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“Eat something first.” He shoved her plate toward her. “How are you feeling this morning?”
“Physically, I’m fine. Emotionally?” She whipped the napkin into her lap and sliced a corner off the end of her French toast. “I’m a wreck. Sad, confused, still in shock. I can’t believe what I witnessed last night. Can’t believe we talked to Avery Plank.”
“I hate to admit it, but he made a lot of sense.” Finn dived into his bacon and eggs and helped himself to another cup of coffee.
Jessica picked at her French toast, plucked off some candied pecans and then shoved the plate toward him. “Try it.”
As he plunged his fork into the cinnamon swirls, Jessica licked her lips and pulled her laptop in front of her. Her fingers tapped the keyboard and she whistled. “Celine, my PI, thinks she located my brother. I had ignored an email she sent a few days ago, so she sent me another.”
“That’s good.” He waved a fork encrusted with sticky crumbs in her direction. “Any news about the case?”
“Nothing.” She clicked the keys again and moved the laptop to share the screen with him. “Here’s the website, Cold Case dot com.”
“Why is your sister’s case on here? It’s not officially a cold case.”
“There are a lot of cases like that—ones where there’s doubt.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “You’re not the only one with doubts?”
“No, I’m not.” She signed into the website and selected a chat room from her saved favorites. She sucked in a breath. “Great minds think alike. There’s been a lot of activity here the past few weeks. Those of us who doubted now see theconnection between Tiffany’s murder and the current homicides—and these people don’t even know half of what I know.”
Finn placed a hand over hers, hovering over the keyboard, fingers ready to type. “And they’re not going to know what you know, right? Keep the card, the doll, the red fibers to yourself. You could compromise this investigation.”
She flicked his hand from hers. “I know that.”
Peering over her shoulder as she typed, he said, “Your profile name is jessiejames? He was an outlaw.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not easy thinking up original profile names.” She skimmed through the messages. “Yep, yep. These online sleuths noticed the similarities between Tiffany’s murder and Morgan’s right away. Wow, they’ve even read about the witness who saw Gabby with someone last night. They’re on top of things.”
“Any of them ever solve a real crime?” Finn jabbed his finger at an envelope icon with red numbers on it in the upper-right corner of the window. “What’s that?”
“Private messages. Members can message each other privately if they want to keep something out of the public chat room.”
“Looks like you have messages.”
“A lot of time it’s personal requests, sometimes appeals for money that the moderators don’t allow.” The cursor skittered toward the envelope and Jessica clicked on it.
A string of messages appeared, all from the same user.
Finn asked, “Do you know who The Hunter is?”
“Doesn’t ring a bell.” She double-clicked on one of the messages and gasped. “It’s him, Finn. The Hunter is the killer.”
Chapter Fifteen
A chill rippled down her spine as Jessica double-clicked the next message and the next and the next, all sent by The­Hunter, all implicating him as the Kitsap Killer, all pointing to him as Tiffany’s killer.
“Slow down.” Finn encircled her wrist with his fingers. “What is he saying here?”
Jessica took a big breath and clicked on the first message, sent four days earlier. “This one asks what I thought about the card. The next one asks about the doll.”
“Is there any information on the message board about the card or the doll?”
“I-I’m not sure.” She clicked away from The Hunter’s personal messages back to the board. “I think the easiest way to find out is through a search. I can search the different threads.”
She entered the worddollin the find field and clicked on the magnifying glass. Her stomach knotted when several threads popped up. “Oh my God. That information is being bandied about here. I swear I haven’t even been on this website since the current murders.”
Finn, trying to be the voice of reason, said, “The­Hunter just might be referring to the rumors on this message board.”