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“You’d be in a bad mood too if you spent hours outside in this cold weather with no results to show for it.” The least Brook could do for Theo was to have his back, just as she would if the situation had been the other way around and involved Sylvie. “I’m having Bit check the junkyards in the surrounding area. Theo made the calls when we first realized that the victims’ vehicles were missing, but the records that the junkyards keep are rather lax. There’s a chance that Bit can access their security feeds and narrow the timeline to the week after each victim went missing.”
“I was going to say that we needed something to go our way, but…” Sylvie’s gaze was focused on the 4k LED monitor. She’d leaned forward and wisely set her teacup on the table. “Brook, your profile states that the unsub could be a woman.”
“Could beare the operative words, Sylvie.“ Brook sighed in frustration as she twirled the stylus in her hand. “Poison is usually preferred by women in most cases, but that still doesn’t explain the burial site. There are more signs pointing to these murders being committed by a male unsub.”
“Hey, Boss? I come bearing gifts!”
Bit had walked into the conference room, but he didn’t stop until he was standing in front of the monitor. He could have used the remote that was near Sylvie, but he chose to use the touch screen feature. He quickly moved her profile to the side and brought up some of the footage that he’d been scanning on and off all day long.
Brook was pleased to note that he was no longer the hesitant and meek young man who had started at the firm a year ago. His confidence had grown, along with his maturity.
“Really?” Bit turned to look at them expectantly with his hands up in the air. “Santa Claus? I come bearing gifts? You don’t get the—“
“We get the pun, Bit,” Brook said wryly as pressed one end of the stylus to her forehead. Everyone had growing pains. “What have you got for us?”
“You have no jolly in your holly, do you?”
It took a moment for Bit’s own words to register with him.
Of course, Sylvie spitting her tea everywhere might have had something to do with him replaying those words in his head. Brook had definitely been too hasty with her assumptions of maturity, but at least he was still the best of the best in his field.
“Oh, snap. Boss, I didn’t mean—“
“Bit?” Brook interrupted, biting the inside of her cheek so that she didn’t add to Sylvie’s inability to breathe. “The footage?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Bit murmured as he reached out and pressed the screen. “Um, I’ve been able to pinpoint three possible people who the stuffed shirt might have overheard at the fundraiser last night. Right here, Dr. Heinsel is talking to his date while Kyle is ordering a drink.”
The footage played out, but Brook noticed that Dr. Heinsel’s date laughed two times during their brief conversation. It was highly doubtful that they had been talking about Millie Gwinn killing four women and plotting to set up one or two respected doctors at the hospital.
“Next.”
“Here.” Bit quickly switched out the footage for another frame. “Brett and Catherine were standing at the end of the bar when Kyle ordered his fourth drink. I didn’t notice them before due to the angle of the camera and an older couple standing in between the Kolsbys and the stuffed shirt.”
“And the third possibility?” Brook asked, not really liking where her thoughts were taking her. “And do you really have to refer to Kyle as a stuffed shirt?”
“Stephen Averill.” Bit didn’t continue until he was able to press play on the last video. “And yes, Kyle Paulson is definitely a stuffed shirt. Anyway, I didn’t know it was Averill standing behind the stuffed shirt due to the way that they were standing. Averill’s back was to the security camera the entire time that the stuffed shirt was standing near the bar. As you can see here, the stuffed shirt walks away, and Averill stays for at least another five minutes before turning to speak with a woman.”
Bit allowed the footage to play out, giving Brook and Sylvie the opportunity to witness the video themselves.
“Patience,” Brook murmured as she leaned forward in her chair. “When choosing poison as a murder weapon, patience has to be ingrained into the unsub.”
“The woman who Averill is speaking to is a brunette.”
“Could be a coincidence,” Brook countered, although she didn’t have a strong opinion one way or the other. “The background check that we performed on Averill showed that he grew up in a loving home, had two doting parents, was the star quarterback for his high school football team, and he excelled in college. Not only that, but he was part of a fraternity. Nothing in his past suggests that he could be our unsub.”
Brook couldn’t stop her thoughts from steering to her own childhood. The same could have been said of Jacob, but what if she’d missed something? What if she’d overlooked something so minor to everyone else that she’d ignored the significance to Jacob?
“There’s something else that I should mention,” Bit said as he rested his hands on the back of a chair. By this time, Sylvie had used a napkin to clean up the droplets of tea that had landed on the table. She’d even thrown the napkin in the small trashcan underneath the thin table positioned next to the door. “Nolan is still at the family estate. He never went home last night.”
“Given that we don’t know the context of Nolan’s relationship with his father outside of this current situation, it could be a normal thing for Nolan to spend some time with his dad,” Brook said aloud more to benefit herself than the others. “For all we know, Nolan has made amends with his father after learning about his illness. Such a horrific diagnosis has a way of letting bygones be bygones.”
Bit had stepped back in front of the large monitor to reset the screen to the way it was when he’d first entered the conference room. The way his hand stilled over the profile displayed his disbelief at the words typed out in the first paragraph regarding the unsub’s gender.
“Do you think that the stuffed shirt was right about Millie?” Bit asked as he turned around to face them. He pushed at his grey knit cap the way he did when he processed information. “Are you suggesting that Millie Gwinn set all this up to deflect suspicion onto herself? Are you saying thatshecould be the serial killer?
Chapter Thirty-One
Brooklyn Sloane
