Page 293 of Cold Case, Warm Hearts

“Everyone knows my mother.”

Wade sensed resentment but didn’t press the issue. It had to be difficult to live in the shadow of a powerful woman. To some extent, he could understand why the man distanced himself from his mom. It had nothing to do with his investigation, so he dropped it.

Wade stopped walking. “If you think of anything pertinent to the investigation, would you give me a call?”

“Sure thing.”

The interview was necessary, but it felt like another dead end. Pete Cunningham had no contact with any of the other victims as far as he could tell and the little contact he had with Mary Van Britton was to nod as she passed by. It was the same casual contact the judge had with most people.

Wade staredat the murder board trying to make sense of all the tangled leads. At first it appeared there wasn’t a single person or place that connected more than two of the victims. Now he had three viable suspects and his prime suspect, Lester Parsons, would soon be a free man if he didn’t find some concrete evidence. Everything he had now was circumstantial, and he would make bail on the drug charges the feds were holding him for.

He stared at Gary Swartz’ name on the board. As unlikely a suspect as the man seemed, he was connected to four of the victims, so Wade couldn’t ignore the possibility he’d been wrong about Parsons. The man was a criminal, but maybe he wasn’t a murderer. He looked at a photograph of the man out on Harvey Lake. A resident took the picture from a distance. It was grainy, but it sure looked like he was dumping something into the lake. They’d found his girlfriend's body in the park though, not in the lake. Maybe he’d ditched the murder weapon in the lake. The size of the object he was dumping was too large to fit that theory. Besides, their forensic anthropologist said the murder weapon was the same with each victim. The killer didn’t dump his weapon. He kept it so he could relive his first kill with each additional victim.

The station door opened, and he grinned at Jamie. “How was the honeymoon?”

“Amazing.” She practically skipped her way into the room. The vacation had clearly done her good. “What on earth did you do to my murder board?”

“Added suspects.”

“Wow. You’ve been busy.” She placed her hands on her hips. “If Parsons is in custody, what’s all this about?”

“We don’t have anything concrete on him.” He massaged his temples. “He might not be our guy.”

“That’s disappointing. I want to see that loser rot.”

“Even if he didn’t do it?”

“He did something.”

“That may be true, but we need to get a serial killer off the streets.”

She traced a finger over the lines leading to Gary Swartz. “What about this guy? What’s your gut say about him?”

“I don’t put much stock in gut reactions. If I did, I would’ve stopped investigating once we locked up Parsons.”

“Humor me,” she said.

“I think he’s a good guy. Someone might be setting him up by going after women he knows, or he could simply run in the same circles as our killer. Either way, he’s a link we need to explore.”

“Didn’t you mention wanting to check out a security guard who worked for the courthouse?”

“That was a bust.” He frowned. “Turns out it’s one of the park rangers, Pete Cunningham. He worked there part-time for a few months and the only victim he would’ve had any contact with was the judge. I’d assumed he would’ve had contact with Genevieve Adams since she was a lawyer, but I can’t find any record of them crossing paths.”

“What do you think of him?” she asked.

“He’s full of himself.” He grinned. “Must come from being a senator’s son.”

“He’s a senator’s son? Do tell.”

“John Cunningham was in here last week asking for updates for his aunt, Senator Martin. He couldn’t understand why she didn’t simply ask Pete,” he said.

“Now that’s interesting. I never would’ve guessed that slick politician was related to Ranger Pete.”

He chuckled. “I’ll bet she wasn’t happy when he became a park ranger instead of a doctor, lawyer, or politician.”

She chuckled. “Or all of the above. She seems like an overachiever. Where do we go from here? We have a tangled web of suspects, but none of them seem to fit the crime.”

“Exactly.” He pulled out a notebook. “I’m going to do some more research on Swartz. Maybe I’ll find another thread to follow.”

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