May disconnected, feeling glad that they would have something available.
"They’re sending a list of threats," she told Owen.
"That’s great. As you might have heard, the local police who handled those threats just can't get things together in any workable timeframe. They’re too busy there. The deputy I spoke to said that we were welcome to come through and look for ourselves. But the drive there and back would take a while, and most probably it would take the whole night or longer, going through the files," Owen said, sounding stressed.
"Hopefully the law firm kept better records anyway," May said. She was also very aware of the pressure of time, especially as it was now fully dark outside. Night was closing in, and they were still no closer to finding the killer.
At that moment, May's email pinged.
"Here we go," she said.
Eagerly, she clicked on the email and opened the documents that the assistant had sent through. Owen scooted around to her side of the desk, peering down at the pages.
"Wow," he said. "Those are a lot of threats!"
May scrolled through. In her eight year career, it seemed that Sheila had received literally hundreds of threats, mostly from angry criminals who'd expected the law firm to work miracles, but who had ended up doing time.
The words jumped out at her, filled with violence and intent.
"You deserve to die!"
"I should feed you to my pigs!"
"I am going to find you and run you over when I'm out."
"You should be chopped into pieces for being so useless."
May frowned as the terrible words scrolled by.
"I wonder how we can narrow this down," she said. "Perhaps we need to look for the modus operandi."
"You mean search for key words like bomb, explosion, that sort of thing?" Owen asked.
"Yes. If the Bomber had made a threat like that, surely he would have mentioned it? Seeing this is clearly how he thinks? We can at least try it at first."
May tapped keys, narrowing her eyes as she saw what came up. Owen leaned even closer, reading the words on the screen.
"He threatened to kill her with a bomb,” he said, pointing to the first threat on the search. “He threatened to set fire to her house,” he indicated the second. “And he threatened to blow her up with an explosive jacket," he said, pointing to the third.
"If we have to prioritize these, then to me, threats one and three seem the most relevant," May said.
She read on, to see who these threats were from, leaning over to Owen’s laptop to search different databases to see where the threatening people now lived.
"Okay. Threat number three is not valid as the person who made it is now deceased. Killed in prison, I see."
"But threat number one looks valid," Owen said.
"Yes. I see the law firm made a note here that Humphrey Andrews, who made the threat, did so after being sentenced to ten years for blowing up his business for insurance fraud."
"Relevant again. The guy we are looking for clearly defaults to that mode to solve all his problems," Owen said.
"Humphrey spent just four years inside, and was released six months ago. So the timeframe connects, too," May said. “He could have come out of jail angry. Perhaps he planned revenge on a few people he was mad at, including Sheila. Thus the string of cases.”
"We need to go speak to him," Owen said. “Let’s see if he’s a resident in the area.”
He logged into another database, tapping keys.
"Okay. I don't have a home address for him. None on record, for some reason. But I have a work address, where he's currently employed and has been for the past three months. It’s a used car company in Tamarack County, but they won’t be open now. They close at six p.m. according to their website."