Fatal Hearts Read Online Free PDF Page B

time anyway. He was convinced someone had taken Josh’s cell phone. And the first thing they would have done was yank out the battery, destroy the SIM card, and pulverize the phone.
    When Boyd had alerted Morgan that Josh’s phone was missing—another factor that had tipped them from sudden death investigation to suspicious death—the cops had used the police K-9 to do an article search of all the walking trails, in case Josh had simply dropped it on his jog. The search had netted lots of interesting items, none of them belonging to Josh.
    “No iPad or Android tablet? Anything like that?”
    Boyd shook his head. “I highly doubt it. I gave him a PDA once, thinking he might prefer to use it for notes instead of those notebooks, but he never really took to it. He just preferred pen and paper. Said they never crashed or got hacked.”
    “You still think he kept a physical notebook on the birth investigation?”
    “More than ever. This investigation was so personal to him, I can see him not trusting his research notes to digital. The forensic sweep of the laptop pretty much confirms my hunch. Which leaves a couple of possibilities. Either his notes were stolen along with his phone when he died or he might have hidden the notebook somewhere.”
    Morgan tilted his head. “You really think he might have hidden it?”
    “If he didn’t have it on him, yes. I’m pretty sure he’d secure it somehow. He’d never just leave it lying around.”
    “Hidden it where?”
    “His room at Stratton House is the most obvious place.”
    Morgan nodded. “His personal belongings were all removed, weren’t they?”
    “Yeah, I packed up the room myself on my first visit to collect my brother’s body. I didn’t get around to doing a deep search of it at that time.” Between cracking passwords and reading everything on Josh’s computer, scanning those notebooks, meeting with police, dealing with the Fredericton funeral director on the logistics of preparation for transport, and checking in frequently with his parents, he hadn’t had time for that kind of search, even if it had occurred to him to do so. Which it hadn’t. “I plan to go by there soon, see if they’ll let me have some time in the room, if it hasn’t been rented to someone else.”
    “Good plan.” Morgan nodded approvingly. “I can’t see them denying your request, if the room is still empty.” He looked down at the file. “Shall we get back to Josh’s day?”
    “Please.”
    “He was at his desk at the paper by seven fifteen and filed his story. He worked until eleven.” Morgan’s finger trailed over the printed report as he scanned it. “Then he went for a lunch-hour jog at Odell Park, which he did on days when he didn’t get in a morning jog. When he got back into his car, he suffered a fatal cardiac arrest. Another park visitor discovered him toward late afternoon. The sun had moved and your brother’s car was no longer in the shade. The guy thought it was odd someone would choose to doze in a hot car in the direct sun and went to check on him. He called nine-one-one, and there was an officer on the scene in four minutes. That’s what we know.”
    “Right.” Boyd’s hands fisted despite himself. “Because there’s no security camera in the parking lot.”
    Morgan pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s a park, McBride. People go there to sit on benches and eat their lunch or feed the ducks or walk or run. I can’t remember the last crime committed there. Besides, you know how expensive it is for a city to install cameras in all of their public locations. I doubt this would be seen as a high priority for City Council.”
    Boyd took a deep breath and exhaled, unclenching his fists. “What about other people at the park? You say lots of people eat their lunch there and it must have been pushing eleven thirty or quarter to twelve. No one saw anything unusual?”
    Morgan shook his head. “Nothing. Which suggests if he was in distress, it