The commander looked like his head was about to explode. “We’ve got another problem? You mean besides the monumental one we already have?”
Ron stared at his shoes. “Yes, sir, besides that one.”
Commander Randall sounded irritated. “Just say it.”
“I contacted Tech to see if Terry’s phone was still pinging south of the city.”
“And?”
“And now it isn’t pinging at all. I imagine that means his locations, as well as the physical phone, have been turned off.”
“So you’re saying without the phone being on, the search engine company can’t give us the exact coordinates of where the phone is located, so the warrant for that information is useless.”
“Yes, we’re pretty much dead in the water with that one, sir.”
Randall squeezed his hands into fists. “That’s just great. So now it’s up to the lake cabin knock and talks, and we have no idea which lake he’s at, if he’s at one at all. If Tommy’s truck has been ditched or hidden in a garage, all the knocking in the world isn’t going to make Terry Lasko answer the door.”
The commander was right, and I didn’t know how much success the deputies would have, but we had to do something. Waiting for the warrant while Tommy and his wife were in jeopardy didn’t sit well with any of us.
“Find out if those officers canvassing Lasko’s neighborhood are getting any intel. We’ll give the deputies down south a few hours to see if they can root him out of a cabin, and if not, when the warrant arrives, a couple of you detectives will go to the Lasko house and tear it apart. Hopefully, you’ll find something inside that’ll give you a clue of where he’s hunkered down.”
We checked off all the tasks we had in front of us and touched base with the officers who’d talked to the neighbors. According to them, nobody had anything bad to say about Terry Lasko. He had always been pleasant, and the entire neighborhood had rallied around him and offered sympathy when Katlyn and their unborn baby died. Lately, most people said, they hadn’t seen much of him. They’d assumed he was in mourning and decided to keep to himself.
I knew Terry was grief-stricken, but he had also spent time plotting his revenge on Chicago’s police force, and now he’d added EMTs to the mix. He was a ticking time bomb that was about to blow. We needed to stop him that day, and I intended to do everything in my power to make that happen.