“Well, the syringe that came out of that packaging I found would sure be helpful.”
“She has to have gotten rid of it by now, right?” Jacob asked.
Spenser shrugged. “You’d think she would have made sure to properly dispose of everything, including the packaging, too. But Layla isn’t a natural-born killer. She’s not a criminal mastermind, so she doesn’t see all the angles the way somebody who was more practiced at killing might. She’s just a woman who was deeply hurt and let her passion consume her. That led her to make a terrible decision.”
“We could still take what we have to a judge. Maybe we get lucky, and the judge is in a generous mood and signs off on a warrant, anyway?” Amanda asked.
Spenser pondered it for a moment. She was relatively sure she could make a case compelling enough for a judge to go against their better judgment and sign off on a warrant. She could do the arm twisting to get a warrant if it came to that. But it wasn’t without risk.
“We could. But my fear would be that if Layla gets a competent defense attorney, they could attack the basis of the warrant and get it tossed,” Spenser responded. “If that happens, we’ve got nothing. Less than nothing. If Layla’s attorney can get the warrant tossed, all the evidence we collected will go along with it, and she will walk. And we won’t get another bite at that apple.”
“If we give Layla more time, we’re giving her the chance to get rid of that evidence once and for all. And then we’ll really have nothing,” Amanda argued.
“But that evidence isn’t conclusive either. It’s suggestive. What we really need is to find that needle if she hasn’t disposed of it already,” Spenser stated.
“This woman may have lucked herself into committing the perfect crime,” Amanda said. “If we can’t find that needle, we may not be able to touch her.”
“Well, we aren’t about to let that happen. It would really help if we could put her at Hamill’s house the day we suspect the drug was laced,” Spenser mused.
“If we could prove she was the figure in black,” Amanda said.
“Exactly.”
“And how do we do that?” Jacob asked.
“I’m thinking,” she replied.
Spenser looked at the monitor for a long moment, studying Layla’s words as she focused on the bigger picture. Tried to get a handle on all the different thoughts running roughshod through her brain. All they had were bits and pieces. Tantalizingly suggestive fragments. Although Spenser had a good idea of what the final picture looked like, they didn’t have the threads that would pull it all together into one complete tapestry. Not one that would hold up to any legal scrutiny.
She thought about Hamill’s cameras. She thought about the fact that he had electronic eyes on him at all times. It was more than strange. But he seemed to revel in being watched while his victims—because that was the only way she could think of the women he secretly recorded—had no idea it was happening. Had no idea he was watching their trysts later on without them. As she thought about it all, an idea formed in her head.
“You two keep sifting through all this. I want you guys to find anything actionable in those files,” Spenser said.
“What are you going to do, boss?”
“I’m going to see if anybody watched the watcher.”
“No, I’m sorry, Sheriff. I didn’t see anybody hangin’ around Seth’s house that day,” the older man said. “But I wasn’t home most of the day either. I’m real sorry.”
“That’s all right, Mr. Simber,” Spenser replied. “You wouldn’t happen to have any outside surveillance cameras, would you?”
He shook his head. “I don’t. Never saw the need for ‘em. This town is pretty safe and you’re doin’ a good job of keepin’ it that way. Just seems like somethin’ that isn’t necessary.”
“Well, thank you for your time, sir.”
“Anytime, Sheriff,” he replied and closed the door.
Spenser had spent half the day knocking on doors up and down Seth Hamill’s street, talking to all of his neighbors, hoping and praying she would find somebody who saw Layla Li at his house on the fourteenth. More specifically, saw her there at 9:38 in the morning. She’d struck out at every turn, though. Nobody had seen a thing. They were all sorry to hear about what happened to him—by all accounts, he was a good neighbor—but nobody was able to tell her anything that proved helpful to Spenser’s case.
If Spenser couldn’t put Layla in the hoodie, slipping into Hamill’s house when he wasn’t home, the uphill climb to put that needle in her hand got even steeper. It made it even more likely that she was going to walk and never be held to account for murdering Seth Hamill. It was a thought that turned her stomach. As much as she pitied Layla for the pain and humiliation she suffered at the man’s hands, she murdered him. And no amount of sympathy would ever get Spenser to turn the other way.
But having struck out on Hamill’s street, the road to justice got a lot rockier. She was going to have to find a way to make the case. The trouble was, with what they had, Spenser wasn’t certain they were going to be able to do that. Everything they had was circumstantial at best. At worst, it could be flipped around and turned into something meaningless. In a court of law, words meant little. Suppositions and gut feelings meant even less. Actions that were backed up by physical evidence were what mattered. And at the moment, they had plenty of words and suppositions but precious little in the way of physical evidence.
Frustrated, Spenser was walking back to the Bronco when she was stopped by an older woman who was walking her small dog, a Yorkie. Smiling, Spenser squatted down and gave the dog a scratch behind the ears. The dog leaned into her, eating up the attention.
“Bernice likes you,” the woman said.
“She’s adorable.”
Standing up again, Spenser took in the woman before her. She was a small thing, no more than five-three, with iron gray hair that was cut short, soft pale skin, and rich azure eyes. The woman’s face was smooth and barely lined, making her actual age difficult to determine, but there was something about her, a certain wisdom in her bearing perhaps, that made Spenser think she was somewhere in her seventies. Maybe. Although, Spenser wasn’t an expert on age, so it was just as possible she was in her fifties. She sort of reminded Spenser of that actress Jessica Tandy in Driving Miss Daisy. A little, anyway.
“I think it’s terrible,” the woman said.
“What’s that?”
“What that horrible man Rafe Johansen is doing to you,” she replied.
“Oh. That. Well, I can’t control what they do,” Spenser said. “I can only control how I react to them, and what I do. And at the moment, all I can do is my job.”
“That’s what I like most about you, Sheriff. You’re a no-nonsense, take the bull by the horns kind of woman. You’re a terrific role model for the kids in this town. And if I’m being honest, it’s about time we had a role model in your job.”
“Well, thank you, Mrs.—”
“Mrs. Belton. Anna Belton,” she replied. “I’m single now, my husband Andrew passed away a few years back, but we were married fifty years, so as far as I’m concerned, I’ll never not be his wife, so I’m always going to be Mrs. Andrew Belton.”
