Page 28 of Echoes of Sin

“You must be Sheriff Jackson. I’m Sylvie. It’s nice to…”

Brook rubbed her eyes while ignoring the sensation of sand being trapped underneath her lashes. While she could thrive on little sleep, last night had been one for the record books. The noise level from the bar on Friday night had been a lot louder than she would have thought possible for a town this size. What should have been a two o’clock close happened much closer to four o’clock. Add on that she’d wanted to meet with the members of the forensic team at six o’clock before they hiked to a potential second crime scene, and there wasn’t enough coffee in this town to keep her energy at a working level.

“Brook is through there,” Sylvie directed the sheriff, who would no doubt make an appearance inside the connecting doorway any moment. Seeing as the rooms were small, she’d wanted some additional space to work. Hence the reason that there were numerous files open on the bed while her laptop and tablet were on the wooden desk. “Mark my words, Sheriff. You’ll be her favorite person today.”

The comment had Brook opening her eyes and turning in her chair. Sure enough, Sylvie had been right.

“Please tell me that coffee is from the Moonshine Diner.”

“This coffee is from the Moonshine Diner.” Otto had walked into her room not only with a cupholder carrying two cups of coffee, but also a large box. He handed her the cardboard holder before scanning the room. Since the bedspread was covered in open files, he ended up setting the box down near the nightstand. “Overnight delivery from D.C. It was left by the front door of the bar.”

Brook’s lips curled at knowing that Graham had come through for her. He’d texted her yesterday before his flight out of the city to let her know that warm, comfortable clothes were on the way. She would change out of the jeans that she’d worn for three days in a row the moment the sheriff gave her some privacy.

“Thanks, Otto.”

“You certainly know how to bring people out of the woodwork,” Otto said wryly as he stood in front of her bed with his arms crossed. He took time to peruse the open folders that she’d collected at the police station yesterday. All of them were the full files of the missing persons reports that were in connection to Luna Breen’s case. “Kirk Sampson has retained Lee Rohan as his attorney. They are scheduled to come into the station at fourteen hundred hours.”

“You can handle the questioning,” Brook said after she’d taken a healthy drink of her coffee. The contents were the perfect temperature. “Let me know if anything of interest is discovered during the interview.”

“You don’t want to be there?” Otto asked in surprise as he turned back to her. His sunglasses were hanging from the pocket of his uniform, and he was once again without his hat. “You surprise me, Sloane. I would have figured that you’d want to run with that meeting.”

“Kirk Sampson might have had a one-night stand with Carissa Norman, but he wasn’t in town the week that Helen Beckham went missing,” Brook said as she leaned back in her chair. “And in regard to that alibi, I mean that Mauve mentioned that Kirk was with her for a doctor’s appointment at John Hopkins. Bit confirmed the alibi. I can only go on the assumption that Sampson kept quiet after Carissa Norman went missing because he didn’t want to be a suspect in her disappearance.”

Otto was right about one thing—a lot had taken place in the span of twenty-four hours. It was as if their presence had rattled everyone in town, and the townsfolk were talking amongst themselves more than usual. While they could have been looking at a long-drawn out investigation, she believed their mere presence had caused enough pressure to break the silence.

“By the way, you could have told me that Mauve was dying from pancreatic cancer.” Brook reached out and pushed the cupholder a few inches toward the edge. Otto shook his head at the offer, and she couldn’t say that she was sad at such a denial. She needed all the help she could get to keep her thoughts in order today. “From my understanding, she’s going to leave Hiker’s Haven to Kirk.”

“That’s the rumor,” Otto said as he closed the distance to the open doorway. He wasn’t leaving the room. He’d changed locations so that he could lean a shoulder against the wall. “Mauve thinks of Kirk as the son she never had. By the way, do you want to tell me why you’re targeting Riggs?”

“I’m not targeting anyone.”

“You requested his personnel file from one of my deputies.”

“I did,” Brook agreed without reservation. She wouldn’t apologize for doing her job. What she could do was treat the sheriff with the respect she’d want in return if they were speaking about one of her team members. “Forensics used the satellite phone to call in about thirty minutes ago. While we won’t have the results from the lab for days, if not weeks, the pattern of blood left behind suggests that the scene was similar to that of what we discovered with Luna Breen.”

“And you believe there is a chance that Riggs murdered those women.” Otto was rubbing his index finger and thumb together as he considered the context of her words. “I understand why you need to look at those with shady pasts, but that accounts for a lot of people in this town.”

“I’m aware,” Brook said knowingly as she gestured toward the bed. The file on the end summed up Riggs’ performance as a deputy for the county sheriff’s office. “Riggs isn’t being singled out. He shared with Sylvie last night his version of events that almost landed him a lengthy stint in prison. The knife belonged to a young man who attempted to assault Tori Mills. She didn’t want to cause any trouble since the young man in question was the mayor’s nephew, so she denied Riggs’ claims of what took place.”

“You believe him then,” Otto said as he relaxed somewhat, but she couldn’t ease his concern just yet.

“I think that Riggs has some anger management issues that has come to the forefront every now and then. By the way, Riggs and Theo accompanied the forensics team up to the second cabin.”

Brook would have cleared off the bed to give Otto a place to sit down, but he would only turn her down once she shared with him her updated profile.

“You want to keep Riggs close,” Otto stated with some reserve, obviously not pleased with her motives. “Does he know that you suspect him of murdering two or three women?”

“You’re making assumptions without looking at the broader picture. I understand that you investigate your cases based on the facts in front of you, but my method is slightly different.”

“Slightly?”

“I base my profile on the evidence left behind, such as the fact that had Luna Breen been the only victim, one could fathom the killer enjoyed torturing her. With a second victim, one needs to step back and view it from a different angle. What if I were to ask you for an opinion on a crime scene where a male individual was tied to a chair in close quarters and systematically tortured for hours? Water just out of reach. No one to hear him scream.”

Otto straightened a bit, his own experiences while in the military coming to the forefront. She’d captured his attention.

“I would say to you that it was some type of an interrogation.”

“We didn’t immediately view it as such given the odd surroundings and the fact that the victim was a woman. A civilian woman.”