Page 28 of Into the Veins

“There’s nothing in his background to suggest he has a connection to veterinary studies or zoology either.” They were going in circles. A strong motive didn’t prove murder. It just gave context to the crime itself. “Breeding vipers takes time and attention, and from what his oncologist said in his statement, Braydon Caddel’s leukemia would make it nearly impossible for him to subdue anyone, let alone drag two bodies into the middle of the woods.”

“Then there’s the fact it was a woman who attacked us in Tiger Mountain State Forest.” Blair leveraged her elbow into the conference table and rested her temple against her palm. “I’m not ready to discard the theory we may be looking for a team, but my instincts say he’s not involved.”

“And our second suspect is now a victim, which leads us back to Evyn Garder.” Colson sat up in his chair, ticking off points one by one with his fingers. “She was the one who found Rachel Faulkner’s remains. According to her social media accounts, she follows both victims religiously and had heated contact with the first victim, which she admitted to. Not to mention a background in zoology, and she wrote her thesis on pit viper venomics.”

The evidence lined up.

“Okay. She studies the venom of snakes, but that’s not the same as preparing strychnine from those trees.” Blair pulled her interview notes from beneath the pile of paperwork and incident reports they’d been fishing through since setting up. “Wanting a refund of three thousand dollars in conference registration fees doesn’t scream motive for murder to me, and her fitness watch GPS and the heart rate monitor put her at home at the time of the first murder.”

“You said it yourself. People have been killed for less.” Her parents had. The private investigator who’d sold them out had walked away with a couple of hundred extra dollars in his pocket and a clean conscience. “She could’ve left her device and phone at home to give herself an alibi or bought a burner that couldn’t be traced back to her.”

Emerald green eyes shifted across the table as she nodded slowly. “You’re right. Those watches sync with phones, don’t they? We assumed Evyn Garder handed the watch over willingly, that she had nothing to hide, but maybe she knew we wouldn’t be able to put her anywhere near the crime scene until she called 9-1-1.” Blair tugged her laptop closer. “She already granted us permission to review her GPS data. Should cover another look, but if she’s smart enough to leave her phone home for the first murder, I’m betting she wouldn’t make the mistake of bringing it to the second.”

The tap of keys filled his ears. “Anything new from the lab running the samples taken from Cardin Townsend’s SUV? Dr. Moss said she’d been dead at least an hour before her body had been dumped on the trail. The victim didn’t drive herself. The killer had to haul her up there.”

“Everything had been wiped down as far as they could tell, but it’ll be a few more days to finish analyzing the results. This killer is meticulous.” A defeated exhale escaped past perfectly pink lips as Blair sagged back into her chair. “Evyn Garder’s GPS places her phone at her residence during the time we were searching for Cardin Townsend.”

“You said before you thought this case might be connected to the serial investigation you and Agent Mitchell worked two months ago. From what I read in the case file, the killer disappeared for a year before they started killing in Seattle.” An idea was forming, but whether or not it was possible to prove was another matter. “Agent Mitchell stated in his report that he and the killer got into a physical altercation in which he surmised your suspect had been professionally trained to fight.”

Blair’s expression neutralized, but the brightness in her gaze burned hotter. “Military training in hand-to-hand combat, but there was nothing in the killer’s background to suggest they’d served.” She filed through the papers in front of her, pulling a stack of stapled pages and flipped to the last page. She ran one long finger down the page and froze, and Colson’s instincts said they’d hit gold. “There’s a one-year gap between the last call Evyn Garder made and where her current phone record for this number pick up six months ago. That can’t be a coincidence.”

“Two seemingly average people disappear for an entire year. One returns to Seattle and starts killing out of revenge while the other, a zoologist, becomes the prime suspect in a homicide investigation where we can connect at least one of the victims to her.” Only Blair was right. Killing Rachel Faulkner because she refused to refund their suspect a three-thousand-dollar conference registration fee was one thing, but why go after Cardin Townsend? “They’ve started their own murder club.”

“A murder club? Is that when they form a get-together, but instead of discussing books, they plan murders, train in military combat, and figure out how to avoid leaving evidence behind?” She collected the paperwork strewn across the table and organized it back into the case file. “I think I might’ve been staring at these papers too long because I’m starting to consider that idea. But even if that’s the case, we can’t prove any of it. We didn’t find any traces of the poison in the Garder home, and a single pit-viper isn’t enough to force my hand. Without forensic evidence tying Evyn Garder to both murders, a judge won’t issue an arrest warrant and the lab is backed up for days, possibly weeks. Right now, all we have are theories.”

“Rachel Faulkner’s body was discovered on a trail Evyn Garder frequents. We should at least look into the possibility she visited Tiger Mountain in the past few months.” Colson rolled through the evidence they’d collected so far. They had proof Evyn Garder had moved the body, the threatening messages discovered between her and Rachel Faulkner, the fact their prime suspect had studied the exact type of viper left on both victims’ bodies. But did she kill them?

“Should be easy enough to confirm. Did you notice any photos of the area in her social media accounts?” Blair glided two fingers over her laptop track pad, and a furrow deepened between her brows. The light from her screen highlighted the freckles across the bridge of her nose as she leaned in to read whatever she’d pulled up on the laptop, and the corners of her eyes narrowed.

He couldn’t help but smile at the sight of her so preoccupied with her thoughts. In fact, he bet he could say just about anything to her right then without her noticing. A vibration from his pocket signaled an incoming text message, but the almost automatic urge to reach for his phone was consumed by the intense, almost cerebral, way Blair processed her case. He’d made his position clear to his client. He’d backed out of the deal that would’ve gotten him out of Seattle and across the ocean. Damn his accounts and the consequences. He’d started over plenty of times, moving from career to career, adventure to adventure. He could do it again, only this time it wasn’t about chasing the next experience. It would be about being happy where he was. And who he was with. “Not yet. I’m checking the metadata on all her uploads, but some of the photos she’s posted in the past were temporary. Without her login and password, she’s the only one who can access the cache unless we get a warrant from the platform.”

“We have a better chance of a piece of evidence showing up to tell us exactly who murdered Rachel Faulkner and Cardin Townsend. Big platforms like that get hundreds of warrant requests from law enforcement. By the time they respond and stop arguing they’re protecting their user’s privacy, our third victim might already be dead.” Blair turned her laptop toward him, a renewed determination in her gaze. “Here we go. Evyn Garder’s watch GPS shows she was on the same trail through Tiger Mountain State Forest three months ago as we found Cardin Townsend’s remains.” She pushed to her feet and collected her coat from the back of her chair. Threading her arms into the sleeves, she flung her hair out from beneath the collar. “It’s thin, but it might be enough to connect her to the second victim and get broader search warrant. I’ll call the judge.”

Another vibration pinged from his pocket, and Colson unpocketed his phone to put it into silent mode. He didn’t give a shit about how Rachel Faulkner’s father had frozen his accounts, and he wasn’t interested in renegotiating the terms of their deal. Whatever the bastard had to say to him could wait. Another message overlapped the first on the screen, and Colson’s gut clenched.

You might want to turn on the news.

Confusion slithered through him, and he scrolled to the first message.

You thought you could break our deal. Your reputation isn’t the only one at stake.

What the hell? He tucked the phone into his pocket and reached across the conference table for the television remote. Hitting the power button, he scanned through channels until he hit the two o’clock news and read the banner at the bottom of the screen. King County Sheriff accused of using taxpayer dollars for personal investigation. “That son of a bitch.”

Her voice tendrilled through the rapid pulse of his heartbeat behind his ears, and she turned, her phone pressed to her ear, before lifting her attention to the television. She did a double take. Color drained from her face, her bottom lip pulling free of the top. Blair blinked as though to wake herself from a nightmare, but there was no denying the truth on the screen. She spoke into the phone, her voice hoarse. “Yes, sir. I understand.”

The muscles running along her throat constricted on a deep swallow as she lowered her phone to her side. She stretched out her free hand, silently asking for the remote, and he handed it over.

The news anchor regaled viewers with an anonymous tip revealing that King County Sheriff, Blair Sanders, used county resources including taxpayer dollars and department man hours to solve the case of her parents’ murder. The case against the man accused of committing the murders was being reopened and, he had cause to sue the county based off of a personal vendetta by Blair Sanders.

Blair hit the power button on the remote, and the television screen went black. One minute. Two. She didn’t move, didn’t even seem to breathe.

He’d done this. The attention of the men and women on the other side of the windows pressurized the air in his lungs, but Blair refused to give them anything. Colson stepped toward her. “Blair—”

“The judge denied my request for another search warrant of Evyn Garder’s home and property.” Her voice flattened. She slid the remote onto the conference table, staring down at the gleaming surface. “He said, given the current state of things, he thought it best if the request came from the FBI rather than my office. He’s recommended the bureau’s Violent Crimes Unit take the lead until I can prove whether or not I used county resources to arrest the man who killed my parents, but we both know where that will end.”

“I’m sorry, Blair.” He didn’t know what else to say, what to think. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. She wasn’t supposed to get caught in the crossfire between him and the victim’s father. He’d chosen her.

“An anonymous tip. That’s all it’s going to take to have me recalled and destroy my career.” A humorless laugh escaped past her mouth, and she raised her cold gaze to his. Blair faced him head on, seemingly unbothered by the ring of deputies staring in through the windows. “There are only a handful of people who know what happened with my parents. My adoptive parents, January, my former commanding officer.” She slid her phone into her jacket pocket. “And you.”

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