The modest green ranch house in Baxter, Kentucky, couldn’t have been more than a thousand square feet. Scraggly crabgrass poked through the dirt in places, and the shrubs seemed half dead from lack of care. The paint on the door and window trim was peeling.
She called up a real estate website and scanned for house prices. “She probably didn’t pay more than eighty thousand for that place.”
Reid touched a finger to the screen. “That’s her car, so it’s definitely her house. This must be an old picture.”
“Most of the photos on Google Earth aren’t current time.” Jane peered at the computer. “Looks like it was taken three years ago, so she’d been there awhile.” She zoomed out to check out another view from the other side. “Someone’s in the backyard. A man. It’s too blurry to make out his face though.”
“Could Nora do anything to enhance it?”
“I can have her try.” Jane saved the picture and shot it off in an email to Nora with her request. “I’ll have to pay her overtime. She’s got to be torn in a million directions with all that’s going on.”
“Can you read the street addresses on either side?” Reid asked.
“Sure.” She navigated until the numbers on the house to the right were visible, jotted them down, then moved to the house on the other side.
“And on the opposite side?”
She positioned the screen until she got the information about the three closest houses across the street. “It’s too late to make any calls tonight, but we can look up the phone numbers and be ready to talk to them tomorrow.”
She spent ten more minutes searching for the addresses and phone records of the neighbors while Reid ate his pizza. “The one directly across the street seems a good one to call first thing. According to the owner information, an older woman lives there, and she might be the type who pays attention to what’s going on in her neighborhood. We can divide up the names and call.”
He wiped his fingers on a napkin before he accepted the paper she handed him. “Any other ideas?”
She rubbed the back of her neck. “I’m too tired to think.”
“I’ll go home and let you try to get some rest.” He drew her close for a good-night kiss that gave her more comfort than he knew. He was such a steady rock in her life. “C-Could we pray for Will before you go?”
He stilled and nodded. “I was thinking the same thing.”
His deep voice rumbled through her like an electrical current as he asked God to protect and comfort Will when they couldn’t. Tears burned her eyes and leaked out from under her closed lids. She had been trying not to imagine how alone and scared Will must feel right now, but it had been impossible not to picture him in that cell.
God would be in that cell with Will even though they couldn’t. It would have to be enough for tonight.
Twenty-One
He shouldn’t have shut Jane down about the key.
Coffee in hand, Reid sat on the back deck as dawn pinked the eastern sky over the trees. Frogs croaked in the marsh, and he heard the splash of something in the river. The hearing was set for nine, three hours from now, and it couldn’t come soon enough. Every minute ticked by like a year.
He just wanted Will safe and sound at home.
Headlights came up the drive, and he recognized Jane’s SUV. He got up to greet her as she got out with Parker and came up the back steps.
“You’re up early.” He pulled her into his arms and held her close.
She was trembling, and he could see how fragile her emotions were. His own were just as bad, but he as a guy, he felt he wasn’t supposed to show them.
“I didn’t get a wink of sleep,” she said in a husky voice.
“Me neither.” Not with their boy locked up. He kissed her, then pressed his cheek against hers. “We’ll get him out this morning. The judge knows you. He’ll let us take him. It’s going to be okay.”
She pulled away and shook her head. “Getting him out of juvie solves nothing, Reid. We’ve got Everest to climb ahead of us.”
“I know, but at least he’ll be where we can protect him.”
She bit her lip and stepped back. “Got coffee?”
“A whole pot.” He gestured to the hot pot on the table. “I’ll get another cup.” When he returned from the kitchen, he found her in a chair, looking at her phone. “Any news?”
“A text from Scott. He’s already talked to the DA and she won’t argue against Will’s release. So it should be routine to get him out.”
“Thank the Lord.” He poured her a cup of coffee and handed it to her.
She wrapped her hands around the mug. “It’s probably too early to make any calls to Lauren’s neighbors.”
“Unless we want to make them too mad to talk to us.”
They sat sipping their coffee in companionable silence for several minutes.
“Have you talked to your dad this morning?” Reid asked.
“He called at five. He’d been up all night and offered money if we needed it for bail.” Jane took a sip of her coffee. “Nice of him, but juvie doesn’t take bail. They either release him into our custody or they retain him.”
“He feels responsible since he didn’t stay with Will. He was putting in some equipment in the bunker and thought he’d be okay for a few hours.”
Jane’s eyes widened. “I hope he isn’t thinking they will charge him in adult court.”
“Could they?”
“Oh yes. Alabama is hard-core with crime, no matter how young the offender. Many kids have been handed over to adult court for serious crimes like this.” She shook her head. “They can’t do that. I don’t think Augusta would go for it.”
“What if the DA is insistent?”
“It could happen then. I have to admit I keep wishing Dad had stayed with him the whole time. If he had been there, we wouldn’t be in this mess. There would have been a corroborative witness. Now we have nothing but Will’s word, and a whole lot of evidence that contradicts his story.”
Reid snapped his fingers. “Witnesses. Has either of your officers put out a request for anyone driving past at that time? Spoken to any of my neighbors?”
“Augusta said no one has come forward. Olivia called this morning too. She said she was going to look for a nursing home instead of staying at your house, but she needs us to take Megan. I told Olivia we still wanted them. That’s okay, isn’t it?”
“Of course it is.” Though he had no idea how they would work out care. “The kids can probably help out too.”
“She has insurance that will help pay for an aide. We can look for someone. I didn’t want her to go to a nursing home.” Jane raked her fingers through her light-brown hair. “Everything is a mess, Reid. How did we get here in only a few days?”
“I don’t know, honey. All we need is one break to lead us to Lauren’s murderer and get Will out of trouble.”
“And Olivia. I vacillate between feeling overwhelmed and wanting to help all I can. There’s so much going on I can’t even evaluate the situation properly. I can’t think or reason. Everything is resting on the outcome today.”