He slams the phone down and leans over the desk. “There are a couple of very dear people who are grief-stricken all over again because they had to see their son’s bloody body plastered on the TV screen and going viral across the Internet. What do you know about this, Dylan?”
“That’s why I’m here,” I say. “I want to know the same thing. Who leaked those photos?”
“Keegan says it was you. Sit down!”
I can’t sit down. “Keegan knows full well that I wasn’t given those photos.” My hand is still shaking as I pull out my phone and go to my photos. I swipe through until I get to the first of the pictures that I took that day, pictures of evidence markers and none of Brent’s body. I hand him the phone and watch as he swipes through.
He finally thrusts the phone back. “This doesn’t prove anything, Dylan. For all I know you deleted them on your way here.”
“Why would I come straight here when I saw it?” I ask. “Brent was my friend. I don’t want people gawking at him like this. This has Detective Keegan written all over it.”
He grunts. “Why would you even say that?”
“He doesn’t like the PR that Casey Cox is getting,” I say. “He wants to change the narrative.”
“So did I,” Chief Gates says. “You probably did too. But this—”
I finally sink down into the chair and rub my face. “Has Brent’s mother seen it?”
“I was just on the phone with Jim,” he says. “She was in Best Buy when she saw it flashed on ten big screens. She’s going to have to be sedated. She’s devastated all over again. It’s like it just happened.”
It takes me a minute to get my emotions in check. I rub my mouth, stretching it into submission. “In my whole history of detective work, I have never leaked anything,” I say. “I wouldn’t do that, especially when my friend’s family is involved. Is there any way we can get an injunction against the television station? Something to make them cease and desist?”
“It’s too late,” the chief says. “The pictures are out there. People are taking screenshots of them, passing them along to their friends.”
I let out a deep breath. “People are sick.”
“Because it’s spectacular. It’s scandalous. It’s horrible and people like blood.” His hand swings across his desk, and he knocks over a bottle of water and a coffee cup. The mug breaks into pieces on the floor, splashing its brown contents onto the baseboards.
His secretary runs in. “Sir, are you all right?”
“No, I’m not,” he snaps. “Get Keegan and Rollins in here right now. Wherever they are, tell them I want to see them. And call the DA back. I can’t avoid him any longer. Get him in here if he’ll come.”
I hope the fact that he’s calling the detectives in means he believes me. The secretary gets the DA on the phone and I give the chief a minute, walking out into the hallway, checking my phone to see where else the photos have been posted. Suddenly I hear cursing from the end of the hall and look up. It’s Jim Pace coming toward me, his eyes red, his stride purposeful. “Dylan, tell me you didn’t do this!”
The fact that he even questions me makes my eyes burn even more. I step toward him. “Jim, why would I want those pictures plastered on TV like that? Why would I want people passing them around and Elise looking at them? I can’t think of anything worse.”
Jim’s mouth trembles and he loses his hold on his emotions. He covers his face and turns his back to me. “I can’t believe this is happening,” he chokes out. “His mother . . .”
“I can’t believe it either,” I whisper.
He swings back to me. “Who had those photos?”
“The CSIs who took them in the first place,” I say, “then they would have given them to the detectives. But the detectives wouldn’t release them to me, for this very reason. There is a very distinct chain of custody for those pictures. It’s all for the sole purpose of keeping the family from having to go through this kind of thing.”
Suddenly there is a commotion down the hall, and I hear Keegan’s voice as he comes toward me, Rollins following a few steps behind. Keegan looks angry, his chin pressed in the air, looking down his nose at me like he’s about to punch me out. I stand straighter and step toward him.
Then Keegan sees Jim and his demeanor changes. He reaches out his hand. “Jim, I’m so sorry about this. We’re going to get to the bottom of it, and when we find out who did this . . .” He lets go and points his finger at me, thrusting with each syllable. “When we find out . . .”
Chief Gates hears us and calls for us to come in. Keegan is on the offensive as he goes in first. “Chief, this is what happens when we contract outside help. He’s a rookie—an amateur!—and he has no business working on a homicide case.”
“You know I didn’t release those photos,” I bite out.
“Oh yeah? How do I know that?”
“Because I asked for them and you said no!” I turn to Rollins. “You were there. You heard him.” Rollins looks like he just rolled out of bed, and he smells like alcohol. He doesn’t say anything.
“You took pictures of the pictures,” Keegan says.
“Not of the ones with his body! You were aware of every one I took. You sat right there and watched me. We talked about which ones I could have.”
“And you apparently didn’t listen!”
“Sit down!” the chief yells, kicking a chair as he passes it. Keegan and Rollins sit, but I stand with Brent’s dad in the doorway. I need to tell Jim that he’ll have to decide who he trusts—me or them—but I have to be careful.
Everyone’s talking at once, trying to go louder than the others next to him, but I remain silent and lean against the wall.
Finally, Chief Gates drops into his chair. Everyone goes quiet. “Jim, I hope you believe me when I say that I didn’t know this was going to happen, and I’m starting an investigation today to find out who released the pictures.” He looks at me, then Keegan, then Rollins as he says those words. “Believe me, when I get to the bottom of this, heads are gonna roll.”
He massages his temples and folds his hands in front of his face. “Jim, I’m calling the station and asking them to take them down, but it’s not going to stop all of it. The other media have probably picked them up by now. It’s the age of sharing and retweeting. We can’t get those pictures back.”
He leans back in his chair, rakes his fingers through his hair. “But if there’s a bright side to this, at least it’ll remind people that Casey Cox is not some female knight in shining armor. That she’s a cold-blooded killer. Maybe it will make someone turn her in, wherever she is.”
Jim turns his haunted gaze up to the chief. “That’s not enough to get that image out of my wife’s head.”
“I know,” Gates says.
“Do you?” Jim snaps back. “He wasn’t your son. You didn’t even know him. Do you really know?”
Chief Gates gets quiet now, and he seems meeker as he shrinks back into his chair. Keegan and Rollins sit looking at the floor, not willing to make eye contact with anyone. I look at Jim, wishing I could take away the pain. He meets my eyes and I see that he trusts me. That’s all I need.
These men sitting in the room with him are the ones who murdered his only son, and if it’s the last thing I ever do in my life, I’m going to make sure they face justice for that. I would love nothing more than to let Jim know that Casey Cox is not the one we should lock up for this crime, but I know he’s not ready for that news just yet.
Finally, Jim speaks again. “Dylan didn’t do this. I want him left on the case.”
I look down at the floor, thankful. I wish I weren’t deceiving him.
“All right,” Chief says. “But so help me, when I find out who leaked this, somebody’s getting fired. I may even charge the person with obstruction of justice and tampering with a crime scene.”
Keegan nods and shoots me a vicious look. Rollins never looks up.
“All right, the three of you get out of my office,” Chief
Gates says.
I walk out first, Keegan and Rollins shuffling behind me. As we reach the hall, Keegan grabs my arm. In reaction, I slam him against the wall. I’m sweating as I hold him there, my face inches from his. “Do not ever touch me,” I say through my teeth.
My actions startle him—as they startle me—and when I let him go, he takes a few steps away before turning back to me. “You’re losing it, man! You’re a hundred percent certifiable.”
Rollins stands between us, and he tries to shut Keegan up. I can see that he fears what I might do next.
But Keegan has more to say. “And for the record, you ever touch me again and you’ll see what I’m made of.”
I want to tell him that I know what he’s made of, and ask him if he intends to stab me to death like he did my friend. Ironic that he’s just out of my reach as he threatens me. I’ve got to get out of here before I do something stupid. Shaking my head, I push past Rollins and roughly brush shoulders with Keegan, daring him to react. The coward takes another step back.
I take off down the hall.
12
CASEY
I get to Dallas in the wee hours of the morning and check into a small independent motel as Miranda Henley. I sleep for three or four hours, then wake up and spend time on Facebook checking out Candace Price.
I scan down her Timeline and see that she loves shopping. She posts many of her purchases as if she were a fashion blogger. She seems to be in real estate and posts some of her listings. None of them is very high priced.
I open the pizza that I got on the way, and as I read the screen and flick through her pictures, I take off the peppers and onions before biting into it.
Candace Price is clearly a partier. Every few days she posts selfies of where she was the night before, usually in a club or a bar with lots of people in the background.
I click through her photos as I eat, and there are many of them. Finally I click to one of her sitting in a stadium at a ball game, Gordon Keegan sitting next to her, staring at the field. This one was only taken last fall.
I recognize Keegan’s profile, but would anyone else? I scroll my cursor over his face, but it’s not tagged. Even so, I’m convinced now that Candace is a key person to help me take Keegan down. I get my legal pad and list everything I can figure out about her. I get her real estate office name and phone number from the signs in the yards of the listings she’s posted. On those listings, I find her personal cell phone number. I scroll through her posts and find where she likes to shop, narrowing it down to an area of town. I see her car in another photo. It’s a white Mercedes SUV, a high-ticket item. Her license plate is even visible, so I get her tag number.
Then I see pictures of her on a Viking cruise ship, floating past the Greek Islands, a picture of her at the Vatican, another of her in a bikini at the beach in Turks and Caicos. She gets around. It seems like she makes a lot of money for a Realtor with low-priced listings. I spend the next couple of hours writing down every fact I can find about her, every potential lead to follow. Then I do a search on the Internet and find her address. It isn’t that hard.
I’ll have to get a car today so I can follow her around. I’ll need to stay in Dallas for a while. That makes me nervous, because it’s only three hours from Shreveport, but I don’t have any other choice if I want to expose Keegan and get my life back.
After I shower, I turn on the TV and watch an hour and a half of the news cycle, waiting for anything about myself.
After a couple of hours, Fox News’s show Outnumbered comes on, and I’m in the fourth segment. As they show pictures of me as my former self and talk about what I did in Shady Grove, they play clips of Laura and her family reunited. Miss Lucy is sobbing as she embraces her granddaughter. It makes all I went through worth it. Sandra is holding her grandchild as if they’ve already bonded. They show pictures of their horrific captors.
Then they talk about me.
“This morning, a Shreveport TV station aired photographs of the Brent Pace crime scene. This is a grim reminder of what Casey Cox is alleged to have done to her close friend.”
They flash a picture of Brent’s body on the floor, just as I’d found him. His face is blurred out, along with the knife wounds, but the blood is visible. I can’t even look.
“Casey Cox should be found and prosecuted for the brutal murder of Brent Pace, regardless of what happened in Shady Grove. Mark my word, there is something sinister that explains why she was in that house and saw the kidnapped girl.”
“I agree,” one of the other leggy panelists says. “And the fact is, the Shady Grove events won’t even be admissible in court. The jury won’t be told what she did in Georgia.”
“But you honestly think the jurors won’t have heard about that? Let’s face it, it’s going to be hard to get objective jurors who haven’t followed the news about her.”
“They will be instructed not to consider anything except the evidence presented regarding Brent Pace. These pictures will be imprinted on their minds.”
I feel sick, like the waitress in the diner. But the nausea just hovers in my chest, with no relief.
“Well, police have to find the girl first.” The blonde who’s been quiet stops the others with that comment. “I have to wonder if she really is the one who murdered Brent Pace. If she risked her own exposure to rescue the kidnapped girl, does she really have it in her to be a killer?”
“If she didn’t do it, why did she run?” one of the other women says. “Police haven’t been able to find her to interview her, so we don’t know what she might have told them. And let’s not forget all her DNA left at the scene, plus the knife found in her car, along with a blood trail.”
It’s almost like it’s a game to them.
If only there were other journalists courageous enough to dig like Brent did, but then they’d just end up dead. When the segment is over, I turn off the TV and sit alone on the bed, hugging my knees. I want so badly to go home to see my little niece, breathe in the scent of her. I want to see her reach out to me, and teach her to call me Cay-Cay. I want to see my mom.
I think back to the things that Dylan said in the emails we exchanged with each other. He’s been through a lot, too, and he leans on the Bible. Maybe I should give it a chance. I reach into the bed table drawer for the Gideon Bible that always seems to be there. There’s a navy-blue book with the stamp of the Gideons at the bottom, but there’s also another one there—a leather-bound Bible that looks well used. I pull it out and open the front. There is a name inside—Cole Whittington—and I see a folded paper sticking out of the top. I pull out that page, unfold it, and read:
Dear Daphne,
By the time you find this, I’ll be dead.
I almost choke, then catch my breath and read on.
I didn’t want to do it without saying goodbye, but I want you to know how much I love you. You have been a beautiful picture of God’s love for me since the day I met you, and I cherish it. But these last few weeks have been a nightmare for all of us, and I want it to end. I love our children, and this threat hanging over our heads is too intense. I can’t let them suffer while I’m dragged through the gutter. It has to end for the sake of everyone I love. Please remember me to the kids the way I was before the accusations, not after, and let them know that their daddy cherished them too.
He signs it Cole. My heart hammers as I look around the room for signs of blood or anything that indicates he killed himself right here. But if he’s dead, they clearly didn’t find the note or the Bible.
If he killed himself, then his wife needs to have this Bible.
I summon my strength and go down to the desk. A girl is working, busy over her computer, but she looks up at me and smiles. “May I help you?”
“Yes,” I say. “I’m in room 138, and I was just wondering, has anything weird happened in that room?”
She frowns. “Anything weird? Like what do you mean?”
“Like maybe a death? A suicide, maybe?”
&n
bsp; She doesn’t bat an eye. She just grins and shakes her head. “No, ma’am. I’m sure I would know. I’ve worked here for five years. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’m just getting a vibe.”
“If the room’s not acceptable, I could move you.”
I think of telling her about the suicide note and the Bible I found, but then I’d have to hand it over for her to return it, and what if they just throw it in Lost and Found? No, someone’s got to make sure his family gets it. “No, that’s okay,” I say. “I’m fine. Just . . . never mind.”
I know she thinks I’m a kook, and now I wonder if I’ve called too much attention to myself. “Could I get a Diet Coke?” I say, hoping to change the subject.
“Sure,” she says and reaches into the little store next to the desk. She gets one out of the fridge, sets it on the counter. “You want to add this to your room?”
I pay cash right there, then ask, “And how late is the pool open?”
I hope these last questions will distract her from thinking I’m a wannabe medium. I take my Diet Coke and go back to my room. I read over the note again, extracting all the clues I can. I feel an intense sense of responsibility, as if this should trump all else in my life, but I know that’s crazy.
I should just let it go and turn the Bible in at the desk. But what if he killed himself somewhere else, and his family members don’t know there’s a note? What if it could give his wife some comfort?
I can almost hear my sister’s voice, telling me to mind my own business. Any departure from my plan puts me more at risk of being caught and killed. But the thought of that note plagues me.
I stuff the Bible into my bag. I’ll decide what to do later. But first I need to do what I came here to do, and for that, I have to find a car.
I search Craigslist and find one that looks like it’ll do, one that I can afford that is offered by an individual, so I call them and ask about it. They’re willing to bring it to the Kroger parking lot a block down from my motel so I can test drive it. I leave the hotel and walk down.
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