Page 21 of Murder in the Lighthouse

“And let her brother get killed over it? That’s cold. Heartless.”

“Self-preservation,” Lucien concluded.

“Still heartless. You’re reluctant to accuse a cop of murdering his mistress,” Brogan surmised.

“Accusing cops of murder is never high on my wish list,” Lucien admitted. “They’re the toughest cases to crack for obvious reasons. Imagine pulling Theo into our half-baked theory.”

“It’s not half-baked. It’s solid.”

“Is it? Are you one hundred percent certain?”

“Well, no. We don’t have all the facts yet.”

“Exactly my point. We need something a lot more solid that connects Bethany to Connie’s killer.”

“Okay. Without access to anything of value, how do we get that?”

“I have an idea. What if we went back to 1999, specifically around the time of Connie’s murder, and looked for anything unusual happening inside the county?”

“Talk about a needle in a haystack,” Brogan muttered.

“If you have a better idea…”

Resigned to the notion, she let out a sigh. “Where do we start?”

“Remember how Barry Heywood mentioned that Bethany believed Connie’s murder was the work of a serial killer?”

She rolled her eyes. “I was right there in the room when he said it.”

“Yeah. But that doesn’t match up with Connie getting killed by a cop. Suppose she thought Connie’s death was part of a serial killer’s MO. Bethany must’ve looked at other women, other cases in town, those who had been strangled and stabbed. We should start there.”

“Maybe the serial killer is also a cop,” she reasoned. “That would really cause a stir. That would definitely be enough to bring a killer out of hiding, enough to kill to protect his secret. That’s enough to get Bethany and Sam killed, right?”

“More than,” Lucien mumbled as he got to work.

Sitting across from each other, they started digging through the internet, aiming their searches at the Santa Cruz area in 1999, looking for other murders that were similar. It proved fruitful in many ways. Through links to newspaper articles, they discovered that the police department was under fire by internal affairs. Around the time of Connie’s murder, rumors swirled about corrupt cops. News articles revealed that copious quantities of seized drugs had gone missing from the evidence lockers. Shakedowns and frame-ups were commonplace. Residents reported that the number of illegal traffic stops had increased. A number of names were mentioned.

“For all we know, it’s not a direct connection to Connie Upland’s murder. But what if our suspect was part of that corruption and Connie somehow discovered it?”

“That’s a big if,” Lucien stated. “Connie was found nude. That usually indicates a sexual motive.”

“Her death could’ve been staged. I thought we were looking for a link to Connie. She’s dating a cop on the side. I say we check out the names of those involved in the corruption, eliminate any of them who aren’t married.”

“As long as we don’t get off track. Are we trying to solve Connie’s murder or Sam’s?”

“What’s wrong with solving all three, especially if you believe Bethany is already dead.”

Lucien lifted a shoulder. “Okay. Why not? But getting anyone to believe the same thing we do is sometimes impossible.”

“Then we’ll need to gather it all and take it to Theo, make him understand we aren’t delusional. He knows we aren’t kooks.”

“Easy to think that now,” Lucien muttered. “Where’s the list of names?”

They had checkedout every name mentioned in the articles. A few had been forced out of the department. Some had taken early retirement. And not by choice. Others had quit and gone to work in the private sector, becoming glorified security guards. One had started his own company that specialized in fraud prevention for banks.

But one name stood out among all the others. Keith Shepherd, older brother to Kenneth, was forced out of the department in early 2000 under a cloud of suspicion and disappeared from the public eye altogether. They couldn’t locate his current address or any address in the past twenty-four years.

Lucien and Brogan exchanged a knowing look, realizing they might be onto something significant. Was this the same Keith, the same cop that Angela had mentioned? They delved deeper into his background, scouring the internet for any connection he might have had to Connie Upland.

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