Flashback (Kendra Michaels #11)

Olivia hugged her. “You need to stop bringing your work home, Kendra. We talked about this.”

“It’s not work. It’s a favor.”

“A favor that involves… a murder?”

She shrugged. “Maybe even a bunch of murders.”

“Ooh, I gotta hear about this.” Olivia pushed back her long black hair as she walked over and plopped down onto the couch. She was stunningly beautiful with her olive complexion and high cheekbones, made even more attractive by her stubborn refusal to believe she was good looking at all.

“Don’t get so excited,” Kendra murmured. “It’s a tragic story.”

“It always is. Got any wine?”

Kendra smiled. “Of course.” She walked to the kitchen counter and poured them each a glass of Malbec. “Do you have any memory of a killer called the Bayside Strangler?”

“No. Was he around here?”

“Yes, but it was a long time ago. We were in school then, at Woodward. I really don’t remember any of the details, but he was never caught.”

Olivia grasped the wineglass that Kendra put in her hand. “That’s what this is about? No one’s asked you to work a cold case before.”

“Well, that’s only part of the story. The only reason I’m considering it is that two women’s lives may be in danger. If they’re even still alive.” Kendra filled her in on the facts of the case as related to her that morning. As she spoke, she felt the same sense of dread she’d heard in Detective Chase’s voice.

Olivia sat in silence for a long moment after Kendra finished. “You have to try to help them. You know that, right?”

“It’s getting more clear by the minute.”

“Good.”

“But this is different from anything I’ve done before. You said it yourself. I don’t do cold cases. Whatever skills I have, they may not apply to a fifteen-year-old investigation that went absolutely nowhere.”

“Which is why you could be perfect for it. They might be able to use a fresh pair of eyes.” She raised her wineglass. “So to speak.”

“You know… Right before I came home, I looked online and saw the news story about the Morgan sisters’ disappearance last week. There was a picture of the two of them, and you could almost see the sadness in their faces. Their mother was taken from them when they were children, and they’ve also lost so much of their lives trying to get justice for her. And now it may have cost them their own lives.”

“Do you think they were really close to finding out who this Bayside Strangler was?”

“Nobody knows. That tower of files over there is everything Chloe and Sloane Morgan gathered over the years as they investigated the Bayside Strangler case. Detective Chase went through it, and she didn’t see anything that convinced her. I’ll look and see if there’s anything I can follow up on.”

Olivia made a face. “Are we talking hundreds of sheets of paper over there?”

“Maybe thousands. That’s what you almost collided with. It’s stacked about four feet high.”

“That’s horribly inefficient.”

“Well, when the Morgan sisters turn up, you can tell them that.”

“No, I mean… for you to sort through.”

“You got a better idea?”

“Scan it all. A good PDF software program could index all the text and make it searchable. If you see something interesting, you can cross-index and bring up every instance that appears in any of the other documents.”

Kendra smiled. Naturally, Olivia would have a high-tech solution right off the top of her head. She ran a popular web destination called Outasite that was geared toward the vision-impaired. Packed with reviews, profiles, and other articles mostly written by Olivia herself, the internationally acclaimed site earned her an income well into the six figures. “Good idea,” Kendra said, “but I don’t have time for a scanning project.”

“You don’t need the time. I have an intern.”

“What?”