“Have you found anything? Anything at all you can tell me?”
“Not as yet sir, we’re still gathering all the evidence. Is there someone you can call to come…”
“No, there’s no one, no one now.”
She said her goodbyes and headed out the door and into the cooling evening. The sun was already going down in the late summer sky as she made her way back to the car. She put a call in to officer Bailey to see if he’d learned anything helpful.
“What have you got for me Pete?”
“Well, it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack isn’t it. You’d be surprised how many people buy this stuff. I’ve got all the credit card purchases from the last month, and some of the stores had working cameras but not all. I’m collecting all the information now and heading back that way.”
“Go home once you’ve logged it in.”
“What about you?”
“Me, I have one more stop to make and then I’m packing it in unless something else comes up.”
“Okay, did you get anything?”
“Not as yet no, I’ll go back over my notes tonight.”
She hung up and put a call in to tech to see if they were getting anywhere with the phone. “It’s encrypted, I don’t know many people who do this with their personal phones but there you have it. I’ll crack it yet don’t you worry.”
“Let me know as soon as.” She hung up the phone and pulled out onto the street. She should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy, but she was sure that text was the answer to the whole thing. Whoever had been on the other end of it, had to know something about where Mrs. Davis was going when she left the house this morning.
She went over all that she’d learned so far and tried to get a picture in her head. She gets a text, takes a rushed shower and leave less than an hour after her husband went off to work.
She went to the woods, the isolated woods. A place where not that many people go any longer!
Was it an assignation? Had she been there before? There was nothing there to suggest it, but why the woods?
Did she think someone was in trouble? If so who? There were too many variables, too many angles. She needed more for that picture to become clearer.
What was she wearing? Had she been dressed for a romantic tryst? Jeans and some kind of tank top she was certain but couldn’t swear to it because the acid had eaten away most of it along with the victim’s chest.
She closed her eyes for a quick second when she came to a red light and brought the crime scene back into focus. She’d still been wearing her wedding ring. Do women wear their wedding rings when going to meet their lover?
And the clown, why was it there? She believed too that that had to play a very big part in the whole mess. But why? Sure there’d been a spate of clown sightings all over the country in the last year. Some sort of promotion for an upcoming horror film she was told. But nothing like that had ever happened here until now.
On a whim she picked up her phone and called Mr. Davis. He answered on the third ring, his voice thick with unshed tears. “Yes, hello, who is this?”
“Sir, this is Detective Sparks, sorry to bother you.
“Yes, what is it?”
“I was wondering sir, did your wife like clowns?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Just something that would help with the investigation.
“I don’t see how… no, no she didn’t. In fact, she was terrified of them.” Her heart tripped in the way it always does when she’d found something, something important.
“And who else knew this sir, apart from you?”
“Well, I’m not very sure; I don’t think she went around advertising it. What is this about?”
“Thank you very much for your time sir. I’ll be in touch.” She rung off and tapped her fingers on the steering wheel as she made the turn that would take her off of the main road and onto the track that lead out to the O’Rourke farm.