CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
It was difficult to get their car out of the mass of vehicles that had parked in a chaotic manner on the road, May discovered. She had to be patient, and maneuver her vehicle back and forth to inch it from between the tightly packed ranks of other cars.
She didn't feel patient inside, though. She felt focused and motivated to get back to the police department, so that she could take a close look into Mrs. Flannery's life.
May felt sure that there would be something to uncover by exploring the family connection that she’d picked up. Surely there must be?
Her mind was whirring as she drove to the Flannery’s farmhouse with Owen.
She had to work out who this killer was. This man now had killed multiple people in four terrible and destructive scenes, and he seemed to be escalating. He wasn't going to stop. They needed to find him and stop him.
If he’d had a deliberate reason for killing one of the first two victims, and had then chosen the others randomly as his spree escalated, May couldn't help but feel that this was the key to unlocking the case.
"I know it might take a lot of work to uncover this motive, but if we do, then it’s a certain link to a suspect," she said aloud as they headed onto the main road, ready for the drive out to the countryside where the farmhouse was located.
"For what it's worth, I'm on board," Owen said. "How are we going to investigate Mrs. Flannery's contacts? Where do we start?"
"I guess we start with her son. He will be at the farmhouse, I'm sure, because they stayed there together and he farmed the land as his business. That means they were hopefully close, and he would know of any family members or connections who might have been problematic in the past."
Feeling more and more hopeful that the theory might bear fruit, May accelerated onto the main road, impatient about the time it would take to get back to the out of town location.
*
Half an hour later, May and Owen pulled up outside the farmhouse. As they climbed out of the car, May felt surprised by how peaceful it looked. It was strange to think that such a terrible incident had occurred here.
She noticed there was a crew on site fixing the garage and rebuilding the walls. They were being supervised by a blonde man who looked to be in his twenties.
May guessed that this was Mrs. Flannery's son. She recalled that he'd had an alibi at the time of her death, as he’d been out of town for a few days, and had therefore not been a suspect.
"Good morning," she said, walking hurriedly over to him. "Deputies Moore and Lovell. We're following up on this crime, and wondered if you might be able to help us with some background? Are you Hilton?" She remembered the name from the case files she’d read through.
The son turned to them and she was surprised by the unfriendliness in his frown.
"Look, I don't see why I must answer any more questions. Nothing is going to bring my mother back. I've already had to suffer being a suspect myself. If you ask me, the police have bungled this whole situation badly. It's what, nearly a month on? And no arrests, I believe? Just more killings."
He sounded incredulous and May felt filled with shame.
"That's what we're trying to put a stop to," Owen said."We're very sorry for your loss, sir. We are just doing our best to follow up on any leads."
"We didn't have all the evidence then that we do now," May said, attempting to help him understand why, sometimes, reinvestigation was necessary. "Sometimes, new evidence only becomes available when further crimes are committed. This is a very complicated series of murders. We’re so anxious to find the killer before he destroys any more families. You'd be helping us so much if you agreed to speak to us."
She could see this young man was hurting, and bereaved, and ready to shut down. But luckily her kindness got through to him, and he gave a reluctant sigh.
"I guess I can help you."
He moved away from the activity at the garage, and May and Owen followed.
"Hilton, did your mother have any family members who had criminal records? Anyone at all who wished her harm, or who had threatened her in the past?" May said.
"I am her family. I'm all that she had. She was an only child. She wasn't a bad person. She was loving and kind and generous. She would never have hurt anyone, and she wasn’t the type of person to have enemies at all."
"No distant family who were problematic, even anyone you were estranged from?" May checked.
Hilton shook his head.
"No, there was nobody I could even start to suggest as a possibility. Like I said, she didn't have much close family at all."
"Any of her students who you remember as being trouble causers? Even from previous years, or a long time ago?" May asked, widening the family connection to include her school family.