Rafe’s phone rang. It was Justin Robbins, an undercover officer that Rafe trusted. Based on his next words and the emotion in his voice, Justin had known and liked Derek Chaney. A moment later, he told Rafe something he’d already suspected.
Derek Chaney had enemies.
Justin insisted that one of them, and not the meth explosion, had killed Derek.
And now Janie Vincent just might have the same enemies.
CHAPTER THREE
“DEREK CHANEY’S DEATH might not have been accidental. He might have been murdered.”
Katie made a sound of shock and Janie collapsed into one of his straight-back brown chairs. For a moment, Rafe again thought she might bolt from the room. Instead, her hands tightened on the chair’s arms until he expected her fingernails to leave a permanent mark.
She might look small, but her imagination was big and usually spot-on. She took a deep breath and then, somewhat shakily, asked, “How?”
Rafe only debated a moment before telling them straight out what Nathan had reported to him and what Justin believed. He wanted to see Janie’s reaction. Even more, he wanted her to understand just how serious the situation might be.
She came to the same conclusion he did.
“So, do you believe someone was trying to kill him because they knew he wanted to confess?”
“I don’t have enough facts to make a judgment,” Rafe said.
But he had already made a judgment. He agreed with Justin. Someone wanted Derek out of the picture. And even worse—
Janie, however, didn’t give him time to decide what was worse. She did it for him. “And they obviously knew about the art book because it’s missing. What if he told them he’d given it to me, before they killed him?”
Years of dealing with witnesses had taught him to be cautious, to not always share the worst-case scenario until he was sure, plus he wanted to reassure her. Aloud he said, “It could have been a drug deal gone bad, it could have been an accident. We don’t want to jump to conclusions just yet.”
She shot him a dirty look before whispering, “Poor Derek.”
Katie gasped. “What? Are you in shock or something? What do you mean ‘poor Derek’?”
Katie was right to be worried. Right now there was no poor Derek; there was, however, a poor Janie. Rafe didn’t believe for a moment that Derek’s death had been the result of a drug deal gone wrong. Not just a few days after he’d turned in a possible murder confession. And, if Derek was killed to prevent his art book from seeing the light of day, then whoever killed him wouldn’t hesitate to kill again, had indeed already killed twice.
Another thing that worried Rafe was how the murderer had tracked the art book to the school safe.
Had the killer been on campus last night, watching Janie, waiting to get her alone? Had the killer watched as Janie read the book, watched as she walked to her boss’s office and then watched what the campus police did with the book?
So many questions.
But what Rafe found most chilling was that the same someone had been able to get the art book from the safe, quickly and seemingly easily.