“I think you have an attempted murder,” Niki said. “If we could link this girl from last night to any of the others, we might have modus operandi for three cases.”

“It’s thin,” George said.

Thin, Niki thought. Low priority. How could men so easily dismiss three dead women? “It’s a start, George. That’s what it is.”

“You want the file?”

“I do.”

Chapter 10

Lila sat quietly in the office of Andi Fitch as her new boss read the first criminal complaint that she had prepared. Lila had stacked the files in order of her own confidence, the top file being spot on, in Lila’s opinion. Yet Fitch picked up a pen and started crossing out words. “It’s not the defendant; it’s simply Defendant. ‘Defendant ran into his house. Officers followed Defendant in hot pursuit.’” Andi slid the file back to Lila. “Otherwise…it’ll do.”

Andi added similar changes to the next three files, cosmetic adjustments, but nothing that caused Andi to throw the file back to her the way Ryan had described it. The fifth file, a child pornography case, would be a problem and Lila knew it. She mentally steeled herself as Fitch opened the file to find no complaint awaiting her scrutiny. This one she did toss at Lila. “I wanted this done this morning,” she said. “Get it back to me by lunch.”

“I don’t think you should charge him,” Lila said.

Fitch looked at Lila as though the younger woman had just thrown feces at her. “That’s not your call. If you can’t do what I ask, I’ll be happy to transfer you to Child Support Collections.”

Lila, her hands clasped tightly together on her lap, waited for Fitch to finish. And when she spoke, she stumbled at first. “It’s not…This isn’t about…” She took a breath. “If you charge him, he’ll walk.”

Andi leaned back in her chair and crossed one leg over the other, a move she executed with the ease of a scorpion drawing back its stinger. “Go on.”

Lila cleared a lump of doubt from her throat and began. “So this guy, Woggum, gets arrested because he made a child porn video and shared it with his buddy. But we only know about Woggum because we arrested the buddy—gave him a deal so we could get the guy who made the video.”

Lila paused to see if Andi might offer some acknowledgment, but the woman simply stared at her.

“But when they searched Woggum’s house, they found nothing. He had wiped his hard drive, so, no possession of child pornography.”

Fitch rolled her eyes. “Tell me you didn’t decline to charge because of that. Good lord!”

“I’m not finished.” Lila spoke in a tone she meant to sound firm, but it was lacking the intended punch. “The informant said that he was there two years ago when Woggum made the video. That implicates Woggum, but it’s the word of a co-accomplice.”

“We also have Woggum’s voice on the video,” Andi said. “We know he made the video because you can hear him, for God’s sake. That’s not enough for you?”