“Just don’t be obvious,” Donny says to the phone.
“I’m not an idiot,” Lisa snips.
He hangs up, and I keep a safe tail distance on Jacob. We pull up to the curb as he pulls into a parking spot. It takes a few minutes before his side van door slides open, and I watch as he is lowered down with the wheelchair on the motorized platform.
“That explains the van. It’s handicap accessible,” Donny points out.
Frowning, I watch as he sits with a basketball on his lap, and then we watch as he locks up his van and starts wheeling down the sidewalk.
When he reaches a basketball court full of kids, Donny hisses out a breath. Most of the kids are suffering some sort of disability. A few are amputees, some are in wheelchairs, and some seem to be struggling with other physical issues.
“We’re going to hell,” Donny groans as the kids cheer, and Jacob blows a whistle, tossing the ball at them.
They start playing basketball, and he plays with them, laughing right alongside them, making a difference in their day.
Elise calls me, and I answer. “Nothing is in this house. The office closet is empty too. I’m sealing it back up so he doesn’t know we were ever here.”
“So it’s empty, and this guy is a paraplegic coach helping disabled kids. He survived losing his mother at a young age, his best friend and boyfriend as a teenager, and he’s paralyzed now. Yet he’s the male version of Mother Theresa,” Donny states dryly. “And we’re accusing him of helping a murderer. I repeat: We’re going to hell.”
“Check his van,” I tell him, frustrated. My gut tells me something is up. There was someone in that house, and if he’s not there now, then he’s in the van.
Donny curses before getting out, drawing his weapon as he goes to the back of the van. He reaches out with one hand, testing the door, as I shift my gaze between him and Jacob.
He opens the unlocked door, and I frown. I could have sworn Jacob locked the van.
All that’s in the back of the van is a box marked MEDIA. The entire back is empty other than that.
Donny arches an eyebrow at me, and I wave him back, rolling my eyes. He shuts the doors and gets back in, and we drive away.
“Forget him. Even if he does know who the killer is, there’s no way he’s involved,” Donny says on a sigh.
I drive away, irked. My gut has always been the driving force, and rarely ever do I feel so strongly about something and end up wrong.
Jacob doesn’t even notice us as we pass him. He tosses the ball into the air, getting it to a one-armed little boy on the other end who scores.
By the time I make it back to the office, Hadley is ready to pounce, but I ignore her in favor of moving toward Leonard. “Hey, I need you to pull everything you can find on the Robert Evans case. Let’s see if we can start there, and find out what that damn town is hiding. Somehow, it’s all linked to that. It’s the first domino that set all the others in place.”
> He nods, gesturing to his laptop.
“Already working on that. There are so many inconsistencies in that file that it’s ridiculous. Essentially the only thing that convicted him was the DNA at the crime scenes, and even that seems compromised, due to the poor chain of custody the evidence went through. I’m not sure how he got convicted, other than the fact the judge pretty much ignored all the laws set in place to keep things fair and honest.”
“And we know how the Godfather worked things,” I add. “See what you can dig up. Find out why the killings stopped, or even if they stopped. If the unsub successfully framed Evans, he may have just moved towns and changed his MO enough to frame someone else.”
“On it,” Leonard says, going back to work.
I almost run over Hadley when I turn back around.
“Why that look? What’d you find out on Jacob Denver?” she asks me.
She’s wringing her hands, anxious for info. I guess we’re all in knots.
“Nothing. My gut told me there was more to him, but I was apparently wrong.”
“That gut thing gets tricky,” she says, frowning. “What happened?”
“Nothing. Hey, Lisa said she was going to have you look in on someone sending her roses from me?”
“They weren’t from you,” she says immediately.