27

Still wearing the clothes she had thrown on in her rush to get to last night’s scene, Lauren addressed the members of the task force less than four hours later, wisps of her blond hair straggling into her eyes, hanging loose from her rough pony tail. After she’d finished all the witness interviews and had spoken to the missing girl’s parents, she had called Kencil and had the whole task force come in early. “I think it’s time to bring David Spencer in for an interview.”

“On what grounds?” Bates was in his self-assigned seat at the conference room table, shirt unbuttoned at the collar, red tie hanging limply on either side, like he couldn’t be bothered to knot it so early in the morning.

“On his connection to Amber Anderson and where her body was dumped. Which is the same place Brianna McIntyre was dumped. Now Isabella Colon has gone missing from the same bar where the burner phone used to set up Brianna’s bogus date was recovered.”

“It’s a stretch,” Manny Perez agreed.

Lauren spread her hands out in front of her. “It’s just an interview. You want to talk about a stretch? You two went and talked to my neighbor and two of the guards who work the gate where I live.”

“Nothing personal.” Bates spit a thick brown wad into his plastic cup.

She suppressed the urge to get up and slap his spittoon across the room. “Asking him to come in for an interview isn’t out of line. What’s the worst that can happen? He can convince you even more he’s not a suspect?”

“I agree with Lauren,” Nolan said. “I want to at least talk to this guy.”

“It’s a dead end. Her paranoid fantasy. It’s a total snipe hunt.” Bates’s voice raised an octave as he slammed his cup down, brown goop sloshing over the side, dribbling down onto the table.

Kencil stood. “Enough, Bates. At the very least we should talk to Spencer about Amber Anderson. Lauren, set it up.”

“Sir—”

Kencil cut him off. “You can choose to watch the interview, if he even agrees to it, or sit out. I don’t care which. But I would think you’d want to explore every investigative avenue and not dig your heels in just to spite your fellow detective here.” He picked his leather folio off the table. “And clean that mess up,” he told Bates as he headed for the door.

“Shane Reese is the primary detective on Isabella’s disappearance. We’ll set up the interview at the Buffalo Homicide office, unless either of you object to that?” Lauren was met by stony silence. “Good. I’ll go make some calls.”

Nolan followed her out of the room and into her cubicle. “That went well.”

The dark circles under his eyes told Lauren he was just as exhausted as she was. Nolan had finally caught up to her at headquarters while she was finishing the harassment paperwork on Moe, the would-be assaulter. “Isabella might still be alive. This has to happen now.” She pulled her cell phone out of her back pocket and dialed Reese.

“His girlfriend left the house at seven in the BMW. I haven’t seen any sign of David.” Reese didn’t even bother with a greeting when he picked up. Lauren knew she owed him big time for sitting in his personal car surveilling Spencer’s house for hours by himself. But like Reese had said back at the bar, they had no other suspects.

“No other movements?”

“There’s a Lexus and a truck still parked in the driveway. I had to grab a coffee and take a piss about an hour ago, right after the girlfriend left. There’s a Tim Hortons five minutes from here.” There’s a Tim Hortons five minutes from everywhere in Buffalo, Lauren thought as Reese continued. “But nothing changed while I was gone. His ride is still here, and I saw some activity in one of the upstairs windows. Someone is still inside.”

“Kencil says to bring him in for an interview.”

“That’s good because I was just about to go knock on his door anyway. My patience is spent. And my coffee is gone.”

“Don’t come here to the task force office. I got this. Take him right to Homicide. See you back at headquarters.”

Reese clicked off without a goodbye. Lauren looked up into Nolan’s eyes. “You ready to meet David Spencer?”