You Can't Run Hope Davis (free ebook reader .txt) 📖

a mental list of chemicals she was familiar with in her head that might be able to do that, it was short. She now wished that she had paid more attention in chemistry.

“Maybe.” Atlas flipped through his own copy of the autopsy.

“Any sign of Ben Rodgers?” She continued to jot down notes,  attaching them to the autopsy.

“Nah, I had a squad car go out there last night, they did so very begrudgingly since it’s so far out of the way, and there wasn’t any sign of the man, nor has the truck been moved since we were there.”

Naya groaned.

“You’re telling me.” Atlas sunk into his desk chair. “I don’t think I’ve had a case this frustratingly bizarre in a long time. The murders I have are usually pretty cut and dry.”

“Don’t tell me, you always find the perpetrator in 48-hours?” That show was the bane of her existence, convincing the public that solving murders was easy.

“How did you know?” He smirked. “I’ve been trying to find out information on who would have inherited old Dave’s plot and I’ve formulated a potential theory.”

“What’s that?” Naya turned to face Atlas, closing her report, giving his idea her attention and allowing herself to digest what she’d read so she could go back with fresh eyes after.

“Well, our computer says that David Smith owns that land, right?”

“Yes.”

“And granted, the Denver Police Department isn’t always up to date, but what do we always upload in the system fairly promptly?”

A piece of the puzzle slid into place in Naya’s mind, she gasped. “Death certificates.”

“Exactly.” Atlas smiled. “But guess what is conveniently missing about David Smith?”

“And who would benefit from his death by not informing anyone?” She couldn’t believe they had missed it for this long.

“You got it, his good old neighbor and our infamous lone farmer, Benjamin Rodgers.”

Naya spun towards her computer, feeling like she should Google something, but not quite sure what. “I don’t think Benjamin Rodgers is our killer though.”

“I don’t think so either. According to the computer David Smith would be about ninety-six now, so it doesn’t surprise me much that he would be dead. But I do think that Rodgers has been secretly farming his land for years, and probably buried his body, convincing himself that David had no family. And maybe he didn’t, I didn’t know the guy.” He tapped his lip with his pen. “But what I do think happened is Ben realized he had told us too much, and that we would find out that David Smith was never reported dead, and he got spooked.”

“I agree.” Naya really hadn’t thought Rodgers was the killer in the first place, just that he had been hiding something. “Benjamin Rodgers doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to abduct physically fit women, and if we agree he isn’t involved just his land,  do you think we should stop focusing on him?”

“Yes.” Atlas also turned towards his computer then looked at her over his right shoulder. “I’m not ruling out that something has happened to our friend Ben, but I think if anything he’s hiding out, and if something did happen to him, all I can think it would be is our actual killer, because he saw us talking to him and didn’t like it.”

“So, do you think the burning house is still our killer?”

Atlas scrunched up his forehead. “I’m not sure about that one. I’m sort of waiting for the arson report to come back for me to make my decision. I can’t decide if that was Ben trying to hide the evidence, or if that was the killer warning us off.”

Naya bit her lip. “This guy doesn’t seem like the type to be scared by the cops.”

He raised his eyebrows.

She had a feeling she couldn’t explain. “I just think this killer is in his own little world. I think he has a mission. Because if he was scared of us, why dump in the same field, possibly while we were there? If he did see us, then he’s clearly not scared at all, but either way, he knew we had found that location and would be monitoring it.”

“I see.”

They sat in silence for a few moments staring into space.

“I guess there’s nothing to do but wait for the arson report.”

“Which means it’s lunch time!” Atlas jumped up and grabbed his coat.

“Are you ever not thinking of food or coffee?” Naya grabbed her jacket as well, she was sort of hungry as well, now that she thought about it

“Maybe when I…um well, when…. No, I guess not. C’mon, let’s go.” They  were laughing as they walked out to their squad car.

Naya sighed as she unlocked her front door. Despite them brainstorming and looking over the autopsy for the entire afternoon, nothing more had jumped out at either of them. They were at another dead end. There was no fingerprints, no hairs, the killer had left no traceable evidence behind.

As she stepped in the hall and slid off her shoes, she could hear talking in the living room. She wasn’t sure if it was Vance with Kevin, or maybe Elliot and Derek, but she really wasn’t in the mood to see anyone, her mind was filled with the case and at burn out. Instead of saying hello she slipped upstairs as stealthily as she could, once there she quickly pulled on her running clothes and grabbed her headphones.

Before she headed back down the stairs, she grabbed her work pants and pulled the spare keys she had stopped to make on her way home. One for Elliot, and two additional keys for Trevor and Sebastian, or whoever didn’t have one already. She set them on the table in the hall on her way out.

She stepped silently back out of the door and locked it before anyone could notice she