“She’s fine,” Matt said. She was more upset with Matt than anyone. “But I’ll take it back to the hotel with me. I want to finish going through these reports and then we can tackle that. Why is no one else in your department helping?”

“Chief Dunn has everyone doubled up and keeping the police presence. No one has time off until after the ninth. I kind of agree with him, because right now we’re looking for a needle in the haystack.” He made a note about something. “However, I assigned the patrols. They’re doubling up at the lake—since both Manners and Ogdenburg were found near the lake. And doing regular patrols by every cop who lives here.”

“Good.”

Matt paused to take a call from Jim. He was processing the cold case homeless murders, and so far, forensics matched up with the limited physical evidence they had in the Triple Killer case.

“You get me a suspect, we have him solid on Ogdenburg and two of the three homeless men,” Jim said. “Spokane has an excellent system, state-of-the-art storage facilities, so no defense lawyer is going to be able to cry contamination or degradation.”

“They’ll try,” Matt said.

“And fail. Be safe, Matt.”

Matt ended the call and went back to the Hamilton file, making notes. There were a few oddities and he had some questions. Maybe Maddox would know. He’d call, but since he didn’t live far from the Liberty Lake PD, Matt decided to drive by on his way back to the hotel.

Kara never felt comfortable in a family setting, even with people she liked. And she really liked the Maddox family. Julie was down-to-earth and never made Kara feel like an outsider. She had her own in-home business that she started after her second child, Teddy, was born. First, she made wooden puzzles for kids and sold them at craft fairs. Then a few years later, she started selling on the internet. Recently, she’d branched out into a collection of beautiful cutting boards in the shape of states. She had a website and went to craft fairs in the summer and currently employed two people full-time to help her keep up with orders. Julie gave Kara a tour of the garage, which they’d converted to her workspace. “We’re going to build an add-on this summer when the weather is nice, so we can put the cars inside, but this is what it’s been like for the last two years. Kind of crazy.” But she clearly loved it. Julie was the single most organized person Kara had ever met. “Brian wants to work with me when he retires. That’s quite a few years from now, but I think we’d want to kill each other. I’ll convince him to get his teaching credential.”

“A teacher?”

“He loves working with teenagers especially. But he’ll be chief of police next year, and while it’s a lot of hours, it’s not as physically demanding. He’ll probably stay until mandatory retirement age—which is the same year JP graduates from high school.”