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“Did she say why it was in the laundry?”
“I didn’t ask. I just thought it was weird she had it out when Halloween is still a few weeks away.”
Hunt pressed his lips tight. “That is strange.”
“But maybe not,” Cyn prompted, thinking the coincidence was just too much to ignore.
Hunt gave her a look that confirmed he had his ownsuspicions about Rad and these burglaries. “The mask is so common we can’t trace it. And the guy uses a different car each time.”
She considered that for a moment. “Rad worked at a garage. He’d have access to all the cars that came in to be serviced.”
Hunt grinned at her. “You’re really smart.”
She beamed. “You already suspected him. Because of some other evidence you can’t tell me about, right?”
Hunt shrugged. “Even with the cars coming from the garage he has access to and the mask, it’s still not enough to tie him to the burglaries.”
Another thought occurred to her. “He’s robbing people’s homes, taking their valuables.”
“Yeah. What are you thinking? Do you know something else?”
“Cash for gold.”
He shrugged. “We assume the burglar is pawning or selling the items for cash.”
“I thought it odd that there were so many envelopes in their mail stack that were from cash-for-gold businesses. I mean, I get those advertisements, too, but these were envelopes with those business names and return addresses. He’s sending in the stolen jewelry and just waiting for the checks to arrive. That’s why there were so many different ones. He couldn’t trade in all the stuff through one place. That would look suspicious.”
“Up until recently, he had a good job. Why would he do this at all?”
Money. “Rad and Angela were barely scraping by on what he earned. They lived paycheck to paycheck. Any little thing going wrong put them further into debt. Likewhen the refrigerator went out three months ago. They didn’t have the money to replace it. I helped them out.”
Hunt raised a brow. “I take it you helped them out more than once.”
“Rad told my sister not to ask me for money, he’d take care of her. With his credit cards maxed, he had no choice but to take the money from me or ask his parents again. He hated doing that. It made him feel like a failure. He hated that I gave them money. He hated that they didn’t have more. Most of their fights were about money. And then they got hit hard with the medical bills for the delivery and Lana’s well-checks. He was responsible for taking care of Angela and a baby now and sank deeper in debt. I’m sure that weighed on him. Maybe this was his way of trying to get them out of a hole and then some. Fast, easy cash.”
“And he gets to take out his anger on unsuspecting homeowners.”
“He’s been cultivating that mean streak for a while now.” Cyn settled deeper into her seat. “Is there any way to connect him to the robberies through the sale of the jewelry? There’s got to be some sort of reporting those places have to do if they suspected the items they were buying are stolen.”
“Not really. The likelihood the police will spend any amount of time trying to trace items like that is fairly low. We just don’t have the time and manpower to do it. Plus, there are too many businesses to check. Stolen property like that isn’t usually recovered unless we find the thief before he’s had time to convert it to cash.”
“Well, that’s just sad.” She hated to think the victimswould simply have to come to terms with never getting back their treasured items and heirlooms.
“It’s reality. I tell people who have had jewelry and valuables stolen to check local pawn shops, but thieves are sometimes clever and drive further away to pawn the stuff, or they take the easy route like Rad is presumably doing and send it through the mail.”
“Well, you should arrest his ass and stop him from doing this to anyone else.”
“I’m working on getting some concrete evidence. All I have on Rad is your say-so on the mask and cash-for-gold payouts. For all I know, he’s been pawning his grandmother’s jewelry to make ends meet and wanted to dress up as that ghost character for some upcoming costume party.” Hunt glanced back up to the open front door of the house and the man’s boots. “Now we have a bullet we can match to a gun. But I’ve never seen him with a gun and he doesn’t have one registered to him.”
Frustration exploded inside her. “Why the fuck does he get away with everything?” She sucked in a breath to ease the wave of anger that came over her. She thought about her sister and niece and let the tears fall. “Someone needs to stop him from hurting and killing people.”
“I’m trying, sweetheart.” He put his hand over her fisted one in her lap.
“I know you are. I’m sorry. It’s just so damn frustrating that all we’ve found is her car and no sign of her or Lana. Where are they? If she’s dead, why hasn’t anyone found her body? Is the baby really alive, or am I just deluding myself into thinking he’s not that kind of monster?”
“I wish I had some answers for you. My hope is that I can get him on the home invasion burglaries, assaults and now murder, and use those charges to get him to talk to me about Angela and Lana.”
She stared out the side window as he drove them back to his place and thought the one thing she didn’t want to say to him.I feel like I may never know what happened to them.
