Fatal Secrets - Desiree Holt Page 0,42
on the table.
“I arranged to have your car towed to my office,” Alex said. “I have a tech I can call to go over it and see if we can find anything. I doubt it, though. I’m sure whoever did this made sure to use generic stuff that wouldn’t track back to anyone.”
“Better your place than anyone else’s,” Sean agreed. “Zoe, you’ll have to call your insurance company. Alex, can you get a copy of the report?”
“All taken care of, but let’s let it sit for a while.”
“Right,” Hank agreed. “Zoe, you won’t be going anyplace by yourself, and I’d like to get this business cleaned up before anything else.”
She couldn’t disagree with him. At this point she had no desire to go anywhere alone.
“Okay, let’s get to it.” Hank looked around the table. “Zoe, do you have information in your notes about Randall Vicks and Jerry McRae?”
Zoe frowned at him. “Randall Vicks, I think, but not Jerry McRae. Why do you want to know?”
“Because they are key to this whole thing.” Hank paused a moment. “It seems there are a lot of secrets here that people have been sitting on for way too long.”
“Secrets?” She looked at her screen then at Hank then Alex and finally Sean.
He lifted his hands. “Don’t look at me. I’m the new guy here, and I have no idea who’s who.”
Zoe managed two big bites of her sandwich before giving out information.
“I don’t know who Jerry McRae is, but Randall Vicks is an attorney in the firm where Elliott Craig is the senior partner. He actually owns the majority of the firm.” She looked around the table. “Elliott is Warren Craig’s father. I have Vicks in my notes but only because he was on a list I found in one of Justine’s files.”
“Her files?” Alex stared at her. “How did you happen to have her files?”
Zoe nibbled her lower lip. “I went through her apartment and—”
“Her apartment?” Hank interrupted. “The police let you into her apartment?”
She squirmed a little in her seat. “Um, not exactly. We had keys to each other’s places, you know, for emergencies. And I knew places to look that they didn’t.”
“Jesus, Zoe.” Hank blew out a breath. “And you never told anyone?”
“No.” She spat the word, anger surging through her. “Nothing was going anywhere with her murder. No one was finding anything, and they practically labeled it a cold case before a week was up. They told me they couldn’t find anything to explain how she ended up where she did, or anyone who could tell them, anything. I knew it was because they didn’t ask the right people, so I wasn’t about to trust them with anything And what does Vicks have to do with this? “The men all exchanged looks, but no one said a word.
“No, no, no.” Zoe took another swallow of her coffee. “This has been my project for ten years. I want to know what the deal is.”
“Answer a question first.” Hank swallowed a bite of sandwich and washed it down with a sip of his drink. “Has Warren ever prosecuted anyone who was a client of his father’s?”
“No.” That she was positive of. “He was very rigid about that. Justine told me. Elliott wanted Warren to join the firm when he passed the bar, but from what little I know, Warren wasn’t too happy with some of his father’s clients. And he was all about prosecuting the bad guys. Why?”
“I’ve got this,” Alex told the others. “I chatted with both the chief of police and the county sheriff. Here’s the deal. You know there’s a big deal about the drug traffic on the highways in Montana. Law enforcement’s been trying to catch the people and stop them for years.”
“It’s hard to ignore it,” Hank agreed. “It’s in the papers almost every week. There’s a huge operation, just within the state, that seems impossible to shut down.”
“I’ve done some stories off and on about that as well as the ancillary crimes,” Zoe told them. “People get high, and there’s a spike in robbery and murder. But what does that have to do with Justine?”
“Here’s the deal,” Alex told them. “The state police in cooperation with local law enforcement have been trying to put a stop to it forever. The problem is, it’s headed by a man who manages to distance himself from it and who has unlimited resources and power to accomplish that and keep it running.”
“Wait a minute.” Zoe snapped her fingers, then typed