Maybe one of the others would have a lipstick that suited him better.
Laurence Strawn, C.E.O. of Hammerstead Technology, was a man with a boisterous laugh and a knack for seeing the big picture. He wasn't good with details, but then, he didn't need to be.
That morning he had received a call from a Warren detective named Donovan. Detective Donovan had been very persuasive. No, they didn't have a warrant to search Hammerstead's personnel records, and they preferred to keep this as quiet as possible. What he was asking for was cooperation in catching a murderer before he could kill again, and they had a hunch he worked at Hammerstead.
Why was that? Mr. Strawn had asked, and was told about the phone call to T.J. Yother's cell phone, whose number he wouldn't have known was hers unless he had access to certain information about her. Since they were fairly certain Marci Dean had known her killer and that the same man was the one who had called T.J.'s cell phone, then it followed that they both knew him, that, in fact, all four of the friends knew him. That made it highly probable that he worked at Hammerstead with them.
Mr. Strawn's immediate reaction was that he didn't want this leaking to the press. He was, after all, a C.E.O. His second, more thought-out reaction, was that he would do whatever possible to stop this maniac from killing more of his employees. "What do you want me to do?" he asked. "If we have to, we'll come to Hammerstead to go over the files, but we'd prefer not to alert anyone that we're looking. Can you access the files and attach them to an E-mail to me?"
"The files are on a separate system that isn't on-line. I'll have them copied to a CD for my files, then send it to you. What's your E-mail address?"
Unlike a lot of chief executive officers and corporate presidents, Laurence Strawn knew his way around computers. He'd had to become proficient just to understand what the loonies on the first two floors were doing.
"T.J. Yother works in human resources," he added as he copied down Detective Donovan's E-mail address, another talent he had, that of doing two things at once. "I'll have her do it. That way we know there won't be a leak."
"Good idea," said Sam. With that accomplished with surprising ease – he thought he'd like Laurence Strawn – he turned his attention to the partial shoe print the techs had lifted from Jaine's bathroom floor, where the bastard had stepped in the ruins of her makeup and left a pretty good imprint behind. He just hoped it was enough to identify the style. O. J. Simpson aside, when they caught this guy, it would help if they could prove he owned the type of shoe that had made the print, and in the same size. It would be even better if there were still little clumps of makeup caught in the treads.
He spent most of the morning on the phone. Who said detective work wasn't dangerous and exciting? Last night had been a little more dangerous and exciting than he liked, he thought grimly. He didn't like playing "what if," but in this case he couldn't help it. What if he had been called away? What if Jaine hadn't been late, he hadn't been worried, and they hadn't argued? They might have parted with a good-night kiss, Jaine going to her house alone. Considering the destruction of her house, he shuddered to think what would have happened if she had been there. Marci Dean had been both taller and heavier than Jaine, and she hadn't been able to fight off her attacker, so the chances of Jaine doing so were practically nil.
He sat back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head, staring at the ceiling and thinking. Something was getting by him here, but he couldn't put his finger on it. Not yet, anyway; sooner or later, it would come to him, because he wouldn't be able to stop worrying it until he found the answer. His sister Doro said he was a cross between a snapping turtle and a rat terrier: once he had his teeth in something, he never let go. Of course, Doro hadn't meant it as a compliment.
Thinking of his Doro reminded him of the rest of his family, and the news he had to break. He scribbled on his notepad: Tell Mom about Jaine. This was going to come as a big surprise to them, because the last they'd heard he wasn't even dating anyone regularly. He grinned; hell, he still wasn't. He was skipping that part, as well as the engagement, and just going straight to marriage, which was probably the best way to get Jaine there. But the family stuff would have to wait. Right now he had dual priorities: catch a killer, and keep Jaine safe. Those two tasks didn't leave time for anything else. Jaine woke up in Sam's bed a little after one P.M. not really rested but with her batteries recharged enough that she felt ready to take on the next crisis. After dressing in jeans and a T-shirt, she went next door to check on the cleaning progress. Mrs. Kulavich was there, walking from room to room to make certain no shortcuts were taken. The two women who were doing the cleaning seemed to take her supervision in stride.
They certainly were efficient, Jaine thought. The bedroom and bathroom were already clean; the savaged mattress and box spring were gone, the shreds of cloth swept up and put in trash bags that sat bulging beside the stoop. Before going to sleep, she had called her insurance agent and found that her homeowners' insurance, so recently converted from renters' insurance, would cover part of the replacement cost of the household goods. Her clothes weren't covered at all.
"Your insurance agent was here not an hour ago," Mrs. Kulavich said. "He looked around and took pictures, and was going to the police department to get a copy of the report. He said he didn't think there would be any problem."
Thank goodness for that. She had been out a lot of money lately, and her bank account was seriously shriveled. The telephone rang. It was one of the nonfeminine things that hadn't been damaged, so Jaine picked it up. She never had gotten around to hooking up the Caller ID unit, she remembered, and the bottom dropped out of her stomach at the thought of answering without knowing in advance who was calling.