Page 51 of Cold Case Murder Mystery

But she hadwork.Important work. She marched herself inside and got dressed for the day. She grabbed her laptop and took it out to the barn, avoiding everyone. Even the dog.

Holed up in the makeshift lab, Brooke opened the report the lab in Cheyenne had sent her this morning. She read through the report, took notes, lost herself in the work. Putting the data points together.

There was no way some of the bones in the cave didn’t precede Jen Rogers. It wasn’t Brooke’s job to come up with a second suspect. It was just her job to compile and analyze the data.

She put together as much of her own report as she could—this one geared to the detectives with enough laymen’s terms they wouldn’t be lost by the science. Anything admitted to court would need to be more scientific, but they needed another suspect before they could worry aboutcourt.

Luckily, Jen Rogers had confessed to the Hudson murders, so there was no way a second suspect got her out of trouble. This just... compounded the trouble.

A knock sounded at the barn door and, a second later, Zeke stuck his head in. “Detective’s here to pick you up.”

“Oh. Right. I’ll be out in just a second.” She glanced at where she was storing the skull. She still hadn’t confessed to the detectives she’d taken it, run her own tests.

Now wasn’t the time for that anyway. That was for another day. Today was for more excavating. It was for focusing ononeproblem, not the cascade of others.

She greeted Detective Laurel Delaney-Carson with a smile. She’d worked with Thomas more than Laurel the past few weeks, but she’d been more with Laurel the first few, so they were on friendly, comfortable terms.

They chatted about the weather and trivial things before easing into the case.

“I’ve got a little update on the scrapbook,” Laurel offered as she drove. “Dahlia is still doing some digging into the facts behind who the two men were in the picture that might be in the cave, if the label is right and all that, but it looks like the picture was taken in the thirties. Maybe early forties,” she said.

Brooke considered the picture. There wasn’t a good way to judge the age of the men, at least to Brooke’s eye, and no doubt Dahlia would find more information as she researched, but Brooke didn’t think those men in the photograph could have been any younger than twenty. That meant, even if that picture was dated into the forties, the youngest either of those men could be now was well over a hundred.

And her preliminary examination of the skull lent itself to her believing it had beenburiedcloser to a hundred years ago. That meant...

“If the bones are as old as the picture, we might be looking at a suspect who’s long dead.” Or worse, a series of murderers who used the same place as their dumping grounds. Purposefully, maybe.

“And spent their life getting away with murder?” Laurel scowled as they drove into the nature preserve. “I don’t like that.”

“Has anyone questioned Jen Rogers about the scrapbook?”

“We’ve tried. Last month when she was first arrested, we tried to get her to explain why she would steal it from us. Obviously, she wasn’t too keen on letting us in. Unfortunately, with her murder case so open and shut, there’s no real leverage on our end to get her to explain now.”

Brooke considered keeping her theory to herself. She’d fought so hard in her position, and it required a lot of evidence and not a lot oftheoryon her part. She’d worked with several detectives who’d only wanted the facts. Not hertake.

But Thomas and Laurel hadn’t been like that, and maybe everything the past few days was trying to teach her to stop being so damn self-reliant. To let people in. Totrust.

She thought of Zeke saying he didn’t make the same mistake twice. The way he’d held her when she’d cried. Last night in his bed and...

Goodlord,now was not the time to be thinking about her personal life. She tried to organize her thoughts on thecase, but Laurel pulled up to the cave entrance where usually a pair of deputies were stationed.

Not today.

“I don’t like that,” Laurel said, a frown on her face as she slowed the cruiser to a stop. “Nothing came over the radio about them leaving their post.”

She picked up the radio in her car. Brooke didn’t follow all the little codes she used, but she got the gist that Laurel was trying to figure out where the deputies had gone and asking a few more to come out. Brooke didn’t think the assigned officers were responding.

“We’re going to stay right here until we know what’s going on,” Laurel said. She sounded and appeared calm, but it didn’t escape Brooke’s notice that her hand now rested on the butt of her weapon as her gaze scanned the world outside her cruiser.

So Brooke looked out into the sunny day as well. Was there another threat out there? Would she ever really be free of them?

Chapter Sixteen

Zeke didn’t like feeling like a babysitter, but he’d made a promise to Brooke, so he stuck close to the house and made sure to keep an eye on any and all exits so he would know if Royal tried to bolt. So far, Royal hadn’t even ventured outside the house. Zeke wasn’t even sure he’d left his room.

With the noonday sun hanging over the ranch, a car pulled up the gravel drive. Zeke had hoped for an early return from Brooke, but it wasn’t her. It was Carlyle.

She came to a stop close to the house, hopped out. “Brought more dog food.”

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