Page 67 of It's One of Us

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THE DETECTIVES

Walking back to her car from court, running testimony through her head as she always does, Joey gets a text from Osley.

You ain’t gonna believe it.

She calls him immediately, crossing the downtown street, jaywalking.

“What am I not going to believe?”

“We just got another tip on the Cooke case. About Kemp this time. You gotta get back here, stat.”

She starts to jog, thankful for the boots she’s wearing. Her car is in the courthouse parking lot. It will take her ten to get back to the office.

“What is it?”

“Not over the phone.”

This case is about to break wide open, Joey can feel it. They just need to find Jillian Kemp before she gets killed.

Osley is waiting at Joey’s desk. He’s been chewing cinnamon gum; the scent is overpowering.

“Joey Joey Jo Jo. It’s been quite a day, hasn’t it?”

“Why are you looking so cheerful? There is another woman missing.”

“Am I cheerful? Hmm. I was thinking more...international man of mystery.”

He strikes a pose, hands together holding a pretend gun, and she smiles despite herself.

“What’s the tip, Will?”

“We got a call from a woman who moderates a private Facebook group. It’s a support group for families who have used sperm donation. We already know Jillian Kemp used a sperm donor to father her kid.”

“And... Come on, Will. Spit it out.”

“Beverly Cooke was a part of the Facebook group, too. She also used a donor to get pregnant. It’s very hush-hush. She didn’t tell her husband.”

“My God. So someone is targeting this group? Do they all have the same donor? Are they all Bender’s?”

“No. It’s a wide-ranging group, variety of ages, multiple donors.”

“Too much to hope for. Tell me you checked on who Beverly Cooke’s donor was. If that’s our tie...if her kid is Bender’s—”

“Not gonna get so lucky. I put in some paper to get the details about Cooke’s situation, but looks like it was a place here in town. Not Winterborn. And the woman I talked to, who called it in, is from Colorado and used a firm out there, so I don’t think that’s the tie. But. Two women who belong to a private support group go missing, and one’s dead. Tells me we got a lot of targets to protect, and a place to start searching for this creep. I already talked to the lieutenant. We’ve got as much overtime as we need, and she’s tasking us three more detectives, that kid from forensics who can break into any computer, and as many rookies as we need to dig through the data and figure things out from that side.”

Joey smiles. “You’ve been busy. Looks like I’m buying the pizza to make up for lost time.”

“Some of us didn’t have court today,” he says with a half smile. “There’s more.”

“You’re making me a happy girl, Will. Keep talking.”

“How’d it go with the lovebirds earlier? They seemed a little tense walking out of here.”

Joey blows out a breath. “Mrs. Bender gave a solid description of the suspect inside her build to Roger. He’s getting the sketch into the system so we can release it tonight. I rattled Bender’s cage a bit about Melanie Rich. He seemed genuinely surprised to hear she was pregnant. He fell apart and stopped chatting, wants a lawyer.”

“Does he, now?” Osley hands her a file folder. “We’ve been running prints from the Bender crime scene this morning. There were multiple sets collected, so it might take a while to sort through all of them. But there was a match right off the bat.”