Deep Dark by Laura Griffin Page B

confronted him in the hallway.”
    â€œYou’re overlooking something,” Veronica said, andby the look on her face, Reed could tell what she was thinking about.
    â€œHe might have done it earlier,” Reed said.
    â€œExactly.” She nodded at the door. “This tool didn’t leave a lot of damage. Even looking for it, we nearly missed it. So maybe the victim missed it, too.”
    Jay frowned. “You’re saying he was inside her apartment when she came home from work that day?”
    â€œHe could have been hiding,” she said. “He could have been there for hours, waiting for her to go to sleep. Which, basically, is any woman’s worst nightmare.”
    Jay looked at Reed. “The more I know about this guy, the more I hate him.”
    â€œWe need to talk to those furniture movers,” Reed said. “Maybe they saw something.”
    â€œFurniture movers?” Hall asked.
    â€œThere was a furniture delivery in front of April’s unit on the day of the murder.”
    Hall nodded. “And what about the boyfriend? Ian Phelps. How’s it coming with him?”
    â€œHis alibi checked out, so we’ve bumped him down the list for now. We’re working some other leads.”
    â€œSpeaking of which . . .” Reed glanced at his watch. Laney had been at it twenty minutes. “I’ll see about that laptop.”
    He left Jay to handle Hall and went to check on Laney. As he took the elevator up, he got a sour feeling in his stomach.
    Veronica’s lie-in-wait theory bothered him. This case had been bad from the beginning, but with every new bit of evidence it got worse. They weren’t looking for some punk kid here. This was someone experienced. And smart. And deliberate.
    Reed crossed the bullpen and found Paul alone in the computer lab.
    â€œWhere the hell did she go?” Reed asked.
    â€œWho, Laney? She left.”
    â€œWhen?”
    â€œOh, I’d say . . .” He looked at the clock. “About five minutes ago? She had to check something at work, something important. Said to tell you she’d call you.”

CHAPTER 9

    The sun was setting as Reed pulled up the winding road to the Delphi Center.
    â€œDamn,” Jay said as the building came into view.
    â€œEver been here before?”
    â€œNo.” He craned his neck to get a view through the gnarled oak trees. “Looks expensive.”
    â€œPrivate money. Some oil heiress donated her millions after her daughter was killed by a convicted sex offender. They specialize in DNA here.”
    A buzzard swooped over the road and landed in a thicket of junipers.
    â€œI thought it was mainly a body farm.” Jay looked at him.
    â€œThat, too. They study human decomp, but the real money’s in DNA. All the private testing they do subsidizes the pro bono work, which is mostly running rape kits and cold-case evidence.”
    They swung into the parking lot, which was fuller than he would have expected for a Sunday evening. Reed noticed the battered white Focus in the front row.
    So Laney had spent her whole day working, just as he had. Evidently, they were both workaholics, and she’d been right last night when she guessed the reason for his divorce. Reed’s job was a marriage wrecker.
    At least that’s what Erika thought—that his job hadkilled their marriage. Reed wasn’t completely sold on that view of it. Yeah, his long hours had definitely been a factor, but so was infidelity.
    Way back when everything had been going downhill, she’d accused him of wanting her to have an affair, of practically pushing her into it with all his late nights and weekends, just so he’d have an excuse to get out.
    Right. Like he’d wanted the humiliation of finding out his wife was cheating on him. Like he’d wanted those visions stuck in his head for months and months, which was how long it had taken him to face up to the fact that