“I think we’ve got all we can here,” said Tanaka.
Paterno instructed Aimes to lock the rooms and not allow anyone inside and to call when either man reappeared.
“They obviously planned on returning,” Paterno said as he opened the driver’s door. “They left their cars, most of their clothes, and their TVs and gaming sets. No twenty-something would leave those things.”
“Unless they left in a hurry. Something spooked them,” Tanaka said, thinking as she checked her phone and ran through a couple of reports that had come into her e-mail account. “Uh-oh.”
“What?” Paterno was checking his side mirror, waiting for a minivan to pass before pulling onto the street.
“I don’t know what took the lab so long, but there’s a match on the beer can left in Macon’s bedroom at the Latham house.”
“And?”
“Wonder of wonder, it turns out to belong to Troy Boxer. The last known boyfriend. I haven’t found any trace of the new guy Boxer mentioned. I’ve got calls into her friends, but most say they didn’t know of a new guy and that she’d been in a bad mood since the breakup with Boxer.” It was more than that. Ivy Wilde had few friends and the ones Tanaka had interviewed all said the same thing: they avoided her.
“She’s okay, I guess,” Anna Jordan had said in a phone interview. “I was with her the day her mom and stepdad were, you know, found dead and all. We hung out until about ten, I guess, just watching movies.”
Paterno grinned without a trace of humor. “With Boxer’s fingerprints it shouldn’t be a problem getting those warrants now.”
“I’m on it.” Tanaka felt a little sizzle of anticipation as she made the call, that rush of adrenaline that came with the first real break in the case.
Soon Boxer’s car at the very least, and probably Stillwell’s as well, would be impounded and examined with a fine-tooth comb by the forensic techs. They’d also check out the rooming house and any locker space at A-Bay-C Delivery along with the truck assigned to Boxer.
Ivy Wilde’s ex had just been elevated to suspect number one.
* * *
Alvarez liked to get into the department early.
Today was no exception.
Dunking a tea bag into a cup of hot water, she made her way to her office. She loved this quiet time of morning when she could spend time alone at her desk, mentally getting ready for the day, reading through e-mail and reports, catching up on leads or whatever else she needed to do before the Pinewood County Sheriff’s Department came to life.
At her desk as she sipped the hot Earl Grey, she checked her e-mail and got lost in an autopsy report of the victim of a bar fight. She’d just flipped the page when her peaceful hour of solitude was destroyed.
By Carson Ramsby.
Junior detective and her partner. For now. Hopefully it would be a temporary, make that a very temporary, partnership.
From the corner of her eye, she saw him approaching the half-open doorway to her small office. Tall and fit, he had the easy, confident gait of an athlete. She eyed him critically. He was handsome, she supposed. His jaw was tight, his cheekbones sharp, his skin swarthy, his hair a warm brown that curled a bit. In khakis, a polo shirt, and open jacket, he was already through the doorway. He hadn’t bothered to shave, his weekend stubble visible, his hazel eyes bright.
“Hey!” he greeted as he slapped a newspaper onto her desktop, her neatly arranged reports fluttering before she secured them with one hand.
“What?”
He swung one of his long legs over the corner of her desk and leaned forward. “This guy—” He pointed a finger at a small column to one side of the front page. The headline read: MAN CLAIMS TO BE MISSING SON. “Says he’s Brady Long’s illegitimate son.”
“No person is illegitimate,” she said, thinking of her own life, the child she’d given up for adoption when she was a teen.
“Oh, right, right. Let’s be politically correct about it.” He leaned. “Anyway, this alleged biological son of Long, what’s his name?” Ramsby pulled the paper back and scanned it quickly. Garrett Mays. He claims that Brady Long might not have known about him. That he was the end result of an affair with a woman thirty years ago, an affair that went sour. And the woman, Mays’s mother, kept his father’s identity a secret from him and probably from Brady Long as well.”
“Unlikely. Brady Long was one of the richest men in Pinewood County. He owned thousands of acres of land, a huge ranch that Nate Santana now manages, and mining and logging companies.”
“He lived on the ranch?”
“Some of the time, I guess. The Long family also owned a place on the top of the hill. You’ve seen it, right?”