Breathe Your Last: An addictive and nail-biting crime thriller (Detective Josie Quinn Book 10)

by Lisa Regan

  “And part of the area north of campus,” Mettner added.

  “True, but this was never going to be precise. However, at 11:03 her roommate texts her wondering where she is, and she replies saying that she met up with a friend, at which point her phone pings these towers over here.” Josie pointed to an area roughly six miles away from the campus which encompassed part of a shopping district, a portion of the interstate, and two different residential neighborhoods.

  “Well, that’s interesting,” said Mettner.

  “And at two a.m., her phone pings again back here,” Josie made a circular motion with the Sharpie, indicating the first area she had marked which included the campus and Hollister Way.

  “So she went somewhere and came back.”

  “Right,” Josie said. “Her phone pings in the campus/Hollister Way area up until Monday afternoon, after which Hummel retrieved and charged it. Then it pings over here in the center of Denton where we are, which is after Hummel brought the phone to us.”

  “But the roommate says she didn’t make it home.”

  “The roommate also said she was seeing someone. So did her sister. That someone probably met her in the street where the cut-through comes into Hollister. No one would have been out there at that time of night. Even if they were, I watched these kids walk back and forth along that path. They never take their damn eyes off their phones long enough to look around. Nysa Somers could have been standing right there with her lover and no one would have noticed.”

  “Okay,” said Mettner. “The older, inappropriate male lover picks her up at the cut-through, takes her somewhere and then brings her back at two-ish. Then what? The roommate said she never made it home. Then at close to six a.m., she gets a calendar notification telling her it’s time to be a mermaid, her bag is tossed into the woods, and she comes out of the cut-through onto campus and walks to the pool. We’re still missing four hours.”

  Josie touched the cap of the Sharpie to her chin, studying the map. “The roommate said she wasn’t sure if Nysa had made it home or not. She didn’t wake up until seven fifteen.”

  “So it’s possible that Nysa came home for four hours, got the notification on her phone, and went back out?”

  “I suppose.”

  “But when does she eat the brownie? Could the person she was with have gotten her to eat it before two a.m. with the effects still working by six a.m.?”

  “I don’t know,” Josie said. “We still don’t actually know what drug was in the brownie. Shit. So much of this is speculation.”

  “Well, not really,” Mettner said. “We know she wasn’t on campus or at home between 11:04 and 2:00, so let’s look at these addresses.”

  He handed her a page with half the addresses on them. Together they began marking them on the map. When they were finished, they stood back and studied the map. Mettner said, “Son of a bitch. This makes no sense.”

  None of the seven men lived in the area in which Nysa Somers had been between 11:04 p.m. and 2:00 a.m.

  “No,” Josie said. “It makes perfect sense. He didn’t take her to his home. Not at first, anyway. They went for a drive and then he brought her back. He lives in this area—near campus.”

  There were two push pins in the first area of triangulation. One was for a professor and the other was for Coach Brett Pace.

  Mettner reached forward and pulled the push pin representing the professor out of the map. “This guy’s married. His wife was home all night. Maybe he was able to sneak out while she was asleep, but he couldn’t have brought Nysa back with him.”

  “Which leaves Coach Brett Pace,” Josie said. “Let’s go have a chat with him.”

  Brett Pace wasn’t at the athletic center on campus. They checked various buildings but didn’t find him. One of the assistant coaches said he’d left practice early the day before and hadn’t returned. Josie and Mettner drove to his address—a white rancher on an acre of land along a rural route just above campus. A jeep sat in the gravel driveway. Empty flower beds lined the front of the house. A Denton University camping chair sat on the front stoop beneath a set of windchimes. The house had a sad air about it, and Josie had the sense that Brett Pace’s divorce hadn’t been an amicable one. As they approached the door, music could be heard from inside. Mettner rang the doorbell, setting off a frenzy of dog barks from inside. The music stopped abruptly. They heard Pace’s voice and then the dog’s barks receded to a low growl. The door swung open and Brett’s large form filled the space. In two days, he had become a different man. Stubble covered his jaw. Dark circles smudged the skin under his eyes. Instead of the neat, jaunty coach’s uniform, he wore torn jeans and a black T-shirt with holes in the collar. Even though he clearly hadn’t slept much in the last two days, he somehow looked younger in his disheveled state than when he had projected his clean-cut image. Josie wondered if Nysa had seen this side of him and been intrigued by it. Or was it the grinning, smooth-talking coach persona spouting off about team dynamics that had drawn her in?

  Wordlessly, Pace stepped out of their way and ushered them inside. An enthusiastic labradoodle greeted them, tail wagging, nose nudging their hands. Josie patted its head. Pace told it to go lay down and reluctantly, it walked to the corner of the room and curled up on a ratty white dog bed. Josie panned the room, which held only a television mounted to the wall and a leather couch. She wondered if his ex-wife had gotten the bulk of the furniture in the divorce or if he was moving. A peek behind him into the kitchen revealed two cardboard boxes on the counter with unused bubble wrap beside them.

  “Have a seat if you want,” Pace said.

  Mettner said, “We looked for you on campus. One of your assistant coaches said you left yesterday and didn’t come back.”

  Pace stood in the center of the room, shoulders slumped. “I handed in my resignation last night.”

  Josie lifted her chin in the direction of the kitchen. “You’re moving?”

  Pace sighed. “I’m not staying here. My, uh, dad has a place up by Penn State. A little cabin, out of the way. Figured I’d lay low there for a while.”

  “Lay low?” Josie said. “How come?”

  “Look, let’s just cut to the chase, okay?” Pace said. “You’re here about Nysa. Once that comes out, I’ll lose my job and be a pariah. I’m just heading things off at the pass, okay?”

  “Once what comes out?” Josie asked.

  He rolled his eyes. “You’re going to make me say it?”

  Mettner said, “Yeah. That’s our job.”

  “The affair. Well, I guess it wasn’t really an affair, since we were both single and both consenting adults. But I was her coach, so it’s a scandal, and I’m a bit older than her, and then she killed herself because we broke up.”

  Mettner gave Josie a quick side glance. Then he said, “Tell us about the break-up, Mr. Pace.”

  Pace turned and walked into the kitchen. Josie and Mettner followed him. From the fridge, he pulled a Guinness. He waved it in the air, silently offering them one. “We’re on the clock,” Josie said.

  Pace opened the beer and took a long swig, using the back of his wrist to wipe his mouth afterward. “Right, right.” He walked over to a small table in the center of the kitchen and sat down. “Look, there’s one thing you need to know. One thing that everyone needs to know, okay? Like when it comes out and her parents find out. They need to know: she dumped me. I was into her, you know? I had a couple of other women on the hook—women my age—and I deep-sixed them once things started happening with Nysa. Things between us were hot.”

  Josie hid her disgust, keeping her face blank. She was sure it was no coincidence that Pace thought things were “hot” with Nysa, and she just happened to be younger than him. She said, “If she dumped you, why do you think she killed herself?”

  He took another swig of beer. “’Cause of what I said to her on Sunday. But you have to understand, I didn’t really mean it.”

  Josie said, “When we spoke on Monday, you told me that t
he last time you saw Nysa was Friday at practice.”

  “Well, yeah,” Pace said. “I wasn’t going to blurt out that I was banging a dead student. Christ.”

  “You’re not lying now,” Mettner said. “Why did you lie on Monday?”

  Pace started peeling the label from his beer. “Because I had just found out Nysa died. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I was trying to cover all my bases. But your lady friend here—”

  “Detective Quinn,” Mettner corrected.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Pace said. “She already knew Nysa was with someone on Sunday night. It was only a matter of time before you figured out it was me. Look, I watch crime shows, you know? I know you’ve got all kinds of technology now that tells you where everyone is all the time, and I’m right because here you are. Also, I don’t know who Nysa told about us. She said she never told anyone but these chicks, they lie all the time. It’s like it’s in their DNA.”

  For a moment, Josie felt repulsed by the fact that Nysa had let this creep touch her. Then she remembered how nice and genial he’d been on Monday when she interviewed him. That had been him playing the role of a college swim coach. He probably played a lot of roles—whichever benefited him most in the moment. Although in this moment, Josie was sure she was looking at the real man beneath the veneer, and she didn’t like him one bit.

  Mettner pulled out a chair and sat across from Pace. “What happened on Sunday night, Brett? Start at the beginning.”

  Josie said, “Actually, start with Friday. You said she dumped you.”

  He sucked down the rest of his beer. “Yeah. We had been seeing each other after practices and sometimes after her classes if no one was around my office. Friday after practice, I asked her to stay late, like usual. We went back to my office. Things started to get hot and heavy and all of a sudden she stops, you know? She starts saying all this stuff about how what we’re doing is wrong and inappropriate, and she’s worried about her future. I tried to tell her it didn’t matter. No one would find out.”

  “But she dumped you anyway,” Josie filled in.

  He went back to trying to peel the label off the empty bottle. “Yeah. She said she felt bad about it, but she couldn’t keep doing it. Then she left.”

  “You didn’t try to call or text her?” Mettner asked.

  “No way, man. The first rule when you’re hooking up with a student is not to leave any trail—” He broke off, as if just realizing who he was talking to.

  Josie let the uncomfortable silence play out until he started squirming in his chair. Then she said, “How did you know where she was going to be on Sunday night?” she asked finally.

  “She always used that path behind the Gulley building. The one that goes from campus right into the back of Hollister? We met back there a few times. She didn’t like it, didn’t want us to be seen there, but no one ever noticed. I knew she usually ate on campus, so I went over and waited. Except she didn’t come out till almost ten o’clock.”

  “You waited for her for three hours?” Mettner asked.

  “Listen,” Pace responded, meeting Mettner’s eyes. “When I tell you it was hot with Nysa, I mean it was hot. Yeah, I waited three hours. Besides that, she was my star swimmer. I didn’t want her to be upset with me. We still had the whole year to get through.”

  Josie said, “What happened when she came off the path?”

  “I told her to get into the car, and she did. I told her to come home with me so we could talk, but she didn’t want to. So I said ‘just go for a drive with me and hear me out.’ She said that was fine. We drove around for a few hours but there was no convincing her. Things got a little… ugly.”

  “Ugly how?” Mettner asked.

  “I might have said some things to her that I didn’t really mean, but you have to understand she was saying ugly things, too, like I wasn’t really who I seemed to be and how the nice-guy coach thing was just an act and she felt duped, and I was just using her.”

  “You weren’t?” Josie asked pointedly.

  “Using her how?” he scoffed. “What would I possibly be using her for?”

  Ignoring his question, Josie said, “What did you say to her?”

  He swiped a hand down his face. “I might have said that if she dumped me, I would tell people about her, like how she was in bed and stuff.”

  “What else?” Josie asked.

  “I also might have said I would tell people she slept with me to get me to recommend her for the Vandivere scholarship.”

  Josie had to concentrate hard on neither physically recoiling nor punching Pace in the throat.

  Mettner said, “That’s sexual harassment. Surely, you know that.”

  “Well, if I didn’t, Nysa made sure I knew. Like my career would be destroyed if people found out about us. I gave her this whole line about how maybe I’d have to coach elsewhere, but she would forever be humiliated, and her reputation would be tarnished for life. I might have made it sound pretty bad ’cause she started crying and made me take her home, except she wouldn’t even let me drop her off at her place. I left her at the entrance to her complex.”

  Josie said, “She told you to take her home and you did.”

  “Well, yeah. She was hysterical. Plus, I started to feel a little bad, you know? She was right. Telling people about us would have been worse for me than her. But I just wanted to keep seeing her. I thought if I scared her…”

  “Yes,” Josie said. “Every woman loves to be scared into continuing a relationship.”

  Pace gave her a sour look. “Yeah, I get that. It was a dumb move. I’m not proud of it. It was a shitty thing to do, but I didn’t think she’d kill herself over it. I didn’t think she was like that.”

  Mettner and Josie exchanged another furtive look. Mettner asked, “What time did you drop her off?”

  “I don’t know. Around two, maybe?”

  “You dropped her off at the entrance to Hollister Way at two in the morning and went home?” Josie said.

  “Yeah. Next thing I know, I get to work and find out she drowned in the pool. Shit. I never meant for anything like that to happen.”

  Mettner said, “Did you give her anything before you dropped her off?”

  “Like what?”

  “Something to eat,” Josie said.

  “Something to eat? Like what?”

  Mettner said, “We believe Nysa was under the influence of something when she went into the pool.”

  “Yeah, well, that was kind of obvious since you two asked everyone on the team about drugs. I figured she was so upset, she went home, got messed up and then drowned in the pool.”

  “But you didn’t give her any drugs,” Josie said. “To calm her down? Get her to come back here with you? Maybe without telling her you were giving her something?”

  “Where would I get drugs?”

  “I don’t know,” she countered. “You tell me.”

  “I didn’t give Nysa any drugs. I didn’t bring her back here.”

  Mettner said, “Your closest neighbors can’t really see your house from where they’re at, can they?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  Mettner shifted in his chair, leaning his elbows on the table. “Well, it’s just that you say you dropped Nysa off around two at Hollister, but you don’t have anyone who can confirm that you were here alone all night, do you?”

  Pace shook his head. “No, I don’t, but I’m telling the truth. Nysa did not come home with me Sunday night.”

  Considering he lied as easily as he breathed, Josie was skeptical. She tried a different tack. “You and Nysa had been seeing each other in secret for a few weeks. Did you have nicknames for each other?”

  His brow furrowed. “What? What kind of question is that?”

  Mettner said, “Just answer it.”

  With a sigh, Pace said, “I had one for her, but she didn’t have one for me. She liked to call me by my first name. Brett. Made her feel like we were really two adults on even
ground, she said.”

  “What did you call her?” Josie asked.

  His gaze flicked to the table. “I called her my sexy mermaid.”

  Neither Josie nor Mettner reacted to this. Mettner picked up the questioning. “How do you know Clay Walsh?”

  “Who?”

  “Clay Walsh,” Mettner repeated. “How do you know him?”

  “I don’t know anyone named Clay Walsh. Who is he?”

  Josie said, “Where were you yesterday afternoon around three thirty, four o’clock?”

  Brett waved his hands to indicate his kitchen. “I was here.”

  Josie asked, “Do you like brownies, Mr. Pace?”

  His entire face puckered momentarily, like he’d eaten something sour. “What the hell kind of interrogation is this? You guys are some weird cops, you know that?”

  Without missing a beat, Mettner said, “Do you? Like brownies?”

  Rolling his eyes, Pace said, “Sure. Who doesn’t?”

  Mettner stood up. “Do you mind if we have a look around?”

  “For what? The drugs you think I’ve got? Go for it. Not many places to look. My ex-wife took just about everything.”

  He was right. Besides the kitchen table and chairs and the couch, the house held almost no furniture. Only a bed and a dresser. A folding chair served as Pace’s nightstand. There was nothing to indicate that Nysa had been there; that Pace was hiding or making drugs; or even that he had recently cooked anything. Takeout containers overflowed from his trash bin. Then again, he would have had a pretty good idea of what the police would be looking for from their first interview.

  “I think we’re done here,” she told Mettner once they’d had a thorough look around.

  Pace walked them to the door. Mettner handed him a business card. “I wouldn’t go far, Mr. Pace. We’ll be in touch.”