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“I’ll be phoning in for updates. Can I contact you, Deputy Alvarado?”
“Call me Tomas, and you can.” He jerked his thumb at the door. “Wait in the lobby of the station. Deputy Davis is driving the van over.”
“Thanks.” She slung the pouch over her shoulder and headed for the lobby. She peeked down the corridor, wondering if Morse was grilling Macy behind one of those doors.
After Finn had told her about Deke Macy, she’d looked him up online. Didn’t have much of a social media presence. Mostly followed young Instagram models, liking their sexy poses and posting emojis with tongues hanging out. Finn had been right. If he was trying to hide his dirty deeds, he was hiding in plain sight. Of course, that could be a ruse, too—thedo you think I’m that stupiddefense.
Avery Plank had lurked beneath the radar—not exactly a family man, had one divorce and one daughter in his past—but he’d been a respected engineer in his field. He’d escaped his rough childhood, as she had, but the darkness had seeped too far into his soul for him to evade it.
“Ms. Eller?”
She jumped and spun around to come face-to-face with a beefy deputy who looked like he could be a defensive lineman for the Seattle Seahawks. She’d be safe with him.
“Deputy Davis? You can call me Jessica.”
“And you can call me Kimani, CSI lady.” He patted the pouch. “I’ll need to check the form before we get in the van.”
She hoisted the bag onto a table in the lobby and slipped out the form. She placed it on the table next to the bag.
He scanned the form and glanced in the bag. “You have two other paper bags coming with us?”
“In my car, not official evidence.”
“I’ll follow you.”
He followed her to her car where she retrieved the two paper bags, and then they got settled in the van for the ninety-minute ride to Marysville, including the ferry across the Sound.
As Jessica adjusted her seat belt, she asked, “You ever play football?”
“Why, yes, ma’am. Washington State Cougars. How could you tell?”
“Ah, because you’re as broad as a double-wide trailer, and I mean that in the most complimentary way.”
He chuckled. “My wife would take exception. She keeps telling me I don’t need to eat like I’m still making those tackles.”
She and Kimani chatted easily about football, the King County Sheriff’s Department, living on the Sound and his wife’s cooking, anything to keep her mind off what was happening to Deke Macy back at the station. Had she ever seen the guy before? If he was the killer, he must know whoshe was. Knew her car. Had followed her. Had her phone number. The knowledge made her feel slightly nauseous, and she cracked the window.
The hour-and-a-half ride went by fast, and they’d missed most of the traffic, but by the time Kimani pulled the van into the parking lot of the forensic lab, Jessica was ready to stretch her legs.
Kimani parked outside the vehicle inspection center where a few cars perched on hydraulic lifts, ready for a thorough search. She knew several people in that unit, and they’d pull plants from the undercarriage and dig out seeds from the tires in an effort to glean every bit of evidence they could from a suspect’s or victim’s car. Too bad neither of the crimes on campus involved vehicles.
She hopped from the van and Kimani grabbed the pouch from the back. As he handed it to her, he said, “I’m escorting you to Evidence Receiving, and then I’m going to get some lunch and head back. Are you coming with me or staying?”
“I’ll be staying for a while. I can probably hijack one of our vans to go back to Kitsap.”
They parted ways at Evidence Receiving when Jessica handed the pouch over to Nicole Meloan, the supervisor. She shook the paper bags at her. “A couple of things in here I’d like tested, but I compromised the chain of evidence because I found them on my own, and in the case of the doll, I carried it around with me.”
Nicole clicked her tongue. “Michael know about your little faux pas?”
“I told him. He was…disappointed.”
“This evidence won’t be in lockup long. I’ve had lab rats knocking on my door all morning looking for it.”
“There’s not much to paw over, and the evidence that might contain DNA has been sent to Seattle.”
Nicole unzipped the pouch and plucked out the form. “I hear that’s on a rush, too.”
“Have you heard anything else? The sheriff’s department is questioning a person of interest. He may have worked with both women…and he was there ten years ago when my sister was murdered.”