"Yes. Yes, I'm here. It's just, I’m trying to work out how I can get there immediately." There was so much she still needed to do on the case, but since they’d just wrapped up with a suspect, perhaps now was a good time to take an hour’s break.
"I'm afraid they're about to close," Pete said apologetically. "There's no way they will stay open longer."
Remembering the rather unhelpful attendant, May acknowledged that. Pete had done his best. There was no way she could get there tonight, even if she wanted to.
"Could you lock it up, please? Perhaps the attendant will agree to keep the keys overnight and I can get there tomorrow," she said regretfully, wondering if the case would be finished by tomorrow.
"I'll do that, Deputy. I’m sure she will agree to keep them for you."
"Thank you so much. And please, leave your invoice there too." May wanted to pay him as soon as she could for the hard and difficult work he had done, going into the evening, to allow the stubborn safe to open.
"Thank you, and goodnight."
"Goodnight," May said.
She put her phone away, now feeling even more urgency to catch this killer because only when this case was closed, would she have a gap in her working day.
Glancing toward her car, she saw Owen approaching.
"Is everything okay?" he asked, sounding concerned.
May nodded. She didn’t want to burden Owen with the latest news on the safe. She felt as if she didn’t want to tell anyone about it until she knew if it would lead anywhere or not.
“It was just a personal issue I had to sort out,” she explained.
Owen sighed as they climbed into the car.
"May, I feel like we've made no progress today as yet. We've been working on this case since early this morning. And we still haven't figured out any connection between the victims."
May nodded, acknowledging his frustration. She felt just as helpless.
"Let's take a drive back to the police department and go through the case files again. In the meantime, we can discuss what we know. Perhaps, with both of us focusing on these notes, we can find answers."
A few moments later, they were driving back through the night. It was a beautiful late summer evening, with a light breeze and a full moon. May saw that the cars had both been removed from the area where she'd led the gunmen and felt glad that those reckless criminals were under arrest and being questioned by the local police. She remembered with a shiver how it had feltwhen that bullet had cracked the air apart as it sped past her “borrowed” car.
May had the feeling that this case was not going to be solved easily. She suspected that it was going to take a lot more work and a lot more time. But she wasn't going to give up on it, and there was still more they could do tonight.
"Let’s look at the similarities we have so far. Maybe that’ll tell us how he’s choosing them. Both the victims are from the farming community. They live relatively close by," May said.
"They both live alone, if that's relevant at all," Owen said.
"It might be. Because it might have made the killer think they were easier targets," May theorized.
"So you're thinking it could have been somebody who knew them?"
"I think it might have been, purely because this is such a small community. In this farming area, so many people know each other, or if they don't, there are only one or two degrees of separation," May said.
“But being a farming community, they do hire seasonal workers. And it’s coming up to harvest time soon. Could one of the farms have taken on a rotten apple? Hired a killer without knowing it?”
“That’s a possibility too,” she agreed.
"They were both out running or walking. That's another common factor so far," Owen said.
The words “so far” gave May a chill. She knew this killer wasn't done yet.
She felt there was something else they had in common, another similarity that she and Owen were not taking into account. Her subconscious was bothering her. It was telling her that she was missing something.
But how could there be something? May sighed in frustration as she turned off the dark, potholed side road to join the mainroad leading back to Fairshore. They'd surely taken everything obvious into account. Although maybe they hadn’t done that yet.