Sam slipped under the yellow tape and started to walk slowly around the area, his eyes fixed on the ground. The others stayed back behind the tape, probably conditioned to act that way after viewing a billion crime shows on TV.
"Jesse." Sam stopped his pacing and looked back at the crowd. "That’s the guy from town who was here partying with you." Sam walked to the place where they’d found the pile of clothing. Sam had marked it with a birch stick the other day, and Kevin had come back and put a yellow police marker on the spot.
Sam crouched down, pushing leaves aside. The campers watched him quietly while they waited for him to continue.
"Anyway, Jesse said he was only here for an hour. Said Lynn was alive when he left." Sam stood up and looked at them again. "I was wondering if anyone here could verify that. Does anyone remember talking to Lynn after Jesse left?"
The campers exchanged looks. Jo watch them carefully. Most of them had blank faces as if they were trying to remember. Sam continued his search, making his way down to the beach, which was about twenty feet from the area where they’d found the clothes.
Jo slipped under the crime scene tape but stayed close to the campers. She made a show of sweeping the ground for clues while also keeping one eye on the campers.
"I don’t think he was here. Lynn disappeared, and I don’t remember seeing him after that." Tara raised her voice so Sam could hear. She looked at Josh. "Do you?"
"I don’t know. We were all kind of drunk," Josh said. "I thought Lynn was in her tent."
Sam made his way back from the beach and slipped under the yellow crime scene tape, joining the campers on the campsite side. "Speaking of that, we didn’t find her cell phone or a purse in her tent. Did she have them?"
Julie shook her head. "Not a purse. No sense in taking a purse camping. But she had a cell phone. Even though we’re taking a few days off, we still need to be in contact with the people back at the office. We all brought our phones." As if to illustrate, she undid the flap on the side pocket of her khaki cargo pants and pulled out her phone.
Sam paced around the site. He inspected the picnic table and various chairs around the campsite. He didn’t find a cell phone.
Sam was incredibly observant, and Jo figured he was taking mental notes of everything around the campsite. But it didn’t take someone with Sam’s skills to see there was no cell phone lying around.
"So where is it?" Jo asked as she slipped back under the yellow tape.
More blank looks were exchanged. Finally, Julie said, "Maybe it was in the woods near her clothes?"
Sam shook his head. "I just looked all around there, and I didn’t come up with it. Have any of you found an extra cell phone?"
They shook their heads.
"Maybe that local guy from town took it for some reason," Amber suggested, looking to Noah for approval.
"Why would he do that?" Sam asked.
Her pretty forehead creased. "Well, I don’t know, but it’s missing."
"And none of you remember seeing Lynn alive after he left? When did he leave? I mean, it doesn’t make sense that he’d kill her and then come back to the party, right? So he must’ve left after he killed her. If he did kill her."
More silence.
Then Noah said, "We weren’t exactly looking at our watches every minute. We were having a party."
"What time did she die?" Tara asked.
Jo had been waiting for this. They purposely hadn’t let out the time of death. They preferred to keep that close to the vest so the killer wouldn’t have time to invent an alibi. But since it had been at 2:30 in the morning, she didn’t know how useful that would be in this case. Most would claim they were in their tents sleeping.
"What time did your party end?" Sam asked as the phone in his pocket chirped. He pulled it out and glanced at the screen. "Gotta take this."
He stepped away, and Jo continued the questioning.
"Did anyone notice the time?" Jo asked.
Josh shrugged. "Like Noah said, we were partying, not clock watching."
"Wait a minute. We were at the bar till one. Then we came back here…" Julie’s face was scrunched up as if she were trying to recall the sequence of events. "That guy, Jesse, followed us. He sold us… I mean we had a few drinks, and then we all started making our way to bed. We were going hiking the next day. Couldn’t have been more than an hour after one."
"And Jesse was still there when you went to bed?" Jo asked.
Julie twisted her lips together. "I don’t remember. Does anyone remember?"
Nobody did. Or if they did, they weren’t saying.
Sam snapped the phone shut and came back to the group. "Okay. We have another call. Maybe you folks need a little time to think. I’d like you all to come to the station tomorrow so we can get official statements." At their looks of concern, he held up his hands. "Just standard procedure. We want to get to the bottom of this as much as you do. Officer Deckard has your phone numbers from the other day, and we’ll be calling to let you know what time we want to talk to you. In the meantime, could you please look for Lynn’s phone? It’s important."
They promised to look, and Sam and Jo got into the Tahoe.
Jo picked up her mug. The coffee was lukewarm now, but lukewarm was better than nothing. She was curious as to why Sam wasn’t taking them in right away. Maybe he figured if he gave the killer enough rope, they’d hang themselves. "You giving them some time to think things over, or to get their story straight?"
"Neither. We have business. Being shorthanded really does put a crimp in the investigation."
"We got another call?"
Sam held up his phone. "Several. We got a cat up a tree on Cross Street, a fender bender on the corner of Owings and Main, and an altercation over at the Laundromat. The interrogations will have to wait until tomorrow. Maybe by then we’ll be able to rule out one of our suspects."
"Really? Which one?"
"Jesse. He said he stopped for gas on the way home that night, and I have Ernie looking for the receipt. According to the campers, and Jesse’s own account, he got there after the bar closed at one and left shortly after. That’s a small time frame, and not too many people would have been stopping at the gas station that early in the morning. If Jesse paid with a credit card, all the better. We know Lynn was killed between two-thirty and three. Maybe the receipt will prove Jesse couldn’t have done it."
Jo looked out the window. "I think we already know he didn’t do it. We just need to figure out who did."
"Yep. Getting her phone would help. Do you think she could have dropped it in the woods? Maybe we should start a grid search."
Jo took another lukewarm sip. The coffee had turned bitter, and she forced it down her throat. She didn’t think they were going to find the phone in the woods. "I think a search would be a waste. My guess is someone took it. I think there’s something on that phone the killer doesn’t want us to see."
Chapter Fifteen
Jo and Sam flipped a coin for the calls. She’d lost and had spent forty-five minutes at the Laundromat, settling an argument between Lola Ehrsam and Judith Crawford because Lola had taken Judith’s clothes out of the dryer prematurely. Lola claimed it wasn’t so, Judith hadn’t put enough quarters in for a full cycle, and the machine was sitting there useless. Jo settled the dispute by buying both the women coffee and making Lola promise to fold Judith’s clothes once they ran through the full cycle.