Kerri’s cell vibrated again, this time with an incoming text. It was the LT. He’d asked her to stop by his office, but she’d gotten caught up in this. “Pull everything you can find on the Stevens case. I’ll be right back.” Before rushing away, she turned back once more. “Also, call the assistant, Marcella Gibbons, and find out if that law firm Sela worked for is or was in any way connected to Ben Abbott or his company out in San Francisco.”

Falco glanced up. “Will do.”

She hurried across the bullpen and down the hall to the LT’s office. She knocked on the door, and he motioned for her to come in.

“I would have been here sooner, but we may have a break in the Abbott case.”

“That would make my day, Devlin. I don’t like spending my entire Saturday in this office. But how can I not be here when I have people working on cases that the chief and the mayor—among others—want to see cleared up?”

That was her cue, Kerri assumed. “Sela Abbott had an older sister, Janelle Stevens, who lived in Birmingham.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said, then frowned. “Wait, I remember that name. Janelle Stevens.” He considered the name for a moment. “If I recall correctly, she disappeared, and the case was never solved.” He pushed his glasses higher up his nose. “You think this might somehow play into what happened?”

“Too soon to know, but it’s definitely a new angle to investigate.”

“It’s certainly more than we had.” The frown lining his brow warned that he was attempting to pull anything about the old case from his memory banks.

The few other disjointed details Kerri and Falco were toying with, like pursuing additional info about the disagreement between Thompson and Abbott, she didn’t share with the LT. He’d made it clear he didn’t want to hear anything related to the Thompson name without sufficient evidence to back it up.

“I’ll give you an update as soon as we have anything new.” She really wanted to get back to work.

“One thing, Devlin.”

She hesitated at the door. “What’s that?”

“How’s it going with Falco? Any problems?”

“It’s going surprisingly well. No problems.”

His eyebrows reared up. “Does that mean this is going to work out?”

She shrugged. “I think so.” She hesitated again. “I’d like to know what all that redacted stuff in his file is about.”

“I’ll see what I can do, but no guarantees. I don’t even know that story.”

Kerri thanked him and walked back to the cubicle. Falco was pacing the small space.

“Did you find something?”

“Have a seat,” he said as he pulled out his own chair and dropped into it.

Hoping this was the break they had needed, Kerri did as he asked. “I’m listening.”

He turned his monitor around so that she could see it. A photo of a young woman, midtwenties, stared back at her. There was enough of a resemblance to easily guess that it was Sela’s older sister.

“She moved here from San Diego and went to work—wait for it,” Falco said with a quick drumroll of his fingers against his desk, “with Senator T. R. Thompson. A few months later she vanished.”

A boost of adrenaline shot through Kerri. “What do you know? We have another Thompson connection. Interesting.”

“Could be coincidence,” Falco said, but his skeptical expression was not sufficient to override the obvious optimism in his tone.

“Definitely,” she agreed with a heavy dose of sarcasm.

“You remember anything about the Stevens case?”

Kerri shook her head. “I guess I missed that one since I was away in college at the time.” This unexpected twist needled at her with new verve. “If Sela was so tuned in to the case all the way through college—even choosing criminal justice as her major—why just let it go? Especially with her being here—where it happened—and married to a man of means?”

“Maybe she didn’t. Maybe that’s the part that’s missing in all this.”

Kerri and her partner were definitely on the same wavelength. “What about any connection between the law office where Sela worked and Abbott Options?”

Falco leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands across his abdomen. “That was a damned good call, Devlin. In fact, the law firm is very connected—as in it represented Ben Abbott personally as well as his business when he lived in Cali. Still represents his business.”

“Are you serious? When I spoke to her former supervisor, he acted as if he didn’t know her husband well.”

Falco nodded. “That’s because the firm you called is the one where she worked the first three months she lived in San Francisco. She left that firm and went to Arnold, Fox, and Patton and found her own Cinderella story.”

Kerri braced her forearms on her desk. Now this was good. “Let’s lay this out, Falco. Ben Abbott is a native of Birmingham—the city where Sela’s sister disappeared. She spends her higher education preparing to solve her sister’s case. Then she moves to San Francisco, and instead of becoming a cop, she goes to work for a law firm, eventually landing at the one that represents Ben Abbott of Birmingham. She steals his heart and, voilà, becomes Mrs. Ben Abbott. The next thing you know, they move back here.”

“But there’s no happily ever after because now Ben is dead, and Sela has disappeared,” Falco declared.

“This is a hell of a lot of trouble to go to in hopes of solving an old case or for some sort of revenge.” Kerri still had a doubt or two.

“True,” Falco agreed, “but the cop from San Diego said she talked about the case a lot. So much so that he seemed damned surprised she hadn’t gone into law enforcement.”

Kerri’s phone vibrated again. She pulled it from her pocket and checked the screen. “It’s the ME.” She tapped accept and set it to speaker. “Devlin. Tell me something good, Dr. Moore.”

The older man chuckled. “I’m a medical examiner, Detective. Whatever I have to tell you is about the dead. How good could it be?”

Kerri laughed. “Let me rephrase that. Tell me something that might help solve my case.”

“Well, I had a second look at Jacqueline Rollins. The autopsy wasn’t scheduled until Monday, but I decided to move forward today. What else is an old man going to do on Saturday?”

Kerri wasn’t quite as old as her esteemed colleague, but she definitely got it. “Tell me about it.”

“Especially,” Moore added, “when your chief is breathing down my neck.”

She got that as well. “Join the club.”

He grunted. “You stated that Ms. Rollins had been diagnosed with cancer; is that correct?”

“That’s what we were told, and the meds in her room seemed to suggest that was the case.”

“Unless some of the labs tell me different, I found no indication of cancer.”

Kerri stared at Falco. They had both seen the medications. Listened to the Abbotts discuss the fact that Sela’s mother suffered with cancer and that her daughter had to take care of her.

“Is it possible it went away or was in remission to the point you can’t find it now?”

“Anything’s possible, Detective, but based on the autopsy I’d have to say there was no cancer. If she had been ill for an extended period, there would be some evidence, I assure you.”

A whole new scenario was forming in Kerri’s head. “Did you find anything else that would suggest she had been ill?”

“I did not. Muscle tone was exceptionally good, as if she worked out regularly. The only anomaly I did find was a bit of an odd one. There are indications that blood had been drawn from the antecubitals in the crevices of both elbows. If it turns out she had some sort of health condition, I would say that was perhaps indicative of lab work. There’s something off, however.”

“Off how?” Falco asked.

“Well, based on my examination, the size needle used was unusual. It was at least seventeen gauge, which is typically for donating blood, not simple lab draws. Certainly, it’s not impossible that a newbie used the wrong-size needle, but it’s not the norm.”

“Maybe she had donated blood recently,” Kerri offered.

“Of course,” Moore agreed. “But that goes against the idea that she was in ill health and on multitudes of medication.”

Valid point.

“How long would it take,” Falco asked, “to get DNA on the blood found on the sheets next to Ben Abbott’s body compared to that of the mother?”

“Since I’ve already requested the analysis as a matter of course to confirm the blood belongs to the missing wife, it’s possible I might be able to push for results as early as Monday afternoon. Bear in mind,” Moore cautioned, “this is a very optimistic schedule.”

“I understand,” Kerri assured him. “Anything you can do to speed things up will be greatly appreciated.”

“I’ll do my best,” Moore promised before ending the call.

“Tell you what I’m thinking, Devlin,” Falco said.

She had a feeling they were on the same page.

“I’m thinking we’ve got ourselves a vanishing-wife act. She wants us to believe she’s a victim, too, so she set the stage, only she used her mother’s blood instead of her own because she’s pregnant.”