Naomi shook her head slowly, but Sam caught the look in her eyes. She knew something. Jonathon and Allina noticed too. “Did you think of something?” Allina asked.
Tossing the photo at Jonathon, Naomi bounded to her feet. “No. I don’t know who he is. I'm sorry. I wish I did but I don’t. I can't help you. I need to go lie down.” She was out of the room before any of them could stop her.
“She knows something,” Jonathon said once Naomi had fled.
“I know,” Sam replied. “I’ll do what I can to get it out of her, but if it’s something to do with the fire, I don’t like my chances.”
“Clara says she’s never been able to get Naomi to talk about the fire,” Jonathon said.
“I’ve known Naomi a lot longer than Clara has, and I've never heard her say anything about it.” This could be his chance to get her to open up about it. Naomi wouldn’t allow another person to be killed because of her, even if she had to rehash the most horrible thing she’d ever been through. Having a conversation with her about it terrified him, but he would do it if it helped Naomi. He would do literally anything for her.
* * * * *
9:13 A.M.
Jonathon knocked on the door. Hopefully, this would put an end to things before they got any worse. He cared about Naomi, she was like a sister to him, he didn’t want to see her hurt again. Seeing Naomi in trouble was killing Clara, and he hated seeing his fiancée in pain. She had been through enough, they all had. He wanted Naomi’s stalker off the streets immediately.
Thankfully, Kane had called just as they were leaving Naomi’s house to tell them that he had gotten a hit on the bullet. It matched a bullet from a gun that had been used in several muggings. There had been three in the last two months. The first victim had been uninjured, the bullet had been fired into a wall behind where the woman was standing, but the other two victims had been shot, one in the leg, the other in the chest, she had only just survived.
“Maybe Heidi was right, maybe the shooting wasn't connected to Nicole’s murder and the threats on Naomi,” Allina noted as they waited for the door to be answered.
“What are the chances of that?” He didn’t like the thought of that. Knowing one person wanted his future sister-in-law dead was bad enough, he didn’t want two threats to her running around out there.
“I wouldn’t have thought very likely,” his partner replied even though he hadn’t really needed an answer. “But so far, we don’t have anything concrete to say the two cases are linked. I'm not saying they aren’t. Itisunlikely that someone would shoot at Naomi and then a couple of hours later murder a friend of hers and leave a threatening letter to her, and them not be related, but it could happen. And the same gun was used in three other shootings that were all a lot more similar to the attack on Naomi than the one on Nicole. I suppose the mugger could have somehow latched on to Naomi, maybe noticed her somewhere and decided to escalate things. Or perhaps he knows her, or knew her, and when he saw her, he decided he had to have her.”
“Hopefully, we’ll find out the answers to all of those questions once someone answers the door,” he huffed irritably, hammering once more on the heavy oak door. Lennox Tyson was the registered owner of the gun used in the shootings. The cops had been after him since the first mugging, but so far, they hadn’t been able to locate where he was hiding out. Lennox had been on the run for two months now, but that was going to end. Now. Jonathon wanted this man off the streets immediately.
“His mother is elderly,” Allina reminded him patiently.
They were hoping that Lennox was hiding out at his mother’s, or at the very least that she might know where he was. Agnes Tyson had already been interviewed, three times in fact, after bullets from her son’s gun turned up at the scenes of the muggings, but she had been adamant that she hadn’t known anything. Jonathon wasn't buying that, and that kind of answer was not going to cut it today. He was not going to allow anyone to hurt Naomi.
He was about to make a push for barging through the closed door when it finally cracked open. A frail old woman peered back at them. Her skin was so pale it was near translucent, her gray hair thin and scraggly, her brown eyes magnified by thick glasses. From the look she shot them, Agnes Tyson knew who they were and why they were there.
“He didn’t do it,” she said before either he or Allina could get a word out.
Jonathon was surprised that such a fragile-looking elderly lady could have such a firm, strong voice. “We need to talk to you, ma’am,” he informed her just as firmly.
With open reluctance, Mrs. Tyson allowed them through the door and down a narrow hallway into a small, cramped living room. Agnes was dying of emphysema after a lifetime of smoking six packets of cigarettes a day, and the room clearly represented her current incapacitated state.
“My Lennox is a good boy,” she pouted sullenly as she sank down into a dirty, stained recliner.
“A good boy?” Jonathon repeated, working to keep the incredulity out of his voice. “Your son has been getting in trouble with the law since he was nine years old.”
The old woman just glared at them defiantly.
“Shoplifting as a child, Lennox moved on to petty theft and drug possession charges by the time he hit his teens. Stealing cars and prostitution by the time he legally became an adult. In and out of prison and rehab. An armed robbery charge sent him to prison for ten years. He wasn't out a year before he was back in trouble. He’s an addict, and he’s proven he’ll do whatever it takes to get his next fix. His gun has been used in three muggings and another shooting, all in the last two months. Two of the victims were lucky to survive. Your son needs to be stopped, Mrs. Tyson, before someone winds up dead. So far Lennox hasn’t killed anyone, no matter what he’s done he’s never taken someone’s life. We’re just trying to keep it that way.”
She was wavering, Jonathon could see it in her eyes. She didn’t want her son to progress to murder. If they didn’t stop him, Lennox Tyson would soon take the next step to killing. If he hadn’t already. If Lennox was Naomi’s stalker, then he had murdered Nicole Carmichael in cold blood.
“The police have been looking for him for the last two months, but he’s been hiding out here, hasn’t he? You’ve been covering for him. I understand, he’s your son, you love him, you want to believe he didn’t do this, but he did.”
“His gun was stolen,” Agnes said a little sullenly.
“So, youhaveseen him recently,” Jonathon pounced on the first crack in her resolve.
“He’s not a bad boy, he just needs some help, he’d trying to overcome his addiction. If you throw him back in prison, he’ll never get better.” The poutiness was gone from her voice, now she just sounded like a desperate mother.
“Where is he, Mrs. Tyson?”