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When Ann arrived at the station, George was already at his desk with his face smashed against his hand. She closed the door, and he heaved a great sigh.
“Hey, George,” Ann said. “Where were you between three and four a.m.?”
“Sleeping.” He lifted his head and looked at her. “Why?”
Ann pulled her chair over to his desk and sat near him.
“The station got a call from Betty and Roger Berg,” she said. George sat up a little straighter. “Something’s happened to Marcie.”
“She’s gone? Abducted like Sheriff and Ruthie?” George moved to stand, but Ann put a hand on his shoulder and made him stay.
“Hold on. Let me finish,” she said. “Marcie is alive but in shock. She lost a lot of blood. Flight for Life took her to Aspen General Hospital.” Ann considered her next words. Would George want to know? Would he care? “She lost the baby.”
“I have to go to her,” George said, rising again.
Ann stood and pushed him back down into his seat. She leaned over him, hands on the arms of his chair, a posture she’d used before when questioning stubborn suspects.
“Listen to me, George. You can’t go to her. Her parents think you poisoned her or stabbed her or did something to cause this. To be honest, it makes sense why you’d do that, but I know deep down you never would.”
He opened his mouth.
“Shush. Listen to me. I know you wouldn’t, but there are implications. So tell me, right now—is there anyone who can vouch for where you were last night? Specifically between the hours of three and four in the morning?”
George blushed and nodded. He let out a lip-flapping breath.
“I was here most of the night,” he said. “With Whitney. She’s the night receptionist.” He glanced at Ann, then away. His face turned full-on crimson.
“Were you here when she got the call from the Bergs?”
He shook his head. “I left close to four.”
Ann went back to her own desk where she’d set the evidence.
“We played strip Go Fish.” He grinned, Marcie’s plight apparently forgotten.
Ann held up her hand. “I don’t need the details, thanks.”
“It was her idea.”
“Please.” She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “Good for you,” she muttered. “For . . . moving on. Or whatever.” Ann pulled out the prints she’d collected. “Do we have any way to analyze fingerprints?”
“We have a scanner and an old computer in the sheriff’s office,” George said. “But no way to analyze stuff. That’s what the lab is for.”
Ann let out a long breath and went into the office. The beast of a computer sat on the floor. The monitor took up half the desk, the scanner the other half.
“It’s slow,” George said from the doorway. “But it works—after a while.” He leaned against the frame. “What are you gonna do?”
“Scan the prints I collected and send them to a friend.”
“FBI?” George seemed impressed. “CIA?”
Ann shook her head. “Not quite.” She turned the computer on, and it whirred to life with a high-pitched whine.
A burp and a fart later and the operating system finally booted. George came around behind her.
“Click that icon there.” He touched the screen, smudging the layer of dust. “The program for the scanner will open.”
“Thanks.” Ann clicked it and, after the computer percolated a pot of coffee, the software opened. She scanned the prints and waited while the processor rendered the images.
When they came up, she picked up the phone and looked at George.
“Give me a minute?”
He shrugged and left the office.
Ann dialed her ex-CBI friend’s cell number. She chewed a hangnail on her thumb while the phone rang. Joey Rigsby could have been the top analyst in the state, possibly the country. He’d graduated from high school two years early, attended prestigious colleges, held a job with the CIA before CBI. Then, he got shit-canned for his penchant for marijuana and inability to keep secrets. His voicemail picked up, and while Ann left a message, he called her back. After their usual banter, he convinced her to have dinner with him the next time she was in Denver in exchange for hacking the various systems and running the prints.
Ann hung up and went out to her desk to examine the other evidence. George swiveled in his chair to face her.
“What else did you find?” he asked.
“I have her laptop, but listen, George.” She touched her eyebrow. “I don’t think you should help me with this case. It’s too personal to you, and I don’t want your perceptions to cloud your judgment.”
He nodded along with her. “Okay, but I might be able to help you.”
“If I run into anything you can help with, I’ll ask.”
“What do you want me to do then?”
“Don’t you have other cases?”
He shrugged. “It’s Harmony.”
“Answer the phone if anyone calls. I have a feeling Rachel won’t be coming back anytime soon.”
Betty said Marcie didn’t have a cellphone, due to the crappy service, so hopefully her laptop had something to go on. Ann pulled it out of the evidence bag.
George shuffled over to Rachel’s seat and twisted back and forth in the chair.
Marcie’s laptop prompted Ann for a password.
She tried PinkysPal and BrentWinter and even combinations of George’s name, but none of them worked.
“Hey, George, do you know what Marcie might have used for a password?”
“Yeah,” he said. He’d opened Solitaire. “PV6LUV.”
Ann tried that. It worked.
“Thanks.”
“Wait, it worked?” He turned around.
“Yep,” she said.
“Our first kiss was in Pine Valley in June last year.” He sighed. “I thought she might have changed it. Why did she have to cheat on me? Why’d she have to go and get pregnant and leave the test where I’d find it?”
Ann shrugged. “She’s young, George. She doesn’t know what she wants right now.” Except Brent Winter, who Marcie also probably kissed in Pine Valley when she was there this past June, according to Betty.
Now logged into the computer, Ann opened Outlook.
Besides a whole lot of spam, there wasn’t much. She clicked through some of the folders but found nothing interesting. Nothing from Pinky’s Pal or Brent Winter. Nothing even from George.
“Marcie has an incredible lack of email,” she said. “There’s nothing in here even from you.”
“Kids these days,” he said, as if he weren’t a kid himself. “With bad cell service, they write notes on newspapers or something silly like that.” He turned to her. “I kept all the ones Marcie gave me.”
Ann picked up the bag with The Local Inquirer in it. Pinky’s Pal. There was a “contact us” address on the back. She jotted it down in her notepad, then went to the supply closet and stuffed a pair of latex gloves and some evidence bags into her pocket. Just in case.
“I’ll be back later,” she said, pulling on her coat.
George sighed. “I guess I’ll be here . . . waiting.”
“Is your radio on?”
He checked and nodded.
“I’ll call you if I need anything, and you do the same.”