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today?” I asked.
    “I should be able to, depending on when I get out of here.”
    “Let me know. I need to get some flight information for the husband. I want to be the first face he sees when he gets off the plane,” I said.
    “The husband was out of town, huh?” Ed asked.
    “Atlanta,” I said.
    Ed ran his fingers through his hair. “Well, that’s convenient.”
    “Okay Ed, we’ll leave you to it. Give me a buzz later.”
    “No sweat, Kane.”
    Hank and I headed back to the station.

Chapter 3 - Kane
    I sat at my desk going through my notes from the scene and the neighbor’s statement—he checked out. I had tried calling the husband five or six times. Each of my calls went straight to his voice mail. I’d left him a message each time. After my talk with Waterman, I knew he didn’t have a flight booked back to Tampa yet. If the guy was guilty, he could have run. The time inched toward five o’clock, and Callie and I had dinner plans. I figured I’d try the guy one last time before I started to shut everything down for the day.
    I scooped up the phone and dialed the number for the husband—it rang twice in my ear.
    “This is Charles,” a man answered. His voice sounded normal, not distressed.
    “Mr. Riaola, this is Lieutenant Carl Kane with the Tampa Police Department. I left you a few messages.”
    “I got them. I’m sorry I didn’t call back right away.” He paused. “I just needed some time to think. Plus, I’ve been trying to find a flight back.”
    “Okay, well, I just wanted to introduce myself to you and see when we’d be able to get together. I understand you’re in Atlanta on business, and this has to be terribly difficult. Yet, the sooner we can meet, the better.”
    “I’ve been trying to find a flight back. There’s just nothing available. My original nonstop flight gets me back tomorrow early afternoon. I think I’m just going to drive my rental car back.”
    I jotted no flights and rental car down in my notepad with a question mark after each.
    “Can… Can you tell me what happened?” he asked.
    “She was stabbed.”
    “Stabbed?” he asked.
    “Yes, I’m sorry.”
    He took a moment to respond. “Have you found who did it?”
    “Not as of yet. We have a team collecting evidence from the house now and are just beginning our investigation.”
    Silence came from the other end of the phone again. Riaola cleared his throat. “What evidence did you find?”
    In all my years working homicides, I’d never heard that question asked right out of the gates.
    “We’re still processing everything,” I said.
    “Has she been taken from the house?”
    “She has, Mr. Riaola.”
    “How do I…? Where do I need to go to?”
    “You’ll need to speak with someone at the Hillsborough County medical examiner’s office.” I gave him Ed’s number and flipped my notepad to a clean page. “While I have you on the line, I’d like to ask a few quick questions.”
    He let out a deep breath of air into the phone. “Sure.”
    “When did you leave for Atlanta?” I asked.
    “I left Monday morning.”
    “And you flew out of TPA?”
    “Yes.”
    I tapped the end of my pen on my notepad. “And this was a planned business trip?”
    “It was. I work in sales for an industrial supply company. I flew in for a Tuesday and Wednesday trade show. I was flying back tomorrow morning.”
    “The company you work for?”
    “American Industrial Materials.”
    “Is that out of the Tampa area, here?”
    “It’s based in Tampa, yes.”
    I wrote down his employer’s information in my notebook. “Did you park at the airport in Tampa, or were you dropped off?”
    “I parked there.”
    “And do you remember which lot?”
    “Um, I’m sure I have the information lying around somewhere. It was one of the long-term lots. I have to ask how any of this is important in finding the person who did this?”
    “I just need to be able to verify your whereabouts.”
    More silence came from the other end of