Page 34 of Just Hide

"Okay, so let's look at where these victims all live in relation to the offices," Cami muttered, assessing the timing that it would have taken each person to get to the scene, carry out the kill, and get back to work. Of course, they might not have gone directly there and back, and probably hadn't, but what she wanted to do was to see the minimum time it would have taken.

That way nobody would slip through the cracks.

She lined up the times and mapped out the routes. It was a long process, and she practically felt her brain steaming as she worked out the parameters, but she felt a sense of satisfaction that she was doing this thoroughly.

Finally, Cami had the set of parameters in place that told her when the killer would have needed to leave the office in order to commit the murders and get back again.

"Okay," she muttered, feeling a sense of impatience that she hadn't been quicker. But she'd been double checking herself every step of the way. "I'm going to find you now, I'm going to!"

She logged into the timekeeping software and set out the search to include each of the times of the three recent murders.

Then she waited, not too long, for this well written software to do its job and throw out the results.

Cami let out a deep breath as she saw a few names appear. Then a few more. And then a whole bunch more, right at the end.

"Okay," she said. "We've got a list, Connor. Here are the people who weren't off work, but who could have done this by being out of the office."

She was interested to see that the software followed her parameters and that the list of people started with the ones who were linked to the times most closely. Right at the bottom, she saw, were the ones whose attendance was far away from those times—the night shift workers, security, and cleaning staff.

"So, starting from the top," she said, looking at the very first name, trying not to feel overwhelmed that there were now nearly thirty names on this list that would all need to be carefully checked.

"Starting from the one who matches these times most closely," Connor said.

"Correct," Cami said, staring down at this first new suspect. Jack Charter was his name.

"Who's he, and what's his role?" Cami said to herself. She looked him up on her own laptop.

Her eyes widened as she saw who this man was and took a look at his heavy, grim face. "He's one of the original software developers who worked on this facial recognition app," she said. "He seems to be freelancing for them on a part-time basis now, but his absences from work in the past few days match up so closely with the times of the kills. And I see he's been absent at other times last week, too, which would have allowed him time to research their movements, I guess."

She felt as if this was starting to come together.

"I'm looking at his social media here," she said. "He's a loner, and he's on a few groups that I think would raise red flags."

"Such as?" Connor asked.

"‘Swords and Knives,’" she said. "He's an enthusiast and a collector. And he's made disparaging comments about high-profile women in the past. He's quite outspoken about his contempt for people who ‘whore themselves in social media’ as he’s put it.” Cami felt excitement build. This could be the man they needed. Finally, she was seeing a pattern that was making sense.

“We need to investigate this guy,” she said. “He’s our strongest lead so far.”

Connor nodded, obviously relieved that they now had a real line of inquiry to pursue. "Let's go and speak to him," Connor said. "We need to know more about him and see if he's had any contact with the victims. Is he at work now?"

Cami checked the latest timesheets. If he was here right now, that would save time. But he wasn’t. "No, he's not at work now. He's clocked out. I guess he might be at home? We could go there and see. He doesn't live far from here. He has a house a few blocks away."

It looked to be a nice neighborhood, Cami saw from the map, with large lot sizes. She guessed that having been one of the founders of this software, Jack was doing well for himself. Perhaps that meant he thought he was above the law. He might believe he was too smart to be found out.

"Let's go," Connor said, standing up and heading for the door.

Cami followed, feeling a surge of adrenaline. She had a feeling that this was going to be the breakthrough they needed.

***

Ten minutes later, they arrived outside the large, fancy home of Jack Charter. Cami had spent the drive looking at his social media, reading those nasty comments that she thought verged on hate speech and looking at his puffy, unsmiling features.

Connor walked up to the front door as Cami checked out the house, looking at the windows, with the curtains open, and the garage door, which was closed.

Did she see a flicker of movement from behind one of the windows? She thought she had, but when she looked again, it was gone.

"I wonder if he's in," she said. "I have a feeling he's in."

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