by Ben Rehder
“What kind of read did you get off Erin Gentry?” Mia asked.
I thought about that for a few seconds. “She’s no dummy. She picks up on things real quick.”
“So she very well could have understood that your whole pitch—‘help me help you’—was a crock.”
“Absolutely, but she answered all my questions anyway. So she either truly does not know whether her husband is dead, or she has a great poker face.”
“Got a gut feeling?” she asked.
“Oddly, no. Could go either way. This late-night trip to Albeck’s house is kind of suspicious, though.”
“How about this?” Mia said. “Erin and Albeck are having an affair. One or both of them killed Boz Gentry. They’re sneaking around at night because they can’t let anyone see them together.”
“Albeck killed his best friend?” I said.
“It happens.”
“Okay, true—and an interesting hypothesis. But in that case, whose body was in the vehicle?”
“Could’ve been Boz,” Mia said. “They still haven’t confirmed that it wasn’t him, right?”
“Yeah, but come on. No dental. No DNA. Fishy as can be.”
“Still. Until there’s confirmation one way or the other...”
“I know, I know,” I said.
“Hey, here’s a question. What happens if you end up proving it was Gentry in the car, and our biggest client loses three million because of it?”
“Bite your tongue,” I said.
I’ve learned time and time again that if you want access to the most intimate details of a person’s life, you just can’t beat Facebook. People will post almost anything there—no matter how outrageous or improper. It’s a very strange phenomenon.
Just learned that my grandfather was an actual Nazi.
Here’s a video of my dog eating its own vomit.
Does anybody know how to get rid of genital warts?
It’s also surprising how little most Facebook users know about the privacy settings. Believe it or not, you can use Facebook and actually maintain a fairly strict level of privacy. But, yeah, it does take some effort to understand which posts can be seen by your friends only, or by friends of friends, or by the public.
For instance, anytime you post a new profile photo, the privacy level is automatically set to Public. Anybody on Facebook can see it, and they can see any comments people make about the photo. If you want more privacy, you have to get in the habit of immediately changing the setting when you upload a new profile photo. And timeline cover photos? Those—and the comments they receive—are set to Public, and the setting can’t be changed.
Some Facebook users want a great deal of privacy, but they simply don’t understand how to maintain it. Then there are others who simply don’t seem to care one way or the other. They’ll post just about any damn thing for anybody to see. No filters, no boundaries.
And I love that, for obvious reasons.
That’s why one of the first things I do on any case is troll Facebook to see if I can learn anything helpful or interesting about my subject. I did that now, checking to see how many of the people on Boz Gentry’s list of close friends had Facebook accounts. I found five out of seven, including Alex Albeck. Most of them had their privacy settings fairly tight. I could see some comments under various profile and timeline cover photos, but nothing useful.
Which led me to the next step I usually take. I sent all of them a friend request from one of my fake Facebook profiles—Linda Peterson. Linda is an eye-catching lady, without appearing to be a spammer or some sort of con artist. Her privacy settings allow a guy like Alex Albeck to see just enough to think she’s a real person that he must somehow know. Maybe she’s a former coworker or classmate or something, right? Why not say yes? Ridiculous how often Linda’s friend requests are approved.
Then another very obvious question finally occurred to me. Did Boz Gentry have a Facebook account? Turned out he did, and the privacy settings were about as loose as they get, but he wasn’t much of a user. The few likes he’d listed told me that he was a Dave Matthews fan and a motorcycling enthusiast, and that his favorite movies were The Shawshank Redemption and The Godfather.
I spent a few minutes sifting through his timeline, but the bulk of the recent postings were from friends and loved ones lamenting his death. In fact, there was Erin, just yesterday, writing a tear-jerking missive about how much she missed him, and she had received a bunch of supportive comments, riddled with typos, from friends.
I pondered sending Boz Gentry a friend request from Linda Peterson, too. I figured, why not? You just never knew what would pan out and what wouldn’t. Sometimes I had to toss out a dozen fishing lines, figuratively speaking, knowing only one would get a strike. Granted, if Gentry was alive, he’d have to be a real moron to accept the request, but morons kept me in business.
If he did accept it, that might give me access to some of his friends’ pages, if they’d selected friends-of-friends as a default privacy setting. Again, many Facebook users didn’t understand the implications of that setting. If you had 500 friends and you chose the friends-only setting for a post, that meant 500 people could see it. But if you had 500 friends, and each of your friends had 500 friends, any post you made visible to friends of friends could be seen by 250,000 people. You can understand why I love that privacy setting. If one of my surveillance subjects didn’t accept my friend request, sometimes I could get one of their friends to accept a request, and that would gain me access to my subject’s posts.
After I was done with Facebook, I couldn’t think of anything else to do at the moment—so I broke down and made a phone call I didn’t really want to make, to arrange a meeting with a person I’d just as soon kick in the groin.
8
“Well, look who the fuck it is. The great fraud expert. How’s it hanging, fraud expert?”
It was the voice of Detective Ruelas, dripping with sarcasm. Reminding me that I was a simple videographer, whereas he was an Important Bigshot who investigated Serious Crimes. He’d managed to sneak up on me while I was looking at a menu. We were inside a Chili’s in Lakeway, not far from the sheriff’s substation where Ruelas officed. An early lunch. He’d picked Chili’s. He was a Chili’s kind of guy, and that wasn’t necessarily a compliment.
There were a thousand places I would have rather been, but I should have known that in my line of work, Ruelas was unavoidable. Interacting with cops in general was unavoidable. Occasionally I learned things that I was ethically bound to tell them. Conversely, I always hoped I built up enough goodwill that the cops would sometimes tell me things I needed to know. Back scratching.
“Detective,” I said, as Ruelas sat down on the other side of the booth without shaking hands. “Charming as ever.”
“You like charming men?” he said. “I never knew that about you.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know. I finished high school, for instance. You should try it.”
He smirked, then he looked down at my shirt. “Still shopping at Goodwill, I see. It’s amazing what you can find for three dollars.”
“Coincidentally the same price as your haircut,” I said.
He grunted and picked up a menu. That was something I’d learned about him: As offensive as he might be, it was almost impossible to offend him back. It bounced right off. Probably because, as a cop, he’d heard much worse—including outright threats that were meant in earnest, from murderers and rapists who’d give most of us bad dreams. Or maybe he had brothers. These back-and-forth putdowns were almost like a form of entertainment for him. I’ll admit it made me want to pour a bottle of ketchup onto his head. He was irritating. So was the fact that he was a reasonably good-looking guy, and successful, which made me dislike him even more. I wanted him to be a fat, balding slob with a poor complexion, crooked teeth, and no professional skills.
After about twenty seconds, Ruelas slapped his menu shut and said, “I hope you aren’t gonna waste my time today.”
“Yeah?”
“But I’ll need something in return.”
“Like what?”
We were both keeping our voices low, even though there wasn’t anybody sitting nearby. The restaurant was no more than half full at the moment, and I had asked for an out-of-the-way booth.
“I want to know what you know about Boz Gentry,” I said. “Specifically, whether or not that was his body in the truck. If it was him, I’d rather know now than later. Save myself a wasted search.”
I knew what Heidi had told me—that it was unconfirmed—but Heidi didn’t necessarily have the latest news. A guy like Ruelas wouldn’t feel compelled to keep her up to date. He wouldn’t even feel compelled to tell her the truth, because, admittedly, there were times when cops needed to keep certain facts to themselves, so as not to compromise an investigation.
“Don’t you watch the news?” Ruelas asked. “We haven’t figured that out yet.” Sarcastic.
“No problem,” I said. “In that case, I can keep what I know to myself.”
A waiter—a guy about twenty years old—showed up and asked what we wanted to drink. Ruelas said he wanted iced tea, and that he was also ready to order. He’d take the bacon burger with fries. No onions. I asked for a Dr Pepper and the grilled chicken sandwich.
The waiter left and Ruelas said, “Okay, I’m willing to share, but I ain’t promising much.”
“Does that mean you don’t know much or that you won’t share much?”
“Guess you’ll have to take your chances.”
I’d have to go first, taking the risk that he had nothing of value to tell me. There was no way around it. So I said, “Late last night, after midnight, someone drove Erin Gentry’s car to one of Boz Gentry’s friend’s houses.”
Ruelas didn’t appear to have the slightest interest, but that had always been his typical response to almost anything I told him. There was no way of knowing whether this was a surprise to him or not. He asked, “Which friend?”
Good. That told me that Ruelas didn’t know what I knew. He wasn’t keeping tabs on Erin Gentry so closely that he’d gotten a warrant to put a tracker on her vehicle. See, he needed a warrant, whereas I wasn’t encumbered by all those pesky legal technicalities. Oh, sure, I was breaking the law when I attached the unit to Erin’s vehicle, because I’m supposed to have the permission of the vehicle’s owner, but I didn’t mind committing a misdemeanor. I wouldn’t lose my job if I got caught. I’m my own boss, and I wouldn’t fire myself. Even if Erin Gentry found it, she’d have a tough time proving I’d put it on there. In fact, I wasn’t aware of any cases where anyone had actually been charged with illegally tracking someone with a GPS unit.
“My turn,” I said, ignoring Ruelas’s question. I knew he’d screw me if he could, so I had to hold back the most important part until I’d gotten something in return. I said, “Tell me about the corpse. Was it—”
I fell silent as the waiter arrived with our drinks, then left us alone again.
“Was it Boz Gentry in the wrecked truck?” I asked.
Ruelas said, “Since you don’t know who was driving her car, I’m assuming you weren’t tailing the vehicle. You woulda seen who was driving. So that means you got a tracker on it. Shame on you.”
“No comment.”
He made a face, like he was trying to decide whether it was worthwhile to continue this conversation. But I knew he’d want to know which friend’s house I was talking about. He understood the implications. Maybe it was even a missing piece of the puzzle in his investigation. Maybe he already had phone records, emails, or credit card bills showing that there was an affair between Erin Gentry and Alex Albeck. Or something entirely different. Or maybe he had nothing.
“Here’s my best offer,” Ruelas said. “I’ll tell you what we got from DNA, but first you gotta tell me which friend.”
Surprisingly, that seemed fair, assuming he meant it. So I said, “That doesn’t seem fair.”
“Fair as it’s gonna get.”
The waiter arrived with our food, then scuttled away.
“You’ll owe me one,” I said.
He didn’t say anything.
I waited.
He still said nothing. In fact, he picked up his burger and took a bite, nonchalant as hell.
You have to know which battles are worth fighting, so I said, “Alex Albeck.”
Ruelas didn’t react, nor did I expect him to. He said, “How long was the car at Albeck’s place?”
“You have to talk with your mouth full?” I asked.
“How long?”
There was no harm in answering that. “Four and a half minutes.”
“So she was probably dropping someone off or picking someone up,” Ruelas said. “Or maybe Albeck wasn’t home.”
“You’re quick. You should become a contestant on a game show.” I picked up my sandwich but didn’t take a bite yet.
“Where’d the car go after that?” Ruelas asked.
“Back to Gentry’s place.”
“Any activity since then?” Ruelas asked.
“That wasn’t covered in our agreement,” I said. “But no. No further activity. Now tell me about Boz Gentry.”
Ruelas took another bite of his burger, making me wait while he chewed. Then he said, “We put a rush on the first test, but it came back inconclusive. Now we’re waiting on a more advanced test. Takes less material to work with. But the lab is backed up. Those assholes are always backed up. In the meantime, they’re saying don’t hold my breath.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning expect inconclusive again,” he said.
“That’s it?” I said.
“Yep.”
“Well, crap.”
“Warned you I wasn’t promising much.”
“And that’s what you gave me.”
He stopped eating and actually seemed a little miffed. “Hey, douche bag, I told you exactly where it stands—and you wanna get pissy about it?”
“All right. Okay.”
He kept eating. And I kept pushing.
“What does your gut tell you?” I asked. “Was it Gentry in that vehicle?”
“Hell, no.” There was juice running down his chin. The man was a slob. I bet he didn’t eat that way when women were around. “Too handy that the dental records went missing. What’re the odds?”
“So whose body was it?”
“No idea.”
The noise level was rising as the restaurant started to fill up. “Any idea where Gentry is?” I asked.
Ruelas said, “If I knew that, I wouldn’t be sharing this special moment with you.”
“Think he’s at Albeck’s house?”
“That’d be great for you, huh?” Ruelas said. “Then you could act like you solved the case for me.”
“So Albeck wasn’t involved?”
“Didn’t say that,” Ruelas said.
“He was involved?” I asked.
“Don’t think so.”
“Why do you think that?”
Ruelas stopped chewing for a minute. “Tell you what. Why don’t I just make a copy of everything I got and send it over? What do you need? Forensics reports? Witness statements?”
I finally took a bite of my sandwich. Not bad, for Chili’s.
Then I said, “Did you search Albeck’s house?”
“On what cause?” he said.
“Hey, don’t ask me. You’re the cop.”
“I can tell you he came in willingly for an interview. No red flags. Talked for an hour until one of his lawyers got wind of it and shut us down.”
“What about Gentry’s other friends?”
Ruelas shook his head. “I’d say we’re about even.”
“I’m assuming you talked with them all and got nothing,” I said.
“Assume whatever the hell you want.”
&n
bsp; I said, “Make a deal with you. If I get another solid lead, I’ll let you know, and you do the same. Off the record. We could save each other some wasted time that way.”
Ruelas made a scoffing sound. “Fuck no. If I get a lead and don’t tell you, I’m just doing my job. If you get a lead and don’t tell me, you’re committing a crime. I’ll tell you one thing: Finding Gentry—if he’s alive—ain’t gonna be as simple as sticking a tracker on Erin Gentry’s car. If she’s involved, she’s not that dumb. I assume you’ve met her?”
“I have. She’s sharp.”
“Looks like a pretty good piece of ass, too, doesn’t she?” Ruelas said. “Speaking of which, how’s your partner?”
I stared at him for a long moment, and he looked right back, smirking. He wasn’t intimidated in the least. He had said it purely to goad me. In fact, I knew that he liked and respected Mia, but he understood that making a crack about her was the best way to get under my skin, and it worked.
The previous year, when we’d been searching for the missing girl, Ruelas had flirted with Mia, and eventually asked her out. Not very professional, because he was working the case and Mia was a potential witness. She turned him down, but still, it pissed me off, and, yeah, I acknowledge that there is a certain electricity in the air between Mia and me—an unspoken “what if?” that we both contemplate on occasion. A decent therapist might even say that’s what makes me dislike Ruelas so much. He’s a threat to my relationship with Mia. Or he was. Maybe. I don’t know.
Right now, I weighed my responses, then I said, “One of these days you’re going to lose some teeth over a remark like that.”
He wiped his mouth with a napkin and tossed it onto the table. “Yeah, well, maybe, but it’s not gonna be you who does it. I have to hit the john.”
And with that he was up and gone. I hated the fact that I was seething. Why did I care what that jerk said? And while I was sitting there, I made up my mind that I’d had enough. When he came back, I’d tell him it was time to take it outside. And we would, and I’d take his fucking head off. Maybe I’d get arrested, but I didn’t care.
A minute passed.
I glanced over my left shoulder, toward the restrooms—and then I saw him through a window. He was outside, walking toward his unmarked unit. He was leaving.