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“There wasn’t that much more, but after I got to this, I stopped and went to see Patricia.”
It had been the right move. The moment she realized what she had in her hand, she should have turned it over to the authorities—too bad it hadn’t been the local police. Rafe could only imagine the grief Nathan was giving the campus cops over the art book’s disappearance.
Still, he wished she’d read the whole thing, memorized every picture.
“What I’m most sorry about,” Janie admitted, “was not paying attention to the numbers on the license plate. He’d included them, but I did no more than glance at the numbers because they were so tiny.”
“Could you distinguish the sex of the occupants?”
“They were tiny stick figures but with details.”
Still, they could label the occupants—Derek and Brittney were in the back, Chad was driving and Chris was the front-seat passenger.
“I know you’ve said that nothing happened in class, but I still want to hear about the last week. All the events leading up to you reading the art book. Don’t leave anything out.”
Her sister returned.
Janie glanced at Brittney’s photo again, then showed it to Katie. To Rafe, she said, “I’m assisting with two classes this semester. Both art. In the late afternoons, if I get an appointment, I work in the Writing Tutoring center. I’m pretty good with English, and it’s extra money.”
“And she’s taking classes at the University of Arizona as well as being employed at Bridget’s,” Katie threw in.
“My Monday/Wednesday class starts at six. I didn’t have a student appointment yesterday,” Janie continued. “So last night, I got there right on time.”
Rafe noticed a sudden blink of her eyes, a quickening, slightly out of sync. She’d either just told a lie or she’d left something out.
Janie regained her composure, smoothed back her unruly strawberry-blond hair, and went on, “I’d earlier set up the stations and put handouts on the back table. So, when I got there, the students were signing in and already starting to work on their major projects.”
“What was Derek working on?”
“It’s a medieval battle scene. Very detailed. He’s done two others so far. All pretty much the same focus. Lots of blood, battle, destruction.”
“You say you got there right on time. Is being on time important?”
She hesitated before answering, “Yes, for both me and the students. I take points from students who are late. If they’re more than twenty minutes late, I count them absent.”
Rafe nodded. So, Miss Janie Vincent was a free spirit who also liked rules. “Seems to me that someone as concerned about punctuality as you are would arrive to class early, just in case a student needed to talk to you, or something.”
Her lips pursed together before she said, “I used to get there early, but then...”
“Then?”
She looked him right in the eye. “Then Derek Chaney started arriving early, too. At first, it wasn’t so bad. He asked questions because he claimed he also wanted to paint murals. I gave him some books to read. He kept them a while, then returned them.”
“And this behavior caused you to stop arriving to class early?” Rafe had to give her credit. She was a master lip purser, but she didn’t squirm at all.
“Look,” Janie said, giving him a haughty glare that reminded him of his own college days and how a professor could reduce him to age twelve without blinking. Few, however, had made him want to achieve more than a pass in the class. And none had been as pretty as Janie Vincent. “I don’t want anything I say here to slant the investigation. I—”
“Slant the investigation?” Rafe sat up. “What do you mean?”
“I mean if I tell you this guy creeped me out, had anger issues, you might believe I’d already condemned him. I can answer impartially, and—”
“Janie,” Rafe said carefully, “right now, we can only label Derek as a person of interest, that’s all. His art book and drawings are probably just the work of a young adult crying for attention.”
She gave a slight shake of her head. She hadn’t given her opinion on fact versus fiction earlier, but she clearly had an opinion now.
Not fiction.
He agreed but couldn’t let on to that.
“Innocent until proven guilty,” was a double-edged sword. In Rafe’s profession, his job was to decode, visualize, analyze and interpret. Years ago, a cop’s perspective—his intuition—had counted for something. Today, because of politics, Rafe didn’t dare share what he thought. It could later be used against him in a court of law.
Plus, Jane Q. Public—especially in the case of a missing or wayward child—wanted optimism.
“Do you want to know how many people have come forward with information about the disappearance of Brittney Travis? Hundreds. And all of them turned out to be dead ends.”
“How many of the hundreds attended the same college?” Katie jumped in.
“More than you’d believe.” Rafe leaned forward. “We investigate all leads, and certainly, we hope this one will take us closer to the truth, but chances are it won’t. Chances are you have the misfortune of reading some misguided young man’s work of fantasy.”
“I know fantasy when I read it,” Janie muttered. “Derek draws fantasy and his writing was nothing like his usual drawings.”
She had him there. And, he figured, by the end of the interview she’d get him a few more times if he wasn’t careful.
“Did you tell Professor Reynolds that he creeped you out?”
“Yes.” Janie filled him in on some of the suggestions Patricia had made for dealing with a difficult student—like one who invaded personal space, who believed in staring as a way to intimidate, and who got argumentative when given constructive criticisms. She explained how ineffective those suggestions had been and finished with, “Derek left during the break Wednesday, a week ago, and didn’t return.”
“Any idea why he left?” Rafael prodded.
She grimaced. “No idea. Patricia had me clean and put away his supplies.”
“How about the people he sat by? Did any of them leave, too?”
“The students all have their own stations. Pretty much their own worlds. The station to his left is empty. The station to his right is a reentry adult. She ignores him. I’ve heard her mutter a few times about teenagers with attitudes.”
“So you weren’t the only person he creeped out?”
“Attitude came off of him in waves.”
“Since you were scared to be in the room alone with him before class started, what did you do after class?”
She hesitated but didn’t purse her lips. Too bad, he somewhat enjoyed watching her expressions of angst. And she had perfect lips. “Derek was the first one out the door. I don’t think the other students even thought twice about what he did after class ended.”
“So, no complaints or other students who lingered?”
“Not that I noticed.”
She would have noticed.
Katie fidgeted in her chair, but Rafe’s attention was on Janie as she stood up and perused his office, stopping to count the softball trophies, smiling at his Baxter the Bobcat keepsakes and studying his photos. Many were of him and his family. His dad had been the sheriff, and his grandpa before that. The photo in the center of the shelf was an enlarged baby picture, the kind taken at the hospital immediately after a birth. Rafe kept it there to remind him. Some of the other photos were of him and his men, or people about town. One showed him holding a fishing rod and a ten-pound bass. She didn’t wince at the mess on his desk—a bit messier since she’d rearranged things—although her eyes lingered on his Bible.
He liked her attention to details. She had an artist’s eye. It made his job easier. “How many times did Derek miss class?” he asked her.
“Four. He’d used the limit. I can’t tell you the dates without the roster, though.”
Rafe opened a new window on his computer, punched in a code, and again stared at Derek Chaney’s rap sheet. Derek had been arrested driving a stolen car at the end of November. Rafe quickly checked, but neither a Chris nor a Chad had been with him. The judge had given Derek another chance.
Derek should have been in jail, not college.
Maybe if the judge had to knock on the door of Lee and Sandy Travis, instead of Rafe, and tell them that their daughter’s car had been found in Adobe Hills Community College’s parking lot but not their daughter, maybe then the judge would have been less lenient.
Rafe still called the Travises every two to three days to tell them that there was no news.
Today, his call would be different. He’d have to mention that a student at Adobe Hills Community College had come forward with evidence—a wee stretch of the truth—and that he was meeting with all involved for details.
He wouldn’t say anything yet about the nineteen-year-old who had turned in an art book detailing their daughter’s murder.
Or that the nineteen-year-old was dead.
He leaned forward, intent, thinking. “The names in the art book were Chad and Chris. Throughout the semester, did Derek mention those names in any other context?”
Janie didn’t hesitate. “No, I’m pretty sure he didn’t. I haven’t taught or tutored any Chads. As for Chris... I’m the lab assistant for two classes on Monday/Wednesday. There’s a Chris in my first one, but she’s female. I have two boys named Chris in my second class, Derek’s class. But I never saw them with Derek, and Chris is a very common name.”
“And you didn’t have Brittney as a student?”
“No.”
“And you’d never seen her around campus?”
“Not that I recall.”
“Was this the first time Derek mentioned Brittney in his book?”
“He usually doesn’t draw modern people, so I’ve never had cause to ask him who he was drawing.”
Rafe looked at Brittney’s flyer again. Everyone—her parents, her high-school guidance counselor, her teachers—all said Brittney was an easy kid, well-liked and with lots of friends. She’d been a senior in high school and already taking college classes, thanks to dual enrollment.
Rafe’s phone rang. It was Justin Robbins, an undercover officer that Rafe trusted. Based on his next words and the emotion in his voice, Justin had known and liked Derek Chaney. A moment later, he told Rafe something he’d already suspected.
Derek Chaney had enemies.
Justin insisted that one of them, and not the meth explosion, had killed Derek.
And now Janie Vincent just might have the same enemies.
CHAPTER THREE
“DEREK CHANEY’S DEATH might not have been accidental. He might have been murdered.”
Katie made a sound of shock and Janie collapsed into one of his straight-back brown chairs. For a moment, Rafe again thought she might bolt from the room. Instead, her hands tightened on the chair’s arms until he expected her fingernails to leave a permanent mark.
She might look small, but her imagination was big and usually spot-on. She took a deep breath and then, somewhat shakily, asked, “How?”
Rafe only debated a moment before telling them straight out what Nathan had reported to him and what Justin believed. He wanted to see Janie’s reaction. Even more, he wanted her to understand just how serious the situation might be.
She came to the same conclusion he did.
“So, do you believe someone was trying to kill him because they knew he wanted to confess?”
“I don’t have enough facts to make a judgment,” Rafe said.
But he had already made a judgment. He agreed with Justin. Someone wanted Derek out of the picture. And even worse—
Janie, however, didn’t give him time to decide what was worse. She did it for him. “And they obviously knew about the art book because it’s missing. What if he told them he’d given it to me, before they killed him?”
Years of dealing with witnesses had taught him to be cautious, to not always share the worst-case scenario until he was sure, plus he wanted to reassure her. Aloud he said, “It could have been a drug deal gone bad, it could have been an accident. We don’t want to jump to conclusions just yet.”
She shot him a dirty look before whispering, “Poor Derek.”
Katie gasped. “What? Are you in shock or something? What do you mean ‘poor Derek’?”
Katie was right to be worried. Right now there was no poor Derek; there was, however, a poor Janie. Rafe didn’t believe for a moment that Derek’s death had been the result of a drug deal gone wrong. Not just a few days after he’d turned in a possible murder confession. And, if Derek was killed to prevent his art book from seeing the light of day, then whoever killed him wouldn’t hesitate to kill again, had indeed already killed twice.
Another thing that worried Rafe was how the murderer had tracked the art book to the school safe.
Had the killer been on campus last night, watching Janie, waiting to get her alone? Had the killer watched as Janie read the book, watched as she walked to her boss’s office and then watched what the campus police did with the book?
So many questions.
But what Rafe found most chilling was that the same someone had been able to get the art book from the safe, quickly and seemingly easily.
Janie must have been thinking the same thing because she asked, “Did they find anything at all in the safe? Are they already gathering DNA?”
Rafe grimaced. Television had given DNA abilities it didn’t really have, like the ability to be everywhere. “A safe isn’t likely to cough up much DNA. Campus police report that this particular safe is opened by a code that has to be punched in. The crime-scene specialists will fingerprint the push buttons, but, keep in mind, the guard opened the safe this morning, technically putting his prints over whoever had opened it last.”
Katie leaned forward, intent. “Did the Adobe Hills police officer say what was inside the safe this morning?”
Finally, something he could answer. “A pair of handcuffs, two wallets and plenty of drug paraphernalia.”
Which meant any of that DNA Janie’d been hoping for would be compromised.
It hadn’t escaped Rafe’s notice that the two women were asking more questions of him than he was asking of them. But before he could form a question, Katie asked, “How long will it take to get back the results?”
“The average is one hundred and twenty days.”
The two towns in his county were small, so they were a low priority after both Tucson and Phoenix for the crime lab, located in Phoenix.
A list of who knew the code to the safe could be helpful, yet he doubted an accurate list could be put together. Most likely the college had had the same safe for twenty years, and every officer, past and present, had been given the code. Add to that list the college president, the deans...
