“You’re sure?”
“Hell, yes . . . To my knowledge, she has never been in my bedroom or my house except that one time . . . wait a minute.” He stared at Rivers. “What you’re saying is that you think because you have pictures of her in my bed with the gun that she and I . . .” To his credit, he seemed disbelieving, his mouth falling open. “No . . . just no! This—whatever it is, is nuts!” And then it appeared to have dawned on him. “You’ve been in my house again,” he charged.
Rivers gave a curt nod. “We checked.” And then Rivers laid it out, explaining that they’d checked his house again, found a long black hair in his bed, presumably from the dead woman. To be certain, they’d stripped his bedding and taken it, probably looking for semen or blood . . . or whatever.
“Jesus H. Christ!” Cahill came out of his chair. “I had nothing to do with any of this! Nothing!”
“And yet your name keeps coming up, and you are at the center of it all.”
“No way, I—”
Mendoza cut him off. “What was your relationship with Charity Spritz?”
Cahill’s head snapped around to stare at her. “The reporter. Nothing. . . holy crap, what the fuck are you suggesting?”
“She called you.”
“Well, yeah! Constantly. Ever since Megan went missing. She wanted to interview me, but I wasn’t into it. I mean she was a real pain in the butt.” He explained that Charity Spritz’s calls were insistent, nearly to the point of harassment, that she’d shown up on his porch, and that he’d finally decided to call her, only to have her not respond. “. . . I guess now that I know what happened to her, that explains it. Wait a minute. Don’t tell me—was she killed with . . .” He glanced at the Glock again.
“No,” Rivers said. “Strangled.”
“Jesus . . . and you think . . . ?” Cahill looked sick. “As I said, this is freakin’ nuts!”
Rivers had just seen the official autopsy report, where he’d noted that Spritz’s larynx had been crushed, the hyoid bone broken, along with injuries sustained in a severe beating. Hopefully, though, the scrapings under her fingernails would help ID her killer.
The interview lasted over an hour, but in the end, Rivers and Mendoza didn’t learn anything more. When Mendoza asked why he was with Rebecca Travers, James reacted a little, bristling.
“I don’t see it’s any of your business, but she and I want to find out what happened to Megan.”
“So you’re not involved with her romantically?” Mendoza persisted.
“No.” But his eyes had flashed a little.
“You were.”
“Yes.”
“And you dumped her for her sister.”
He hesitated, then nodded. “I made a mistake. I broke up with her based on a lie.”
“That Megan Travers perpetrated.”
A muscle worked in his jaw. “As I said, it was a mistake.”
“So you aren’t taking up with her again?”
Just the tiniest bit of hesitation. “No.”
Rivers didn’t believe him. “What about Sophia Russo? You’ve been seen with her.”
“Are you two involved? Romantically?” Mendoza added, putting a finer point on it.
“We were,” he admitted. “That’s over.”
Rivers asked, “Does she know it?”
“Yes.” A muscle twitched in James’s jaw, visible just over the scars in his beard. “I made that crystal clear.”
“You’re certain about that?” Mendoza said, her eyebrow crooking, but James Cahill didn’t rise to the bait. Then he dropped the bomb. “Is she related to you?”
“Is she what? Are you kidding?” he said, in visible distress. “Related to me? Hell, no! She’s a woman I met here. You people are sick.” He scraped back his chair and held up his hands, palms toward the cops. “I think we’re done here.”
And they probably were for now. “Just one more thing,” Rivers said, and texted the officer staying with Rebecca Travers.
“What?”
When Rebecca stepped into the interrogation room and sat down next to James, they told her they’d located her sister’s car.
“Where?” Rebecca asked, her hand at her throat, her eyes round. “What about my sister? Is she—?” She couldn’t get the rest out, and James took her hand, gave it a squeeze and pinpointed Rivers in his glare.
“We haven’t found her,” Mendoza admitted. “Just the car and some personal belongings. The car was parked in a garage near a mountain cabin, a garage owned by Harold Sinclaire. Does she know him?”
Rebecca, ashen, shook her head. “Not that I know of.”
“I know him.” James scowled, ran fingers down his beard. “I sold a tiny house to him.” His eyebrows drew together, creating more havoc with his uneven haircut.
Mendoza’s head snapped up. “When did he buy the tiny home?”
“Last year sometime . . . end of summer maybe,” James said. “Was that it? Was she in one of my homes?”
“No. The cabin is at least fifty years old, maybe more, built solidly on a foundation and with a garage,” Rivers said.
Mendoza eyed Cahill. “Do you remember where Sinclaire’s tiny home was delivered to?”
“It wasn’t. Sinclaire hauled it away himself on a trailer.”
“To take it where?”
James leaned back in his chair, rubbed his chin. “I don’t know. It was built to code, was small enough to be considered an RV.”
“Then I guess we need to know where it landed,” Rivers said aloud, and Mendoza made a note. “It’s registered, right? To Sinclaire?”
“Yeah.”
“We’ll need copies of that paperwork,” Mendoza said. “You know that Harold Sinclaire is dating Jennifer Korpi. You were involved with her, too, right? A while back?”
“That’s right,” James clipped out, and beside him, Rebecca tensed, shifted in her chair. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Just something we’re trying to figure out,” Rivers said.
“Then do it. This has nothing to do with me.”
“Then why would a friend of Megan’s say that Megan told her not long before she went missing that if anything happened to her, you were the guy responsible?”
Rebecca gasped, her eyes rounding.
“That’s a lie!” James said, and he was on his feet. “I don’t know where you’re getting your information,
