Page 35 of Cold Vengeance

Finally, he turned back and smiled. “Of course, if that’s what you want.”

She nodded. “Thank you, Tony. Now back to the case.” River looked down at her notes again. “Anyway, the friend suggested that the man Michelle was seeing was the shooter.” She looked back up at Tony. “I think this is a good tip, don’t you?”

“What did April do with it?”

“Says here she contacted the Chicago PD, was transferred to a detective Amato. No notes after that. Looks like she talked to him shortly before she disappeared.”

“That’s interesting,” Tony said. He started typing on his laptop. “You said the woman having the affair was named Michelle Matisse?”

“Yes.” River spelled the name.

A few minutes later, Tony smiled at her. “Looks like April was right. The man, Barry Davis, was arrested and charged with the killings. He’s serving life in prison.”

“Wow. When did his happen?”

“This article was written two months ago.”

“So, April never knew she’d helped solve this awful crime.”

“Probably not,” Tony said. “That’s sad.”

“Yes, it is.” River was finding all these cold cases sad. All this death. All this grief.

“Next time I talk to Arnie, I’ll tell him about this. It mightmake him even more determined to help us find April. Seems she knew what she was doing.”

“We really are blessed that you and Arnie are such good friends,” River said. “You told me that you two met at the academy, right?”

Tony smiled. “Yeah, we bonded there. He left before you joined. We worked hard, but we had fun. Arnie pushed it a little too far sometimes.”

“I can’t imagine that.”

“You remember Hogan’s Alley?” Tony asked.

Hogan’s Alley was a training location on the FBI Academy’s grounds, set up to look like a small town. Gunfights and robberies were staged there to help the agents in training learn how to handle real-life emergencies.

“Of course.”

“One of our instructors was named Jared Newcum. Arnie took a picture of him and had it made into something that looked like the front page from a newspaper. Newcum’s picture was on it, along with an article saying he was wanted by the police for cruelty and the harassment of trainees. When we met at Hogan’s one morning, the page was up on the window of the post office. We thought it was hysterical. Newcum, not so much.”

“Did Arnie get in trouble?” River asked.

“No. Newcum tried to find out who did it, but no one would turn him in. We all had to run around the training track until we were ready to drop. Still, no one ratted Arnie out. I think Newcum was actually rather impressed.”

River laughed, but something Tony said stuck in her mind. A newspaper.

“What’s the matter?” Tony said. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost. My story wasn’t that disturbing, was it?”

“No, that’s not it.” River stared at him for a moment. Then she grabbed April’s notebook and pulled out the copies of thearticles written about both of the Casanova killings. When she was done, she looked over at Tony. “Look, I may be way off here, but I think you need to ask Arnie to check on something. Remember when we said that the Casanova killer probably didn’t kill the other teenagers four years earlier since it didn’t seem like he was seeking attention?”

He nodded. “Sure, what are you thinking?”

“What if he was getting attention, but just not the way we assumed? What if he didn’t need to see his name in the news as the killer because his name was already associated with the murders. Already in the media?”

“You’ve lost me.”

“It’s been staring me in the face all this time. Brent Wilkins is the reporter who came up with the name Castlewood Casanova. When I was reading through the newspaper articles about both of the murders, I kept thinking they sounded the same. I just checked. The reporter who wrote about both cases? Brent Wilkins. He covered the story in Illinois, where the first murders took place. And then here, in Missouri.”

“Where he gave the killer a nickname,” Tony said slowly. He shook his head. “It makes sense, but it’s flimsy. Still, the police need to look into it. Check out this Wilkins guy.” He wrote something down on the pad of paper on his desk. He smiled at her. “Now that would be something, huh? If we were able to help April solve this case?”

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