Page 121 of State of Alert

“Yep.”

“We’ll get on that. Hold off on the request until we get back to the house.”

“Will do.”

“I’ll write it up,” Freddie said after she ended the call.

“I’d like to take a stab at it, and then you can spruce it up, if you don’t mind.”

“Fine by me.” He glanced over at her. “Are we really thinking teenage girls plotted their mother’s murder and then went about their days like nothing of any importance was happening?”

“I don’t want to think that’s possible, but we’ve looked at every other aspect of her life and have found no real trouble anywhere but right in her own home. There’s no sign of forced entry, which means whoever did this had the code to the house. Where would that person have gotten the code except from someone who lived there?”

“Good points. It’s just hard to fathom.”

“It is, but maybe they’d reached a breaking point with her and thought it would make everything easier to have her out of the way.” The statement added to the buzz working its way down her back.

“And you think these two sisters, who had not a nice thing to say to each other, worked together on this?”

“Roll with me… What if the nastiness was part of the plan? ‘If we act like we hate each other, no one will believe we’re capable of doing something like this together.’”

“The hatred was very convincing.”

“There’s probably enough actual hatred to make it easy to act that way. Just because they worked together on this doesn’t mean they’re suddenly BFFs.”

“You’re really digging this angle.”

“It’s the only thing so far that’s given me a buzz.”

“Accusing minors of murder, if that’s where we end up, will be dicey.”

“For sure.”

When they returned to HQ, Sam went directly to the captain’s office and knocked.

“Enter.” Malone sat behind his desk, his attention on a stack of folders in front of him.

“What’s all that?”

“Forensic reports from Stahl’s house. Just some light reading to keep me awake all night.”

“Jeez, better you than me.”

When the captain looked up at her, she saw anguish in his eyes. “It’s still so unbelievable… That he was aserial murdererwhile showing up here every day and pretending to be one of us.”

“He was never one of us. Not for one day of his entire miserable career.”

“No, he wasn’t.” Malone sighed and made a visible attempt to shake off the horror that would stay with them all forever. “What’s up?”

“As I mentioned on the phone, the Myerson investigation is pointing toward the daughters at this point.”

“What’ve you got on them?”

“At this moment? A ton of animosity between the vic and her daughters, as well as a really big hunch. We’re hoping the financials will show some money moving around that might lead us to the person they hired to take care of their most pressing concern.”

“How old are these girls?”

“Fifteen and seventeen.”

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