Page 337 of Cold Case, Warm Hearts

“Celia knew she had a shift.” The administrator shrugged. “Whenshe gets here, let me know. I want a word with her about her responsibilities.” She glanced at Jacob, winced, and walked away.

The receptionist looked under the counter, then at him, then under the counter again.Guess the book is still there.

Jacob knew Celia. He could swing by her mom’s house where she lived and check if she was all right. The girl probably just forgot to call in sick. Or the receptionist was right, and she had spent the weekend with her boyfriend out of town.

He didn’t need to get in the middle of a young woman’s poor choices, though. It was none of his business, even if she was nice and that conversation hadn’t had an ulterior motive.

He had work to do trying to figure out if he’d been interviewing a murderer today. Then he would dismiss Mr. Harris as a candidate and meet with someone else.

Jacob needed a story to tell.

CHAPTER THREE

Virginia

Addie leaned back in her chair. She tapped her pen on the desktop and compiled her thoughts. Except that there weren’t any. Her brain didn’t want to think of anything. It was blank.

Sure, Zimmerman had told her not to come in. Technically it wasn’t tomorrow. She had a report to write and figured maybe he might've forgotten that order by the time she finished.

Meanwhile, the entire team sat around the office writing up their reports from the café operation. The suspect was being interviewed. She hadn’t done anything since she sat down.

Now she had to wonder what was wrong with her.

Not that she’d let anyone else know there was a problem. Zimmerman may or may not let her in there to talk to Benning as part of the interview. It wouldn’t have anything to do with whatever issues she did or didn’t have. Addie still wasn’t going to hold her breath that he’d ask her. Not after that conversation they’d had at the scene.

She tuned out the buzz of people moving. The general office chatter. Her profile for William Benning indicated it was unlikely she could persuade him to give up the location of the bodies he’d buried. Might not be impossible, though.

The seven they had discovered were in locations that held no connecting pattern, no way to predict where another would be.

The phone on her desk rang.

She picked up the handset. “Special Agent Franklin.”

Dead air greeted her.

Someone had her extension and felt the need to call her whenever they wanted to disrupt her train of thought and interrupt her work. Always a blocked number. Even the tech guys couldn’t figure out where the calls had originated. Someone spoofing the IP, calling over the internet.

She sighed. It hardly helped to dissipate the weight of exhaustion and frustration. She replaced the phone.

Addie had to contend with the frustration over unanswered questions with every case. Usually, she went for a run to bleed off the tension. Knowing there were possibly five young women out there who might never be found. Or, if they were, it was because of happenstance and no other reason.

Addie shoved her chair back and headed to get a drink. She should get water, but the truth was she would pour a cup of old coffee, and she knew it. The profile she had on herself was the skinniest she’d ever done, but there were some key details on it. The rest she didn’t want to know.

One of her colleagues, Bill from Albuquerque, left the kitchen with his own cup. He lifted it in salute.

“Hey.” She passed him and headed inside. They’d learned early on she had a hard time with small talk. Addie tended to answer only the question she was asked and didn’t volunteer much else in terms of information. She wanted to do her job—solve the puzzle. She wasn’t here to make lifelong friends. She wasn’t wired that way.

Being relational meant attention. It meant people realized she wasn’t worth sticking around for.

Sometimes attention led to…

She shook off the rush of memory laced with the tang of fear that not even coffee could get rid of when everyone knew coffee was magical.

Addie poured a mug anyway. She drank it black to have the most coffee in the mug possible. It burned going down but in a good way.

Considering she could muse about coffee for hours on end, she headed back to her desk. The murder board on the wall had been covered with victim photos, crime scene information, and an entire section on the suspect list they’d compiled.

It all pointed to one person: William Benning.

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