By the time she opened the door to the cruiser and got into the front seat, her body felt bruised and battered. She felt like she’d climbed to the top of a mountain and down again.
Lando settled behind the wheel and shifted in his seat. “I think Jocelyn bought it. I don’t think she caught on to the ruse.”
But after starting the engine, he looked over at his wife. “What’s wrong with you? You look like you’re either steaming mad or like you’ve seen the devil himself.”
“I think maybe both. My God, Lando, I think she did it. I think Jocelyn killed the Copelands. Now we just have to figure out how and prove it.”
11
Lando decided they should go over everything with Zeb and get his take. He drove over to the Reservation and met the tribal police chief inside the Windhorn Grill for lunch. Zeb had already settled in a back booth by the time they got there.
After placing their orders, Lando began going over the narrative, then leaned back and waited for Zeb to offer up words of wisdom, or maybe a new direction in the investigation, maybe even a new strategy. But he was disappointed in the first thing out of Zeb’s mouth.
“So this Jocelyn was a cold fish?”
“Cold fish is a polite way of putting it,” Gemma retorted. “She was more like a piranha with fangs. And arrogant.”
Unsettled, Lando tightened his jaw. “That’s not the point. I went in there, giving her the benefit of the doubt. I came away thinking she was guilty as hell. Jocelyn wasn’t just cold; she was indifferent to the murders. Learning that I might re-open the case didn’t seem to bother her one way or the other.”
Gemma nodded. “It’s like she’s gotten away with murder for twenty years, and she’s not afraid. She’s arrogant enough to know there’s no evidence linking her to the crime.”
“And there’s no way you can prove she was even near the murder house?” Zeb remarked. “What about these sorority sisters? After such a long time, their stories may have changed.”
Lando blew out a breath. “I have Dale trying to track them down now. But frankly, if charging her with murder hinges on her sorority sisters, then Jocelyn might be smug for a reason. I’m not sure that would be enough to convict her in the eyes of a jury. I need something tangible, concrete, like DNA to show she was at the scene.”
“What if she got a boyfriend to do it? Or hired someone off the street,” Gemma proffered. “In a case like that, her alibi would be solid.”
“Murder for hire is damn hard to prove,” Zeb pointed out. “I should know. I had a case like that several years back, drove me nuts. It was a sordid mess to try and untangle the web of deceit and lies. Took me damn near two years to make my case and get enough on the daughter to charge her with conspiracy in the murder for hire plot.”
“Daughter? So the daughter killed who? Her parents?” Lando asked.
“Yep. She hired someone to kill both of them one night when she was out playing blackjack at the casino. There was surveillance footage of her playing at the time of the murders. She obviously thought that would be enough to keep suspicion off of her.”
Gemma felt disgust build in her belly. “Why’d she do it? Money?”
“Oh, yeah. She wanted the estate. Her parents were sitting on valuable ranch land estimated at five and a half million about two minutes from where we’re sitting right now. She didn’t want to wait until they died naturally, thought she’d move the process along to suit herself.”
“Greed makes people do crazy things,” Lando uttered.
There was a pause in the conversation while a waitress with the nametag that read Maggie handed out their food. Burgers for the guys, a spicy chicken sandwich for Gemma.
But as soon as Maggie left, Lando resumed his reasoning. “I find it strange that Sandra and Jocelyn’s parents had a car accident two years before the murders. The Trasks are dead, buried two years when someone comes along and wipes the Copeland family clean off the map.”
Before digging into his meal, Zeb shook his head. “I don’t much care for coincidences like that.”
Gemma turned to stare at Lando. “Maybe that’s it. Maybe the parents getting killed triggered something in Jocelyn. Maybe this college kid decided she wanted the entire pie for herself. As long as Sandra and her kids were around,