Tessa Stark: Desert Heat

Chapter Twenty Four

 "Stark? Are you with us?" Sheriff Gonzalez's voice sounded in her ear.

"Tessa?" Cole pressed, worried now.  "Did something strike you?"

"Actually, yes," she replied and quickly repeated the notion that had occurred to her.

"Well, by hell," the sheriff breathed, giving his head a shake once she'd finished.

"I'll second that," Cole echoed.

"Its just a theory, Sheriff," Tessa asserted. "And if you'd really rather I go looking for a second killer, that's what I'll do. I was the one who put Etty Montrose on the suspect list, so I'm going against my own work by taking her off it now. So, if you don't trust my judgment--"

"An investigation is a malleable thing, Stark. At least until all the facts are in. We all know that," the sheriff said thoughtfully. "And since you're the one we called to pull our backsides out of the fire...I'm going to have to trust that you know what you're about.  So, you go ahead on and do what you need to do."

Tessa gave the man a nod. "Am I informing the Montrose family?"

"No. Leave that to me. You're too young to be offered up as a sacrifice," said the sheriff, giving his dark head a shake. "I'll put my own head on the chopping block. You have work to do."

"We do," she affirmed. "And I want to do some of it before Etty Montrose's death hits the press. Does your office have GrayKey?"

"Harris County has one GrayKey device and it stays locked in our equipment room, to be signed out only by myself," answered the sheriff, speaking of the two inch by two inch gray box that costed roughly thirty thousand dollars.

"If Etty's cell needs a pass code, I'll need it unlocked as soon as possible," she said.

"Not a problem.  If you need it, tell Collins he has my authority to sign it out," stated the sheriff.  "Also, should I go and ring an approximate time of death out of Lydecker's crotchety backside, so you can get on?"

"Do you know what time it stopped raining last night?" she asked, the sudden inquiry lifting the sheriff's dark brows.

"It stopped at one fifteen," Cole supplied. "The thunder was keeping me awake, so I checked the time when the rain stopped, trying to figure up how many hours of sleep I could still get."

"Then Etty was killed between eleven thirty and one fifteen." Any sooner or later and Etty Montrose, who's car interior was completely dry, wouldn't have had rain soaked hair and clothes.

"Alright. Then I'll wring something else out of him," the sheriff intoned. "After that, I'll be giving him a Notice of Conduct. I'll make sure that he has someone at his elbow, monitoring his crime scenes for the foreseeable future."

"Well, then we need to finish up here and try to get to Hallie Whitmore's clutch of friends before news of Etty's death breaks," she stated, her stomach beginning to squeeze with a sense of urgency.

She really wanted to find out where they were and what they were doing while their girlfriend was out in the night, getting stabbed to death.

"Get to it, then," the sheriff told her. 

"Yes, sir," she replied. "And, tell the Montrose family...I'll do everything I can to make sure they get answers."

That said, Tessa pointed herself toward the CSU van to fetch her messenger bag, her mind trying to figure just how she was going to get to Hallie Whitmore's clutch of friends before news of Etty Montrose's death hit the town. And judging by the ever growing group of people arriving, some with nothing but cell phones to capture the goings on, it wouldn't be very long before the whole of Santa Maria knew that a second local celebutante had been murdered in cold blood.