Sub hooked.
Ryder cleared his throat. “Joe Molina. He’s been spending a lot of time at the bar talking to her.”
“Keep an eye on her.”
“Sir?”
“Just check in periodically, make sure she’s covered.”
Ryder didn’t say anything.
“What?” Matt snapped.
“I don’t fit in at the Wrangler.”
“Has anyone given you undue attention?”
“No. I go to the coffeehouse every morning as we planned and work on my laptop for a couple of hours. Michael comes between six and seven, checks in. Kara comes between seven and nine. Everything comes through secure text or email, encrypted, and I send to you.”
“No one has questioned you? What you’re doing?”
“The owner of the coffeehouse has chatted with me a few times. She looked at my University of Arizona shirt and assumed I was a student, and asked me how classes were going. I said I was working on my master’s thesis and, at Kara’s suggestion, made it a topic that was complex but I knew something about, so I chose physics.”
“And you can’t just go to the bar for a drink?”
“I don’t drink, sir.”
Matt felt like no one was watching Kara’s back. “Still, check in with her, over and above her morning reports. Make sure she’s covered, not having problems at the bar.”
“She’s not going to like it,” Ryder said.
“I don’t care what she likes. She is part of my team. I’m responsible for her and her safety.”
Ryder said he would check in with Kara at the bar, and that made Matt feel marginally better. When he left, Matt put in a call to Tony Greer in DC, and sat on hold.
Matt asking Ryder to keep tabs on Kara was in no way a reflection on Matt’s confidence in her abilities. She was a good cop with sharp instincts. But they’d only worked on one case together and she hadn’t been officially a part of his team. Now that he was her supervisor, he had to cover her at all times.
And now that he was her supervisor, it was going to make the fact that they’d had a relationship—however brief—far more complicated. Especially since he was still attracted to her.
Very attracted to her.
“Matt? Sorry to keep you waiting.”
“I’m just doing paperwork. Any word on the warrant?”
“I’m optimistic we’ll have it by tomorrow, Monday at the latest. There’s precedent, plus we have solid circumstantial evidence from the Game & Fish report.”
“Great news,” Matt said. “I should know by tonight the exact time the A-Line Truck will be at Southwest Copper.”
“Did I see an expense come in for a flight to Las Vegas?”
“Yes, Zack is on his way.” Matt filled Tony in on what Zack was looking for. “If he finds something, we’ll need financial warrants into those banking records.”
“I’ll give the AUSA a heads-up. Good work. Maybe this will be wrapped up faster than you thought.”
“The waste disposal is only half the case,” Matt reminded Tony. “Without physical evidence tying the illegal dumping to the murder, it’s going to be next to impossible to prove that they’re connected—if they’re connected.”
“One step at a time. If we nail Hargrove or anyone else at Southwest Copper on illegal dumping, I can get almost any warrant you want—and I’ll make sure that evidence related to the murder investigation is a priority. I have to go to a meeting, but good work.”
Matt wasn’t as confident as Tony at this point, but at least they were making progress—slow progress, but still moving forward.
As soon as Matt ended the call, his cell rang. It was Jim Esteban, their forensics expert. He’d been on-site in Tucson for the first two weeks of Matt’s investigation—he reviewed all the findings from Emma Perez’s death and analyzed the crime scene with an advanced computer model that helped Matt visualize what happened to her. There was no doubt in Jim’s mind that someone had intentionally killed her. Though the initial coroner’s report listed undetermined pending investigation instead of homicide, Jim recommended they revise the report to list probable homicide. She’d been hit twice by the rock, with the force of a baseball bat. There was evidence that she’d been dragged partway to the pond, but that the killer had been scared off.
Jim helped Matt come up with his working theory that the murderer had premeditatedly killed Emma with the intention of making it look like an accident, which is why he ran when Billy approached.
The big question was why? What threat did she pose? Did the killer somehow know that Emma was looking into the dead birds? If so, why would he care?
Billy told him Emma hadn’t talked to anyone besides him about her recent suspicions after Frank had agreed with her professor that three dead birds in the area she found them wasn’t cause for alarm. Emma had used Frank’s name when sending the carcasses to Game & Fish to be discreet, so no one at AREA or Game & Fish knew that she was investigating on her own. The FBI had already run a full background on her professor who’d taken her and her class up Mount Wrightson and nothing suggested he or the class were involved in any way.
Matt and Jim had discussed early on that Emma may have been doing additional research on her own, and may have talked to someone before she went searching for the contaminated water with Billy. But they’d found no evidence to that effect. Her map and notes were written in a shorthand that Frank could only partly decipher, so all they knew was where she had looked and intended to look for contaminated standing water. And while Jim’s theory still remained the most likely scenario, Matt couldn’t discount that there was another reason she was killed.
Jim said, “I’m done for today. I just wanted to call and check in, see if you needed me for anything.”
“Appreciate it,” Matt said. “I don’t have anything.” He gave Jim a brief summary of where they were now. When he was done he asked, “When’s your trial over?”
Jim had been the director of the crime lab in Dallas before he joined the FBI’s mobile response team and deferred his retirement. He was in his fifties and had been a pioneer in the early days of forensic investigation. He was currently in Dallas testifying on a major case that was one of the last he’d been involved with there.
“I’m hoping tomorrow is the last day for testimony, but I’m not holding my breath. I’m thinking Tuesday for closing statements. I can be back as soon as it goes to the jury.”
“I’ll let you know, but there’s not much you can do here. If that changes, you’ll be the first to know.”