Chapter 8

She put a change of clothes in the back of the detective’s car. She climbed in and shrugged. “If I’m going to go to an heiress’s funeral, I’m not wearing my jeans.”

He grinned and looked down at the black suit pants he was wearing.

She took a moment and noted he’d shaven and his hair was less shaggy looking. “At least we’re on the same wavelength.”

He pulled the car out into traffic. “I’m going to drop you off, then go over to the address we have for the dating office and see if I can dig anything up.”

“Don’t you need a search warrant for that?”

He smirked. “Sometimes, unless people feel an uncontrollable urge to cooperate.”

She chewed her lip. “Can I come with you?” She shrugged. “Maybe I can help find that urge.”

He glanced at her for a moment, then back to the road. Grinning, he nodded. “I don’t see why not.”

Jac was relieved to see it was an office like any other. She’d been afraid it would be all hearts, or something equally tacky. Standing out of the way as she watched Detective Merritt speak quietly to the receptionist. Clearly, the mousy older woman wasn’t intimidated at all with his badge or willingness to help him in any sort of way.

She moved closer to hear the exchange.

The round-faced woman gave him a skeptical look. “Don’t you need a warrant to pry into files? It’s against our privacy policies to simply hand them out to anyone.”

The detective straightened to his full height, an annoyed look on his face. He put his hands in his pockets. “I could go and get a warrant, but this is a very time-sensitive situation.”

“What situation?” The receptionist demanded.

Jac bit her lip to stop from grinning. She could see the muscle in his jaw twitching, no need to touch the man to see how annoyed and frustrated he was becoming. She stepped in front of the desk. “Perhaps I could be of assistance, Detective Merritt?” She offered a polite smile to the woman sitting there.

He studied her for a few seconds, then shrugged, motioning for her to go ahead.

Jac smiled at the woman again. “It is your job to do data updates and list maintenance?”

She nodded abruptly. “Okay, Ms…”

“Mrs. Oster.”

Jac smiled. “Mrs. Oster, I wonder, you see—”

She turned to look at the detective and grimaced. Walking around the desk, she leaned over and spoke quietly to the other woman.

Reid stood back and watched. He wasn’t sure what she was whispering to the woman, but he could see the look of shock come into her eyes as her mouth dropped open, then snapped shut to be replaced with an angry scowl.

“The bastard.”

He heard her hiss.

“What are the women’s names again, dear?”

Almost shocked, he pulled out his notebook and flipped to the appropriate page before handing it to Miss Brown, a solemn look hiding her twinkling eyes.

Reid wanted to smack his hand down on the counter and demand why now, as she was typing quickly, she was cooperating? But when the printer started spitting out multiple pages, he decided his pride would just have to suffer without an answer.

Jac took the pages from Mrs. Oster. “We’ll let you know as soon as we know.”

Mrs. Oster nodded quickly. “Please, then I can remove his account.” She smiled in an unfriendly sort of way. “And possibly smack him for being such an inconsiderate bastard.”

Jac nodded and smiled again. “Thank you so much, and rest assured, we didn’t get this from you.”

Reid just nodded to the older lady and followed Jacinda out.

He waited until they were in his car again, then smirked at her. “Going to share how you did that? Because I know you didn’t tell her we suspected a murderer.

Jac looked at him for a moment, then grinned. “STI,” she said softly, then smiled at his puzzled look. “I simply told her that we suspected one of their male clients had a sexually transmitted disease, and the common links were the women we were representing.” She chewed her lip. “We are representing those women, and I’m sure in the client database, somewhere, someone has an STI.” She shrugged at him.

He thought for a moment before he started the car. Grinning at her finally, he whispered. “Remind me to stay on your team.”

She laughed and patted the printouts in her lap. Looking over at him, she frowned. “So, now the bank account is closed, do you think that’s the end?”

He’d asked himself the same question half the night. “I don’t know.”

Reid reached over and grasped her hand, giving it a light squeeze. “We’re going to find him.” He stated softly.

She could only nod in response. Her whole being was swamped with emotions. She could have looked deeper but decided selfishly that she just wanted to absorb the strength of his surface emotions, and use that to help her blunder her way through this investigation.

She looked down at their clasped hands, noticing how small her hand looked in his. Heat flashed through her system, but before she could react, he’d released her hand and gripped the steering wheel. “Thanks,” she said almost in a whisper. “When this is finished, I am never straying away from furniture again.”

He smirked at her words, then shrugged. “That’s too bad, you’re better at digging stuff up than half the people trained for it.”

Jac was shocked, she couldn’t help it. He was not the type of man to just toss out compliments, he’d use them sparingly and only when absolutely necessary. “Thank you.” She could feel her cheeks heat and was embarrassed that he would see she wasn’t comfortable with kind words.

He glanced at her a few more times during the drive but didn’t say anything more.

***

Reid wasn’t surprised to see reporters lurking by the station. They could only be stalled for so long. “Shit,” he mumbled.

Jac turned and glanced at the crowd, then back to him. “How do we get in?”

He studied the frightened look in her eyes for a moment. “I’ll go jump into the chaos you go around back.” She just nodded before opening the door. He didn’t wait until she’d pulled her clothes from the back, just took long strides into the melee. A reporter he preferred to stay clear of came sauntering out of the thick of the crowd. Nicole Anderson. A man-eater would be the polite term for her. She was a six-foot, blonde, black widow spider, as far as he was concerned. Giving her a ‘not today’ look, he breezed past her like she wasn’t even there.

***

An hour later, the three stood in the basement office staring at the three new, male names written on the board.

Brent sighed. “I was really hoping for one name.”

“That would have made it too simple,” his partner said quietly.

“Simple would have been good,” Jac said, irked. Walking over to the computer, she sat down. “Let’s take a look at their profiles.”

Both men moved to stand behind her.

She logged into her profile and typed the first name in. “I give you Wrangler dash zero one, aka Will Denton.” She patted the list of printouts from love quest. When his profile loaded on the screen, she sat back and looked at it. “He looks like a snob.”

One of them chuckled from behind her.

Brent reached over and moved the mouse to print the page. “I’ll take the snob then.”

They all stared at the screen as she brought up the next profile. “Meet Ladies Servant or Mister Paul Saint-John.”

“How old does it say he is?” Detective Merritt moved closer to the screen.

Jac scrolled down the page. “Thirty-nine.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Leaning close to forty-nine, I’d guess.” He studied the picture a moment more. “Print it, I’ll check out Mister-older-than-I’m-saying.”

Jac nodded and click on print. Looking over at the printout, she sighed. “That leaves Sincere Man or Robert Wise for me.” Both men stood behind her as the profile opened on the screen. She grimaced. “He looks like an axe murderer.”

Brent chuckled. “Well, if the killings were brutal, I think he’d be our guy.”

Jac turned and looked up at them. “So, where do I start looking?”

Brent looked at Reid for a moment, they both turned back to look at her. He tilted his head to the side and smirked at her. “Where do you think we should start? Seems to me that what things we don’t think about, you try first.”

She knew her mouth dropped open for a second before she bit her lip in concentration. “Well. I would start by seeing if they were available on the dates of the killings?” Brent nodded. “I mean, before digging really deep, let’s see if we can eliminate at least one of them.”

Detective Merritt frowned at her. “You are after my job, aren’t you?”

She laughed. “No, definitely not. You can keep it.”

All options she checked that would take Robert Wise out of the country came back empty. He hadn’t taken a plane, train, bus, or ship anywhere. Not good for him so far, she thought. Brent’s chair scraped the floor as he stood up, making her jump. Great, she was going to have a heart attack and die before she got through this. She watched him walk to the board and cross off Will Denton’s name, and then he wrote France #2 #3 beside it. She didn’t need to ask what that meant. She knew that eliminated him for the times Theresa and Desi were killed, which meant they were down to two possible suspects.

Turning back to computer, she sighed and stared at the search applications. Heart attack. She frowned, opened the health search program and typed in the name. Waiting impatiently, she sat and stared at the screen. A hospital came up on the screen. Her shoulders dropped. She wasn’t sure if it was realizing he wasn’t a suspect or worry that unless the third name on the list came up with something, they were back where they started.

Pushing her chair back, she got up and walked to the board. Picking up the marker, she crossed off Robert Wise, writing hospital #3 beside it. Turning, she saw Brent sigh and rub a hand over his face in frustration. She turned to look at Detective Merritt, still searching the final suspect, his focus still on the screen in front of him. When his hand smacked the desk, she jumped and glared.

He grimaced. “Sorry.” He walked over to the board and looked at it. “Mr. Saint-John was not anywhere else on any of these dates, and he’s a bad, bad boy.” He met Jacinda’s curious look. “He’s married and living with his wife and two children.” Her jaw dropped. “And registered with a dating site.”

Brent puffed out his cheeks for a moment, and then exhaled. “None of that makes him a killer, sadly.” He glanced at the clock. “We’re going to have to postpone the chat with Mister Cheater, we have a funeral to go to.” Jac’s shoulder slumped. “I know, I’m not looking forward to it either. It’s bound to be a media circus.” He grabbed his jacket and headed to the door. “I’ll go see the captain to tell him what we have so far.”

Jac waited until he left and then turned to Detective Merritt as he was pulling his jacket off the hook. “Um, I don’t want to be in front of the media.” She clasped her hands and looked down at them. “I don’t need the people I left behind to find me.”

He studied her for a long silent moment, “We’ll keep you out of the limelight.”

She smiled. “Thank you.” She took her change of clothes off the coat hook she’d placed them on. “Just give me ten minutes.”