Page 25 of Child In Jeopardy
“Did you want Marsh enough to kill Stephanie?” Lana blurted before she could stop herself.
Taylor made an outraged gasp. “No. Of course not. That man on the news killed her. The same man who tried to murder you.”
It didn’t surprise Lana that the attack had already hit the media, and she wondered just how much detail was already out there. “So you didn’t have any part in Stephanie’s murder? Because that’s what the cops want to question you about.”
“No part whatsoever,” Taylor insisted. “And I’ll tell the detective that, too. There’s no crime in hating a man-stealing ex-friend.” She paused. “I’ve heard some rumors. Did Stephanie have Marsh’s baby?”
Slater pressed his finger to his mouth in akeep quiet about thatgesture. Lana hadn’t planned on spilling it, anyway. “Why would you care if the child is Marsh’s?” Lana argued.
“Because a baby would give him a tie to Stephanie. I don’t want any ties.” Her tone was now one of a pouty child. “I want him to see her for what she was. A cheater who didn’t care one bit about him. If Stephanie gave birth to his baby, then he might never get over her.”
Lana couldn’t be sure, but it sounded as if Taylor choked back a sob. She doubted the sadness, or whatever emotion she’d heard, had anything to do with Stephanie, though.
“You should talk to Detective Thayer about this,” Lana finally said. Not that Thayer would answer the question of the baby’s paternity, but the conversation might end up being productive for the investigation.
“I don’t want to talk to her,” Taylor whined. “In fact, I’m not going to talk to any cops. They’ll have to arrest me first, and then I’ll use my lawyers to bury them.”
That was a threat with no teeth because Thayer had cause to interview Taylor. The woman’s hatred for Stephanie was plenty motive to work with Buck to commit murder.
Taylor ended the call, but before Lana could even put her phone away, it rang again, and she saw yet another familiar name.
“It’s Julia Munson,” Lana told Slater. “Someone I work with at Sencor.” She answered it and said, “Julia, I’m putting you on speaker. Deputy Slater McCullough is here with me.”
“Hello, Deputy McCullough,” Julia greeted, and she launched right into the reason for the call. “We found something that probably won’t be a news flash to you, but it confirms something. We interviewed visitors at the hospital where Stephanie died, and a new father, Asa Burkhart, was recording the maternity ward where his daughter had just been born. I’m sending you the footage now.”
Moments later, Lana’s phone dinged again, and she automatically held her breath. Julia had said this wouldn’t be a surprise, so Lana already had an idea of what Slater and she were about to see. Still, it felt as if someone had clamped a vise around her lungs.
The recording loaded, and there were a couple of seconds of the new father panning his phone around while providing a fewverbal details like the name of the hospital, the room number and the obstetrician. When the camera shifted toward the other end of the hall, Lana saw the man.
Buck.
He was in a small alcove with the vending machines, and he peered out. Just seeing him gave Lana another slam of the flashbacks of him stunning and grabbing her in the parking lot. But those slams were a drop in the bucket compared to what she felt as she watched him move out of vending and across the hall. He disappeared into Stephanie’s room.
Lana nearly shouted to alert someone to stop him. But the avalanche of dread came when she realized it was too late for that. Buck had already murdered her sister and now he, too, was dead.
That was all of the footage, the blur of motion as Buck went into Stephanie’s room. The new father had obviously finished recording since there was no footage of Buck coming out.
“The hospital security cameras were tampered with,” Julia explained, “but they were working again by the time you came back to the hospital with the baby. There’s about a half-hour lapse between Buck entering the room and your arrival.”
A half hour when Lana hadn’t known that her sister had been murdered. “Yes,” Lana said. “I was driving around, deciding what to do. Stephanie had wanted me to take the baby to Slater, but I decided to go back and talk to her, to make sure she was certain this was the right thing to do. I didn’t see Buck when I left the first time, but I believe I saw him after I came back.”
“You probably did,” Julia provided. “We got footage from a dash camera of a taxi that shows Buck outside the hospital thirty-two minutes after he went into Stephanie’s room. That would have given you time to drive around and return.”
So he had lingered around. Maybe because he’d been trying to find Stephanie’s baby. It sickened Lana to think about whatcould have happened when she saw Buck outside her sister’s room, how close he had been to Cameron.
“Was anyone with Buck?” Slater asked.
“No,” Julia answered, “but we’re checking for other dashcams and private security equipment to try to track his movements. There are traffic cams around there, but it’s my guess he avoided those since Austin PD hasn’t been able to find any footage of him.”
That was Lana’s guess, too. Clearly, Buck had been concerned about being recorded, and that’s why he, or maybe his accomplice, had tampered with the hospital security cameras.
“There’s more,” Julia added a moment later, and Lana could tell from her coworker’s tone that this was not going to be good news. “I’m guessing you’re both familiar with a woman named Taylor Galway?”
Lana certainly hadn’t expected Julia to bring her up. “Yes. In fact, she called me right before you did.”
“Did she admit to hiring a computer hacker?” Julia asked.
“No,” Slater and Lana answered in unison.