confined to wheelchairs…This school helps a lot of people. I still keep in touch with some of the teachers.”
“So you’ve come back to visit?”
“Occasionally.” Kendra looked at the file in her lap. She had to clear her throat. “But I never thought I’d come back under these circumstances.”
She was staring at photos of Elaine Wessler and Ronald Kim, two staff members she’d known since she was five years old. Dear God, she had hundreds of memories of them from the years after her mother had brought her here as a nervous little girl. She remembered how tightly she’d held her mother’s hand as she’d been driven up this driveway to the front door. But more with excitement than fear, because her mother had prepared her for that first venture into the world outside the safety of the only home Kendra had ever known. She had been sure that she would be greeted with only kindness by everyone here at Oceanside.
But neither of the people in these photos had been met with kindness. Kendra was looking at crime scene photos of their bloody corpses.
They had been murdered.
Their bodies had been found on opposite sides of the campus within a day of each other. Elaine Wessler, who specialized in real-world survival skills for the visually impaired, had been stabbed on the flat rocks of the school’s west side, a boulder-laden area that offered a spectacular view of the Pacific Ocean. Groundskeeper Ronald Kim, wearing the same blue overalls Kendra remembered from her campus visits, had been killed by a single gunshot behind his left ear. He’d been found on the far side of the great lawn adjacent to the campus’s main building.
“Did you know them?” Griffin asked.
Kendra nodded. “Almost for my entire life.” Her lips tightened. “They didn’t deserve this.”
“No one does.”
“Why are you even handling this investigation? Shouldn’t it be an SDPD case?”
“The director asked us to offer our services. Several of the resident students are the children of very powerful foreign diplomats.” He grimaced. “And the fact that the entire student body is made up of special-needs kids has already started generating a lot of public pressure. We have to close this case very quickly.”
“Yes, we do. And I didn’t see anything in the file about suspects.”
“That’s because there aren’t any.”
“None?”
“Not yet. At least none we’ve been able to identify. Neither of the victims had enemies anyone knows about, and they didn’t have criminal associations. They weren’t drug users, had no criminal records.”
“Robbery?”
“No. Elaine Wessler was wearing a fairly expensive Movado watch, and it was still on her wrist when her body was found. Ronald Kim was found with a wallet full of cash, which was normal for him. He didn’t use credit cards. We’ve ruled out robbery as a motive.”
Kendra looked out her window at the Latin phrase chiseled in stone over the main entrance: AD ASTRA PER ASPERA.
Griffin squinted at it.
“It means ‘To the stars in spite of difficulties,’” she said.
Griffin nodded. “I know, Kendra. Despite what you may think, my education didn’t begin and end at Quantico. Good motto.”
“Sorry for underestimating you.”
He shrugged. “Non forsit.”
“Now you’re just showing off.” She looked ahead at a Ford Explorer parked on the stone driveway. “Looks like Metcalf beat us here.”
They pulled up behind the Explorer just in time to see FBI Special Agent Roland Metcalf climb out. He was a tall, handsome man with a fit, muscular body and floppy brown hair.
“I had an amazing presentation prepared for you at the office, Kendra.” Metcalf shook his head. “A PowerPoint extravaganza. Photographs, crime scene video, pithy yet informative bullet points…”
“Sorry, Metcalf. Tonight I needed to be here.” She held up the file folder. “This helped catch me up.”
“A poor substitute.”
“Maybe you’ll run your extravaganza for me later.”
“Perhaps, if you’re extremely lucky.” He smiled. “Good to have you home. Sorry it’s under these circumstances.” He grimaced. “And I don’t mean Lynch getting you kicked out of Afghanistan. I know this case is going to be difficult for you.”
“Obviously. Or you wouldn’t have been the one to win the office prize on how to draw me into the game Griffin set up.” She saw him flinch and felt a moment of regret. He was clearly sincere. Lynch, her best friend Olivia, and even her mother insisted that Metcalf had a crush on her, and she’d only recently admitted that it was probably true. “He’s right, you do know me well enough to know I’d want to be here and work this case. That’s