Page 9 of Whispers Left Behind

Unlike Kinsley, Alex preferred a clean work area. He took his time hanging his jacket on one of the hooks of an old coat rack. He had found the aged piece in the back storage room a couple of years ago, but he was the only one who used it.

Alex reached for the cupholder on her desk before sitting across from her. He removed his coffee before tossing the cardboard holder into the garbage can underneath his desk. If he didn’t help keep her space clean occasionally, her desk would resemble the inside of a dumpster.

“I’m good, but not that good.” Kinsley’s phone must have been set to vibrate. The surface of her desk hummed with an incoming call. She reached out and pressed the side button to stop the annoying reverberations without checking the display. “Rachel Hanson. Twenty-six years old. Married with no children. Worksin the finance department over at the car dealership on the west side.”

“The one with that annoying clown commercial?”

“One and the same.” Kinsley frowned and gestured toward him with her coffee cup. “Take those sunglasses off. It’s like I’m talking to myself.”

Alex groaned in protest, but Kinsley was like a dog with a bone when she wanted her way. He had learned over five years ago that life was easier for him when he picked his battles. Since there was a good possibility that Calvin Gantz’s name would be brought up sooner rather than later, sunglasses weren’t part of his battle plan.

“Though the family is originally from Halliday, Hanson’s mother moved her two children to Fallbrook after her divorce ten years ago,” Kinsley explained, but only after Alex had set his sunglasses on his desk. He caught her wince when she noticed his bloodshot eyes. “I broke the news to Louise Baird and her fiancé last night.”

“Not the victim’s husband?”

“Sebastian Hanson was conveniently out of town,” Kinsley replied as she inched her chair backward to open the top drawer of her desk. Within seconds, she was tossing him a small bottle of eye drops. “He drove back to town late last night. We’re slated to speak with him this afternoon.”

“Where was Hanson conducting business?” Alex asked, wondering if the man had enough time to drive or fly home, murder his wife, and return to whatever hotel he was staying at for work. Alex was still reserving judgment on whether Gantz returned to town, but he wouldn’t turn a blind eye to the facts, either. “And did you speak to him over the phone?”

“Bismarck. He’s in sales.” Kinsley tilted her head slightly, acknowledging that an eighty-mile drive was nothing in the grand scheme of things. “Louise Baird called Hanson while Iwas at her residence. Sebastian and Rachel were high school sweethearts, and Louise had nothing but praise for the man. As far as I could tell, there is no bad blood between the two.”

“Happy marriage?”

“Yes, according to Louise.” Kinsley’s phone vibrated again, but she just as quickly disregarded the call. “She did mention that Rachel was having difficulty becoming pregnant while also pointing out that the delay hadn’t been such a bad thing since Sebastian had just received a promotion.”

“So, the husband didn’t want children?”

“Not sure, but that’s an avenue worth exploring,” Kinsley said as movement from the middle of the bullpen caught their attention. The captain had made an appearance, but he had stopped at Laura’s desk. “I heard downstairs that Hendricks located Rachel Hanson’s car.”

“We had to bring in Izzy to reconstruct the crash.” Alex tensed when the discussion between the captain and Laura became somewhat serious. The way she held her coffee cup gave way to the fact that she was tense. Kinsley’s slight cough brought his focus back around. “It appears as if Hanson was run off the road. The front end of her car was smashed into a tree. No other skid marks were left on the pavement. The car is with impound now. Might be a few days before we get any results, but if the other vehicle left any paint behind, we might have something to go on.”

“Wally make it out to the crime scene?”

“Yes, and he scheduled the autopsy for noon today.”

“Give me a heads up if you decide to request a new partner,” Kinsley replied wryly, snapping Alex’s attention off Laura. He rubbed his eyes and chided himself for such a slip-up. “Something I should know?”

“You want to share with me who you’ve been sending to voicemail?” Alex shot back after downing half his coffee in oneshot. Given his lack of sleep, he tempered his irritability as best he could. He began to unscrew the cap on the bottle of eyedrops. “We were able to follow Hanson’s path from her car through the woods. The blood on Hanson’s right side came from shrapnel after the airbag exploded upon impact. There was blood in the car and on some trees where she must have pushed off to help with her momentum.”

“Anything of significance left behind by whoever chased her through the woods?”

Alex relaxed somewhat when Kinsley didn’t push the issue regarding his interest in the captain’s conversation with Laura. He shook his head in response before tilting his head back.

One drop.

Two.

He blinked a few times to clear his vision.

“Nothing except the imprint of his shoes.” Alex noticed their captain approaching and didn’t waste time squeezing the bottle to drop the solution into his other eye. “Eleven and a half, by the way. Not twelve.”

“Not ten and a half, either,” Kinsley quickly countered before smiling at their superior. Not wanting to appear divided in their opinion, he kept to himself that it was common for men to wear shoes of a different size depending on the designer. “Cap, we’re on our way out to speak with Tobias Zayn. He is the grandfather of our victim. She was…”

“Most likely on her way home from visiting him last night when someone intentionally ran her off a back road. Hanson smashed the front end of her car into a tree,” Alex said, filling in the rest of Kinsley’s briefing. They didn’t have much to go on yet, but that would change after some interviews and the findings from the autopsy. “From what we can piece together, the victim ran from the crash site. Her attacker pursued her through thewoods toward Lionel Cooper’s property. The chase ended at the barn.”

Captain Dale Thompson tossed a newspaper onto Kinsley’s desk. The frown lines embedded in the man’s forehead had become permanent over the years from the stress of his job. The skin didn’t even so much as smooth out when Thompson was in a good mood, but that was almost certainly due to his overexposure to the sun. Everyone was aware that when Thompson wasn’t at the station, he was either hunting, fishing, or camping.

“I only want one answer.”

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