My phone vibrated in my pocket. Nick lifted his head. I didn’t dare breathe as he reached out with one hand and slowly adjusted the angle of the sleeping laptop screen.
This was it. He was going to spot my reflection and catch me and cart me off to jail.
He tipped an ear in my direction. His chair began to swivel. I stifled a gasp as the office door swung open and smashed into the end of my nose. My eyes watered furiously as it started to throb.
Please let it be Vero.
“Surprised to see you here,” Joey said, a lingering prickle in his tone. “Thought you said the lab reports could wait until tomorrow.”
The desk chair creaked. “Didn’t mean to make myself at home. Figured you’d be at the movie for a while.”
Joey grunted. “Ty offered to cover when he heard Vero was there. Rookie’s been following her around all week like a damn puppy.”
Very slowly, I reached into my pocket and silenced my phone. I pulled up Vero’s last text.
Vero: Hannibal Lecter just left the auditorium.
I typed out a frantic reply: TOW TRUCK!!!
Vero: Seriously???
Finlay: Get me out of here NOW!!!
I squeezed my eyes shut, praying Joey didn’t close his office door before Vero could come up with a distraction.
“What do you make of it?” Joey asked.
Nick blew out a long exhale. “The only leg the defense has to stand on is reasonable doubt. If I know Kat, she’s going to latch on to these reports like a bulldog and use them to plant doubt in the jury. If she can persuade them to consider the possibility that this one death could have been attributed to someone else with an equally compelling motive, that would blow a hole in the prosecution’s case. If they question one of the murders, they’ll have to question all of them.”
“Unless you can prove Zhirov had a hand in Mickler’s murder, too.”
“After reading this, I’m not convinced he did.” Nick sounded tired, defeated when he said, “According to Mickler’s wife, ketamine is the drug Harris was using to abduct his victims. Investigators found bottles of it in his office and in his car. Which begs the question … who drugged him, then poisoned him? The ketamine suggests the motive for Mickler’s death was revenge. The nonviolent manner of death? Probably a woman. Someone reluctant to use a weapon, probably because they’d never killed before. I’m thinking Harris was murdered by one of his victims.”
“Then how did he end up in a grave with four of Feliks’s victims?” Joey asked.
“Maybe Feliks’s men came for Mickler but he was already dead. They could have taken the body and dumped it with the others, just to keep anyone from finding it.”
My stomach grew queasier the longer I listened. It was a plausible theory because it was partially correct. I could see Joey and Nick following it to an even bigger truth. What if someone else killed Harris Mickler? And what if that same someone buried him on the sod farm, knowing those bodies were already there because she had somehow been involved with them?
I jumped out of my skin at the piercing wail of a fire alarm.
“Damnit!” Nick said. “What now?”
Nick and Joey rushed out of the room. I peeped around the door and slunk out of Joey’s office when they disappeared from sight, my mittens pressed to my ears against the blare of the alarm. The faint smell of smoke drifted through the hall. I yelped as I rounded the corner and smacked into Vero.
“Please tell me you didn’t start an actual fire,” I said.
She pinched two fingers together and closed one eye. “Just a really little one.”
The alarm cut off. Nick’s and Joey’s raised voices carried down the hall, urging the academy students to return to their dorms. I dragged Vero with me into the women’s bathroom, checking for feet under the stall doors before asking, “How did you set a fire without anyone seeing you?”
“I didn’t,” she said, perching on the counter. “I asked Ty to make me a bag of popcorn. When his back was turned, I added a few minutes to the timer, then I distracted him until the microwave caught on fire.”
“Do I want to know how you distracted him?”
“Believe me,” she said, “it didn’t take much. What kind of dirt did you dig up on Joey?”
I leaned back against the counter beside her. “More like, what did Joey manage to dig up about us?”
CHAPTER 15
Vero and I huddled in a corner of a table over breakfast the next morning. The cafeteria was buzzing with chatter about the classes for the day. I sucked down a second cup of coffee. I hadn’t slept a wink or written a word last night, consumed with worry over those damn toxicology reports.
Vero dusted toast crumbs from her mouth. “Nothing on those reports is going to matter if we don’t find EasyClean, because Feliks will be pissed and he’ll tell the police about Ike, and we’ll both go to prison anyway. We’ve been here two days already and we’ve got nothing to show for it. I say we broaden our search. So what’s the plan?”
I unfolded my schedule, holding it between us. “We have seminars all day. Apparently, we earn points for every class we attend. My sister’s teaching a class on investigative procedure, Joey’s doing search and seizures, Stu’s giving a talk on victims’ advocacy, Sam’s offering a class on cybercrimes—”
“I’ll go to that one. What else?”
“There’s a forensics presentation in the auditorium, a K-9 demonstration on the drill field, and an arson presentation scheduled in the fire tower.”
Vero shuddered. “Pretty sure we’ve both seen enough of that. When do we get to the fun stuff?”
“Looks like we get to pick two hands-on classes tomorrow. A few patrol officers are offering ride-alongs,” I said, tapping Roddy’s name on my schedule. “I’ll sign up to ride with Roddy. That’ll give me a few hours with him at least.” We could affirm him as a possible suspect or scratch him off our list.
“Nuh-uh,” Vero said, snatching the schedule from me. “You’ve been on three ride-alongs with Nick already. I’m signing up with Roddy. You can take firearms training with Wade. You still have the bullet we dug out of the Aston?”
“It’s in my gym bag.”
“Bring it with you. Maybe he can tell you something useful about it.”
“Where am I supposed to tell him I found it?”
“You’re the storyteller. Make something up.”
We both clammed up as Max and Riley exited the food line with their trays, searching the bustling cafeteria for two empty seats. Max gave us a broad grin when she spotted us, making a beeline for our table.
She and Riley dropped into the seats across from us. “We missed you at the movie last night,” Max said to me, breaking the seal on her carton of milk. “Sucks that we couldn’t stay to watch the end, but at least we got to practice using the extinguishers. It took two of them to put the fire out.”
“Two? For popcorn in a microwave?” I shot Vero a look. “Must have been a pretty big fire.”
Vero smiled. “No hotter than your next book.”
“Speaking of your books,” Max said between spoonfuls of oatmeal, “we researched some of your earlier publications last night in preparation for our interview. And we read all twenty-four of your Amazon reviews.”