Page 68 of Her Last Whisper

“A little bit after 11p.m. the night before she was found at Whispering Pines. You can’t identify the man or even get a good description of him; the video is too far away and very low resolution. It’s beginning to look like Amanda hadn’t been entirely truthful.”

“Could still be a doctor?” she said.

“You think the man in the video was the kidnapper too?”

“Maybe, but I think he fits into this somewhere or he has information we need. And I want to see who this guy is, study him without him knowing it.”

“How are we going to do that?” he asked now with more enthusiasm in his voice.

“I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

“Dammit, Katie. Why do you do that? Now I’m not going to be able to sleep.”

“Go back to your girlfriend, and don’t forget to wear something nice tomorrow. Maybe a change of shirt too.”

“Katie, what the hell are—”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Hey, Katie, lay off the heavy caffeine at this time of night. Otherwise, you’re going to be paying more for psyche fees.”

“Will do.” She ended the call.

Forty

Thursday 0745 hours

Katie drove to work early, eager to get back to the investigation. She felt surprisingly rested and alert after a long day yesterday; perhaps it was the pep talk from her uncle. She fully understood where he was coming from, but sometimes you just had to let baby birds fly on their own. She would give serious thought to speaking with a counselor—but for now she forged ahead.

She pulled into the parking lot at the sheriff’s office and drove around the building to her usual parking area. There was some kind of commotion going on. As she slowed to take a closer look, she saw the familiar crime scene tape cordoned off a section with John dusting for prints—fromherJeep.

“What the hell is going on?” she said to herself.

Pulling over, she was out of the car in seconds and by John’s side as he dusted print powder along the rear windows of her car. “What the hell is going on, John?”

He looked up from his work and said with a smile, “I was leaving late last night and caught a guy scoping out your Jeep. I called him out and he ran before I could catch him.”

“He touched my car?”

“Yep.”

“I don’t keep anything in there besides some training stuff for Cisco. What was he looking for? You think he was just a thief?”

“Don’t know. It was hard to tell.”

“What did he look like?”

“That’s the thing, I couldn’t see his face clearly.”

Katie frowned—it wasn’t what she wanted to hear. She thought of the person leaving her messages and wondered if it was the same person here last night.

“Sorry, that’s just how it goes sometimes,” he said, concentrating back on his work.

“So he actually touched the Jeep?”

“You already asked me that. We’re checking cameras too.”

“I’m just trying to figure out why he would want to do that.”