Page 9 of Child In Jeopardy
And she wasn’t alone. Her husband, Leonard, was with her and so was a tall, blond, thirtysomething-year-old man. Hell. They had enough to deal with tonight without adding visitors like this to the mix.
Deputy Brandon Rooney was working at the front desk, and he immediately got to his feet to direct the trio through the metal detectors. No alarms sounded, which meant none of them were armed.
“Lana,” Pamela repeated when her attention landed on her daughter.
Lana immediately moved into the doorway of Duncan’s office, and Slater thought she might be doing that so her mother didn’t see the baby. Possibly because Pamela might try to take him. No way would he and Duncan let that happen, not until they had sorted out Cameron’s paternity, but Pamela and her husband might try to cause a scene. Also, it was possible the blond guy with them was their lawyer.
Both Duncan and Slater moved into the doorway with Lana, positioning themselves on each side of her so they could face down what might turn out to be trouble. Luca and Brandon had moved behind the visitors while Sonya kept a watchful eye on them from her desk while she continued to work on her laptop.
Pamela and Leonard looked pretty much as they had years ago, and despite recently learning of their daughter’s murder, they didn’t look grief-stricken or disheveled. Just the opposite. Pamela was wearing expensive-looking brown pants and a cream sweater while Leonard was in a perfectly tailored suit.The blond guy had on khakis and a white shirt. He was the only one of the trio who appeared to be grieving or in shock.
So maybe not a lawyer, after all.
“How’d you know I was here?” Lana asked, taking the question right out of Slater’s mouth.
Pamela and Leonard both froze for a moment, but then Pamela hiked up her chin. “Leonard has friends in Austin PD. They told us you were here.”
This time Slater said the “hell” out loud, and he glanced at Duncan to see if they were on the same page with this. Of course they were. There was no way a cop should have divulged that kind of information.
“I’ll want the names of your friends in Austin PD,” Duncan insisted, aiming a hard glare at Leonard and Pamela.
“I don’t have to do that,” Leonard snarled.
“All right,” Duncan said, taking out his phone. “I’ll make an official complaint through Austin PD Internal Affairs to open an investigation into divulging information regarding a murder investigation to a civilian. I’m sure they can get to the bottom of it and then discipline the officers involved.”
Slater hadn’t thought it possible, but Leonard’s jaw tightened even more. “Detective David Sullivan,” he said. “His father used to work for me.”
Duncan put his phone away, but Slater had no doubts he’d be making a call to Austin PD to file a complaint against Detective Sullivan.
“David was doing me a favor,” Leonard added, maybe hoping to minimize the trouble he’d just gotten the detective into. “He knew Pamela and I were crushed by Stephanie’s murder, and we needed to find Lana, to make sure she was all right.”
“I pressured them, too,” the blond guy said, and then he came closer to extend his hand to Duncan and Slater. “I’m Marsh Bray. Stephanie and I were...close.”
“My parents wanted Stephanie and Marsh to marry,” Lana provided, earning her a sharp look from her mother.
“I’m in love with Stephanie,” Marsh further explained as if not bothered by Lana’s comment, “and it was my hope that Stephanie would someday agree to be my wife. That’s why I gave her this time she’d asked for. That’s why I waited.” His voice wavered on the last word. “And now she’s dead.”
The grief seemed genuine. Seemed. But Slater had too much cop in him to take this at face value. Maybe Marsh hadn’t been as patient as he was claiming. Maybe he’d gotten so enraged over Stephanie that he’d murdered her. But that left Slater with a huge question.
Was Marsh the baby’s father?
“We need you to come home with us,” Pamela said to Lana. “We need you to explain to Marsh and us exactly what happened to Stephanie.” She paused. “A nurse at the hospital said Stephanie had had a baby. Is it true?”
Slater kept his attention on Marsh. The man certainly wasn’t jumping to say the child was his. Just the opposite. There seemed to be some dread creeping into his expression.
“We know that Stephanie was a surrogate,” her mother went on. “We hired PIs to try to find her, and we found out about her visit to a surrogacy clinic. There was a charge for it on her credit card. Why would she do that? Why would she go to a place like that to get pregnant and carry a child for someone else?”
Since the questions were aimed at Lana and not him, Slater had to figure that the surrogacy clinic hadn’t given Pamela and Leonard that particular bit of info.
“I don’t know,” Lana muttered, and Slater knew it wasn’t a lie.
Her mother groaned and squeezed her eyes shut a moment. “I’m not asking out of idle curiosity. I need to know what happened to my daughter.”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Lana assured her, and she made a show of checking the time. “We need to leave so I can give a statement. That might help them find who killed Stephanie.”
Slater so wished she hadn’t just spelled that out to them, since he didn’t want anyone other than the cops here in the sheriff’s office to know that he and Lana would be on their way to Austin.
“I’ll call you after I give the statement,” Lana added.