have a feeling about it, but I thought I’d put it out there and get Derrick’s reaction. Turns out, he looked gobsmacked. What does gobsmacked mean exactly? And who uses that word?”
Lando found that funny. “It means completely shocked. And I was watching his eyes. Derrick was blown away by your question. The perfect start to the best interview I’ve given in years. I knew you’d landed a punch as soon as he collapsed off his feet and had to sit down. The bravado went out of him. You saw that, right? His arrogance just faded right before our eyes. I loved it. Remind me not to play poker with you.”
“What happens next? Did Dale really find the car?”
“Oh, yeah. That was no bluff. And the timing couldn’t have been better. Showing Derrick those pictures had him calling out for his lawyer.”
“Which was the point, correct? To scare him?”
“Well, not really. But a guy with no alibi for the night Ben Zurcher died climbs to the top of the list because of his connection to Jocelyn. He could be her current stooge.”
“Why do you think Derrick was so reluctant to admit that he works for her?”
“Good question. And another reason to dig deeper. Those two are linked by what exactly? How did Derrick come to be on Jocelyn’s radar? The important takeaway for me was that Derrick formally denied that he ever knew Daniel Albrecht. I have him on record now.”
“Yeah, but he also claimed he barely knew Jocelyn. How do you barely know the owner of the company you work for when there are no other employees? That sets it up that he’s a lying sack of you know what.”
“Exactly. But now he’s on record changing his story about his debt, about his employment, about Laura Leigh. We just need to find out why Daniel Albrecht met up with Ben. What triggered Ben and Daniel getting killed? Was Ben getting too close to the truth about what happened to the Copelands? Then, days later, Daniel Albrecht suffers the same fate. Why? Someone must’ve found out that Daniel was talking to Ben. How? How did they know that? There are still big gaps to close. No doubt we still have more digging to do, a lot more, but at least now we have a firm place to dig.”
“That means Jocelyn, right?”
“Oh, yeah. We zero in on Jocelyn.”
To focus on Jocelyn, Lando needed to start connecting a few dots to back up his suspicions. He hadn’t heard from Jimmy yet. Which was why once he arrived at the station, he headed straight to Jimmy’s desk down the hallway while Gemma took off in the opposite direction to check her emails.
The squad room was a bullpen-style open area with four metal desks arranged in each corner of the room. The placement provided little privacy. When the officers took phone calls, anybody could listen in. But since they were a tight bunch, no one ever complained.
After going through Ben’s papers for the third time, Jimmy sat at his workspace, feeling frustrated. He looked up to see Lando walking into the room.
“Look, I know you wanted to see some results, but after spending hours going through this stuff, I feel more perturbed than when I started. The man’s notes are barely legible, not that organized, and sometimes ol’ Ben tended to ramble. Most of the names are scattered throughout a host of documents, sprinkled here and there among theories and suspects.”
“If that’s a long drawn out excuse for closing up shop for the day, I’d like to encourage you to stick with it.”
Jimmy huffed out a breath. “Okay. But it’s not like I can make something materialize out of thin air. How’d it go with Derrick?”
Lando caught him up to speed. He also shared Dale’s photos of Laura Leigh’s car.
Jimmy studied the pictures, swiping through the series of images. “It doesn’t take a mechanic to figure out the brake line has been cut. If Derrick’s story is that he had sex at this cabin with Laura Leigh right before she died, maybe while they were in bed, somebody tampered with the Prius. Then when Laura Leigh got the phone call and left, it was a perfectly timed setup. She took off down the hill and wasn’t able to stop. This was no accident. The question is why.”
Dale came strolling in with a grin on his face. “I might be able to help answer that.”
After hanging up his jacket on the peg, Dale took a