Tessa Stark: Desert Heat

Chapter Nine

 "So, you're going to just...start over? Completely trash Rogers' entire investigation?" Cole asked, his brows drawn together as he studied her.

Tessa nodded her affirmation. "If Rogers decided one lead wasn't worth following, there could be other leads that he ignored, too. I can't trust his work."

Cole's eyes narrowed for a moment as he weighed her words. "I'm game. And you're right. Rogers might have compromised the entire case.  And he should know better. I mean, by damn!  He's a twelve year veteran of this office!"

This very situation happened in police work every day, unfortunately. Detectives were swamped with cases, the hours were long and tedious, and a human mind could only take so much before it just tired out and gave up. When that happened, bad decisions could be made.

Of course, some detectives were simply bad at their jobs. Law officers were just regular people, after all. They weren't super human. They were showing up at the office so they could get a paycheck and pay the bills and that was how they treated the job. Like a paycheck.

Looking away from Cole and back down to the file in front of her, she flipped to the next photograph in the stack, finding a picture of everything that had been inside Hallie Whitmore's purse, all neatly laid out on a stainless steel table. The next couple of snaps were close ups of those items, so they could be documented and cataloged into evidence.

Surveying the items, there seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary. There was a wallet, opened to reveal credit cards and a driver's license, a sizable amount of cash in a variety of denominations, hair brush, a foldable hand held fan with a cheap pink tassel, a fancy gold compact and matching tube of lipstick, cell phone, a charger cord, stray tissues...

It seemed that other than the body of Hallie Whitmore, there really was nothing of any worth inside the car. So, it was time to put that aside for a while.

"Here you go, Tessa," Zeb spoke as he wheeled himself up to her desk and held a file folder out toward her. "We have the pictures of Etienne Montrose and everything I could find on her, which wasn't more than her address and a single speeding ticket from three years ago."

Closing the Whitmore file and placing it onto the stack beside her, she took the one being offered, opening it to find herself looking down at a slightly dim and grainy picture of a man and woman, taken from some yards away. Despite the distance and the fact that it was taken at night, she could clearly make out Mr. Nathan Rutherford, who was standing with a young woman, his finger pointed at her, mere inches away from her face.

The next photo showed Nathan Rutherford with his hands clamped down onto the young woman's upper arms and he was leaning down toward her, almost nose to nose with her, his mouth open as he raged. However, though he was blatantly angry, the young woman on the receiving end didn't appear to terribly afraid. In fact, though the dark haired woman was captured only in profile, she seemed rather stoic.

She wasn't screaming back. She was visibly upset. She didn't even seem to be trying to get away. Instead, Etienne Montrose was standing stock still, her expression neutral, despite having a towering man clutching her arms and screaming in her face.

It was a very strange reaction.

"I can't get a cell number for Etty Montrose, but the DMV has her current address. 1600 Manor Road," Zeb stated.

"That's over in The Flats," Cole put in. "She's one of the pipeline Montroses?"

"Yes. She's the granddaughter of Charles and Merle Montrose, the founders of Southwestern Enterprise Products, which owns fifty thousand miles of natural gas, oil, and petrochemical pipelines," Zeb explained, gearing his explanation toward Tessa.