Page 119 of The Last Close Call

“I thought this was expedited?” he said. “The lab was supposed to turn this around in less than twenty-four hours.”

“That’s what I thought, too, but they ran into a glitch with the sample. I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Tell me when the fuck we’re going to get our DNA back so we can get a fucking arrest warrant and get this fucker in handcuffs.”

“Hey. I get you’re frustrated, but don’t take it out on me. I’m as impatient as you are.”

Jack rubbed the crick in his neck.

“And, anyway, right is more important than fast, at this point,” she said.

“What’s that mean?”

“It means just what it says. We need to make sure we’re right about this.”

Irritation burned in his chest. “How the hell would we be wrong about it?”

“I don’t know. I’m just saying, let’s run the DNA test and be sure.”

Jack tossed the binoculars into the seat beside him. “I already am sure. It’s William John Anderson in that house right now. I’ve been tailing him to restaurants and gas stations and the goddamn grocery store. I’ve seen him with my own eyes.”

“Yes, but do we really know it’s him? WCR? Do we really know Will Anderson is the guy who raped eight women in Austin and murdered another in San Antonio? I mean, what if the genealogist is wrong, and we’ve got the wrong guy here?”

“She’s not wrong.”

“How do you know, Jack, unless we test the DNA evidence?”

Jack clenched his teeth.

“Look, I understand this woman is good. And I also know you like her personally—”

“What’s that mean?”

“Jack. Give me a break, here. Everyone knows you’re sleeping with her. That doesn’t mean we all get to throw our procedures out the window and rely on her boundless talent. People screw up! Even pretty genealogists who you happen to have a hard-on for! So we have to get confirmation before we go in there guns blazing and arrest this guy.”

Jack leaned back in his seat, fuming. Liz was right. He knew that. But he wasn’t happy to learn she and everyone else had picked up on his personal relationship with Rowan.

And he was even less happy with the reminder that Rowan could have made a mistake. If she had, it would screw up everything. From an investigation standpoint, it would be a logistical nightmare.

“Hood told me he’d call the minute the lab gets back to him,” Liz was saying. “I’m guessing that will be midmorning.”

“Call me when you hear.”

Jack hung up.

Was it possible he was jumping the gun here? Maybe. He could admit—to himself, at least—that Liz had a point. This entire investigation had become focused on a suspect based on Rowan’s work product. And she’d been out of the police investigation game for several years. What if she’d overlooked something?

What if Joy Kendall had another male relative who might be responsible for the DNA profile recovered from the second victim’s fingernails? Rowan was good at her job, yes, but still she was human, and she could have missed something.

And that something could torpedo the whole case. Jack didn’t think she’d screwed up. But he was beginning to wonder if his attraction to her was affecting his judgment.

He couldn’t stop thinking about her. He’d burned through two hours of his last break—hours when he should have been sleeping—to drive to her house and see her after she’d ignored his messages. What the hell was wrong with him? He wasn’t one to hover. Or smother. Usually, he was the one backing away from relationships—as Heidi knew better than anyone. The minute he realized Heidi was auditioning him for the role of husband and father, he was out.

But something with Rowan was different. The thought of a commitment with her didn’t spook him like it usually did. The opposite, in fact. Maybe because she was so clearly pulling away from him, he was more inclined to chase her.

Typical male bullshit, he knew—the sort of stuff he’d heard his sister complain about for years. But it was just what he felt. He liked Rowan. A lot. The sex had been great, too, and he had the scratch marks on his back to prove it. So, why was she dodging him? Even before she’d come down with the flu, she’d been ghosting him, and if he hadn’t gone over there and scraped her up off the floor, she’d probably still be shutting him out. He’d done something to upset her, but he had no clue what it was, and now he was trapped in a damn surveillance van waiting on backlogged lab work and bureaucratic red tape—the two things he hated most about his job.

Jack scrubbed his hands over his face. He needed to snap out of this shit mood. Spending hours cooped up in a cold, dark van was making him loopy. Not to mention short-tempered. He’d gotten into it with Bryan, even though Jack knew Bryan was right—after wrestling with Anderson in the woods, Jack couldn’t then tail the guy closely without risking blowing his cover. Which meant Jack was relegated to staking out the house while Bryan and Heidi followed him into restaurants and stores and wherever he happened to go. They still didn’t know what he or his girlfriend did for a living, only that they didn’t leave the house much except to run errands or walk their dog. Back in Montana, the woman had had a cosmetology license, but Jack had found no evidence that she had renewed her license here or worked for any of the salons in town.

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