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When they pulled up on a suburban street that had everything just short of the white picket fence, Laura found herself frowning and checking the GPS twice.
“This doesn’t look right,” she muttered. “Does it? A guy who was working as a bartender lived here?”
“No, it doesn’t,” Nate said. “So, if he was working while living in… what? His parents’ house? Maybe he wasn’t able to take women back home with him.”
“Let’s figure this out,” Laura said, shaking her head. “I’m not even convinced this is where he lives, but we’ll find out.”
She got out of the car, glancing up and down the street as she did so. It was a calm day, the sky clear. The street was dotted with cars, many of them hybrids or people carriers, and at least one neighbor within sight was mowing their lawn in the front yard.
Killers could come from any walk of life, of course, but in her experience, they very often didn’t come from places like this. And if they did – well, those were the ones that usually tended to be the most terrifying. The killers who maintained a lovely family life with a wife and children and were pillars of the local community were the ones who got away with it the longest and often committed the most vile crimes. BTK came to mind.
Nate went ahead and knocked at the door before Laura caught up with him, but they were both standing on the doorstep when it opened. A brunette woman with her hair up in a high ponytail and a baby, perhaps six or eight months old, balanced on her hip, looked up at them in confusion.
“Hello?” she asked.
“Hello,” Laura said, smoothly, as if she wasn’t at all phased by the appearance of this slice of family life when she was expecting to find an ex-barman. “We’re looking for Jayson Shaw.”
“Oh, Jayson’s my husband,” she said. Her hand went up to her neck automatically, touching a pendant hanging there in the shape of a heart. A gift from him, no doubt. Laura quickly memorized its appearance. She hated that she had to think this way, but there was always a chance that she was looking at a trophy taken from the neck of one of his victims. “He’s at work right now.”
“He is? What does he do?” Nate asked quickly, as if he was just very curious.
“Oh, he manages an entertainment complex on the outskirts of the city,” Mrs. Shaw said. That raised both of their eyebrows.
“We need to speak with him,” Laura said. She took the chance, now, knowing it could end up in him fleeing – but needing to build enough trust with the wife to at least open the chance. She took out her badge and showed it. “It’s regarding something that happened at a bar he used to work at – we’re just looking to check his witness statement.”
“Oh, well, I’m sure he’ll be happy to help,” Mrs. Shaw said. She pushed the door open wider with her hip, the baby’s eyes following the motion silently. “If you want to come inside, I could video call him for you right now – we always speak on video at lunchtime, anyway.”
“That would be fantastic,” Laura nodded. This could be a good opportunity. If it was him and he was spooked, then he would be spooked as soon as he knew they were on the way. This way, at least they would be able to talk to him before he had the chance to disappear.
Mrs. Shaw led the way into a home that was pleasant, airy, and open with all the walls, furniture, and flooring in shades of white, cream, and beige. It was also just lightly on the side of chaotic – every few feet there was an abandoned pacifier, or a muslin cloth that had fallen to the floor, or a toddler’s toy. Still, Laura, who had raised just one baby, with significantly more mess, was very impressed when they turned into an open-plan living space and saw a toddler of perhaps three years old sitting in the middle of the floor with a toy train set.
“I’ll give him a call now,” Mrs. Shaw said, tucking the baby into a bouncer seat and grabbing a tablet that was sitting on the end of a plush gray sofa. Laura and Nate found themselves sitting close together on that same seat and waiting as she quickly dialed, the screen clearing not long after to a shot of a clean-shaven, clean-cut man in a blue button-down shirt against a blue sky.
“Hey, babe,” he said, not noticing Laura and Nate right away. “How’re the boys?”
“They’re good,” Mrs. Shaw said. “Honey, I have someone here who wanted to speak with you. They said it’s about something that happened at one of your bars a while back?”
Jayson Shaw refocused on them, frowning but nodding. “Sure. What’s this about?”
“Hi, Mr. Shaw,” Laura said. “We’re reviewing the files for a couple of cold cases connected to The Major Hart.”
Immediately, his expression darkened. “You’re talking about those two girls.”
Laura didn’t want to give the game away by reacting, but if she could have, she would have turned to Nate and raised her eyebrows. “That’s right. Can you tell us anything you know about them?”
“Just that I can’t believe their killer still hasn’t been found,” he said. He shook his head. “Honestly, I told the original investigators everything I could think of. I didn’t know much back then.”
Laura had looked up his statement in the car, and she knew there wasn’t much to it. “Are you sure you can’t recall anything else?” she asked. “It could be someone who wasn’t suspicious until later on, for example. Something you overheard. Or someone who stopped coming to the bar right around the time of the second murder.”
“A lot of people stopped coming to the bar after the second murder,” he said. “That wasn’t great for business. I ended up leaving, too. I didn’t want to see another one.”
“Why did you stay working at the bar for so long?” Laura asked. “We’ve seen your employee record. You were there for three years.”
“So?” he asked, giving her a blank look through the tablet’s screen.
“So, when we spoke to the current staff earlier today, they told us there’s always been a lot of staff turnover there. Staying for more than a year is usually enough to warrant a manager’s position. Yet, you stayed on as only a bartender for the whole time you worked there.”
“That was simple math,” Shaw shrugged. “I was working two jobs for most of that time – I had a shift at night and a shift during the day, and I would sleep a few hours between them on each side. They wanted me to go up to being manager, that would have meant mandatory work during the day to prep the place for opening. But the promotion didn’t come with enough of a pay raise to cover what I was earning in my second job.”
