Fear No Truth

by LynDee Walker

  “This is complicated.”

  “Murders usually are.” I shoved my hands in my pockets, turning to face him. “Explain. Now.”

  “Tenley Andre will make the second young woman from a well-to-do family murdered in Travis County in eight months.”

  Jessa DuGray. “And?”

  “There are people who are afraid the press will start hollering ‘Serial killer,’ and you and I both know ratings would encourage that even without a shred of evidence the murders were related. People stop letting their kids go out at night, parents decide not to let their daughters come to the university . . .” He raised both hands, palms out, when my eyes narrowed. “Just the messenger.”

  “You can tell whoever’s writing the script that your message fucking sucks.” I stomped one foot, wishing for something I could kick. “Money? They want to let this go, leave this family with no answers, and actually leave a killer out there walking free, over money?”

  “You know just as well as I do that everything is always about the money. Hell, I’d wager you know it better than most of us.”

  Blood rushed to my head, roaring in my ears, drowning out Graham and the rest of the world with him. I closed my eyes, no longer in the sunshine with cars whizzing by, but back in the frigid hallway outside the governor’s private study, low voices filtering through the wall. Talking about my sister. My hero. My biggest champion. Like Charity’s death was a goddamn political situation to be handled. Headlines. Polls. And donors. Always all about the money. Money and power, where Chuck McClellan was concerned.

  A hand closed over my shoulder and I jumped, pulling my right fist back for a jab before I opened my eyes.

  “Faith!” Graham ducked anyway, but I stopped my arm before the punch actually flew.

  “Sorry.” I let the hand fall back to my side.

  “You okay?”

  I shook my head. “I am going to get to the bottom of this, with your help or without it.”

  “You didn’t actually have to tell me that. I’ve met you.” He bumped my shoulder with his own. “You’re going to piss off some powerful people.”

  “I have a bit of experience with that. But I get it if you don’t want to join the fun. It can suck sometimes.”

  He sighed. “I thought I wanted this promotion. Youngest commander in the history of the department.”

  I smiled, opening my mouth to congratulate him. He shook his head. “Then they called me in, gave me this case. Told me to ‘handle it.’” He wiggled his fingers in air quotes around the last two words, disgust creeping into his tone. “Keep it quiet, that’s what they meant. As long as I could convince myself there was a reasonable chance she jumped, that’s one thing. But covering up a murder . . . that’s not me. I’m a cop first. And what’s the use in doing this job if you’re not proud of it? If you’re not serving a greater good? Nobody gets into police work for the money or the glory, that’s for damned sure.”

  I snorted. “I have a Costco package of ramen in my pantry and a couple of .22-shell-sized scars that will testify to that.”

  He started walking again. “So what now?”

  I shook my head. “There are so many geese zipping around this I haven’t one damn clue which to chase first.”

  Graham pointed to a coffee shop. “Shall we caffeinate while we make a plan?”

  I nodded, grabbing the door and holding it open for him. “I’ve missed you, partner,” I whispered to his back as I followed him inside.

  He ordered our coffees and paid before I could object, handing me a cup with a smile. “I missed you, too. Why do you think I’m still going this alone? Nobody is as good as you at catching the little things, at unraveling the webs around shit like this.” He waved his cup at a round table along the back wall. “Let’s get to work.”

  I sipped my coffee as I took a seat, my jangled nerves practically screaming for a nicotine fix. No time, and besides, Graham hated the smell. I pulled out a notebook and started ticking off what we knew.

  “Tenley was seeing someone, but so far nobody I’ve talked to is saying who,” I said. “She was involved in an accident two years ago and befriended the woman she crippled when she ran a stop sign. Spent time tutoring at the gymnastics school the lady runs. One of the students completely flipped yesterday when she saw me, but I couldn’t find her to figure out why.”

  “Flipped how?”

  “Took right the hell off. Hollering about how she didn’t know anything, nothing was her fault. Really bizarre.”

  Graham tipped his head to one side. “And the gymnastics coach said?”

  “Not much. Gave me a home address. I went by there last night, waited for a while. Kid never showed up.”

  “Let’s go see if she’s there now.” Graham stood.

  I waved him ahead of me and tossed my cup in the trash on the way to the door.

  We were halfway to Lena’s house when the tinkling started.

  “You need to take that?” Graham asked as I flipped the blinker on to turn onto Lexington.

  “It’s—” the “not mine” died on my lips as I remembered putting Erica Andre’s cell in the glove box yesterday. I stayed quiet as I pulled the phone out and stared at the screen.

  Brent.

  “That the mom’s phone?” Graham didn’t miss a trick.

  “Possibly. Call coming in from Mr. Andre.”

  “I imagine they need to arrange a funeral.” Graham paused. Tapped the dash. “You know you have to give this woman her phone back, right? You can’t search it without a warrant, and what judge is going to grant that?”

  “I can too. I just can’t tell anybody I did,” I grumbled, dropping the device back into the glove compartment when it stopped ringing.

  Graham turned when I stopped at the light at Barton Springs and Dawson. “You’re way in on this one. I get it. But it won’t do anybody any good for you to get to the bottom of it if the guy walks because we were in a hurry.”

  “But I’m not looking to book the girl’s mother. I just want to know how cozy she really is with the track coach.”

  “I thought you thought the track coach was sleeping with the victim. Or the pregnant girl.” Graham shook his head as I laid on the gas when the light changed. “Husband seems like a decent guy, and pretty fit for his age, too.”

  “Billionaires cheat on supermodels every day.” I rolled my eyes. “Women can’t have wandering eyes, too? Wait’ll you get a look at this one and then you tell me.”

  “Rich people. Never happy. I guess the thing about money not buying it is really true, huh?”

  I snorted. “In my experience, the relationship is inverse. The trick is to want what you have.”

  “How very insightful of you.”

  “I saw it on a Facebook meme.”

  “Beautiful and honest, too, ladies and gentlemen.”

  My cheeks heated and I cleared my throat. “So, this guy, Jake Simpson. Maybe he was doing the mom. Maybe he was the new guy in Tenley’s life that her friends mentioned. What if he’s both?”

  “Sleeping with the mom and the daughter?” Graham grimaced. “There’s a D-list porn director somewhere in this city who wants to talk to him.”

  And Graham didn’t know the half of it. Yet.

  I wanted to tell him Archie and I thought the coach might be caught up in Jessa DuGray’s death, too, but that wasn’t my case, and the last thing I needed was to step on the toes of the one guy in the Rangers’ service who didn’t treat me like I had some sort of contagious incompetence.

  Tenley gave me an easy in on Simpson. I could talk to people about him—even talk to him—and nobody would wonder if I was digging for darker secrets than maybe him having inappropriate relations with a student.

  I just had to be careful how my questions were phrased. And if growing up in Chuck McClellan’s house taught me a single useful skill, it was how to extract information from people before they realized what I was up to. As much as I loathed the governor on any given day, I had him to thank
for much of what made me a good cop. I just didn’t like to admit it.

  I flexed my fingers around the wheel until my skin pulled tight, the mere notion of my father setting off a nic fit.

  I’d started smoking at fifteen, powering through layers of disgust (and there were so many) because I knew it would irk my father and drive my mother bugshit crazy.

  I still woke up every Monday determined to quit twenty-plus years later because the damned things steadied my nerves when I had a big case, or when I let Charity wriggle too far into my thoughts.

  My big sister was walking energy, with a massive, infectious laugh that could make the darkest day bright. Brilliant, talented, Charity was everything I was not, and our parents made sure nobody ever forgot it. But Char always had just the right words to convince me that I was special in my own way. “You’re so smart, Faithy-bear,” she used to say. “You see things other people don’t notice. Someday, you’re going to change their world, and they’ll never see it coming.”

  Some days, I missed her easy confidence in me so much I flat-ass couldn’t breathe. On balance, nicotine was easier to juggle with police work than Valium. Or Scotch.

  “Twenty-five thirty-nine?” Graham’s voice pulled my attention back to the world outside the window. A neat row of postwar Sears-kit houses lined the street, long oak branches reaching overhead, drought-droopy green leaves fluttering in the breeze.

  I nodded, pulling the truck alongside the curb and shifting into park.

  Graham kicked his door open. “It’s almost nine. We should hurry if you want to talk to this kid.”

  “I don’t think she goes to public school,” I said. “Pretty sure the gymnastics place is some sort of charter academy. Tenley was helping the girls there with their grades, probably so it wouldn’t lose its accreditation.”

  We walked up the cracked concrete driveway and across three flagstones set in the sun-baked Bermuda between it and the front steps.

  Graham raised a fist and rapped on the brown metal edge of the storm door.

  “She was freaked out by my badge yesterday,” I whispered. “Smile and be cool.”

  The flat-gray-painted plywood front door didn’t have a peephole, but a bay window jutted out behind the shrub to my left, overlooking to the porch. The curtain fluttered. Feet shuffled.

  “Who is it?” The voice on the other side of the door was female, but not teenaged.

  “Graham Hardin, Travis County Sheriff’s Office.” Graham kept his voice low and soothing.

  The door cracked open. “You got a warrant?” asked a scratchy alto that matched the button nose and single almond-shaped hazel eye I could see.

  “We’re not here to search anything, ma’am.”

  “What do you want?” She pulled the door wide enough to stick her hot-roller-covered head out and give me a shrewd once-over through the screen. “That a Rangers badge? I didn’t even know we still had those.”

  “I’m hoping Lena might be able to give us some insight into what’s been going on with Tenley Andre lately.” I smiled as I talked, keeping my voice light. Every word true. I simply omitted the part where the kid flipped out and bolted, because who would go home and tell her mom she’d run from a cop?

  The door opened a little wider, a shoulder appearing as Hot Rollers leaned forward. “The tutor? Seems like a straight arrow. Real stand-up of that kid, going to Stella trying to make amends for that accident. What’re you bothering her for?”

  Did they not own a TV? Tenley’s picture had been half of the local news cycle for at least the past eighteen hours, every station in town hosting child psychologists who postulated about the dangers of pressure and perfection. Front page of this morning’s Statesman, too.

  “Tenley’s dead, ma’am,” Graham said gently.

  Hot Rollers’s face went slack, her gaze drifting in the direction of the tree behind Graham.

  I folded my arms across my chest.

  “What happened to her?” Hot Rollers finally asked.

  “That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” I said. “Stella told me she’d seemed troubled lately, and that she was closer with Lena than the other girls at Lone Star. I’m hoping she confided something in her that will help us find an answer.”

  “Really seemed like that girl had her shit together.” Hot Rollers shook her head, opening both doors and waving us inside. “Smart. Pretty. Lena said she was going off to college in California on a scholarship. You never know when your number’s gonna be up, I guess.”

  I kept quiet, nodding as I stepped onto the linoleum in the shoebox entryway. The woman was petite—shorter than my five-ten by a good six inches—and rail-thin, the pink-and-white diner-style waitress uniform hanging on her frame at least three sizes too big. The plastic tag pinned under her left collarbone read Rachel in white block letters.

  “Lena’s still in bed. She doesn’t have to be at the gym until ten, so she’s seldom awake before nine thirty. I’ll get her.”

  “Mom or sister?” Graham whispered when Rachel disappeared through the doorway in front of us.

  I shrugged. “She’s going to let us talk to the kid, which is all I really care about right now.”

  A groan issued from the other side of the wall. A door slammed. Muffled shouting.

  “Still doesn’t want to talk. Are we sure she’s not a suspect?” Graham was still whispering.

  “I’m not sure of a damned thing. Every time I—” I clamped my lips down on the rest of that sentence when Lena appeared in the doorway, marshaled by Rachel’s death grip on her arm.

  “What do you want?” she muttered, her eyes on the round black ears jutting from the top of her worn Mickey Mouse slippers.

  I pulled out the cocktail-party smile again. “To talk with you about Tenley.” I glanced at Rachel, who nodded that she’d broken the news.

  “It’s not like we were friends,” Lena snapped. “She was just this snotty rich bitch who was trying to play teacher because she hurt Stella.”

  Rachel’s pointy elbow had to jab like a razor, and Lena’s breath hissed in so fast I thought for a second she might choke.

  “Manners. Momma raised you better than this.” So, sister then.

  Lena narrowed her eyes at Rachel, then shrugged. “She wasn’t even doing that right anymore. I think she got over her guilt. That or she was just too into herself and her own stuff.”

  “When did you notice a difference?” I asked.

  Lena rolled her narrowed eyes back so far I could only see white. “Like I have nothing better to do than remember when other people have shit going on in their lives.” She didn’t bother to mutter.

  I blinked, pretty sure she was deflecting with her assessment of Tenley’s character.

  “I don’t expect you marked it on a calendar, but if you can give us any sort of estimate, we’d sure appreciate it.” My voice stayed calm thanks to years of practice.

  Lena folded her thick arms across her more-muscular-than-normal chest, biceps visible even through her sleep shirt. “Three weeks? Five? Seems like she was real happy right after Christmas, and then something changed her a few weeks ago.”

  “Changed how?”

  “She got quieter, for starters. Thank God. All the peppy rah-rah school crap she gave off can wear you out. And she started getting phone calls. Kept tripping over her tongue saying she was sorry and going outside to talk. Too important to not take it, she’d say.”

  “But you never asked her who it was? Never wondered what was so important?”

  “She wasn’t my friend, okay? None of my concern, and I really couldn’t bring myself to care. Maybe she started smoking dope. Shooting up. She did seem skinnier the last couple weeks than she was before.”

  Still didn’t fit with Tenley’s school and sports performance.

  “Did she seem like she was afraid of anything?”

  “Like, somebody was out to get her?” Lena’s eyebrows went up. “What happened to her, anyway?”

  “That’s what we�
��re trying to figure out.” My words had a knife edge that made Graham lay a hand on my arm. I shook him off. I knew how to question a witness. But did this girl have to be so damned hateful? What kind of teenager doesn’t care when they hear somebody they knew is dead?

  Maybe the kind who had something to do with it?

  Coach Smarmy was still my favorite suspect. But he wasn’t the only one by a long shot. And every road has to be followed in a good murder investigation. No matter how crazy a theory seems, it’s never wasting time to chase it because at worst, proving it wrong eliminates a card from the mystery’s hand.

  Deep breath. Smile back in place.

  Lena’s pointy face looked interested for the first time since her sister dragged her out of bed. “I figured she was in another car crash or something.”

  I shook my head. “She was not.” I didn’t elaborate. “Do you remember her seeming afraid recently?”

  “I wouldn’t say she was afraid. She was off somehow, sure, but not looking over her shoulder or nothing.”

  “And you didn’t overhear anything? She didn’t talk to you about anything but school?”

  Lena scuffed one toe over the threadbare carpet.

  Rachel poked her with the elbow again. “Tell them.”

  The gymnast shot her sister a glare. “It’s not my place. I even told her to knock it off.”

  I flexed my fingers, nails biting into my palm.

  Rachel shook her head. “The girl is dead, Lena. I know you know what her family is going through. Tell. Them.”

  Lena shuffled the foot again. Sighed. “She was bugging Stella for money,” she said to the carpet. “Threatening her and stuff.”

  Zayne’s disgusted “She kept emailing that lady she ran over” floated through my head.

  But . . . why? That didn’t sound like the Tenley people had practically waxed poetic about since yesterday. Didn’t fit with the rich girl who stopped to chat up the gardener. Or the shock and concern I’d gotten from Stella herself.

  I slid a glance at Graham. Still good at covering shock—his eyes were a little wide, but other than that a passerby would’ve thought Lena had just told him the trees needed water.