He found a new text message from Special Agent Graley.
Check your email and call me.
Now what?
Inside, Nancy glanced up from her keyboard. “Do I know you?” she said, throwing him a double dose of sarcasm.
“Ha.” He held out a hand. “Messages?”
She shook her head. “Abby’s already handled everything.”
He dropped his hand to his side. “Well. She’s either looking for a raise or trying to put me out of my job.”
Nancy smirked. “You’re never in town anymore. Might be time for some new blood around here.”
“You’re not funny.” He headed down the hall to his office.
“I wasn’t trying to be,” his secretary called after him.
Pete slung his coat on the hook inside his door, poured a cup of coffee from the full pot, and sank into his chair.
He woke up his computer to find a whole page of new emails. Abby might be taking care of the incoming phone calls, but at least he still had plenty to keep him busy. Scanning through the list of senders, he clicked on the message from Felicia Graley, subject line: DLK.
The body of the email contained two links with one sentence typed above it. You might find this interesting. If he hadn’t received the text from her, he’d have thought this was one of those scam emails. The first link took him to a newspaper from Morgantown, a West Virginia city about sixty miles south of Vance Township. The headline read “Local Woman Murdered.” In smaller print, Police asking for help locating killer.
Pete read the article about a young woman who’d been found shot in her car, which was parked behind the strip mall in which she worked. There had been no witnesses, and the police were looking into a person of interest. Pete checked the date of the story. A chill gripped the back of his neck when he realized the murder had taken place six weeks before Elizabeth’s.
The second link took him to a short follow-up article dated a month later. “Woman’s Unknown Killer still a Mystery.” The body of the piece simply stated no arrests had been made and pleaded for anyone with information to come forward.
He reread the articles before picking up his phone and keying in Graley’s number.
The agent answered without a hello. “That didn’t take long.”
“Care to explain?”
“One of our investigators came across it yesterday. Like your case, this homicide happened before DLK was on our radar. A jilted boyfriend was the prime suspect, but the local LEOs were never able to gather enough evidence to make an arrest. The boyfriend later moved away from the area.”
Pete squeezed the bridge of his nose, warding off a stabbing headache. He wanted to call Graley out on her task force missing another one but didn’t think alienating her at this point was a good idea.
“I’m sure you noticed the date on the homicide,” she said.
“Six weeks before Elizabeth Landis was killed.”
“Exactly. This places DLK within easy driving distance of your jurisdiction.”
The bells on the station’s front door announced an arrival. He hoped it was Abby, because he sure didn’t care to hear from anyone else right now. “Are you still certain Elizabeth’s killer wasn’t your DLK?” he asked.
A long pause was followed by a resigned, “No. Your case still doesn’t match his MO, but placing him in the vicinity does change things.”
Graley ended the call after assuring Pete she’d be in touch with any new updates and asking him to do the same. He hung up and swiveled his desk chair to face the yellowed roadmap of southwestern Pennsylvania tacked to the wall. Before his tenure in Vance Township, his predecessor had used this map to locate addresses when responding to emergencies. Pete had GPS, but he kept the map for its sense of history. Except at that moment, his gaze went to the southern border of the state. And the northern border of West Virginia. Morgantown perched on the edge of the map where Interstates 79 and 68 intersected.
He wondered if anyone he knew worked for their police department. Preferably someone who owed him a favor.
A rap on the doorjamb interrupted his musings. Lauren Sanders entered without waiting for an invitation. “Nancy asked me to wait until you got off the phone. Do you have time to answer a few questions?”
Pete didn’t know whether he should thank his secretary for keeping the reporter up front while he spoke with Graley or fire her for letting anyone from the media—even Lauren—show up in his doorway unannounced. “Do I have a choice?”
She grinned and claimed the guest chair. “You always have a choice, Chief.”
He suspected otherwise. Especially since Zoe had informed him Lauren was going to care for the horses, allowing Pete and his bride to go on their honeymoon. “Ask your questions. But understand I may choose not to answer.”
“Like I said. You always have a choice.” Lauren deposited her leather tote on the second guest chair and withdrew her notepad and a pen. “What are your thoughts about the possibility of the Deserted Lot Killer actually being Elizabeth Landis’ murderer?”
Pete studied Lauren’s face. He wondered where she’d gotten her information. And exactly how much information she had. “I thought you were doing a feature on Franklin Marshall.”
“I’m very good at multitasking.” She tapped the notepad with the pen. “Right now, I’m working the Landis case. As are you.”
“He preys on women in deserted lots, as the name implies. There were other vehicles in the Route 15 Plaza the night Mrs. Landis was shot.”
Lauren’s scowl told him she didn’t care for his response. “You’re not even looking into the possibility?”
“I didn’t say that.”
She brightened. “What are you doing to rule out the serial killer as a suspect?”
Pete’s gaze settled on his computer screen and the still-open Morgantown news article.
Working with, rather than against, Lauren Sanders had proven beneficial in the past. Perhaps she might be helpful again. He weighed his words before speaking. “We’re keeping in close touch with a
