We All Sleep Alone (Finley Creek #11) - Calle J. Brookes Page 0,35

TSP. What they do with that information is up to them.” He shot a look at Turner. “Elliot owes me a few favors. I’ll call one in. See if I can get him to delay releasing the information by a few days.”

“That’s probably the best I’m going to get, isn’t it?”

Allen nodded. Izzie took a moment to study him quietly, against the backdrop of his home. He looked…good. Attractive. It was no wonder the doofy nurses on first shift went gaga over him. “I’m afraid so. If Annie hadn’t been with you, I’d have been able to keep my mouth shut. I’m not going to take any chances with her. I’ve...seen what can happen too many times lately. I’d rather not risk it.”

She had to agree with him there.

35

Jake stared at the woman’s body as Chuckie the evidence tech retrieved the body from the water. “How long has she been there?”

Murder. Again. This time there weren’t guns involved. There had been far too many homicides in recent days in Finley Creek lately. Far too many for a city of around sixty thousand people. There was a reason for that.

Jake had been trying to identify that reason for eighteen months now.

It still stung that Marshall had pulled him from the case.

Chuckie shook her head. In the setting sun, her brown hair looked almost red. “It’s hard to tell. With all the rains we’ve had, and the condition of the body, anything from weeks to days. We’ll know more once we get her to the ME.”

Jake knew better to ask when that was going to be. Everything was backlogged because of the storm. It would be for months to come. The TSP was now starting to rebuild on the actual location. “Keep me in the loop. I’ve been looking for her for weeks.”

“She still has a wallet. That’s surprising,” Chuckie said. She pulled it from the victim’s back pocket. “It’s stuck in her pocket pretty tightly.”

It took some maneuvering, but she was able to get the slim folio clear. Chuckie flipped it open and pointed a small waterproof penlight at the contents. “ID is partially legible. Connie, but the last name is obscured by ink bleed. ID number is still fully visible. We’ll have you a full ID by the end of the day.”

“Just confirm it. She’s Callum’s missing nurse. She disappeared a week or two before the tornado.”

He’d been searching for her for weeks. Only one of the cases he had. His load had doubled since the tornado. No surprise. Everyone’s had. Jake stepped back.

He had a family notification to make.

Damn it. Those were the worst part of the job.

He hadn’t made it halfway across the city before Marshall was calling him again.

Damn it. This shit never ended.

36

They’d found a body. He’d seen it on the news playing in the rec room. Wallace suspected exactly whose it was. She’d been in the water for weeks now. Found not even three miles downstream from where he’d put her.

They’d slept together. There could be DNA on her body, still. Even though she’d been submerged for so long.

He’d used a condom—he would never risk Jennifer’s health by having unsafe sex—and he’d bathed Connie’s body thoroughly while wearing gloves. He’d been careful.

She’d been submerged for weeks. That had to mean something.

There was talk, even in the jail, about who she had possibly been. There had been an ID made, but the TSP wasn’t releasing that information yet.

He knew, though. He knew.

Of course…he could be wrong. The sheriff of the county south of Finley Creek had had an actual serial killer obsessed with plastic wrap active in the area recently. That man had been arrested, Wallace had read. Everyone had lived in fear for weeks because of that.

It could be a part of that. Even though the body had been found on the Finley Creek County side of the reservoir.

He needed to calm himself down. There wasn’t much to tie him to Connie.

Unless she’d told someone about their affair.

She could have. She didn’t have super-close friends, but she could have told someone. It was probably only a matter of time until they found him out. About Connie…about Miranda.

Maybe this was what he’d deserved for what he’d done to all of them. Each of their faces flashed through his mind again. Connie. Miranda. Innocent little Izzie.

He was glad he hadn’t killed her too.

“Henedy. Your visitor’s here. Guess you got you a fancy attorney with all that money, huh?”

Wallace stood. He had gotten really good at doing what