“Yep. You win. That is the clear solution.”
“Great. I’m glad we had this talk,” she said.
“Now I just need to figure out what a stockbroker does.”
“I’m pretty sure you just need to have zero moral compunction.”
“Yes, but what do they do?” I asked.
“Wear suits? Which, by the way, is another skill you’d nail.”
“Again, not a description of their day-to-day activity.”
“I can’t help you, friend. The entirety of my knowledge base is eighties movies.”
Honestly, so was mine. “Right. Well, I guess that won’t work then.”
“Damn. At least we tried. I guess you just need to be a drug dealer.”
“We did our best.”
* * *
Lane and I shared a quiet evening. She seemed exhausted from her first day back at school and overwhelmed by the amount of work she needed to catch up on. By nine, she was fully ensconced on the couch with a laptop, iPad, and three textbooks. I retired to the patio. Andy had helped me hang the outdoor heaters a few weeks back, but it was the first night I’d lit them. I was halfway through my beer when the door behind me opened. I turned, expecting Lane and found Laurel instead.
“Hey.” I smiled. It was involuntary.
“Hey.” She leaned down and kissed me.
“You’re done late.”
She nodded slowly. “Yeah. Today was…” she paused, searching for the right word, “long.”
“You want a beer?”
She collapsed into the Adirondack next to me. “God, yes.”
“Okay. I’ll be right back.”
“Cool.”
I went in. Lane didn’t look up. When I passed, I could see a flash of white from her AirPods under her messy bun. I snagged another beer and popped the cap off. When I went back outside, Laurel had her head back with her eyes closed. I set the bottle on her armrest.
“Thanks.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“I don’t even know how. It’s a complicated story.”
“Okay.” I put my head back and looked at the four visible stars. Warm air from the heaters drifted across my face. It was undercut by a cool breeze, but the combination was quite pleasant.
The door on the Ward side of the house opened and Andy stuck her head out.
“You’re here,” she said.
“That is accurate.”
“I texted, but you didn’t answer.”
“My phone is inside,” I said.
“Oh, hey, Laurel. I didn’t see you.”
“Hey, bud.” Laurel opened her eyes and grinned at Andy, but it was a weak smile.
“I was just wondering if you could read my essay for English,” Andy said to me.
“Is it due tomorrow?” I asked.
“No, Wednesday.”
“Can it keep until tomorrow night?”
“Yeah, totally. I’ll email you the link. Thanks.”
“No problem, tiger.”
Andy disappeared back inside the house. I closed my eyes and went back to my contemplation of air movement. Every few minutes, I heard Laurel lift her beer and take a sip.
“Digital Forensics found an app called Locus on two of the vics’ phones,” she said.
I sat up straight and opened my eyes. “Okay. What’s that?”
“It’s a stalking app. It’s invisible on the home screen, but it runs in the background.” Laurel was looking up at the porch ceiling, studying the shadows.
“Doing what?”
“Some apps record and transmit the text messages and phone calls someone makes. Or they will track social media usage. Or location. They’re commonly used by abusers who want to monitor their partner. Some stalkers use them, but it’s harder to access the phone to install if you don’t live with someone or have their password.” Her speech sounded rehearsed, like she’d given it twenty times that day.
“So someone was stalking them? Presumably before assaulting them?”
She nodded. “That’s one of the theories. It’s also possible that he installed the app after assaulting them when they were unable to intervene. But neither of them remember him taking their phones.”
“Why would he do that?”
“We don’t know.”
“Maybe he’s trying to monitor if they report him?”
“It’s possible. At the moment, it looks like all this app does is transmit location,” she said.
“Can you track where it’s transmitting to?”
She shook her head. “Not yet. Brika—he’s the detective from Digital Forensics—is working on it.”
“Wait. You said two phones?” I asked. She nodded. “Does that mean it wasn’t on the others?”
“Don’t know yet. The young woman who runs the Instagram account was our second interview. We found the app on her phone when we were trying to use that geotracking thing Duarte was talking about.”
“Got it. And then you checked the next woman’s phone during her interview for good measure.”
“Yep. Tomorrow, we are bringing back the first woman as well as all of the others.”
“Were they freaked out when you told them?”
Laurel nodded like five times, very slowly. “It was a rough conversation.”
“Fuck.” They must have felt violated all over again.
“Yep. So that was today.” She was still staring up.
“And you get to do it all again tomorrow,” I said.
“Hopefully, Brika can track wherever the fuck the signal is transmitting to. The fucked up thing is that this is probably the best lead we’ve gotten.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“This. The fact I can’t make it better.”
She finally looked at me. “You do, though.”
I decided to take her at her word. “When’s the last time you ate?”
“Does coffee count?”
“It does not. Can I interest you in a grilled cheese?”
“Now that you’ve said it, you have to make me one.” She looked very serious.
“On it.” I stood.
“With tomato.”
“And mustard and turkey. I got you.”
She smiled at me. She still looked tired on a visceral level, but she didn’t look hopeless anymore.
I went inside. Lane was crashed out, her books piled on the floor, her iPad balancing dangerously on her knee. I touched her shoulder.
“Lane,” I said softly.
She woke with a sharp inhale. “Oh, hey.”
“Why don’t you go crash? This will all be here tomorrow.”
“I can’t. I need to read two more chapters.”
“Okay. I can make a pot of coffee. Or you can crash, knowing you’ll retain more information when you’re not exhausted.”
She rolled her eyes at me, but then she yawned. “Fine. But only because I’m not going to campus until noon tomorrow.”
“You going to need a ride?”
She yawned again and shook her head. “One of my sorority sisters is picking me up. I spoke with a few of them today.” She started to stack her electronics with her texts. “They were really good. Kind of closing ranks around me. It was nice.”
“Good. That sounds good. I’m glad.”
“Same here.” She stood and a wealth of blankets fell off her. She collected the pile of study materials and crossed to her room. Her fuzzy socks were silent on the hardwood, but Nickels heard her anyway. She darted out of the hall and sprinted into the study before Lane could close the door.
“I see how it is,” I said to no one.
In the kitchen, I assembled the ingredients for Laurel’s grilled cheese. I dropped the sandwich into the hot pan, careful not to burn my fingertips. The butter crackled and made the air fragrant. When the bread was golden and the cheese was on the verge of melting out, I slid the sandwich onto a cutting board. I cut it in half diagonally like God intended it.
&
nbsp; When I went back outside, Laurel’s eyes were closed. I thought she was asleep for a moment, but then she lifted her bottle and drained it.
“You want another?” I asked.
She opened her eyes and took one of the cold bottles I was holding out. Her gaze landed on the sandwich and she sat up straighter. I handed it over.
“This.” She bit off one of the corners.
“This?”
She closed her eyes and nodded. “Yeah. This.”
“Cool.”
Chapter Seventeen
“They all have it,” Laurel said when I answered the phone.
“Huh?”
“The fucking app. Locus. It’s on every single one of their phones.” The sounds of the squad room filled in at the edges of her voice.
“Fuck. Seriously. What the fuck.”
“We’re all spinning in circles here. It’s a shitshow.”
“How can I help?” I asked.
There was an indistinct mumble, then the background noise cut off. “Are you asking as my girlfriend or as my CI?”
“Umm. I don’t know. Girlfriend, but I can be your CI if you prefer,” I said.
“Shit. I’m sorry. That was a dumb thing to say.”
“It’s fine. Just tell me what you need.”
“I need you and Nate to come down to the station and help us sift through Instagram photos. Again.”
“Did you guys narrow them down?” I asked.
“Yeah. Well, Duarte did. He took the locations Brika found and cross-referenced them with the frat parties happening on those dates.”
“That doesn’t seem like a fun task.”
“Apparently, it wasn’t. But we’re kind of all hands on deck over here right now. Even if that means cross-referencing frat parties,” she said.
“Sounds like a blast. Do you need anything else? Or just photo sorting?”
“That’ll do for the moment.”
“Got it. I’ll see you soon.”
“Thanks, Cash.”
I tapped Nate’s name. When he answered, he sounded out of breath. “What’s up?”
“Sac PD is requesting our presence.”
He groaned. Paused. Groaned again to make sure I got the message. “Dude.”
“I know.”
“What do they want?”
“The same thing as before, basically,” I said.
“I cannot sit there and watch them stick their heads up their asses again. That was painful.”
“I think the photos will be more specific. Duarte narrowed down the parties.”
“They are so incompetent. How the fuck did they catch us?”
“I got distracted by a hot chick.”
“Oh, yeah. Right.” He laughed. “Thanks for that.”
“Anytime, man. Anytime.”
“So they think we are going to happen to identify the rapist in Instagram photos?” he asked.
“Yep. But they are also trying to track him digitally. Forensics found a stalking app installed on all the victims’ phones.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
“Yep.”
“That’s skeevy as shit.”
“Agreed.”
“Okay. I’m stuck on campus for a few more hours, but I can head to the station when I’m done. I’ll even bring you dinner.”
“Thanks, man.” We hung up.
I wrote an ambiguous note for Lane and left it on the coffee machine. I knew I could text her, but this was apparently our thing. Her phone seemed like the last bastion of her youth. Writing her notes made me feel like a grandpa, but in a good way.
It wasn’t until I was tying my shoes that I landed on a thought I’d been circling since the night before. If Lane was, in fact, one of the victims in Laurel’s case, her phone would have Locus installed on it as well. There was no evidence of ketamine in her tox screen, which was plenty of evidence for me, but Laurel wasn’t convinced. I didn’t like her job, but I at least respected her ability to do her job. If she thought Lane was one of the victims, then maybe Lane was one of the victims.
“Fuck,” I said.
Nickels was unimpressed.
I grabbed my wallet and keys and headed out. Laurel had surely thought about this already. I just needed to ask what her game plan was.
When I got to the station, I went upstairs and paused at the edge of the squad room. I’d seen it busy in the middle of a weekday and I’d seen it utterly still, but this felt different. There weren’t many detectives working, but the noise of them working was overwhelming. The air was weighty with their frustration. Across the room, Laurel stopped typing and looked up. Our eyes met and she took a deep, full breath. The skin around her eyes tightened and turned faintly pink like she was about to cry. I pressed my lips together and tried to smile. She gave me a half nod and went back to her computer.
Duarte came out of one of the conference rooms. I crossed the room to him.
“Duarte, hey.”
“Cash.” He grinned. “Are you here to help with the photos? Kallen said you were going to.”
“Yep. I’m excited.” I was not excited.
“Cool. Perfect. I just need to grab a laptop. You can head in though. This is the room.” He pushed open the door he’d just come out of. “I’ll be there in a sec.”
“Super.”
I went in and realized we’d been assigned the small, shitty conference room. There were stacks of photos on the conference table. I glanced at the first few in one of the stacks. Someone had enlarged and enhanced the people from the background of all the Instagram photos we had looked through previously. I glanced at the next stack and realized it was a different party. They must have been from Duarte’s cross-referencing. This was why I never did anything that involved cross-referencing.
An hour later, Duarte and I had settled into a system. The photos were spread in a grid. We were attempting to identify the hundreds of twenty-year-old frat boys and had tentatively identified two. Plus, Digital Forensics had identified three others because they’d been tagged on Instagram. So things were going real well. There were a few dozen guys who were present at more than one party. We were focusing on them.
“Maybe we need a white guy in here helping us,” I said.
“Why’s that?”
I stared at a set of three photos. I knew they were different dudes because they were wearing different outfits and were at the same party. But aside from the different shirts, I could not tell them apart. There was not one distinguishing feature between them.
“Because clearly all white guys look the same to us.”
“No,” he said with the barest shred of confidence. “That one has a high nose and distinctive brow. That one might have a tattoo on his hand. And that one has no chin.”
“Well, shit. You solved it. Let’s go home.”
“I’m just saying I can tell the difference between them.”
“Good for you, bro. I can’t. How the hell are we supposed to identify them if all we are able to do is determine that this dude is probably not that dude?” I pointed between two photos for emphasis.
Duarte shook his head and collapsed into a chair. “I don’t know.” He crossed his arms and chewed the inside of his lip.
“What?” I asked.
“What?” he asked.
“You’re all twitchy. Say whatever it is you want to say.”
“No. What? No, there’s nothing.” He was very convincing. “It’s not professional.”
“I’m a drug dealer. Professional was gone a long time ago.”
He contemplated that with a borderline-comical furrowed brow. Then he nodded. “Okay. It’s just that this is useless. I’m all for putting in the work, but we are wasting our time.” He stood and started circling the room. “The rapist totally might be in these photos, but we’re not going to find him this way. At best, we will catch him, then find him in the photos, which might give us a better idea of the timeline. ”
“So why are we doing this?”
&n
bsp; He shook his head. “I don’t know. Because Fenton and Blackford are hoping he will appear at five different parties and it will be clear that he’s our guy.”
“That’s dumb. Even if that’s the case, we still won’t be able to track him down.”
“I know. But that’s a manageable task. If we have an image, we have something to go on.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway. None of these guys are in your little database.”
That comment made Duarte fussy. “It’s not my database. NCIC and Versadex are what all law enforcement uses.”
“Whatever. It’s not helping us.”
“Well, your method of looking through your contacts and saying ‘he kinda looks like the dude who hung with Matt’ isn’t exactly working either.”
“Hey, I’m just working with what I got. This was not my idea.”
“Fuck. This is not going well.” Duarte stopped walking, crossed his arms, and glared at the photo spread.
There was a knock on the door and Fenton stuck his head in. “How’s it going in here?”
Duarte and I looked at each other.
“Great,” Duarte said.
“Yep. Super,” I said.
“You making any headway?” Fenton asked.
Duarte nodded in a very chill way. “A bit. We’ve identified a couple. Mostly just settling into a system.”
Fenton glanced at me and I smiled. “He’s good at picking out distinguishing features.” That was all I could think of to say.
“Okay.” Fenton nodded at that neat tidbit and backed out.
When the door shut, Duarte and I looked at each other and grinned. This was an idiotic endeavor, but at least we were playing on the same team. My phone rang. I checked the readout. It was Nate.
“Hey, buddy.”
“I’m finally leaving campus. How’s it going over there?”
“It’s a shitshow. Duarte just had a tantrum,” I said.
Duarte gaped at me. “I did not.”
“Duarte throwing a tantrum? That sounds hilarious,” Nate said.
“Yeah. It was pretty cute.”
“So I’m on my way. You want me to stop at that deli you like in Davis?”
Cash and the Sorority Girl Page 15