Secrets of Blackhand Creek by Declan James

Author:Declan James [James, Declan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-One

Jake and Birdie didn’t make it back to Stanley until after three o’clock. Ray DeSilva never woke up enough to have a meaningful conversation. But he had Dale Halsey by his side until a few other members of the Lean On Us support group showed up. Heartbreaking as it was to watch DeSilva let grief hollow him out, Jake thought with the support he had around him, he might make it to the other side.

The plan was to switch cars and punch out. But when Jake and Birdie headed down the hallway to his office, Sheriff Landry stood in front of the doorway, looking anxious.

“You’re back,” she said, breathless. “I wasn’t sure we’d see you again.”

“Things were a little dire in Westeridge,” Jake said. He briefly explained the condition they’d found Ray DeSilva in.

Meg’s face fell. “My God. I just can’t imagine the pain he’s in. If something like this happened to Paige, I don’t know how I’d put one foot in front of the other.”

“Let’s hope you never have to find out,” Jake said. “Thanks for coming down there with me, Bir ... er ... Erica.”

“No problem. You know that. Anyway, I’m gonna head out and ...”

“Before you do that,” Landry said. “The reason I was hoping to catch you both. I just got off the phone with ONIC. They finished the analysis on all the phones found at the Waters’ crime scene. They sent a courier with the flash drive. The file is huge. It’s going to take some time for you to go through all of it. Ten burner phones. But I’d like you to get started on it tonight. I figured you’d want to anyway. Your overtime’s already approved. For both of you.”

Landry smiled at the end. Getting overtime for Birdie had been a bear for the last two weeks.

“That’s great,” Jake said. “I’ll have some sandwiches sent in. We didn’t eat lunch.”

“Already taken care of,” Landry said. “I’ve got pizzas on the way. Hope you like pepperoni.”

Jake slipped out of his suit jacket. Landry handed him the package containing the flash drive. Birdie hesitated at the door.

“You coming?” he said. “We’re gonna have to divide and conquer on this one. It’s ten phones. We need to look for patterns. Most frequently called numbers. Reverse lookups. Build a timeline. Ramirez said the ONIC analysts will do a bunch of the legwork on this. We just need to pick out the data important to our case.”

Birdie’s expression was odd. For a moment, anyway. Then she found a smile.

“Let’s get cracking then.”

“I’ll get out of your way,” Landry said. “Paige has a choir concert in about an hour. I’ll be home after that. If you find anything, you call me. I don’t care how late it is tonight. I want to know what you know when you know it.”

“Sure thing,” Jake said. But he was already distracted, firing up his laptop and slipping the flash drive in.

He hadn’t been kidding. This would be a divide-and-conquer proposition. Jake made a copy of the flash drive for Birdie.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.