Page 101 of Her Last Whisper

“I’m totally in.”

Fifty-Seven

Tuesday 1345 hours

After spending most of the day doing background checks on hospital employees and waiting for anything else to materialize from forensics, Katie was going stir-crazy.

“That’s it, I’m done with this for the day,” she announced. “I’m not getting anywhere.” Her eyes were tired but she still had quite a bit of excess energy. She was itching to get out.

“What?” said McGaven, looking up from the lengthy list he was working on. Sticky notes and pieces of paper with his small handwriting were stuck all over his desk.

“I’m so disappointed that the search warrant we served for Sykes turned up absolutely nothing… nothing… I still can’t believe it.”

“He’s not out of the loop yet.”

“I know… I need to do something more. I can’t look at these useless background checks anymore.”

“I second that,” he said.

“Wait a minute.” Katie began searching furiously through paperwork.

“What are you doing?”

She sorted through two stacks of papers until she found it. “Okay, I need the aerial view.” She searched until she found it.

McGaven watched her with curiosity.

“I had almost forgotten all about this.” She put the pieces of paper on her desk side by side.

“What is it?”

“This was the original architectural drawing of the houses in what is now called the Basin Woods Development. I’m trying to find the house where Amanda said she was held captive on here. Where I didn’t find anything, but…”

McGaven helped her move the maps, smoothing out the corners.

Katie studied the neighborhood, streets, and zeroed in on an area where she had previously searched for the house based on Amanda’s description. Looking back and forth from the plans, she exclaimed, “There’s the house.” She referred to the floor plan with the two bedrooms. “Wait. See, these bedrooms aren’t situated like that. There’s a portion missing in the structure—at a weird angle. Why would they cut the plan like that?”

“That could’ve been changed due to budget, or whatever.”

“True.”

“We need to start at the beginning—where everything started.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Road trip,” she said.

“Let’s go.”

“Everything for these cases is simmering right now. We need more…”

“Let’s go then.”

“Can we pick up Cisco?”

Katie laughed, knowing the dog would love the company. “Sure, it’s on the way.”

“I’m game.”