Page 77 of Made of Steele
She’d worked enough homicides to know it wasn’t that simple. And those were individual murders. But four of them? That took manpower. “Can I make a suggestion?”
“Sure.”
“You mentioned asking for extra help, and I’m assuming Harris turned you down.”
“She did.”
“What if we asked my family to help? Londyn and Ryleigh are still sworn officers and the others have recently left law enforcement. They all have the skills to review these files and look for connections.”
“I don’t know.” He frowned, the indecision back in his expression. “The risk of something leaking might be too great.”
“First of all, none of them will leak info. Second, we need help and Harris won’t provide it. My department likely doesn’t have the staffing to do so. If you want to catch this killer or killers, my family is your best option.”
“Fine.” He planted his hands on the table. “But let’s not call all of them in right away. Mackenzie seems to know something’s off, so we start with only her.”
“I’ll call her.” Teagan quickly dug her phone from her pocket and made the call before Drew changed his mind.
When it connected, she said, “I need you to come home. I need help with something I’m working on.”
Mackenzie blew a frustrated breath through the phone. “I’m kind of in the middle of something myself.”
“My something involves murder,” Teagan said to pique her sister’s curiosity.
“Be right there.” She ended the call.
“Nothing like murder to get a sister’s attention.” Teagan smiled to try to lighten the mood, though there was nothing light about murder.
Drew grabbed the paperwork. “Let’s get these reports organized.”
“It would help to put them in murder book format in binders. I know that will take time, but then we can flip through them easily and not waste even more time searching for what we need.”
“Agreed.”
“We have all the supplies in the office. I’ll grab stuff while you separate that stack by investigation.” She took off to the office shared by all the siblings and cousins.
She loved this room. The dark paint set the mood. The long wall of original bookshelves overflowing with law enforcement reference books dating all the way back to their grandad’s days as a detective added to the moodiness. Instead of a desk, they’d placed a small dining table in the middle of the room with four chairs so more than one person could comfortably work in the space at the same time.
A closet in the corner held the supplies she would need. She took empty binders, dividers, markers, highlighters, post-it notes, and a hole punch to the dining room.
Drew had separated the reports into three stacks and stood over the first one. He looked up. “Which investigation do you want to take?”
“We don’t know much about Hoyle, so I’d like to start with him. See if he’s the link to the others.”
Drew slid a stack of papers across the table to her.
She scanned the detective’s report sitting on top. “He was a supervisor for an airplane manufacturing plant, and he went missing while out biking. They found his bike on the side of the road. Never found him.”
“Explains the cycling clothes found in his grave.” Drew went to the whiteboard and added Hoyle’s details to his name, then tapped each employment type. “Enforcer. Alternative energy. Hotels. Airplanes. What do they all have in common?”
“Hotels and airplanes go together, but the energy company and enforcer are the odd ones out. Hopefully, the answer is in all of this paperwork.” She started sorting Hoyle’s files into mini piles that she would divide with tabs for easy access.
Drew tugged the pile with Romo’s records across the table. “Their personal lives could give us the lead we need. Though if the way they disappeared tells us anything, it looks like they were into different activities too.”
She looked up at him. “Could the connection be related to the dates they disappeared or were murdered?”
“Good question.” He went to the board and tapped the first two dates with his finger. “We have a two-year gap between Smiley and Hoyle, then four years between Hoyle and Forte. Only eight months between him and Romo.”
“So what might that mean?”
