The Girls in the Snow (Nikki Hunt #1) - Stacy Green Page 0,78

to have a solid case first so that he didn’t have the opportunity to run. “Thanks, Court. I’ll let Liam and Miller know. They’re headed home for the day, but I’ll be available if you find anything else.”

Nikki went straight to the administration desk. She showed the attendant her badge. There was something else she needed to do.

Thirty-One

Nikki set the case file aside and dug into the Chinese food she’d picked up on the way to her hotel. She moaned in appreciation as she bit into the sesame chicken. Tao’s had always been her favorite Chinese restaurant in Stillwater, and the food was just as amazing as she’d remembered.

She ran through her notes from the day while she ate, hoping something would jump out at her.

Liam had spoken with the two dancers John always requested at The Doll House. Both said that nothing specific about him stood out other than being a good tipper. He’d complained about his wife, but no more than any other guy. He never mentioned children. None of the girls felt he acted inappropriately with them, and none of them remembered any specific interactions between John and Janelle.

The information should have eased her mind, but Liam had saved the best for last. John had told Nikki that he started going to The Doll House after Madison went missing, but both dancers said John started coming to the strip club a full two months before the girls disappeared. The club’s owner had emailed Liam six months of archived security footage. Liam and Miller had stayed late at the sheriff’s office and were currently going through the recordings. John seemed to visit the same time every day, between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m.

If Brianna’s information was accurate, the Bankses’ marital problems had started well before the girls disappeared and he’d lied to Nikki. And if what Briana said about the pictures Bailey had found was true, were the women simply sleeping or had they been drugged? And if he’d drugged those other women, what had he done to Nikki that night? Is that why her tox screen had been buried all those years ago? Nikki wondered just how far John would go to bury this.

Minnesota was a no-fault state, and Amy would get half in a divorce regardless of the reason for it. Did he have a motivation for keeping his affairs a secret?

Madison’s injuries were key. Whoever had killed the girls had treated them very differently. John could have killed someone in a fit of passion, but would he beat up his own daughter and leave her to freeze to death?

John certainly knew the press strategy regarding Frost. He also knew how stubborn Nikki could be when she made up her mind about something. Staging Janelle’s killing to look like a Frost victim could have been his way to lead her off course.

But if John had been getting away with drugging and raping women for years, he knew how to choose the right victim, how to lure her and how to cover his tracks. Leaving fingerprints was a rookie move. Unless the stress of covering up his crimes caused him to make a costly mistake.

Everything pointed to John, and yet nothing added up. Maybe stepping away from the case for a little while would help her figure out what she’d missed. She grabbed the remote and turned on the television, searching for anything to take her mind off the case and clear her head. Infomercials and reality television didn’t exactly help.

She glanced at the table, half-wishing she hadn’t asked the district attorney to send her copies of her parents’ case file. Did she really want to do this?

She had to. If there was any chance Mark was telling the truth, Nikki owed it to her parents to find their real killer. And to help get Mark out of prison. Nikki had put her trust in John, and for the first time in her life she was questioning him. What if everything he’d told her was a lie? What if he’d slipped the liquid ecstasy into her drink? What had he intended to do to her?

Nikki lifted the lid and tossed it aside. A copy of the evidence log sat on top. Her father’s bloodstained pajamas and slippers, her mother’s nightgown and the bottom bedsheet, and various items from Nikki’s room and the nightstand were listed, with the chain of custody stating they were currently in the prosecutor’s office pending testing, in addition to the swabs taken from