In normal circumstances, Laura would have argued. She would have told him that they needed to press on, to get this solved no matter how long it took. But she was tired, so tired, and he was right. Even if they worked on through the night – they had nothing.
She turned the car towards the motel they were booked into, wishing as she always did that she had the power to stay awake for days until the case was solved, remaining sharp and clear.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Laura locked the door to her motel room and turned to see Nate just emerging from his own. He nodded a greeting. “You sleep okay?”
Laura shrugged. In truth, she hadn’t much. She’d tossed and turned for most of the night after they got back, and with her alarm set for the sunrise, there hadn’t been a lot of hours of actual shuteye. But it had been enough to get her moving again, and she didn’t want Nate to order her back for more rest, so she didn’t say it. “Let’s just pick up something to eat on the way,” she said. “I don’t want to waste time at a diner. We can eat at the same time as investigating.”
“No arguments here,” Nate said. He held up a hand for the car keys, and Laura tossed them to him, not wanting to argue with him either. If he wanted to drive, she had no problem with it. She slumped into the passenger seat and shut the door after herself, wishing the sun wouldn’t be quite so bright.
“I’ve been thinking,” Nate said, starting the engine. “Even if we can’t find a link yet between Gypsy and the others, we still have a really strong link to the acting world. Chances are that the killer knew both of our first two victims from those circles. I don’t think we should give up. When we find the missing link that connects all of them, I still think it’s going to be a student or colleague.”
“You could be right,” Laura agreed. Despite her own restless night, she hadn’t managed to get much thinking done at all, it seemed. She still had no better ideas than that. “I guess we can start with the two class lists, start going through them and looking for connections. Even if it’s not a current student, one of them might know something about someone from the past, and they can help us put it together.”
“Sounds good,” Nate said. “I think Lucile’s list had phone numbers. We can start with those, ask the detectives to find us some contact details for the others while we work through them.”
“Better yet, they can help us with the calls,” Laura said. “All hands on deck. Anyone that Captain Mills can spare. The quicker we get this done, the quicker we’ll know if we have something or not.”
“I’d like to speak with a few of our previous suspects and contacts again, too,” Nate said thoughtfully. “See if they can shed any light on a connection to Gypsy.”
The motel wasn’t far from the precinct, and they were already pulling into the car park within a few minutes. Laura spared a moment to wish she was going to a place with better coffee before getting out of the car and heading inside, trailing in Nate’s wake. He seemed far more awake than she was already. That was a good thing. Maybe he would be able to carry her a little this morning.
Talking on the phone with all the contacts they could get, though, was a great idea. Maybe they would get lucky, and Laura would happen to call the killer. If she did, she might trigger a vision, see him in action. That would give her everything she needed to start tracking him down, and all she would need to say was that he had seemed suspicious in the phone call to make everyone follow her lead.
Laura sloped into the elevator to head up to their investigation room and gather the first set of numbers to work on, while Nate went to speak with Captain Mills and beg him for some detectives to man the phones. She took a deep breath and picked up her cell phone to make the first call, knowing that it wasn’t going to get any easier if she waited for him to come back. She was still going to be tired and feeling like hell.
The phone rang for what seemed like a long time, and Laura was about to give up and move on to the next number when it finally connected. “Hello?” the sleepy voice asked, clearly having been woken up by the call.
“Hello, is that Matthew?” Laura asked.
“Yeah. Who is this?”
“My name is Special Agent Laura Frost. I wanted to talk to you about a case we’re currently investigating.”
“Oh, man – is this about Lucile? I saw it on the news,” Matthew said, suddenly sounding a lot more awake. “It’s awful.”
“That’s right,” Laura said. “We’re trying to find any information that could help us to bring her killer to justice. First of all, can I ask you if anyone suspicious or any unusual events come to mind over the last few months? Something you might have witnessed in class, for example?”
“Oh, yeah,” Matthew said, making Laura sit up and click her pen on. “There was this one guy. He’s been losing it lately.”
“Okay, can you tell me his name?” Laura asked.
“Everyone calls him Duck,” Matthew said, with a slight laugh. “He’s kind of pathetic. He had a breakdown recently, I think. Ended up in some kind of center.”
“Can you think of what his real name is?” Laura asked. “That would be really useful.”
“I’m not sure. Donald maybe?” Matthew said, and then gave a short laugh again. “Oh, I just got the joke. Yeah, his name is Donald something.”
“Right,” Laura said, noting this down. She wondered privately why Caleb hadn’t mentioned this guy. “Anything else you can tell me?”
“I don’t know,” Matthew said. “Um, there was this girl as well. She dropped out a while back because she kept getting bad notes all the time. Michaela, I think? She just wasn’t cut out for it. I think it made her really
mad.”
“Okay, Matthew, thanks for that,” Laura said. “If you do think of anything else, just give us a call back and let us know, alright?”
“Yeah, I will,” Matthew said. “I hope you catch them. Lucile was nice. And the best acting coach I’ve ever had.”