of her thighs. A bolt of desire ran through her as her imagination soared.
Valerie’s reply brought her attention back to the matter at hand. “If Maria Tindal was involved, there’s no money trail leading to her bank account. I checked. I’m running reports to see if perhaps she had other bank accounts we aren’t aware of. However, there is this,” Valerie said, moving to another screen.
Toni recognized the video. It was the one they had picked up from the gun range yesterday. She and Drew had watched it already, but hadn’t seen anything of interest. “Did we miss something?” Drew asked, stepping closer to the screen.
“No,” Valerie said. “You had no reason to continue viewing the video once Maria Tindal left the premises.”
“We did watch it until we knew for sure that she wasn’t followed from the lot,” Drew said.
“Yes, but this is something else,” Valerie added, fast-forwarding the video two hours.
Both Toni and Drew watched as a man exited the building. His back was to them so they couldn’t make an ID. They watched as he pulled his phone from his pocket and hit speed dial. Obviously, it was a number he called a lot. The conversation only lasted the time it took for him to reach his car.
Just before the man got behind the wheel, it looked like he received a call. Pulling his phone from the pocket of his jacket, he began talking. The conversation lasted three minutes.
“Although he kept his back to the camera, and we couldn’t get a facial ID, I did a body breakdown, and this is one of the profiles I came up with.” The face of a man appeared on the screen.
“Fred Tatters,” Toni said, nodding. “Interesting.”
“You might find this even more interesting. I was able to decipher the keys on his phone pad. The number he dialed is one of many to Will Mooney’s private lines. And the call he received? One of the cameras caught an image of the phone screen. The call was from a Roger Shellpoint.”
“Roger Shellpoint,” Drew said, repeating the name. “Where do I know that name from?”
“Probably the FBI. He’s been on their radar for a while. A few years back, they thought they had enough to put him away, but the charges were dropped on a technicality. Last thing I heard on him, he was living in Nevada.”
“Do you think Will Mooney is somehow involved with Shellpoint? It would be foolish to get too caught up in a man who has history with the Feds,” Toni said.
“That’s just it. Until now, we never had reason to suspect a connection. We still can’t. All we know is a common denominator is Tatters, and he spoke to both men the same night, just minutes apart,” Valerie said.
“The big question is...where does Maria Tindal fit into all this?” Valerie said. “I did a body mass assessment of the gun range, and at no time did Maria Tindal and Fred Tatters’s bodies come within fifty feet of each other. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t aware she was there, or vice versa. And there is also another possibility.”
“What?” Toni asked.
“That Maria Tindal didn’t place something in one of the lockers, and Tatters retrieved it after she left. The body mass assessment only detects when bodies come within a certain range of each other.”
“So it might be more than a coincidence that Tatters and Maria were there the same night,” Toni said, thoughtfully.
“I wonder what Shellpoint’s role is in all of this?” Andrew said, studying the screens.
“Maybe Fred Tatters can answer that for you, especially in light of this,” Valerie said, pointing to another screen. “Market and Pearl. That is the only intersection near Maria Tindal’s residence that has a traffic cam. It seems that the same vehicle Fred Tatters was driving the night he was at the gun range passed through the intersection of Market and Pearl the night Maria Tindal was killed—and within an hour of her death.”
Drew glanced over at Toni. “Let’s have Tatters picked up and brought in for questioning.”
• • •
Five hours later, Andrew and Toni were walking the long hallway that led to the interrogation rooms. Earlier, they had gotten approval for a search warrant for Byron Nettles. At this moment, officers were en route to his home, intent on getting a copy of the flash drive Nettles claimed Maria Tindal had taken from him, including the rest of his electronic equipment. That meant confiscating Nettles’s computer and videos from his security cameras, too. It