Near Miss

Chapter Thirteen: Notes

Rhiannon had borrowed some of Theodore's graph paper and was using it to make notes. Not her usual set of notes, with cramped printing and confusing diagrams (over the years, Rhiannon's handwriting was becoming gradually more illegible; she suspected now that medical school was the culprit for doctors' handwriting stereotypes). Today, she was writing down clues.

All the interesting aspects of each interview, all the leads to follow up on, all the strange discrepancies associated with the case, step by step until Rhiannon discovered the pattern.

First was Blaise Jorgeson Junior. The timing here was very important, Rhiannon was sure of it.

9:50- heard something outside. Crash noises, yelling, tire screeches? Car door?

9:54- called 911

10:09ish- ambulance arrives

"Interesting things," Rhiannon muttered to herself. "Strange things."

Car door.

She rewrote the words below the timing, with deeper printing, making sure to reinforce the strongest lines. Jorgeson thought he had heard a car door opening shortly after the crash. No one else had reported it, meaning that the car door he'd heard must have been opened and closed by the killer.

So that was one thing, she thought to herself. What else?

Other Lindquists / Motive

It was the only other connection between Blaise and the rest of the case. The mysterious Other Lindquists. He hadn't explained who they were, and they hadn't reached out to Rhiannon. She could only hope they did. Anyway, according to Blaise, they only became relevant if Dorian Lindquist were to die as well- and, even then, they would barely inherit anything.

Dorian Lindquist, she wrote for good measure. She'd have to look into him somehow, and she had a distinct feeling that Jorgeson was not going to be any help.

There was one more idea nagging at her mind, something strange, something that probably didn't matter at all but was at least worth mentioning.

Boy, she wrote. Jorgeson had called Malachi a boy. The boy on the ground, she seemed to remember. That was before he knew who it was; it was a judgement he'd made based solely on what he'd seen. Malachi was an adult. No one else had called him a boy. He had a job, he lived in an RV, he was twenty-one years old.

Rhiannon realized that, despite all her investigating, she still hadn't seen a picture.

"Right," she muttered to herself. "Time for Sonia."

VACATION. The word was scrawled in capital letters, standing several squares high on the sheet of graph paper. Sonia had opened the conversation by saying that she thought Malachi was on vacation. But it quickly became clear that not only did she already know he was dead, but she'd could also already have talked to the police- sometime between eleven the previous night and nine in the morning, when Rhiannon had interviewed her. Admittedly, though, that seemed unlikely. At any rate, she had lied at least twice.

It was obvious that Sonia knew how Malachi had died. The anecdotal story about Gina So trying to sell her the other lot hadn't been verified, but it at least sounded reasonable. The police, though... Sonia had said the police had the ring. Rhiannon was willing to bet that whenever the police talked to her, she'd say that a private investigator had the ring. In Rhiannon's mind, the solution was fairly simple: Sonia was more interested in stealing a valuable ring than providing help to the investigation.

But that still didn't explain why she had told Rhiannon about the ring in the first place.

Maybe she actually did think it had something to do with Malachi's death. Maybe she wanted to tell Rhiannon, on the off chance that it might help, but in a way that would hopefully prevent her from being caught.