“It’s the mannequins,” the detective said, somewhat nervously. Laura took that as a very bad sign. “Captain Ortega said we should notify you right away.”
“What about them?” Laura asked, bracing herself for the bad news she already, in her gut, knew was coming.
“The one we retrieved from the suspect’s home has a stamp on it marking it as property of the department store,” the detective explained. “We hurried over to the store to check out the storeroom, and all the others do, too. But the ones found at the crime scenes didn’t have any identifying marks. There’s no way to remove the stamp – the porous material kind of sucks it up, so you’d have to scrape off part of the mannequin to get it off. There’s no sign of any tampering like that.”
Laura gritted her teeth against an oncoming headache. Not the kind that usually precipitated a vision. No, this was a regular old frustration headache.
“Alright. Thank you,” she said, before walking back into the interview room and shooting Nate a look of hopelessness.
“Mr. James,” she said, leaning heavily on the back of her chair. “Thank you for your cooperation. We’ll be speaking with your manager about whether he wants to press charges on the theft. For the moment, you’re free to go.”
She turned towards the wall rather than watch the look of victory on the smug lawyer’s face, or see William James realize he was no longer in danger of being put away for something he didn’t do. It wouldn’t make her feel any better.
And somewhere out there, the killer was still ready to make his next move.