Page 34 of Nothing Left

CHAPTER TWENTY

"I need to step out for a minute," Juliette muttered to Wyatt, glancing at the observation window. She knew that Wyatt would keep the pressure on while she found out what this problem was. But even so, she didn't like the sound of Fernando's mocking laugh behind her as she left the room.

She hurried around to the tiny observation room and opened the door.

The glow of the phone was bright in the semi-darkness. Behind it, Sierra's eyes looked concerned.

"I've opened it," she said. "And I've accessed the photo gallery. What's worrying me, Juliette, is that all these photos have time stamps on them. You can see exactly when he took them. And two nights ago, at the time of the murder, he was somewhere else. Photographing somebody else."

"What?" Juliette felt shocked by this revelation. So Fernando's cocky confidence was not just bravado. He'd known that there was evidence to clear him.

She hurried over and took a look at the photos.

Sure enough, according to the documented, time-stamped footage, he'd been busy stalking a blond woman in what looked like a house, not an apartment, because it was set in a grassy yard.

He'd clearly made a meal of the approach and the stalking, taking a photo of the brightly lit window at one a.m., the garden fence at one-thirty – first in front of him and then behind him, and then another one of the cars arriving home at two a.m.

From two a.m., right through until six a.m., this stalker had been holed up in the garden, taking photos of the blonde while she undressed and as she slept.

It made chills go down Juliette's spine.

This was a criminal offense, and without a doubt, Fernando was going down for the material that Sierra had found on his phone.

The only problem for their case was that these photos, although they were clearly incriminating, simultaneously cleared him of the particular crime that they were suspecting him of.

He couldn't have been in two places at once, and the time stamps were very clear.

Juliette rubbed her forehead, trying to think of a way to salvage the investigation.

"We have to hand him over to the local police," she said eventually, hating the words because they felt like a failure. But his alibi was clear. Illegal as his activities had been, he'd been doing those activities elsewhere at the time.

She went back in and called Wyatt out. Again, Fernando's mocking laughter followed them.

Wyatt stared in consternation as Sierra showed him the photos.

"Oh, no," he said. "I don't believe it. The guy just proved he's a criminal, but at the same time, he couldn't have killed Samantha." He also massaged his temples briefly as if his own head was pounding as hard as hers was. "This is very bad for us. We're back at square one now, and where on earth do we start over?" he asked.

Juliette nodded grimly. She wasn't looking forward to telling Ebury that, yet again, the case had stalled.

"I'm going to go back to the apartment and see if there's anything else I can pick up from the evidence there," she said.

"But what could be there?" Wyatt asked in surprise. "Forensics have been combing through the place for the best part of a day."

"I don't know," Juliette shrugged. "But we have to try something. Maybe there's something we missed, something that could point us in a new direction. Maybe there's a connection we don't know about or that we haven’t realized the importance of."

Even though she felt as if she was grasping at straws, she'd had a hard experience, before now, in crimes that felt as if they were stalled. And one of the most constructive things that you could do in a case like this was go right back to the start.

She was going to pretend she'd just walked into the crime scene and was going to look at everything through fresh eyes. And perhaps, by doing that, she might see something that had been missed.

It should be easy enough to get the key to the apartment, which had been locked when forensics had finished up, and was now on the schedule for a crime scene cleanup in the next couple of days. But for now, the key should be in safekeeping at the police station where they are now.

"We go back. We pretend we've just been handed this case. We put everything we know out of our mind, and we search."

"Okay," Wyatt and Sierra agreed. She could see the lines of tension in both their faces, the fear of defeat in their eyes.

But she under that was the same determination that simmered in her gut. This killer, whoever he was, was not going to beat them. He was not going to see an innocent young woman spend a lifetime in prison for a murder he committed. He was not!

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