Treacherous Secrets novel Chapter 40

"When did he lose his?" Harold asked, moving closer to the edge of his seat.

"About a year ago." She looked up at them, the look on her face anger and horror. "About the same time I started seeing Kenton. Kenton had one just like it. I asked him about it and he said that he'd always liked Damon's so he had one made just like it. It was Damon's ring he was wearing, wasn't it?"

"Not exactly," Janice said quietly.

"That mother fucker was playing me the whole time!" Carol growled. She stood up abruptly. "I need to be alone. Please leave."

Harold and Janice both jumped to their feet. "Of course, but if you decide about the text and phone call information, please call us," Janice said, laying a card on the table right before Carol ushered them out of the house.

"Oh man," Harold said. "She's really starting to piece things together about Damon and Kenton's relationship, and how Kenton was probably using her to get at Damon."

"Yep, which makes Damon look even more guilty. Damn, I wish we had some kind of proof!" Janice growled.

"We need those text messages and phone calls," Harold said. "Let's go talk to the Chief and see what we can do about getting a warrant." Harold walked quickly toward is SUV. "I'll see you at the office."

Janice waved as she got in her car. Maybe, just maybe, they might finally be close to getting a break.

Janice and Harold hit the chief up first thing the next morning about getting a warrant for Carol Butler's text messages. The chief let them talk to the judge about the warrant based on the fact that Carol had identified the ring found in the casket as her husband's. The judge refused to give them a warrant because the information was retrieved illegally. Janice decided they would use the fact that Carol had gotten the text illegally as a threat to get her to give up the copies.

By the time they got back to the office from visiting the judge, they found that they didn't need a warrant or threats. Carol had brought copies of the messages for them while they were gone.

There were a hundred or more pages of the texts printed off that covered the past year. Janice and Harold split them up and started going through them. Each of them carefully made notes of the different people who had sent Damon texts. Carol was right about the secretive, cryptic nature of the messages. Damon had acronyms for just about everyone who sent him texts on a regular basis. With some of them it was very clear who they identified, while others were confusing.

Janice ran her fingers through her hair in frustration after about two hours of going over the list and then got up to fix a cup of coffee. When she came back, Harold was sitting back rubbing his eyes.

Harold nodded. "SJK stood for Kenton Jenkins, but it was backwards. S for the last letter in his last name J for the first letter in his last name and K for his first name, so JN must stand for Junior." He let out a long sigh, "But that doesn't get us any closer to figuring out who Junior is."

Janice ran her hands through her hair again and stared off toward the windows at the far side of the office. She ran over in her mind everything she had read in the texts, and nothing really jumped out. A thought came to her, and she jumped up, grabbing her purse. "Come on!"

"Where?" Harold asked, getting up more slowly.

"It just occurred to me that we never searched Kenton's office. There was nothing in the house that led us to believe the killer had been in the house, and I don't think he was. We had the phone, but he hadn't received any threatening texts, and the phone calls were to people we could trace the numbers back to. We only looked into the people we thought had reason to kill him or who were in the area. We didn't think to look into anyone else."

"That's right. There weren't any blocked numbers. We need to look at the text messages on Kenton's phone to compare them to these. Carol didn't give us the information on the phone messages, but she said all the sexual stuff had been sent in texts, and that Damon always cleared them off his phone right away. If she hadn't been getting them too, they would be lost. Don't you think Kenton would have done the same thing?"

"Possibly, but let's hope there are a few left on it, or maybe our tech guys can pull something out of the phone's data chip." Janice took off for the parking lot with Harold right behind her. "I just hope Emily hasn't cleaned his office out yet," she said as she dialed Emily's number."Hi, Emily, this is Detective Janice Carter," She said when Emily picked. She listened to Emily for a moment and then said, "I'm fine, thank you for asking. Are you at home?" Another pause, "Great, do you mind if Detective Jones and I stop by for a few minutes? Great, we'll see you in a few minutes. "