She chuckled. “Can’t promise.”
John liked her. “Did you or anyone working on that case consider a tie-in with the blood moon that night?”
“Of course. Dobbs took Larissa out in his boat to look at it.”
“We had a young woman over here named Crissy Mellin. She disappeared on the night of the next blood moon, which was in November.”
“Yes, I know. When we learned about it, I assigned somebody to see if there was any correlation between your case and Larissa Whitmore, and also to two previous cases.”
“In 2018? Jackson, Mississippi, and Shreveport?”
“Yes. But nothing came of our inquiries. Dobbs wasn’t near either of those cities on the nights of the 2018 abductions. In fact, when one of them occurred, he was in Croatia on a humanitarian mission, teaching English to schoolkids.”
“So you never found any link?”
“None. What about your case? If I recall, your suspect hanged himself while in custody.”
“That’s right. Billy Oliver.”
“Didn’t he confess?”
“He signed a confession and claimed to have disposed of her body where it would never be found. You’ll be able to hear all about it on TV.” He told her about the upcoming episode of Crisis Point.
“I’ll be sure to watch. Are you in it?”
“No. But I was on the Mellin investigation team. Until recently, I didn’t know anything about the blood moon aspect. Zilch. I guess nobody thought it was relevant because you couldn’t even see the moon the night Crissy went missing.
“But this upcoming program has got me thinking back on that case. Four missing girls, four blood moons, four remains never discovered. It seems too bizarre a coincidence for our team to have overlooked the moon angle.”
She said, “That’s why I tipped you.”
John’s fingers went numb. He dropped the paperclip. “You tipped us?”
“Yes. As soon as I heard about your presumed abduction and realized the moon had been red that night just like when Larissa Whitmore disappeared. You were leaning hard on… Oliver, was it? But at that point he was classified as a person of interest. Jackson and Shreveport had never even gotten that far. Neither had nailed down a suspect, so, I thought until you had indisputable evidence on that young man, you’d probably want to check out those two cold cases, see if you could find a connection to yours. We talked about it at length.”
John bent his head over his keyboard and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Detective Morris, do you remember who in our department you talked to about it? At length.”
John burst through the office door with such impetus, it crashed against the inside wall, cracking the pane of glass stenciled with Tom Barker’s name.
He was sitting behind his desk, feet propped up on the corner of it, lazily swiveling back and forth in the leather chair, talking on his cell phone. He gaped as John crossed the room in three strides. In the process of rounding the desk, he knocked Barker’s feet to the floor, then yanked the cell phone out of his hand and hurled it against a file cabinet.
“What the—”
“You son of a bitch.” John grabbed a fistful of his shirt and hauled him out of the chair. He drove his other fist into Barker’s nose and relished the sound of cartilage crunching and seeing blood spurt from his nostrils.
Barker screamed.
John shoved him back into the chair with such force it rolled backward and slammed into the wall. The impact dislodged a brass plaque of commendation and sent it to the floor, barely missing Barker’s head as it fell.
John leaned over him. “You knew. You knew about those missing persons cases, their tie-in to the blood moon. Jackson, Shreveport, Galveston. You knew, but you didn’t follow up because you were too fucking intent on wrapping up Mellin and getting your promotion.”
He thrust his index finger toward Barker’s swelling nose. “I’m going to bring you down. For Billy Oliver. For Crissy Mellin. And for my own goddamn gratification.”
He withdrew his hand and stood up straight. “And if you send your gorilla to my house again, I’m gonna shoot him in his bloated gut. Not so he’ll die, but so he’ll wish he was dead. You’ll lose your muscle, and without him, you’re a limp dick.”
Barker glared at John from above the hand he’d placed over his smashed nose. “I’m gonna have you charged with assault.”
“Do it! I can’t wait to have my day in court. But in the end, I think it’s going to be you on trial, not me.”
“I want your badge and your service revolver on my desk. Now,” he shouted, although it was nasally. “You’re over, Bowie. Out! Fired!”
John threw his head back and laughed. He tossed his badge wallet onto the desk. He took his service revolver from its holster, removed the clip, and laid both on the desk. “Thank you. I can draw unemployment.” Leaning over the man again, he said with quiet intensity, “Now I’ve got no procedural boundaries, no job to lose, and that ought to make your asshole pucker.”
He straightened up, turned, and walked out of the office. Personnel who had congregated outside the door to watch the unfolding drama parted for him when he didn’t break stride.
As he passed the ogre, he paused and smiled at the man. “What I said about shooting you in the gut? I was kidding.” Leaning closer in, he said, “You mess with me again, I’ll blow your fucking head off.”
Chapter 14
Beth answered her phone.
“What room are you in?”
“Why?”