News had spread of Frank’s arrest, and the station was full by the time she returned. The state cops accompanied her to the charging desk with Maurice and Frank still in their cuffs. No official charges were made, but the pair were led to separate holding cells to await questioning.
Laurie noticed the looks her colleagues trained on Frank’s hunched figure being led away, and marveled at her own sense of defensiveness on behalf of the man. She’d behaved the same way herself in the past, assigning a guilty verdict to a suspect before they’d even reached trial. It was wrong to presume anyone’s guilt, but sometimes you just knew. Cops didn’t always need a court of law to tell them when someone was guilty and, in Laurie’s experience, once her colleagues made an absolute decision on a suspect, they were rarely wrong.
Remi had returned from Houston and walked over to her. “I’m glad you’ve found our man,” said Remi. “Can I buy you a coffee?”
By “buy,” Remi meant pouring her some of the lukewarm liquid from the breakroom, but she readily agreed. As she took the coffee into the bullpen, which was full of colleagues despite the late hour, she was dismayed to catch sight of Warren in Filmore’s office. “What the hell is he doing here?” she said, taking a seat.
“You can’t really blame him, can you? It would appear that the person who killed his daughter has returned, one way or another.”
She supposed Remi was right, and she did sympathize with Warren. He would be reliving the agony of losing Annie all over again and she couldn’t blame him for playing the ex-cop card. “As long as he doesn’t interfere with the investigation. So you’re on the Frank Randall bandwagon for this?” she asked, grimacing as she sipped her coffee.
Remi’s youth and inexperience meant he wasn’t as jaded as the majority of her colleagues, and he never reached any conclusions without a train of logical thought. “That’s why I wanted to speak to you. Actually, I’m growing concerned about Glen Harrington.”
“Concerned?”
“It seems Bonnie Webb wasn’t the only young woman he’d been seeing. I managed to speak to another former intern, Natalie Morton, nineteen years old. She interned for Harrington last summer.” He showed Laurie a picture of a young woman with flowing auburn hair. “She had an affair with him pretty much the whole time she worked there.”
Laurie rubbed her face as she looked at the image of the smiling girl. “When did it end?”
“That’s the thing that makes this all the more unpleasant, if that’s possible. She was eighteen when they were seeing each other. Ended not long after her nineteenth birthday.”
Laurie sipped her coffee again, fighting the wave of nausea from both the taste and from what Remi was telling her. “The same age as Grace,” she said, shaking her head.
“It gets worse. They split up when she found out Mr. Harrington was fucking one of her college pals, Regan Yates. She’s in Europe at the moment. One-night thing, by all accounts, but still.”
“Have you spoken to her?”
“Not yet.”
“Let’s make sure we do. Christ, this is one headache I can do without. What the hell is he thinking?” She sighed. “Rhetorical question, I know.” Glen Harrington clearly had a serious thing for very young women. That his obvious age preference coincided with the age of his daughter could be just queasily coincidental, but it might not be. Harrington wouldn’t be the first sick bastard to have a fixation with his child, and it was easy to see how that obsession could have caused him to attack his daughter. If Grace had denied him what he wanted, or threatened to reveal him, then it was feasible to imagine him taking her life. And, with Frank Randall back in town, what better way to disguise his actions?
Laurie realized she was making some great leaps, but at the very least it was apparent that Glen Harrington needed to be questioned in depth, along with Sandra and Tilly. “How far did you question Natalie Morton?”
“Just the basics. She’s happy to speak to me again. She’s not Mr. Harrington’s number one fan.”
“OK, go see her again. Find out what they used to get up to. See if there were any role-playing fantasies. You know the sort of thing.”
Remi looked momentarily confused before the horror of what Laurie was suggesting dawned on him. “No,” he said, swallowing. “You don’t think . . .”
“I hope not, but it’s an angle we have to look at.”
Laurie remained at her desk as Remi arranged another meeting with Natalie. She wondered if Sandra knew the age of her husband’s ex-mistresses, and what her reaction would be to the news. It wasn’t the sort of question she wanted to be asking her on any day, let alone on the very day she’d discovered her daughter had been brutally murdered.
She called Gemma Clayton, the junior detective who had been placed with the Harringtons. After checking on the parents’ well-being, Laurie suggested she prep them both for the possibility of questioning the next day.
When she closed the call, she became aware of the tension in the bullpen, her colleagues all on edge, as if desperate for her to begin interrogating Frank Randall. She checked in with the front desk, but Maurice’s legal representation had yet to arrive, so for now her hands were tied.
She took the time to revisit Annie Randall’s homicide investigation. Like Grace, Annie had died in October, the dates only eleven days apart. With the images of Grace’s stricken body still fresh in her mind, she studied the photographs of Annie Randall in detail. It soon became apparent that if Grace’s killer was a copycat, then they would have to have had intimate knowledge of the original crime scene. The bodies were laid out in nearly identical fashion, the snapped and twisted bones giving an unreal quality to the victims, who in their stillness and deformity looked like mannequins washed up on shore.
Next, Laurie looked at the postmortem report. Grace’s autopsy had been fast-tracked for tomorrow but the CSI had raised the possibility that Grace had been alive when her bones had been fractured; although Annie’s body hadn’t been found for three days, the autopsy had revealed that her bones were likely to have been broken prior, or very close, to her death.
Much more was still to be read. Witness reports and testimonies, including those from Warren Campbell and David, as well as the tapes and notes from the various interrogations of Frank Randall during the period between his arrest and eventual conviction. Like it or not, Frank Randall was the prime suspect in this new case and every detail about the old case potentially had some bearing on the current investigation.
“Laurie,” said Filmore, sticking his head out of his office door. “A word.”
Everyone’s eyes were on her as she made the short journey across the bullpen. The tension was palpable. Many of Laurie’s colleagues had children the same age or younger than Grace, and she knew they couldn’t help but put themselves in the Harringtons’ shoes. Just like the community at large, they were looking to Laurie to resolve the investigation as soon as possible, so they could return to some sort of equilibrium. Laurie sensed that pressure, and couldn’t deny that a part of her thrived on it. Even so, she resented the sight of Warren Campbell talking to Rodriquez and Abbey as if he was still the chief of police.