Page 9 of Just Now

“Yes, it would seem so,” Cami confirmed. “The phone calls from Kate and Gracie were made to his work number. And there are calls from his work number back to them again. I would guess that means he did see them both.”

“As clients.” Connor sounded thoughtful.

“It definitely looks that way,” Cami said, scrolling through the call logs.

“You’ve found an important lead there. We need to talk to this counselor, Maxwell Reed, right away. Can you find his address easily?”

“There’s a business address here. I’m not sure where he lives,” she said.

“That, I can look up,” Connor said. He looked stern as he closed his notepad, which was filled with jotted notes, details on the autopsy and on those defensive wounds. She felt relieved to have not really been listening. Thankfully she’d been too focused on pinpointing the contacts.

“Okay. So I see here, from what you’ve found, that his consulting office is about halfway between the two women’s home addresses. And in this database, I’m seeing he lives a few miles away. Again, central.” His voice was meaningful. “It looks like he moved there four years ago. What’s his history, I wonder?”

Gathering more information before they set out, Connor sent his fingers clacking over the keys.

Cami felt a quick, affectionate smile warm her face as she listened to the pace of his typing. She’d know Connor’s rhythm if she was blindfolded. Slow and deliberate, that was him. It wasn’t the rapid machine gun fire that the programmers at MIT did, without even a glance at the keyboard.

And yet, slow as he might be, Connor got results. Like now.

He looked over at Cami, an eyebrow raised. “Now, this is interesting,” he said.

“What is?” She leaned sideways to take a look at the screen. “I don’t understand. What am I seeing?”

“It’s what we’re not seeing,” Connor explained.

“And what’s that?”

“Any past history. It’s like this ID record just popped into life four years ago. There’s something strange about that. It either means it’s been changed or corrupted along the way, or else, it’s new.”

“New?” Cami raised her eyebrows.

“Yup. Might have changed his name, moved from another state. For that, we’d need to go into a different database. It might be a red flag, and he could be a fake. Either way, we need to check it out, and I’m going to put my office onto that while we get going. We need to find out if he’s legit, and if he saw these women.”

Cami felt enthused. Leaving the phones in the office, Connor strode out, waiting for Cami to leave and then locking the office behind them.

As he headed out of the police station, he was on the phone to the FBI office. A month ago, Cami knew with a pang, Ethan would have been his go-to there. Now, she didn’t know who he was speaking to. Perhaps she didn’t want to know. Nobody could fill those shoes, ever. Nobody.

“I want a background check on the health counselor Maxwell Reed.” He read out the address. “There’s something strange about the record. It’s not going back as far as it should, and I want to know why.” He paused. “Great. Thanks.”

Then he strode to the car, with Cami hurrying alongside. This case was already exposing potential irregularities. She felt optimistic that the killer had been careless, and that this would allow them to find the common thread between the victims.

Reed was hiding something. At any rate, she suspected it. And two women were dead.

“I heard you saying, on the phone, that the bodies were moved. Do you know anything about where they were held? Is there anything we need to look out for at his premises? Or his home?” Cami asked.

“Nope. At this stage there’s nothing helpful, but the pathologist will look for more when he does the postmortem. But so far, knowing they were held, and moved after death, does give us some parameters.”

Connor swerved to the left, pulling into the fast lane.

“Yes,” Cami said. “It means this guy—I’m guessing a guy—is strong enough to be able to carry women, he has a place to keep them where other people can’t hear, he has a car to transport them in.” Cami checked off the points on her fingers, causing Connor to give her an approving glance.

“Yup. You’ve got it.”

There was cohesion between them. Cami felt pleased about that. It had taken a while. She and Connor couldn’t have gotten off on a worse footing to start with. She thought back to those conflicted hours they’d spent together, each one resenting the other. And now look at them. They were partners who were on each other’s wavelength.

Or so Cami thought until Connor cleared his throat, and in a different tone of voice, spoke again.

“So. While we’re driving, tell me this.”

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