If She Heard (Kate Wise Mystery #7) - Blake Pierce Page 0,16

of that, too.”

“Let me know if you need a hand.”

Kate ended the call, starting to wonder if Griles might be more of a lead than she had originally thought. She checked the address in her GPS and saw that it was only sixteen minutes away from the Larry’s Lanes and Arcade.

“You thinking the killer might be some sort of jilted or rejected ex-boyfriend or something?” Demarco asked as she guided them to the address.

“In a small town like this, it’s where my mind automatically goes at first,” Kate said. “But until we can accurately look at any links between the two girls, that’s going to be hard to nail down. It’s the one reason I really wish the mother was still here.”

“Maybe we can call her tomorrow,” DeMarco said. It was more of a question, though—a veiled way to ask: Would we be total monsters if we bothered the grieving mother tomorrow?

“If nothing pans out tonight, we may have to,” Kate said.

“The thing that’s hanging me up is where Kayla Peterson was killed. Right there on her front porch. I mean, she even got the key in the door. Makes me think she had the guy with her.”

“Maybe trying to sneak him into her house?” Kate asked.

“Maybe.”

“There’s another possibility, too. Maybe he was there, waiting for her.”

DeMarco nodded gravely. “Neither one of those scenarios is particularly pleasant.”

As DeMarco drove to the address they had been given, Kate looked over the notes on the iPad DeMarco had been uploading all of the case files to. So far there wasn’t much to look at, but there were small things to pick up on here and there.

“Both victims went to the same high school,” Kate noted as she read through the notes. “Although in a town this small that’s really not too much of a surprise.”

“Different colleges,” DeMarco pointed out. “Kayla Peterson went way off to Florida for college. Mariah Ogden went to Western View Community College, just outside of Charlotte.”

“I would be curious to know if Jamie Griles knew Kayla. If so, that would basically be the only link between them.”

“And that wouldn’t be good news for Griles,” DeMarco said, thinking it over.

It was the last thing either of them said, though Kate was pretty sure DeMarco was feeling the same stirrings of excitement she was. They were on their way to question their first concrete lead and that was always am exciting moment. Kate allowed herself to enjoy it, though as they drove through the night she could not ignore just how badly she was starting to miss Michael.

She felt the old stings of feeling like a bad mother, of leaving her family behind. It was more than the guilt of any mother who went back to work after maternity leave, though. No, these were stings from the past, stings she had suffered through and thought she had managed to put behind her.

But these stings…these were fresh. And they seemed to be reiterating the same cries of her heart. Maybe this was her last hoorah.

Maybe she shouldn’t even be here at all.

***

They covered the rest of the trip to Jamie Griles’s residence in silence. When they arrived, they found themselves pulling into a small gravel parking lot in front of what appeared to be a four-plex. It looked like one large house, divided into four different living spaces or apartments. Each apartment had its own mailbox at the mouth of the parking lot. Kate noted that the one marked 3 held the name J. GRILES.

DeMarco parked beside a beaten-up old GMC pickup, parked slightly crooked in front of the third apartment. As they got out, Kate heard the rumbling of a stereo coming from one of the apartments. She was rather proud to find she knew the song as “Battery” by Metallica. Melissa had gone through a Metallica phase in her youth and had been both surprised and humiliated to find that her mother hadn’t outright hated the music.

As they approached the door with a bronze 3 in its center, she realized the music was not coming from inside. However, someone was home: a soft light filled the window, mostly blocked by lopsided blinds. As Kate stepped onto the stoop, DeMarco knocked.

“Yeah!” was the response from inside. “One minute!”

There was some brief commotion from inside and then, about twenty seconds after knocking, the door was opened. Jamie Griles was an average-sized man. His black hair was held up in a style that nearly reminded Kate of Elvis, held in place by