Page 83 of Lead Me On
“Oh, no,” Jane whispered.
“But—and here’s the important part—she said her purse was stolen on May thirteenth.”
Jane frowned. “The thirteenth?”
“Jessie was arrested on the seventh. He was in custody on the thirteenth.”
“It couldn’t have been him.”
Mr. Chase shook his head. “It couldn’t have been him.”
Overwhelmed, Jane grabbed Chase’s hand and squeezed it. “This is it, right? This is why they didn’t arrest him again. They don’t have anything.”
Chase’s dad smiled. “They don’t have anything. Jessie admits he stole Michelle Brown’s purse, but there’s no evidence he was involved in the theft of Kelly Anderson’s backpack, and he couldn’t possibly have committed this last theft.”
Jane nodded, blinking back tears. “So all we have to worry about are the legitimate charges of theft.”
“Probably. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Cops don’t like to give up on a hunch. Right now Jessie is their only lead, as far as we know, and they won’t want to let him go. I want to give them something else to think about.”
“Like what? I don’t understand.”
“We’re going to go through these files and find something they’ve missed. Even if it’s just an idea. Every single page. You sure you don’t want that beer now?”
Jane shook her head, and they got to work.
An hour later they’d made a list of possible connections between the women. Most of them were tenuous, and the police had probably connected most of the dots, but it was better than nothing.
Churches, schools, doctors, friends. If those details had been collected, they hadn’t been included with the evidence provided to Jessie’s lawyer. But despite all their hypothesizing, it was clear that the women were linked by the thefts.
“All the reports were taken by different officers, but that’s not to say another officer couldn’t have taken an interest in each woman as she came in.”
Jane couldn’t quite believe what Chase’s dad was saying. He’d been a policeman himself. “You really think an officer could be involved?”
“I don’t think so, but that doesn’t mean it should be dismissed out of hand. Now then, her purse has been stolen, she’s filed the report—now what does she do?”
“Cancels her credit cards,” Jane suggested.
Mr. Chase wrote that down. “And maybe her cell phone account?”
Chase flipped open a file. “The first two had the same brand of phone.”
His father raised an eyebrow. “Maybe it’s someone working at the local cell phone store.” His hand flew over the notebook. “I noticed all the women reported that their keys were in their purses. They must have had their locks changed, too.”
Jane added, “And they would’ve needed a new driver’s license first thing.”
She felt Chase’s elbow touch her. “Don’t go down to the DMV anytime soon. There could be some psychopath there taking license pictures.”
By the time they left, Jane was nearly giddy with hope. Mr. Chase would give all these ideas to Ms. Holloway, and Ms. Holloway would make clear to the police that they’d better start following up on these other leads before the press got the idea that they weren’t doing their jobs.
Pretty soon Jessie would be cleared, and Jane’s life would get back to normal. Only, she was beginning to suspect she no longer knew what normal looked like.
* * *
ONWEDNESDAY AFTERNOON,Jane was sitting at her desk in Jennings Architecture, looking around with a sense of wonder. She’d been back at work for three days. The mess of indecipherable notes that Mr. Jennings had piled on her desk had been weeded down to two remaining scribbles.
These were the kinds of mysteries she enjoyed. What had Mr. Jennings meant when he’d written “8 south boy here”? He had no recollection of such a thing, so it was up to Jane to puzzle it out. The second note was less cryptic—“Thursday 9:00” —but equally mysterious. Still, that puzzle would likely solve itself on Thursday at nine o’clock, so Jane was less intrigued.
But her sense of amazement had nothing to do with her personal littleDa Vinci Codeand more to do with the utter calm around her. Jessie’s lawyer had played her cards with great success. It had helped that the lead detective on the case was losing faith in the Jessie-as-serial-killer scenario. A preliminary report from the medical examiner placed the girl’s death at a time when Jessie’s alibi was strongest.
