Devil in the Deadline by Lyndee Walker Page A

again.
    â€œI’m thinking he doesn’t mean literally,” I said. “But I couldn’t get him to say anything else. And there was another guy who’s part of their group. He and the vic—they called her Jasmine—had a thing going.”
    Aaron snatched up a pen and flipped a piece of paper over, jotting notes.
    â€œYou didn’t get a name for the boyfriend, did you?”
    â€œNot a real one. They call him Flyboy. He said something about the Air Force Academy. Not sure how that’ll help you, but it’s a teensy lead.”
    â€œI’ll take it.” He sat back. “Everything about this has been like trying to find a needle in a barn during hay harvest season.”
    â€œHere’s another one for you: Flyboy said they wanted to leave Richmond. There were four of them. Two girls and two guys. They all live on the streets. And they wanted to get the hell out of Dodge and make a fresh start.”
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œColorado.”
    â€œThe Air Force Academy.” Aaron made more notes.
    I nodded. Aaron was a brilliant detective. But this case had shaken him in a way I’d never seen. “The victim was talking about getting money for them to move. A lot of it. But if he knows from where, he wouldn’t say. Oh, and he works off-the-books construction.”
    He kept writing. “Gives me something to go on.” Aaron’s chest heaved with a sigh and he sat back and dropped his pen. “I’ll take anything right now.”
    I clicked out a pen. “How is it possible y’all haven’t ID’d her yet?” Landers said they had clean prints. The DMV database should have produced a name and former address hours ago.
    â€œShe didn’t have a driver’s license or a criminal record.”
    â€œA dental, then?” Those were harder to match, but with a case like this, the command staff would’ve lit a fire under whoever was working on it.
    Aaron shook his head, running one hand over his close-cropped blond hair. “They’ve been on it since the middle of the night. There are no matching records.”
    I tapped my pen. “She didn’t come from nowhere.”
    â€œIt looks like she might have. The chief even called in a favor from the damned FBI and got their superbrain people to check it. There’s no record of a dental match anywhere in the United States. And the head forensics guy over there says he buys that, because the decay and damage levels in her molars indicate she’s never seen a dentist.”
    What the ever-loving hell?
    â€œHow old was she?”
    â€œEarly twenties. Between twenty-one and twenty-five.”
    I nodded. “Her friends said twenty-four or five. How does a person get to be that old and never go to the dentist?”
    â€œIt happens in poor families more often than people think,” Aaron said. “It’s one more question mark hanging over this, and the clock is ticking. Fast.”
    â€œDid you find anything else useful at the scene?”
    â€œA whole lot of blood.”
    â€œNo weapon?” No way the killer had been so careless, given the elaborate nature of the murder scene, but I had to ask.
    â€œNope.”
    I stared for a minute at the bluish hollows under his eyes, just a shade darker than his irises. He looked beaten. “It’s a hard one to handle,” I said gently. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”
    The corners of his mouth turned down and he dropped his chin to his chest. “I sent my girls back to school this morning. They got home for summer a couple weeks ago. I made them call around and find places to stay and go back. They’re too close to her age. I can’t have them here with a psycho on the loose.”
    I nodded, unable to imagine how worried Aaron must be to give up vacation time with his daughters. Ticking clock, indeed.
    â€œThe guys both said they slept in that loft in the summer,” I