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Fear No Truth

Page 8

by LynDee Walker


  Five days to find an answer.

  12

  Thwack. Pause. Thwack. Pause. Thwack.

  I stepped through the door at Lone Star Gymnastic Studio to the long-familiar sound of a bars routine in progress, pulling in a lungful of sticky air laced with a somehow inoffensive fusion of rubber, chalk, and feet, a tsunami of memories rattling my resolve.

  Breathe. Smile. Charity loved few things more than being the girl who could fly. Gymnastics held happy memories, if I could choose to see them that way.

  A muffled thud and a hasty “I thought you had another layout?” drew my eyes to the floor, where a little blonde pixie limped out from under the bars.

  “Dammit, Lena, ‘spot her’ means don’t let her break her leg!” A booming shout echoed off the metal warehouse walls as another girl jumped to grab the low bar. “Gretchen, are you all right?”

  I leaned on the granite countertop of the tall reception desk, watching tiny girls in shiny leotards defy gravity twelve different ways.

  A petite woman with a neat brunette bob shouted corrections and praise from a sporty fuchsia wheelchair at the edge of the mats lining the balance beam. I crossed the space and touched her shoulder.

  “Stella Connolly?” I flashed my ID before I tucked it back in my hip pocket.

  Stella nodded, her brow furrowing. “Is something the matter?”

  “I’d like to ask you a couple of questions about Tenley Andre if you have minute.” I kept my face neutral, my words and tone walking a line between businesslike and friendly. Every bit as tricky as the uneven bars the tiny blonde had crashed from moments before.

  Forgetting to breathe, I stared at Stella and waited for my score.

  The other woman’s face smoothed and she shook her head. “This was all taken care of more than a year ago. I’m good with the settlement. I don’t want Tenley to be in trouble.”

  I nodded, because while curiosity about the car crash burned, I needed Stella to think I was an insider. “I’m not here about the accident.” I looked around. “Is there someplace more private we can talk?”

  Stella pointed to a door behind the counter. “My office is right through there.” She turned and told a teenage gymnast to watch the little ones before she waved for me to follow her. “Is everything okay, Officer?”

  I stayed quiet until the office door was shut tight. “When was the last time you saw Tenley?” I pulled out my notebook and pen.

  “Yesterday.”

  “Was she upset about anything?”

  “On the contrary, she seemed more sunny and—I don’t know how to say this . . . in the moment?—than I’ve ever seen her. She was happy. You could feel it just being in the room with her. Why? What’s the matter?”

  “I’m afraid she passed away early this morning.” I watched her reaction, unblinking.

  Stella’s eyes popped wide, her mouth opening in a neat little O.

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry, what? No! How?”

  “That’s part of what I’m trying to find out, ma’am. You said Tenley was happy when you saw her yesterday?”

  “She was. She brought my dry-cleaning in with her yesterday afternoon and hung it there.” She waved a hand to the back of the office door, where a plastic bag from Jack Brown’s still swayed slightly under the air vent. “She kissed me on the cheek and asked how my weekend was, and then she went in to help the girls.”

  “Which girls?”

  “Tenley tutored five of the girls on my elite team. One hour every Monday afternoon on math, one on English.”

  “And none of the girls noticed anything out of the ordinary?”

  “Not that any of them mentioned to me.”

  “Would you mind if I asked them?”

  “I won’t. They will.” She smiled when my brows shot up. “That’s why Tenley was so good for this place. I used to do it all myself—figured I could get some use out of my teaching degree—but they resented being pulled away from practice, and it started to hurt my coaching relationship with them. These girls are so damned focused it’s disturbing. So much pressure. Push, practice, compete, win. Repeat. Tenley got it. She was one of them.”

  “It certainly seems she was a talented young woman.”

  “She was all about her grades, too, though, which I can’t get my highly competitive girls to give two figs for. I was hoping she’d be a good example for them.”

  “The only thing I excelled at in high school was annoying my mother.”

  Stella laughed. “Girls like mine—like Tenley—are a special breed. They don’t crack easily under pressure, and they drive themselves harder than any coach or teacher would ever think about driving them. They’re their own worst enemies in so many ways. Nobody is harder on herself, win or lose, than an elite athlete. But that generally comes from a desire to please. They want to hear the applause, feel the hugs, see the pride on everyone’s faces.”

  I kept my face blank, nodding. She could’ve been talking about Charity.

  “Lord, if there’s anything Tenley wouldn’t do for a kind word from her mama, I’m sure I couldn’t name it.” Stella shook her head. “Thicker than mud, the two of them. Tenley cares more what her mother thinks and worries more about her mother than any ten kids do. Or should.”

  “Worries about her mother?” The same mother I’d met earlier? In the two minutes I’d had with Erica Andre before I’d shattered her world, I could tell the woman was practically a force of nature.

  Stella tapped a finger on the wheel of her chair. “I get the feeling her mama isn’t happy.”

  Mrs. Andre did seem convinced that Mr. Andre had a girlfriend. “Did Tenley confide in you about other things?” I asked.

  Stella held one hand up and twisted her wrist side to side. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say she confided in me. I hear a lot, though. People tend to forget I’m in the room.” She flashed a smile. “It’s the chair. Handy for eavesdropping. Tenley’s been glued to her phone lately.”

  “Talking to anyone in particular?”

  Stella pinched her lips between her teeth and shook her head. “Just that she talked a lot about wanting someone to be happy.”

  “No indication who or what she might have felt this person was unhappy with?”

  “Complaining wasn’t in her. Rainbows and unicorns, at least as far as she wanted most people to know.” Stella’s lips stretched into a line, her eyes going soft and unfocused. “I wanted so badly to hate her. She was the last thing I saw before I passed out and the first when I came to that night. I thought for a minute I was dead and she was an angel. The doctor came in and said she’d insisted on sitting with me. All night. Like I was supposed to thank her or something. Then he asked her to excuse us, so he could tell me I’d never walk again. From out in the hallway she started bawling and telling me how sorry she was, how she’d make it up to me, anything I wanted. I told her to get the hell out and leave me alone.”

  Stay quiet. Let her talk.

  “She wouldn’t budge. I screamed until the doctor rang security. Called Tenley everything but a white girl. She just stood there, tears running like a faucet, nodding her head and repeating, ‘I know. I’m so sorry.’ By the time the cop got up there, I told him to leave her alone.”

  “Why?”

  Stella hauled in a deep breath, a short cough issuing back. “All I saw when I first set eyes on Tenley was a spoiled brat who didn’t want to get in trouble. But watching her just stand there and take the vile things I said to her . . . I’ve worked with teenage girls for nearly thirty years. And I never set eyes on a kid so broken as she was. Not before, not since. That little girl needed a friend way worse than I needed a whipping post.”

  Wait. What?

  Popular. Confident. Strong. Beautiful. That’s what all the other adults in Tenley’s life had to say about her.

  And Stella saw “broken”? How?

  “I’m not sure I follow.” I stretched the words. “Tenley was popular and bright. She was gorgeous. You said ‘rainb
ows and unicorns’ five seconds ago. How can that kid and this kid you’re describing be the same kid?”

  Stella rolled the chair back and forth in tiny increments. “For these girls, knowing they’re good at a sport works for the sport. But when things shake them, it almost seems like they feel it deeper than regular people, and Tenley was in a bad place when I met her. It got better. Then worse again last fall, and then a bit better, and yesterday she was as happy as I’ve ever seen her. Real happy. Genuine joy.” The last word faded into a sob, her fist going to her mouth. She looked up, her eyelids batting back tears. “And now she’s gone? How?”

  “I wish I knew.” I shoved my notebook back in my pocket, staring at the team photo gallery on the wall. In all but the last two, Stella stood next to the girls.

  Tenley had come here to do penance. The kind of girl who talked to the neighbor’s gardener wouldn’t have burdened Stella with her problems.

  But, kindred spirits and all . . . what about someone else here?

  “Which of the girls was she closest to?” I asked.

  “Lena. She’s more competitive and focused than anyone else. Like takes to like, my grandmama always said.”

  “Is she here today?”

  “I think she’s here more than I am.” Stella gestured for me to step aside and rolled her chair out the door and toward the mats. “Lena!”

  A petite, muscle-bound brunette with a short ponytail and huge eyes over her high cheekbones practically floated in our direction. “Yes, ma’am?” Her voice was so squeaky sweet I blinked.

  “Sweetie, this is Officer McClellan with the Texas Rangers.” Stella reached up and grasped Lena’s dangling hand. “Come into the office and let’s talk.”

  Lena’s wide eyes got even wider. She jerked her hand away. “No! I tried to talk her out of it, I swear. I didn’t do anything.” She leapt past me and snatched a bag off the floor, her bare feet pounding a path to the door.

  “Nobody is saying—” I called to Lena’s back as she shoved the door open and disappeared. I turned to Stella. “Well then.”

  Stella’s mouth hung open. “What in the name of heaven?”

  “Sometimes flashing a badge gives you information you didn’t know you were looking for. I don’t suppose you’d save me the trouble of tracking down her address?”

  “Happy to. As long as you tell her to get her ass back here when you’re done with her. We have a tournament coming up.” Stella rolled the chair back to the desk, shaking her head. “She’s such a quiet, focused girl. I don’t know how she could have time to get into trouble.”

  I didn’t answer that. Seemed several teenagers had more ways into trouble than I would’ve thought possible just yesterday.

  She found the file in the computer on the desk and copied the address and phone numbers onto a turquoise Post-it. I tucked it into my pocket with a thank-you and a promise to pass along the message about coming back to practice.

  As I shook Stella’s hand, I met steely, determined eyes and a stronger grip than most men had. Stepping back into the sunshine, I wasn’t sure what to make of her. I still felt sorry for her, of course, but the granite stare and viselike grip stayed with me. Was Stella really as forgiving as she wanted people to think?

  I punched Lena’s address into my GPS. Four blocks. Flipping the visor down did nothing for the low-hanging western sun, sending my hand digging in the console for my sunglasses as I glanced at the clock. Just enough time to maybe get one answer today before I needed to grab food and go see if I could help with Archie’s murdered coed. Police work provides little rest for the weary.

  God, I had missed it.

  13

  Twenty minutes and a half dozen futile jabs at the doorbell later, I left Lena’s house with no answers and a rumbling stomach.

  A quick pit stop at Wu Chow, and I found Archie in the conference room at headquarters standing over a tabletop completely obscured by folders and photos, his left foot tapping like it always did when he was trying to figure something out.

  “Dinner delivery,” I said, setting the bag on a chair. “Orange chicken and beef lo mein. And extra spring rolls. I didn’t know what you’d like, so I brought options.”

  He nodded, still focused on the table. “I’m missing something, Faith.”

  “Stop staring and tell me what you know.” I stepped to the edge of the table, swallowing hard at the photos even all these years into police work.

  “I told you about all I know already.” He ran a hand through his thick silver hair. “It’s like digging in bone-fucking-dry sand. They didn’t even find what was left of her until six months after she disappeared, and the park rangers aren’t exactly crime-scene experts. I’ve been praying every day that the labs would turn up a lead, but we hit another wall there. I can’t let myself believe a person who could do something like this is just going to get away with it. There has to be something I’m not seeing.”

  I sipped my soda, nodding. There always was. I believed that with every fiber of my being, and had the perfect record to prove it.

  Which was the only reason I was there—Archie loved me, sure. He also worked alone. Had since forever. But he was on the verge of giving up, and he knew I wouldn’t let him.

  “Walk me through it from day one,” I said.

  He pointed to the left end of the table, where the thinnest folder lay. “Missing person’s report called into the university PD by her roommate on July twenty-seventh. Jessa went to meet friends for pizza and a study session the evening of the twenty-sixth. She didn’t go home, which was unusual, but not alarming.” He sipped his Dr Pepper. “When the roommate didn’t see or hear from her all of the following day, she started to worry, though. She called and texted, but didn’t get an answer. So at six forty-seven, she called the campus police.”

  I picked up the folder. It contained three sheets of blue paper: one dispatch report of the first call, one officer’s incident report from an interview with the roommate on July twenty-eighth, and one disposition form showing they’d referred the case to Austin PD when Jessa’s parents came looking for her on the thirtieth.

  “Four days. It took four days for anyone to do much of anything.” I shook my head as I murmured. “Cutting-edge technology at our actual fingertips, and nobody moved on this until the trail was practically frozen.”

  “College kid, summertime . . . nobody took it too seriously.”

  That was usually the first mistake in cases like this one. People don’t tend to want to think the worst until the worst has happened to them. They let precious time tick by, squandering the minutes and hours when a trail is blistering hot on poor assumptions and positive thoughts. By the time anyone really started looking for Jessa DuGray, she could’ve been in a hundred different kinds of trouble in a thousand places nobody would ever find her.

  Dammit.

  Psychology would have to ride shotgun to superstition, then. I could study every detail in every folder here, and I could build a pretty good profile of Jessa’s killer, but we’d need some luck, too—and that was harder to come by.

  Running a finger over the gold charm bracelet that had been my sister’s most prized possession, I wished for a little divine intervention. I put the file back on the table and gestured to the food containers. “Chicken or beef?”

  “I feel like I’m back on your father’s detail.” Archie chuckled. “How many hotel ballroom dinners did we eat?”

  “Too many.”

  He nodded. “Beef.”

  I passed him the container and opened the spring rolls and a bowl of sesame noodles for myself, handing him the plastic fork before I tore open a set of paper-wrapped chopsticks.

  “How’d it go this afternoon?” he asked. “You get anything new on your dead girl?”

  “Nothing that’s going to change anyone’s mind about the whole suicide thing.”

  “But you still don’t buy it?”

  “Everything around this feels weird to me, Arch. I went out there, and Graham is
right: She was near the base of the dam. Damage to the back of her skull consistent with a fall from that high. But I can’t let it go.” I dropped a tangle of noodles into my mouth.

  “Where’s her car? The SO impound?”

  My hand froze, a spring roll halfway to my lips. “No.”

  Archie furrowed his brow.

  The roll fell back into the container, followed closely by the chopsticks. “Her car is at home in her garage. Her mom said she thought someone picked her up this morning, but she couldn’t say who.”

  “Did she go up there on foot?”

  I shook my head. “Not likely. It’s, like, fifteen miles from her house, and she’s a runner, but she wasn’t dressed for a workout in those party heels.”

  Party.

  “Shit.” I put the container down and jumped to my feet, striding to the far end of the table. Moving works like a bright light for my brain, sharpening connections and making answers clearer.

  “What now?” Archie asked.

  “I missed a ton of intersections here. The car was at home, and she wasn’t dressed for school in that teeny-weeny skirt. Her friend said they went to a party last night.”

  “So she didn’t make it home?”

  I bit my lip. “He said he took her home.”

  “Anybody who can vouch for that?”

  I spun on my heel and paced the length of the room again. Erica Andre said she hadn’t heard her daughter come in. But she also said she’d heard Tenley in the bathroom before daylight, and the husband was still out of pocket. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to her father. He might know.” I turned again, still walking. “I don’t like the boy who took her to the party, but he’s not the same one who took her home.”

  “Oh? The one who took her can’t be happy about that.”

  “You can definitely say that again. And then a few more times after that. He played it off, though. Captain Her Loss, quarterback of the football team. But I rattled him. Trouble is, mom is swearing he was home all night and dad is a partner at Carrey and Minor.”

 

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