Page 6 of Maverick Detective Dad
Bad connections.
Eleven years earlier, Delbert had received community service and probation for an incident in a bar fight that had left a woman dead. During the fight with another man, Delbert had shoved the woman out of the way, and she’d landed on some broken glass.
“She bled out,” Everly said, and this time her voice cracked. “A cut to the femoral artery like Jill.”
Noah didn’t bother to try to reassure Everly that this could still be a coincidence. Instead, he went to Winona’s background.
Bingo.
About ten years before she’d been murdered, when she was still a minor, Winona had been driving under the influence when she’d hit a pedestrian. The person had lived but had been seriously injured and was now disabled. Winona had been convicted and had done only a couple of weeks in juvie lockup.
For several moments, the silence stayed thick and heavy between them. Obviously processing it. Or rather trying to do that.
“Did Jill receive a box?” Everly asked, her voice stabbing through that silence.
He was about to answer no, that a box like that hadn’t been found at her residence, and Jill hadn’t reported receiving one. Instead, he took out his phone and called Hank Dubois, Jill’s landlord.
“Detective Ryland,” the man said when he answered. He’d obviously seen Noah’s name on the phone screen. “Did you find Jill’s killer?”
“Working on it. Mr. Dubois, I need you to think back to the days or even a week before Jill’s death. Do you know if she happened to receive a package she hadn’t been expecting? Or maybe you saw a box left outside her apartment door?”
“I didn’t see a box,” he answered without hesitation, “but she came by the office here and complained about it. Somebody had put a box filled with broken glass on her doorstep. It was the kind of glass from a car windshield, and she said they’d poured ketchup or something on it.”
Everly made a soft sharp sound, and she pressed her fingers to her mouth for a moment.
“What’d Jill do with the box?” Noah pressed. “And was there a note or anything else inside it?”
“She didn’t mention a note, only the glass, and I’m pretty sure she tossed it in the dumpster. She said something about kids playing a stupid prank.” The man paused. “Was it a prank?”
“I’m not sure,” Noah settled for saying. And he wished like the devil that he’d known about the box sooner so he could have tried to retrieve it from the trash. “Get in touch with me if you remember anything else that might help,” he added.
Noah ended the conversation so he could text Grayson to have him ask the courier if he’d also delivered anything to Jill’s apartment. He intended to follow that up with a call to the courier company, but his phone rang before he could do that.
“It’s Kevin Kendall,” Noah relayed to Everly.
They both knew the man. They’d not only gone to high school with him, but Kevin was also now the head of the CSI team.
Noah had a debate about whether or not to put the call on Speaker. A debate that quickly ended when he realized that even if it was bad news, this was something Everly had the right to hear.
“Kevin,” Noah greeted. “Please tell me you found something I can use.”
The man certainly didn’t jump to answer, but Noah had no trouble hearing Kevin’s heavy sigh. “We found something,” he verified. “After we’d bagged the dress from the box delivered to you, I saw some writing along the entire inside of the hem.”
Noah had certainly looked at the dress, but he hadn’t taken it out of the box, hadn’t examined it because he hadn’t wanted to contaminate possible evidence.
“It appears to have been written with a black marker,” Kevin went on. “It’s smudged in a couple of places, but it was still easy enough to read.”
“What did it say?” Noah pressed when Kevin paused.
The CSI cleared his throat. “It said,The law didn’t punish her so I made her payfor what she did. You and Everly will pay, too.” Kevin muttered some profanity. “It looks as if we might be dealing with a vigilante killer.”
Chapter Three
Vigilante killer.
Those two words repeated in Everly’s head. So did the threat that had been written on the dead woman’s dress.
The law didn’t punish her so I made her payfor what she did. You and Everly will pay, too.
