Page 4 of Cold Vengeance

“Besides the phone and her laptop, I also have her notebook. She had notes about her cases, along with phone numbers, contacts she’d made while investigating. I thought it might be important.”

“You realize that her parents could accuse you of theft for taking her personal property, right?” Tony asked.

Nathan shrugged. “I don’t care. April wouldn’t want her dad to have them. In fact, she told me once that if anything ever happened to her, she wanted me to take anything that had to do withher podcast.” He shook his head. “We were just ... talking, you know? Neither one of us actually thought that day would come. So, once she disappeared, I did what she’d requested. But I left her regular phone behind, as well as a second laptop that she used for other things besides the podcast. And it’s just her father, by the way. Her mother died a long time ago.”

“Where are April’s things now?” Tony asked.

“In safekeeping at my place. I wanted to see if you’d take my case before giving them to you. As you can imagine, I don’t want anything to happen to them.”

“If you want us to proceed, we’ll need them. As well as your phone and laptop.”

Nathan’s eyebrows shot up. “Mine? Why would...” His eyes widened. “I didn’t hurt her.”

“Actually, we believe you,” Tony said. He brushed a lock of curly black hair from his forehead. “But we have to make certain there’s nothing to tie you to her disappearance. If you don’t have anything to hide...”

“But I need my phone and my laptop. I use them for work.”

“What do you do?” River asked.

“I’m a graphic designer for an advertising firm in California. I work out of my apartment.”

“Can we get them from you after work so we can go through them?” River asked. “We’ll get them back to you in the morning. We may have some questions concerning what we find, but we can make notes and talk to you when we’re done.”

They could actually clone the cell phone onto another device, but since it could be tricky with certain models, going through it manually would probably be easier. They would copy the files on the laptop to a USB drive.

“I ... I guess that would be all right.”

“A warning though, Nathan,” Tony said solemnly, “if we findthat you’ve deleted anything before you give them to us, we’re done. Do you understand?”

The young man nodded. “Look, I have no plans to hide anything from you. I just want to find April. I pray with every fiber of my being that she’s still alive. But even if she isn’t, I need to know the truth. So does her father. Even though he believes she’s alive, he’s really upset. I’ve tried to stay in touch with him for April’s sake, but he blames me for her disappearance.”

He sighed. “Sometimes I’ve wondered if I should just walk away from him, but I feel like April would want me to help her father if I can. Even though they argued before she disappeared, they love each other.” He hesitated a moment before saying, “There’s something else. I’m not sure if I should share this. At the time I believed it was April’s imagination, but I feel like I should tell you everything. April loved what she did, investigating cold cases. She thrived on interviewing family and friends of the victims and asking the public for help. She felt as if she was doing something good. Something noble.” For the first time since he’d walked through the door, his smile was genuine. “Believe it or not, she actually helped solve two different cases since she started the podcast a couple of years ago. An arson and a murder. I was so proud of her.” His smile slipped and his expression became serious again. “But sometimes she got spooked, you know, by the details of a crime, or by thinking the person behind the crime was after her. Thankfully, it was never real.”

“So, was shespookedabout one of her cases in particular before she disappeared?” River asked.

“Yeah.”

“So, she believed she was in danger and then she went missing?” Tony said. “It didn’t occur to you that the two things might be related?”

Tony’s frustration was showing. River felt the same way, butalienating Nathan by making it seem they blamed him for April’s situation wouldn’t help anything.

“This wasn’t the first time she’d felt that way down through the years,” Nathan said, his tone somewhat defensive. “It never turned out to be real. I assumed this was the same thing.”

“Can you tell us about the case?” River asked calmly. “It’s possible her state of mind is important, even if there wasn’t any real threat. How she acted in the days up to her disappearance could reveal something that might help us.”

She frowned at Tony, who seemed to take the hint. He leaned back in his chair and nodded at her.

“I can’t be certain which case was bothering her,” Nathan said. “She wouldn’t tell me. I’m not sure why, but since she’d been wrong before, she might not have felt confident enough to share her concerns. In the months before she went missing, she was trying hard to focus only on the facts. She wouldn’t move on anything until she had solid leads. I think her mistakes in the beginning made her cautious. So, this is just a guess, but the case that was taking up most of her time was the Castlewood Casanova. Two teenagers—a guy and a girl—were reported missing. Their bodies were found in Castlewood Park in Ballwin, near the river. It was assumed that they went there to make out.”

Tony frowned. “Why use the word Casanova?”

Nathan shrugged. “April named most of her cases, but this one had already been given a title by a newspaper reporter. I think it was because the young man involved had a bit of a reputation. I have no idea if it was deserved or if the reporter just wanted something that started with a C. You know, because of Castlewood Park.”

“And they never found a suspect?”

“They interviewed several people, ruled them all out. But April felt there was one man who could have done it. She also suspectedthat he’d killed before. She didn’t talk much about it, but I could tell those murders really bothered her.”

“Are there any notes on her laptop about that particular case?” River asked.

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