If She Heard (Kate Wise Mystery #7) - Blake Pierce Page 0,52

dropped out. I asked Frances, over on dispatch, if she could think of anyone, and she gave me one more name. Sadly, we won’t be able to get anything definite until morning when we can call the records office at the school.

“In the meantime, this paper,” he said, indicating the sheet he had just handed Kate, “is the result of a study that was done three years ago. Some big-wig from a college in Tennessee came through, saying they were doing a study on high school dropout rates in the southern states. Stateside High School participated in it, and those are the results.”

Kate looked the paper over. It was very brief and mostly comprised of numbers. It gave her a snapshot of what she needed, just without any names. The year prior to the study, there were eight hundred and eleven students in Stateside High School. At the end of the year, there were eight hundred and two. A note had been added to the figures, stating that any students that had moved or been relocated were not included in the final count, making a total of five students that had dropped out.

There were similar results in the year the study was conducted. That year, there were six students that dropped out. In the space of two years, there were only eleven students that had willingly stopped attending high school. According to numbers and percentages at the bottom of the page, this was about average with most other schools in the state. Kate figured that meant if she looked back over the course of ten years, she would have about twenty people to look into.

The frustrating aspect of this was that they would not be able to get names. And even when the school hours were underway, tomorrow would be the first day of Thanksgiving break, according to Principal Robinson.

“I’ve jotted down the three names Frances and I were able to come up with,” Smith said. “But one of the names I provided…well, I can promise you they aren’t your killer. He moved up to New York. He was posting on Facebook yesterday, so I know he wasn’t around here.”

Just like that, Kate felt her promising theory start to slip away. Still, though, there was the fact that she now knew what she thought might be used as a murder weapon.

“Any luck on that graduation cap?” Kate asked.

“Not yet. However, I called a man I sometimes play poker with. His oldest daughter graduated two years ago and his wife is a pack rat. He’s on the way right now, bringing the entire graduation ensemble.”

“Nice work, Smith. Thanks. Sorry to have you calling friends so late.”

“He didn’t seem to mind. People are getting scared now. I think you’ll find that when a small community feels like they’re under attack, people start to come together pretty quickly.”

Kate knew this, as she had seen it multiple times in the course of her career. But she also knew that such a mentality could often work to the killer’s advantage. In a small town, if the killer was local, it was that much easier to keep tabs on the investigation and any future victims.

Something about his idea triggered another thought. The killer knew the women were drinking and, in the cases of Kayla and Vanessa, seemed to even know when they would be arriving home. So if he was following them, what situations or environments would he be around them in? She wondered if he had been present at the bowling alley when Mariah was killed—not as just some creepy stalker hidden in the shadows, but as an active member of a group.

She felt like there might be something there, but she wasn’t quite sure what it was yet.

It was inching closer to 10:30, but Kate knew she would not be able to get back to sleep until she settled her brain down. Even if it was going over criminal background checks of the three names Smith and Frances had given her, she had to do something.

She did just that, using the database to start checking the three names she had been given. She had pulled up results from the first one—a man who now owned his own lumber business in Glensville—when Smith knocked on the door to her little office space.

“Got something for you,” he said. He showed her a graduation cap, still wrapped nicely in the plastic package it had originally come in.

He tossed it to Kate and she caught it easily. She