Cut and Run (Lucy Kincaid #16) - Allison Brennan Page 0,5
left in a hurry.
Had they been grabbed there? Or as they were leaving town? Maybe they’d planned to disappear for some reason … because Denise stole all that money?… and the killers followed them.
If they followed them to Mexico, they would have killed them in Mexico, where their bodies would likely never be found or identified.
Lucy frowned. She was already thinking like Nate, that the family had been killed before they went to Mexico, when so far the evidence pointed that they’d left the country and returned within a week.
What were you thinking, Denise? Were you scared? Maybe you left without thinking, then came back to turn yourself in … and then what? You had a partner? Someone who didn’t want to come clean? Killed you and your entire family?
That actually made sense. Guilt was a powerful emotion. And being on the run was hard, especially with a family.
Yet … that didn’t explain what happened to Ricky.
Maybe Glen and Denise left Ricky behind. Or maybe the killer had a hard time shooting a child … and if that’s the case, where was he? Could a nine-year-old be convinced not to turn in the person who killed his parents?
Knowing what they knew, Lucy believed that poor Ricky Albright was most likely dead. She hoped Ash would find his body so his remaining family could have peace.
And Lucy vowed to find the person who killed them, because they deserved justice … no matter what crimes Denise Albright committed.
Chapter Two
Detective Carl Chavez was of average build, in his late forties, with dark hair just beginning to both gray and recede.
He was clearly unhappy that the FBI had taken lead on the Albright case. He slapped a folder in front of them. “There’s everything we have.”
Lucy glanced around at the uniformed officers all watching the exchange. The hostility was palpable, and Nate—who already looked and walked like the soldier he’d been—looked ready to pounce.
“Is there a place we can talk in private?” she asked.
“I really don’t know what I can tell you that’s not in the files.”
“Is Detective Douglas here?”
He shook his head. “He had a case he couldn’t drop.”
Nate spoke up for the first time. “When will he be back?”
“Don’t know. It’s an important case, this is three years old—what’s another day or two?”
“We have some questions about the case file,” she said. “You were involved in the investigation three years ago, correct? Your name is on several of the reports.”
“Yeah— It was Garrett’s case, but I assisted.”
When he realized that Lucy wasn’t going to budge on the conversation, he motioned for them to follow him down the hall and to a small conference room. He sat down, leaned back in the chair. “What can I help you with?”
Lucy sat across from him; Nate continued to stand. She could feel the anger rolling off him, but if Chavez sensed it, he didn’t react.
“Is this all you have?”
“Everything’s there. We sent your people what we had at the time.”
“I was hoping in your follow-up that you might have additional information.”
“Once we learned the Albrights went to Mexico, we moved it to inactive. And since it was a federal embezzlement case, it really wasn’t on our radar.”
Chavez was very relaxed. Maybe it was the town—small county, not a lot of crime. They averaged less than one murder a year, maybe they just didn’t know how to proceed with such violent deaths.
Lucy asked, “Can you walk us through the time frame? From when you were called in, who you talked to?”
He motioned to the files. “It’s all in there.”
“I read the files.”
“So I don’t see what the problem is. What else do you want to know?”
“The report says the first call was from the high school principal—Glen and his daughters didn’t show up at school. Was that when you caught the case?”
He nodded, rocked back and forth on the two back legs of the chair. “We went to the house on a welfare check late Monday morning, September 24. Determined that the Escalade, registered to Denise Albright, was gone. The cars registered to the husband and the daughter were both there. No one was home, house locked tight. No neighbors close by—the house is in the middle of a couple of acres. We talked to one neighbor that was listed as an emergency contact for the kids at school, a young couple with a baby, but they hadn’t seen the Albrights on Friday or over the weekend. Didn’t find it odd, because like I said, the