Page 61 of Edge of Steele
“Me too,” Finn said.
“What about me?” Ryleigh fired a look between the men. “No one asked if I could live with it.”
Ryan shifted his attention to her. “Well, can you?”
Could she? Meant more time with Finn. Honestly, it hadn’t been a hardship to be in his company most of the time. And if continuing to partner with him moved the investigation forward, she owed it to the victim to do her best to help. “I can do it for the good of the team and to find a resolution.”
“Good. That’s settled then.” Russ eyed Finn. “Don’t make me regret my decision.”
“I won’t.”
Russ stood and looked down the table at his assistant. “Pass out those packets, Allison.”
She got up and walked around the table, handing out a thick packet of stapled papers to each team member.
“Allison is giving you background documents Colin prepared for Gates, Eckles, his wife, and for Dean Keenan too. Take a good look at them as you finish eating, and I’ll get started on listing the latest developments on the boards.”
Colin set down his sandwich, turkey on hearty wheat bread, that had been Ryleigh’s second choice. “I’m still working on Nye and have algorithms running on everyone. They could turn up additional info from more obscure or difficult sites to access, like the dark web, but I thought you would want to have some background to start with. I should have details on Nye by the end of the day.”
“Great work, Colin.” Russ crossed the room, grabbing a blue marker as he passed the smaller board, and started to write below the To Do list from the prior day.
Ryleigh slowly chewed her last bite to savor the rich flavor and dug into the report, starting with Uri Gates. He was born and raised in Adamsville, Alabama. Went to work as a logger right out of high school. Married Greta. Worked his way up to supervisor. Then a logger on his crew was killed by a tree, and Gates sunk into a dark period in his life. That’s when his wife divorced him. No red flags other than his depression. Contents of his medicine cabinet proved he still took the meds, but it seemed as if he was functioning well except for being overly careful as a supervisor.
Ryleigh turned her glass of iced tea and moved on to Virgil Eckles and his wife, Pauline. His report was even less helpful. Nothing at all to draw attention to him. He became a logger at nineteen and worked for Tobias ever since then, a supervisor for ten years now. No serious accidents. And he was well-liked by the crews. He met and married Pauline ten years ago. She was born and raised in—wait, what?
Adamsville, Alabama.
Ryleigh looked up. “Anyone else see Pauline Eckles and Uri Gates grew up in the same town?”
“Me.” Finn peered intently at his phone. “I’m looking up the town population now to see how likely it is that they could know each other.”
That would’ve been Ryleigh’s next move, and she was glad he’d already started.
His head came up. “A little over two-thousand people.”
“A city that small and they’re a year apart in age,” Russ said. “They could well know each other.”
“But if Eckles told her about Gates when he started,” Finn said. “Why didn’t she say something about knowing him from back then?”
“They could have something to hide,” Ryan said.
Ryleigh looked at Russ. “We didn’t ask her about Gates. We need to question her again.”
“Indeed.” Russ wrote it on the whiteboard under his name.
“A good lead for sure,” Ryleigh said. “Thanks, Colin.”
“All in a day’s work.” He drained the last of his water bottle.
Ryleigh couldn’t drink a thing right now. Not with her heart beating fast. She returned to the reports and looked at Dean Keenan. He too lived in Alabama, but in Birmingham, where he led Sovereign Earth. He’d been arrested several times for minor charges at protests and paid fines. That was until he’d assaulted an officer and served five years in prison. He’d continued to lead the group from his cell.
“This Keenan guy’s a piece of work,” Finn said.
“Seems like he wouldn’t be opposed to killing people.” Colin crinkled his empty bottle and pitched it at the recycle bin. “I couldn’t find any phone numbers for him. No surprise. These guys are all often paranoid and only use virtually untraceable prepaids.”
She turned to the Sovereign Earth packet and learned the group was suspected of several bombings and violent protests, but they hadn’t been charged with any crimes.
“Looks like Sovereign Earth isn’t such a peaceful group,” she said. “But no one has ever been able to prove it, including me.”
