Free The Watcher by Jo Robertson

face, and eyes that darted everywhere but toward the detectives. While he didn’t add any more information, Slater wondered if he’d be more forthcoming without the mother hovering over him.
    After a wasted few minutes, Bauer and Slater left, glad to quit the oppressive delicacy of the Johnston home. They walked to the bottom of the circular drive and made their way to the parked car. They passed no one, and the neighborhood felt like a ghost town. Slater wondered if both parents of these fancy homes worked to make the mortgage payment. Probably not. This kind of community was made up of people with very old money. The kind of income people didn’t work to get. The kind they inherited.
    “What kind of mother lets her kid walk home that far from school?” Bauer complained, easing the car onto the asphalt.
    “The kind that’s too busy going to day spas and pedicure appointments to notice.”
    “With that kind of money they could’ve sent a taxi or hired a limo, for Pete’s sake.”
    Slater could tell the whole interview had disturbed Bauer’s sense of how serious parents should take the rearing of their children.
    “If Jennifer walked home every Wednesday,” Bauer continued, “someone could easily tail her from school, know her routine, and lay in wait for her.”
    “Exactly what I was thinking,” Slater said. “He wouldn’t actually have to get inside these hallowed grounds. He’d just have to watch her and follow her home from school.”
    “You think this is a random thing?”
    “Probably, but I want to eliminate the father before I consider it a stranger abduction-murder.” Slater ticked off the items in his mind. “We also need to talk to her friends at school again. Make sure nothing hinkey was going on there. Let’s track down the Severson kid and interview the brother without his parents. Kid brothers are notorious for knowing what their older sisters are into.”
    Slater passed a hand over his eyes and rubbed down his cheeks. He hated to admit it, but Myers might be right. There could be a serial killer running loose in Bigler County.
    #
     
    Bauer dropped Slater off at the front steps of the courthouse while he parked the car. Slater took the cement steps two at a time and swung through the double doors that opened into the courthouse foyer. He needed to divide interviews among his team members, review the autopsy report, and more important, have another conversation with Dr. Kate Myers.
    The Bigler County Sheriff’s Office, located in the county seat of Placer Hills, was a calming presence to the residents of the surrounding neighborhoods and served the area ranging southwest to Sacramento County and northward to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range and the Nevada state border. The gently sloping hills of Ralston Park lay directly across the street from the courthouse.
    As with his apartment on the other side of the park, Slater was engaged in a strange love affair with the old courthouse and the community. He’d started to feel at home during the ten-plus years he’d lived here since he’d left San Francisco.
    He thought of his loss in that beautiful city, and a familiar wave of anger and helplessness washed over him. He pushed it away. Bury the past, he warned himself.
    As he swung through the front doors, he passed Sergeant John Sanderson perched high on a stool behind the imposing desk that greeted all entrants to the precinct. Completely bald, the sergeant’s head shone like thick molasses, and his glistening face was slick and moist as a baby’s behind. A tiny gold earring decorated his left lobe, a matching glint sparking off his front tooth when he smiled. Sanderson smiled a lot.
    The sergeant greeted Slater as he passed through the security metal detector. “Slater, my man. Later than usual, ain’t you?”
    “We’re working the big case. You heard?”
    “Yeah, what a damn shame. Pretty teenager like that. Makes you lose faith in humankind.”
    “Have you seen