Cole and Bailey entered the sheriff’s station to a frenzy of ringing phones uncommon for ten o’clock on a Thursday night, and every hand was on deck bustling about to answer them.
Cole dropped one of Elma’s pryaniki on Landon’s desk. She’d insisted on sending a bagful home.
Landon looked up and relief swept across his face. “You’re back.”
“What’s going on?”
“Don’t you answer your cell anymore?”
“I wasn’t on call today.” It’d been on vibrate in case of a true emergency, but Landon hadn’t paged him with their emergency code. Not to mention he’d been out of cell-phone range the better part of the day.
Slidell stormed out of his office, an unlit cigar butt clamped in his teeth. “McKenna. Where have you been?”
“We—”
“Sheriff,” Tom called, “Mayor Cox’s on the phone.”
“Again?” Color rose up Slidell’s neck.
Tom held the phone out to him. “Afraid so.”
Slidell waved him off. “Take another message.”
“All right.” Tom shrugged. “But he says if you don’t take his call this time, he’s coming down here.”
Slidell growled and grabbed the receiver. “Slidell.”
Cole looked to Landon. “What’s going on?”
Spewing out a few choice words, Slidell slammed down the receiver. That conversation hadn’t lasted long. It sounded like Mayor Cox was headed to the station.
“I’ll tell you what’s going on. Someone”—Slidell glared around the station—“leaked word of the murders.”
“Murders, as in plural?” Cole asked.
Landon nodded. “Blood sample collected on the boat does not match Elizabeth Johnson’s.”
It had been Liz. “Elizabeth?” Had they learned something more?
“I got a call from Elizabeth Johnson’s sister today. Poor girl is distraught. She said Elizabeth and some mysterious boyfriend of hers came up here from California to do some wreck diving, and Rachel—that’s the sister—hasn’t heard from her since. The description matches. We’re just waiting on dentals to confirm.”
“Mysterious boyfriend, huh?” Cole said.
“Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”
“How’d she define mysterious?”
“Never saw the guy except through a car window. Elizabeth told her he was private and shy. Rachel found it strange.”
“She have a name on the guy?”
“Only a first. Nick,” Landon supplied. “What description she had of the guy didn’t contradict Cleary’s.”
“We’re still going by Cleary’s description?”
Landon shrugged. “So far it’s all we’ve got.”
“Any luck with the boat? Fingerprints?” Cole asked.
“Too many to even sort through, being a rental, but I did a more thorough search and found a couple more items that might be of help.”
Landon spread a series of photographs across Slidell’s desk.
Cole studied the images of ornate censers, candle stands, and a remarkably beautiful chalice set. “Where’d you get these?”
“An underwater camera I found stashed on the boat,” Landon explained.
Bailey lifted a photograph. “These weren’t taken underwater.”
Landon shook his head. “No, they weren’t.”
“But you just said . . .” Slidell began.
“That they were taken with an underwater camera, but not underwater,” Landon clarified.
“Why on earth would you take regular photographs with an underwater camera?” Slidell asked, the remaining thread of his patience nearly worn bare.
“Maybe because they expected these things to be underwater,” Cole said.
Slidell gnawed his cigar butt. “Go on . . .”
“Let’s say our divers—Liz and her mystery man—took the camera diving. They expected they’d only need an underwater camera, but they found submerged ruins filled with air.”
“What kind of ruins would have these types of artifacts?” Landon asked.
Cole exchanged a knowing glance with Bailey and smiled. “A church.”
“Let me get this straight,” Slidell began. “You’re saying an entire island, including a church, sank into the sea, and somehow these images are from the inside of that church.”
“As crazy as it sounds, yes,” Cole said. Based on the evidence, it was the most logical solution, no matter how illogical it sounded.
“My aunt kept fastidious records,” Bailey said. “Give me a few days to go through them. Maybe there’s something on the church there.”
“In the meantime, I can come up with some coordinates for a search grid based on where Elizabeth’s body was found in relation to the area of the sunken island,” Cole offered.
“If one even exists,” Tom scoffed from the periphery. He hadn’t managed to keep his opinion to himself yet. Hogwash was the term he used to describe what he felt about their theories. But, fortunately, he wasn’t the one making the call.
Slidell rocked back in his chair. “Here’s what we’re going to do. Landon, you work on the traditional leads we’ve got. Give the sister, Rachel, a call. See if there was an angry ex-boyfriend in the picture—someone who could have followed the happy couple up here. And find out all you can about this mystery man. Contact Elizabeth’s neighbors. Maybe someone else got a better look at Romeo. And keep up your hunt for the truck Liz was driving. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find it was rented in our mystery man’s name, though I doubt it. Bailey, you search Agnes’s files. See what you can find. You said this icon, if found, would be worth money?”
She nodded. “A fortune.”
“All right.” Slidell rubbed his chin. “Cole, you go ahead and make up a series of search grids. We’ll give it a few days, if nothing else pans out we’ll see if we can’t locate whatever started all this trouble.”
Landon leaned against the doorframe. “I think it’d be wise to assume whoever killed two people over this isn’t just going to walk away. The longer we wait, the more opportunity he has to kill again.”