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CHAPTER 60

CINDY WAS AT her desk inside her small office at the Chronicle with its windowed view of the city room—but she didn’t even glance at her colleagues working toward their deadlines. Her mind was split between her office and another small office that was located in the Verne, Nevada, police department.

She and Steven Wilson, the homicide investigator from Verne, had been on the phone for an hour, and this time she was recording it all. Cindy had promised again not to use Wilson’s name, to tell the story with fictitious names throughout and the facts as Steve had been able to learn them. And then he told her why he’d called, saying that one of the “I said. You dead” deaths he knew about now appeared to be a homicide.

“Explain ‘appeared to be.’ How so?”

Wilson said, “She was the second ex-wife of a man in the investigative services. Which one, I can’t say. But I saw a photo of the deceased. And I say it was connected to the ‘I said. You dead’ murder spree.”

Cindy asked, “And what about suspects?”

Wilson said, “Nuh-uh. Not saying.”

“Steve. I swore not to tell!” What are we, in kindergarten? she thought.

“Cindy, you can use what I’ve said or forget it. What I’ve told you could be a key to the whole story—or it’s nothing. And by the way, you owe me. Big-time.”

Cindy agreed. She owed him. She thanked him. And she hoped that one day she could return the favor by giving Steven Wilson some kind of a huge tip with no details and letting him research the entire known universe to learn the name of a victim—let alone the killer!

She hung up, telling Wilson, “I’m getting another call,” then typed a URL into her browser, calling up the website of a transcription service that would convert her hour-long recording into a perfect transcript in six minutes flat for as many dollars.

Cindy pressed Send and called Lindsay.

When Lindsay picked up, Cindy said, “We need to have a girls’ dinner at Susie’s. Working dinner. No booze.”