A few minutes later, Kyle joined them. He’d traded his white lab coat for a leather jacket and, judging from the black boots accented with chains on his feet, was still fond of riding his motorcycle as much as the weather permitted.
“Is it true?” he asked, without preamble. “Is it possible Wade is innocent?”
“It’s what we’re trying to determined,” Luke said. “Why? Would it surprise you if he was?”
“I…I don’t know. I had a hard time believing Wade killed Franny. They had a good friendship. I mean, they flirted, but it never struck me as anything serious. Then he confessed, so that changed things.”
“Have you noticed anyone lingering around June’s property in the past couple of weeks?”
Kyle’s gaze skittered away, and he shoved his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. “Nope.”
“You sure?” Luke had the faintest sensation Kyle wasn’t being honest. “It might not have been recently. Could’ve been even as far back as a couple of months.”
“Naw. There are a lot of woods separating our properties, so it’d be hard for me to keep track of the comings and goings at June’s house.”
Megan frowned. “Wade said he gave you a lift home from the party that night and along the way, Franny called to say she’d found his cell phone. Is that true?”
“Yeah. He arranged to go back to her place to pick it up after dropping me off.” Kyle shifted his weight back and forth. “Listen, Megs, there’s something you should know.”
“What?”
“About ten minutes after Wade dropped me, I got a phone call from Franny. She didn’t say anything, but I could hear voices. At the time, I figured she’d butt-dialed me or something, and I hung up. It wasn’t until later I realized the significance of what I’d heard. Someone else was there with her that night.”
“How can you be sure someone was there?” Luke asked. “Maybe it was the television.”
“No, it was definitely a person and they were having a conversation. I know the difference.”
It would’ve taken a good twenty minutes for Wade to get back to Franny’s house after dropping Kyle off, even if he floored it. It couldn’t have been Wade she was talking to.
“Was it a man or a woman?” he asked.
“It sounded like a man, but I can’t be sure. The voices were muffled.” He shifted his weight again. “I told Dan about it right after the murder, and then June came to my house asking all kinds of questions. I told her too. Other than that, no one else knows. When Wade confessed, I was surprised. I’d convinced myself I must’ve been mistaken about what I heard that night. But with these attacks…now everything is different. Maybe Wade is innocent after all.”
Eleven
Kyle’s revelation plagued Luke for the next day and a half. Knowing someone was with Franny near the time of her murder didn’t prove Wade’s innocence, but it was significant. The more Luke dug into the case, the deeper his doubts went.
Weston leaned back in his chair and it groaned. “Any idea who was with Franny on the night of her murder?”
“None,” Luke said.
It was lunchtime, and the Medina County Sheriff’s Department was bustling with activity. The door of the conference room was cocked open and, a riot of laughter came from a small group of deputies gathered around a pizza box on someone’s desk.
Megan frowned. “Maybe we shouldn’t discuss this with the door open.”
“Good point.” Luke got up and shut it. “I had troopers recanvass the neighbors around the lake, but no one remembers anything. We also questioned a few of Franny’s girlfriends, but they confirmed everyone left the party around the same time.”
“We don’t even know whether it was a man or a woman,” Megan added. “So the information is helpful, because it proves someone else was there, but narrowing it down will be difficult.”
Weston eyed the table covered in documents and photographs. “What is all of this?”
“It’s Franny Dickerson’s case file.”
“Why is it such a mess?”
Megan blew a strand of hair out of her face and pushed down on a hole punch. It squeaked in protest. “When we opened the boxes, it looked like someone had dumped all the pages on the floor before shoving them back inside and closing the lid.”
Weston’s eyes widened, and he shared a look with Luke. Neither man said anything, but they didn’t have to. They’d worked with enough departments to recognize potential trouble.
“It took us all afternoon yesterday just to put it in some kind of order,” Megan continued. She placed the pages in a binder and added a divider. “Today, we’re working on making copies.”
“What news do you have?” Luke asked.
“Well, your mysterious caller, Megan, used a prepaid phone,” Weston declared. “Not much of a surprise there. I got a warrant to ping the phone to come up with a general location, but it’s been turned off. Chances are the person bought it for this purpose and only turns it on to make a call.”
Luke frowned. Identifying the woman through her phone had been a long shot, but it was still frustrating to hit another brick wall.
Megan pushed down on the hole punch and it squeaked again. “So there’s no way to find out who she is?”
“Not at the moment. Record the call next time. That would give us her voice to analyze.”
Luke punched his own set of sheets and tucked them into a binder. “What about the key we found on June’s key ring? Any luck there?”
“I’m afraid not.” Weston scowled. “I even expanded the search to any storage unit within a four hundred-mile radius. None of them use a key like the one June had.”
“What else could it be for?” Megan asked.
“Well, I had someone at the lab take a look. The key could be for
