pay. We still need to change license plates, but can you believe how easy it was? I wish I'd thought of this a long time ago.'
Melanie smiled at Charlie's enthusiasm even while Jared was holding up his hands to get him to quiet down. Then suddenly, Jared seemed to do a double take, looking into the back seat with his cupped hand and face against the window.
'What the fuck did you do?' Jared said as he reached for the back door handle. It was locked. 'Open the fucking door.'
Charlie punched at the buttons until he found the right one and heard the click.
'Did it ever occur to you there might be a reason she left the engine running on a warm, humid morning?' Jared asked as he yanked the door open.
Melanie's heart sank to her stomach. There, in the back seat in a child's car seat, was a baby, its sleepy eyes only bow starting to open.
'Oh my God!' Melanie's hands flew to cover her mouth.
Jared slammed the back door and pulled open the driver's door, standing aside while he told Charlie to 'get the fuck out.'
'Wait a minute,' Melanie said. 'What are you gonna do?'
'Get out of the fucking car, Charlie.' Jared had to tell him again because Charlie was in such a frenzy he couldn't seem to undo the seat belt. 'I can't believe you fucking screwed up again. Have you ever heard of the fucking Amber Alert? Jesus, Charlie! I'm tired of cleamng up your fucking messes.'
Finally, Charlie half slid, half jumped out, and Jared got in.
Before he could close the door, Melanie grabbed at his arm. 'What are you gonna do, Jared?'
He wrenched his arm away, giving her a shove back so he could slam the car door. All he said before he tore away was, 'I'll take care of things.'
CHAPTER 60
8:20 a.m.
Omaha Police Department
Grace raced into the conference room only to find them all waiting.
'Sorry,' she said, taking the chair at the end of the table next to Special Agent Sanchez.
'We're still waiting for Rob Thieson with the State Patrol,' Pakula said, 'but he sounded like he might be really late. Why don't we get started. I think I know most of what he's going to report, anyway.'
'That they haven't found the fucking Chevy with any of their roadblocks?' Detective Ben Hertz complained.
'Actually,' Pakula said, pushing aside the file folders in front of him, 'it's not a Chevy anymore. The Chevy was found in the parking lot of a manufacturing plant just north of Auburn.'
'Wait a minute,' Grace said. 'I thought you told me the gas station clerk was in Auburn and they were headed south?'
'That's what I thought when I talked to you last night. One of the workers reported her car stolen after she got off work late last night. The Chevy was parked two slots away.'
'So what are they in now?' Sanchez wanted to know.
'A cream-colored Taurus. But it could already be something else.'
'This is ridiculous,' Hertz said. 'They're starting to make us look like a bunch of fucking fools.'
'Do we even know what direction they're headed?' Grace asked, but before any of them could answer, she added, 'Is it possible they've backtracked?'
'I'm thinking it might be easier to find them if we know who the fuck they are.' Pakula looked to Darcy Kennedy. 'Please tell us you have something.'
Grace could see that Pakula hadn't gotten much sleep. He was guzzling coffee and she knew the OPD's coffee was even worse than over at the Hall of Justice.
'Well, I know you're all waiting for me to say it's Jared Baraett,' Darcy said, ignoring her own reports piled in front of her. 'The thing is, I can't get a definitive print. Even the ones on the butcher knife were so smudged, I swear it's like he did it intentionally.'
'Are you saying we've got nothing?' Sanchez almost came out of his chair.
'I do have a perfect print on the inside of the Saturn, on one of the back windows. There was a smudge of vomit next to it, so there's a very good chance it belongs to the one who threw up.'
'Excellent,' Sanchez said. 'So who is he?'
'I don't know.'
'What the fuck?'
'Calm it down,' Pakula told Sanchez, and Grace realized they were all running on little sleep. She was probably the most rested one of the bunch.
'He's nobody in the system,' Darcy explained. '-Chances are he's never been fingerprinted before. I did find a match, though.'
'Wait a minute,' Pakula said. 'I thought you said the print didn't match anyone in the system.'
'I said it's not anybody in the system but I do have a match on file. Grace had me go back to one of the convenience stores that was robbed last week.'
They were all staring at Grace now. She knew what they were thinking: was she nuts for interrupting the tech's time with a string of piddly robberies when there was a manhunt for killers going on?
'She discovered the same person was in each of the stores right before the robberies took place.' Darcy pulled out black-and-white photos, and Grace recognized them as stills from the surveillance cameras, the date and time stamped in the corners. And in each photo there was the same young man.
'Look, I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous,' Sanchez was at it again. 'What the hell does this have to do with anything?'
'One of the videos shows him opening a door to one of the refrigerated cases,' Darcy said, ignoring Sanchez. 'He left his fingerprints up high and inside. I went back yesterday and after a week it was still there-no others, not that high.'
'I hope you're getting to some point soon.'
'He's one of our bank robbers,' she said, pointing to the young man in the grainy photo. 'The prints inside the refrigerated case's door match the ones on the inside window of the Saturn.'
This time even Sanchez was quiet.
'But I can't give you a name because he's not in the system.'
'Holy crap!' Pakula said, rubbing a hand over his face then up over his head. 'You were right, Grace. It's the convenience-store robbers escalating.'
'Or practicing.' Grace waited for the idea to sink in. 'I still think it's Bamett. You said the gas station clerk was shot. Where?'
Pakula wouldn't meet her eyes and she knew even before he said, 'In her face. Her jaw was ripped open.'
'Any connection to Jared and the bank teller?' Grace asked.
'None that I can find.' Pakula pulled out a file and flipped it open. 'She went for much older men than Bar-nett. The only connection I could make was that she used Max Kramer last spring to get her out of a DUI conviction, which he's still calling her about. She probably stiffed him for the bill. One of her roommates thinks she had a rich married guy wound around her little finger, but I have her phone records for the last several months right here and I haven't found the mysterious guy named Jay. Oh, and we have this,' Pakula said, tossing a plastic bag containing a piece of jewelry onto the table. 'Wes Howard found this in the mud next to the Saturn. It was Tina Cervante's. Given to her by JMK, her supposed mystery man.'
'Wait a minute,' Grace said. 'I've just seen those initials somewhere.' And she started riffling through the papers she had received yesterday for Carrie Ann Comstock's drug case. 'Here it is.' She pulled out a document and threw it down on the table next to the locket with the initials JMK. At the bottom of the document was the
