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Herrera had picked up some extra-large pizzas and brought them into the conference room down at the station, declaring they came from the best pizza joint in the city. Kelly was having a hard time getting more than a slice in. Not that she was blaming that on the pizza, rather some homesickness. Tomorrow night—or tonight technically, as it was pretty much midnight—she’d be missing the first dinner in six years with her friends, Brianna and Jessica, back in Miami.
Herrera was seated at one end of the table, Jack at the other. It could have been construed as a struggle for power, but Kelly thought Jack took that crown hands down. There was no doubt there was still some tension from Jack’s failure to communicate with Herrera about the previous murders. And for that, Kelly couldn’t blame Herrera for being upset.
Before heading here, they’d requested video from the Colonial Hotel be sent to Nadia. She’d have to wade through the last five days to see who had entered room 850 and when. If they were lucky, they’d get a face.
Brandon and Paige talked to neighboring guests before coming to the station, and no one had heard or seen anything helpful.
“As we briefly explained earlier, we—” Paige glanced at Brandon “—think the sniper arranged to meet Sherman and then used the opportunity to take him out.”
“With Sherman’s cheating ways, it’s possible the sniper is a woman.” The thought excited Kelly for some reason she couldn’t pin down.
“Right,” Paige confirmed.
“I’m still not on board with that yet,” Jack said. “Sherman was unemployed at the time of his death. It could have been an interview or something business-related.”
Brandon’s eyes met Jack’s. “We thought of that, too.”
“Yet it sounds like all of you are giving real credit to the sniper being a woman.”
“It would allow her to get close to her victims without them suspecting,” Kelly rushed out, not understanding how Jack could close his mind to the possibility of a female sniper. Really, it made complete sense. Male victims shot through the heart—adulterous men, at that. It smacked of a woman scorned, but it didn’t mean the victims had wronged the female sniper directly. They could have just been surrogates for the actual person who’d caused her pain. Question would then be: what had her traveling from New Mexico to Virginia?
“Now, about the room at the Colonial—” Paige swallowed a mouthful of food and dabbed her lips with a napkin “—how did our sniper know the room wouldn’t have been rented out?”
“If possible, we need to find out if their computer system was tampered with.” Jack dropped his pizza crust on his paper plate. “I can have Nadia get on that. Now, the other rooms the sniper used…You had mentioned they were rented. Do you have anything more on the stolen credit card that was used to pay for the room in Albuquerque?”
“The card belonged to Edna and David Mavis, a couple in their seventies, out of California.”
“Did any of these other hotels, where the sniper set up their nest, have video that could have captured the shooter?” Kelly asked.
Brandon met her gaze. “The ones in New Mexico and Arkansas didn’t have video. The hotel in Tennessee did, but the video file was corrupt and of no use.”
“We need to get on the ground. Talk to the investigating officers, find out more about any possible eyewitness accounts. That goes for all three shootings, but if I were to focus on one, it would be the first,” Jack said.
Kelly fiddled with her greasy plate and eyed her half-eaten slice, but she wasn’t hungry anymore. “Any update on the maid, Marsha Doyle?”
“Nothing yet,” Herrera said. “Officers have been sent to her apartment, and there was no answer. The building manager, who has keys, has gone out of state for a couple days. Guess his mother fell ill, but the officers got ahold of him by phone, and he said he’d come back tomorrow.”
Kelly nodded. And she knew there hadn’t been any update from CSIs working over room 850 of the hotel, which she found strange. What hotel room had no hits for DNA or fingerprints? The answer was simple: one that had been wiped down. She supposed that shouldn’t shock her, really—not when they were looking for a skilled sniper who seemed to take pride in remaining invisible.
“Was there anything else found on Reid’s person or of note from the autopsy?” Jack asked Herrera.
Herrera bobbed his head, swallowed his mouthful of food. “There was epithelial under his fingernails and hair taken from his suit. Besides his keys, Reid had his wallet in his pocket and three individually wrapped breath mints. We collected his cell phone, and a preliminary check shows nothing useful—all business correspondence. His wallet contained his ID, as you know, but also credit cards and two recent receipts.”
Kelly sat up straighter. “Where do they tie back?”
Herrera brushed his hands together, ridding them of crumbs from the pizza slice he’d polished off, and opened a folder in front of him. A few seconds later, he said, “Spencer’s Sports Bar—it’s downtown—and a Starbucks.”
“When were the charges made?” If they were lucky, they might be able to piece the last moments of Reid’s life together before he’d shown up at Wilson Place on Wednesday night. She was surprised they were just hearing about the receipts now.
“Starbucks yesterday afternoon about three and—” Herrera squinted and held the report a few inches from his face “—the bar was at eleven.”
Kelly glanced at Jack. If this information excited him, it wasn’t evident. She hesitated to voice her thoughts on the matter for fear of being shot down, but she’d regret it if she didn’t say anything. “We need to go to Spencer’s and see if Reid was there by himself or had company.” Maybe their sniper had shown his or her face again. It does seem that the sniper had arranged the meet-up with Sherman.
“I agree,” Paige said. “If we’re lucky, he was there with his mistress, or the mystery woman from Pryce’s condo, if they are different people. The staff at Spencer’s might have some names for us so we can track her—or them—down.”
“It’s definitely a lead worth following,” Jack said.
Kelly smiled inside because she’d been the one to suggest going to the bar in the first place, but she refused to let the expression show, thinking it would come out as a goofy grin. Jack must have been more interested in the receipts than he’d let on.
“On the topic of the mistress, how did the CSIs make out at Pryce’s condo?” Jack asked, his attention on Herrera.
“They have a bit of a goldmine there. Semen on the bedsheets. You know about the lipstick on the wineglass. That left us some DNA, and there were also prints there. If the woman’s in the system, we’ll find her.”
Jack tapped his shirt pocket that housed his cigarettes. “All right, here’s the plan. Kelly and I are going to work the case from here in Arlington.”
Brandon and Paige stiffened in unison.
“And I want you two on a plane for New Mexico. Dig around and find out anything you can about Robert Wise’s life before he was shot. His interactions, his relationships. Let’s see if we can figure out a trigger for our unsub.”
“You don’t think it has something to do with cheating men?” Kelly rushed out and regretted doing so immediately.
“Nothing is ever the way it seems on the surface.” Jack latched eyes with her as he spoke.
She nodded and felt foolish—and angry. She’d been a homicide detective for six years and a cop for four years before that. She knew very well that things weren’t always the way they appeared. She was tiring of being corrected at every turn just for speaking her theories aloud. He was hot and cold; one minute acknowledging the validity of something she said, the next reprimanding her. If things didn’t change with Jack, she wasn’t sure how she could go on being a part of his team.