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I nearly tumbled out of the chair when my body reactively dove forward, stumbling to my feet. “Two?”
“That is correct,” Kendall confirmed. “Two. It’d taken me a while to sort through everything, and unfortunately, I was only able to find a strand with the root still intact on just one of them. The other strands are rather short, but I’m going to try and see if I can at least gather some mitochondrial DNA from the shafts.”
“And how long will that take?” I asked.
“It’ll be a while, Charlotte. 72 hours at most. I know that’s not what you want to hear and that you have Harley and Chief breathing down all of your necks right now, and I’m sorry. I want to catch this guy as much as you do, but this form of testing is something that unfortunately cannot be rushed. I hope you can understand.”
“That’s fine, Kendall.” I wasn’t happy, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it, so I just took the little bit of info she was able to provide as a win and just simply bobbed my head. “Would you mind doing me a favor and forwarding the results you do have to my email address?”
“Uh, yeah, no problem. I can totally do that.”
I gave her my info and then ended the call, sighing as I sat down at my computer and pulled up my emails, waiting.
Once I had what I needed, I printed off the pages and then began going over everything from scratch, starting with Delilah’s case.
I stared up at the two mobile white boards Blaire and Perry were nice enough to let me borrow from their offices and wiped the sweat beading down my brows away, checking for what had to be the thousandth time that I hadn’t made a mistake and forgotten to jot down any significant information. Everything appeared to be precise, so after convincing myself it was okay to unhand the files and focus more on the boards, I dropped them on my desk and then perched down on the end of it with my arms crossed firmly against my chest.
None of this made a lick of fucking sense.
Delilah wasn’t drugged. And other than the DNA we’d gathered from her rape kit, there was no additional evidence that had been found or reported indicating there was another assailant.
Then again, just because no evidence had been found didn’t necessarily imply a second man wasn’t involved.
But it did, however, make it insanely fucking difficult proving there was.
If only those cameras hadn’t been broken. That footage would’ve given us all the answers we needed.
“Hey, Charlotte,” Harley said, knocking twice before she stuck her head in the door. “I’m about to head home.”
I twisted around to stare at the clock on my desk, blinking in surprise. It was getting late. I should’ve left over an hour ago, but I was way too invested in my work to even think about going home.
“You’re still at it?”
Harley stepped in, whistling as her eyes briefly scanned over each board harboring the crime scene photos and paragraphs of notes and theories scattered everywhere in dry-erase marker.
“Yeah.” I sighed tiredly and swiped away the last of the sweat marinating my face. I must’ve looked like a circus clown, but my condition must not have been too bad because Harley made no mention of any smudges smeared along my face. “To be honest, I feel like I’m starting to lose my mind.”
“Cases like these can do that sometimes. Do you need me to take over for a few days so you can get some rest?”
I shook my head and said, “I’m fine. Really, I am. It’s just the additional hair follicles the lab found on Amber that’s been bugging the hell out of me. One of them has to belong to our perp, but the second one… That just completely screws up our theory and any hopes of it—”
“Not necessarily, Charlotte.”
I lifted my chin and met her gaze, my brows crinkling. “What do you mean?”
“The extra follicle does raise some suspicion, but it doesn’t imply there are two different aggressors. Amber and her husband are swingers, Charlotte. It’s possible Amber had another engagement prior that day with a special friend, or perhaps a more special kind of friend her husband has no knowledge of. The possibilities are endless, but there’s no way to know for sure until DNA is back, and, well, Amber will also need to be questioned again too.”
I considered that, having realized Harley made a damn good point.
“Have you told Hutch and Rhodes about it?” she asked.
I nodded. “Yeah. I left messages, but neither has responded. Their phones are off.”
“I wouldn’t sweat it too much. They probably got called into a meeting and had to shut down their devices. Chief gets rather pissy when over half the department would rather be on their phone than pay attention to their briefings.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle. Yeah. That sounded like Chief.
But it had also been hours since I last reached out to them. I doubted he had them tied up for that damn long.
