Free To Die For by Kathy Braidhill Page A

She lived out of state. She and Greco spoke for a few minutes, then Greco watched them file out the door before he headed back to his desk. He didn’t blame them for doubting his efforts. He didn’t have much faith in himself, either.
    *   *   *
    â€œWhat’s going on out here?”
    â€œIs there some connection between these murders?”
    â€œHow come you guys can’t catch this guy?”
    â€œI’d like to report a transient in the neighborhood—I think it might be related to these murders.”
    By midday, Greco had fielded 15 to 20 phone calls and that didn’t include calls from the press. James McElvain dropped by Greco’s desk with a couple of newspaper articles and Greco read his quotes in print. Members of the community no doubt read the paper; word of the newest murder would spread quickly. Some of the callers were hostile, some fearful, and some offered tips. One person who had the misfortune to resemble a transient walked through the private development and triggered more than a handful of calls. Greco heard repeat phone reports of people driving beat-up cars, and of pedestrians whom the caller didn’t recognize. He fielded so many calls that he couldn’t get any work done on this or any of his other cases. Of the leads he followed up on, all went nowhere. Greco chalked up some callers’ hostility to a panic reaction. Canyon Lake’s residents were not shy about complaining. Greco didn’t know what to tell them, except to assure them that the investigation was proceeding and everything possible was being done to solve the homicides.
    Greco decided to ask Sgt. Wenker for help with the calls. Wenker assigned a non-sworn officer to screen them, categorize them as complaints, comments or leads, and forward relevant information to Greco. The overflow during off-hours would be routed to an answering machine. When the news stories ran their course, Wenker said, the calls would start to die down.
    As soon as he got back to his desk, the phone rang again.
    â€œThis is Charles Van Owen,” he said. “You left some evidence here at the house. You need to come and pick it up.”
    Greco hesitated. At first he didn’t recognize the voice, but quickly realized he was talking to the out-of-state homicide detective who’d refused his handshake earlier that morning. Van Owen sounded perturbed and Greco felt himself tense up. Greco knew Van Owen already thought little of his investigative skills and wondered what evidence they’d left at the house. Greco told Van Owen he’d be there as soon as he could.
    When he got there, Greco found June’s relatives in the middle of the disturbing task of cleaning the house. Ugly blotches of June’s dried blood stained the carpet and the arc of blood still swept across the side of the desk. Greco realized that his inexperience—his having missed potentially vital evidence—probably heightened their distress. He had been right behind the criminalists the whole time and thought they had picked up everything important.
    â€œThere.” Van Owen pointed. He was barely civil, but Greco didn’t blame him. Who wouldn’t be angry after a loved one was slaughtered in her own home? He was not about to argue with a grieving family.
    There was June’s bloody, brown plastic hairband, a typed list of Canyon Lake canasta players and their phone numbers, a small child’s drawing with a handwritten name and address on the back and a ticket stub to a movie labelled Do Anything, which bore a time stamp. Any of that could be important, Greco agreed. Van Owen said some of the papers were taken from June’s wastebasket, suggesting that he hadn’t bothered to look through his mother-in-law’s garbage. Greco let the comment go and simply agreed to collect it. He didn’t have a good answer as to why the hairband and the ticket stub had not been picked up. Greco had