I murmured acknowledgment, already punching the Uber driver’s plate number into the DPS site, one finger tapping Tenley’s screen to the beat of “Eye of the Tiger,” keeping the phone awake. Tenley and Nicky smiled from behind the app squares, their grins as flawless as a Barbie and her Ken.
The computer screen filled. The car was registered to one Sergey Valysnikov, by way of Bluebonnet Transport, LLC. A car service. Of course. Because a plain old regular answer just wasn’t on the menu this week.
Phone calls. I touched “Recents” and scrolled.
Mom. Dad. Mom. Dad. Dad. Coach?
I clicked that one. Five thirty Monday evening. Two minutes and change, received call.
Nicky, an hour before that: outgoing call that lasted two seconds.
And a local number not saved to a name, at two forty-eight Monday afternoon. I clicked the information circle. Four minutes on that call, but there were more than a dozen others to and from the same number over the past few weeks. I scrolled faster, my brain spinning right along with the numbers on Tenley’s screen. Pulling out my own phone, I snapped a photo of the call detail.
Every call except one came in or went out during the day. Could this be the mystery guy?
That would rule out Simpson, because Tenley had his number saved. Didn’t mean he was in the clear, but added a dash more doubt.
“What else were you hiding, Tenley?” I half whispered, touching the email icon again and clicking to the accounts list.
Just one, with Tenley’s name serving as the address.
Damn.
I laid the phone down.
Picked it back up.
Scrolled left to search for an app: Gmail.
Yep. I touched the white-and-red square.
And found a single long conversation thread. From Erica Andre.
Tapping the screen, I watched the same snarky-yet-threatening message I’d read on Erica’s phone earlier materialize on Tenley’s screen. I picked up my phone again and fired off another photo just as it buzzed a text arrival. Graham was ready to go.
Sliding Tenley’s phone back into the evidence sleeve, I finally had one solid fact: whatever the blue hell she had been up to, Tenley Andre had been in way over her head.
27
Sergey was pretty easy to talk information out of, thanks to about ten OSHA violations Graham and I spotted on the way into his shop.
After crossing his thick arms over his chest in his best Goodfellas pose when he got a load of our badges, he folded easier than a pair of old jeans when Graham pointed to a guy running a welder with no safety gear and I remarked on my father’s good friend the small-business commissioner.
“Why you bothering me? Aren’t there bad people out there”—Sergey swept one arm toward the door, his Russian accent still thick after seven years of running this company in Austin, according to the business license Graham pulled up on the ride over—“who need to be in a jail?”
“We didn’t come here to bother you, Mr. Valisnykov, and I don’t want to bother the commissioner with issues I’m sure you can clean up yourself now that we’ve pointed them out for you. Right?” I raised one eyebrow.
“Of course, of course.” Sergey crossed his arms again, but he nodded. “Perhaps if you told me why you are here . . .”
“We’re looking for one of those bad people you mentioned.” I didn’t get the rest of the sentence out before Sergey started shaking his head. He didn’t stop for a good thirty seconds.
“Sir,” I said. “If I could . . . There was a passenger in one of your cars Monday night. She called through Uber. We’d like to talk to the driver. That’s all.”
“This woman, did she say one of my drivers is bad person?” Sergey’s brow furrowed. “Because my guys are all solid. I do the hiring myself.”
“She did not say anything of the sort.” To us, anyway. “We just have a few questions for him.”
“Which driver? Only sedans we run through Uber. It’s easy extra money.”
I pulled my phone out and touched the image of Tenley’s screen. “Dimitri, according to the email she got.” Sergey waved for us to follow as he turned for a glass-walled office in the back of the shop.
He plucked a folder from a stack on the desk and flipped it open. “Monday night?”
“Correct.”
“Da. Dimitri.” Sergey put the folder down, his forehead bunching again.
“Is he here?” I turned back to the windows overlooking the shop.
“Dimitri!” Sergey shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Come here!”
A stocky man with graying hair laid a magazine on the dash of a black Lincoln Continental and climbed from behind the wheel, ambling belly-first toward the office.
He was definitely big enough to throw Tenley off the dam.
Graham and I exchanged a Look. The kind that said we both knew what the other was thinking but couldn’t say it right then.
“Hello.” Dimitri’s voice was deep, his tone unsure.
“These police officers have questions about a pickup from Monday night. Uber call,” Sergey said.
I fixed Sergey with a polite smile that waited for him to leave the room.
He sat down and put his feet on the desk. Okay, then.
I pulled out the photo from the Marshall yearbook. “You would’ve picked her up—”
“Dammit, I knew I shouldn’t have left her up there.” Dimitri smacked himself in the forehead. “Stupid! I knew it.”
Graham glanced at me. I gave a tiny shrug. On a list of reactions I’d expected, this didn’t make the top one hundred.
I bent my head and caught Dimitri’s gaze, my voice smooth and untroubled. “If you could give us a little more detail, we’d really appreciate it.”
I watched his face. He’d gone paler, but his hands were loose at his sides, his bright-blue eyes staring straight ahead. He looked like he was shaken, not like he was lying. I took a slow breath, not wasting a smidgen of attention on anything but the large, bothered man in front of me.
“She wanted to go to Mansfield Dam. Insisted I leave her on the side of the old road by the park. The one that’s closed.”
“Did you see anyone else up there when you dropped her off? In the park, maybe?”
“I knew I should’ve stayed.” Dimitri shook his head. “She said she was meeting someone, and I thought she’d be okay.”
I stood up straighter. “Meeting someone?” Too high. I cleared my throat. “Did she happen to say who?”
“A boyfriend her folks didn’t like. She was plum anxious to get away from her house.”
He had no way to know that unless Tenley told him. She could’ve lied to scare him off if she got a bad vibe from him, of course, but my gut said he wasn’t our guy. I went with it, for the moment, pulling out a pad and jotting a note. “Did you notice anything else about her? How did she seem? Scared, sad?”
Dimitri nodded. “She was nervous. Or excited. Bounced in her seat the whole way up there. And she reeked of booze.”
Really, now? That was new. Nicky said Tenley didn’t drink. Like, not ever.
I snuck a sideways glance at Graham. “You’re sure?” I asked Dimitri.
“Hard liquor. On her breath. I could smell it every time she spoke. Which wasn’t much until she started trying to talk me into leaving her on the side of the road in the middle of the night. Please, is she okay?” He raised wide eyes to meet mine.
“I’m sorry to say she’s not. We’re investigating the circumstances surrounding her death.” I stretched my lips into the sympathy line most cops practice in the mirror until it’s a bad-news delivery reflex. My phone buzzed against my hip. I kept my eyes on Dimitri. “You’re sure you didn’t see anything else we might need to know about?”
He shook his head, his hands clutching at his unruly hair, a single word sliding through his teeth on repeat. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
I turned to Sergey, handing him a card. “Call me if he remembers anything at all.”
He nodded, his face blank. “Thank you, Officer.”
Graham leaned forward as we stepped back into the shop. “There’s one more for the mystery boyfriend. You still think that’s Coach Simpson?”
I wobbled one flat hand. “There was a number in her phone. Someone she talked to twice a day, just about, for the past few weeks, but she didn’t save them as a contact. I’d like to figure out who that was before I settle on Simpson.”
I pulled my phone from my pocket and looked up at him with my finger on the home button. “You get anything from the bank yet?”
Graham checked his email, shook his head. “They told me they want their lawyers to look it over. But it’ll come.”
I clicked my browser open and logged in to DPS. Tapped the digits from Tenley’s call log. Crossed my fingers.
“Damn.” I flipped the screen around to show Graham. “Prepaid cell.”
His eyes rolled. “We can’t catch even a little break.”
I stared at my screen until the numbers blurred. “I wonder if Tenley’s secret friend is around today.”
He leaned against the side of the truck and watched with raised eyebrows as I tapped my screen and put the phone to my ear.
Six rings.
“Come on,” I whispered.
Seven.
The tiniest click.
And nothing.
My eyes popped wide. I checked the screen.
The call timer ticked off two more seconds.
“Hello?” My voice rang clear. Sure. Authoritative.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Call ended, the screen advised.
“Well?” Graham snatched my phone.
“Thirty-five seconds of silence, and they hung up when I spoke,” I said.
Graham clicked my recent calls up and saved the number into his phone before he handed mine back.
“Weird,” I said.
I pressed the home button just as the thing buzzed again. Graham’s fingers closed around my wrist. “Did you just give a murderer your number, McClellan?”
Honest answer? Maybe. Creating a break in a stubborn case often requires risk.
I watched the dark screen.
Archie’s name flashed up.
I shook my head, raising the phone to my ear. “Hey, we were talking to the driver who took Tenley up to the dam. Says she told him she was meeting a boyfriend her parents didn’t like. Did you let Simpson go?”
“Yeah, but the APD is on him. If he farts in the direction of an underage girl, I’ll hear about it before he smells it.”
I covered my mouth to muffle a snort. “You and your metaphors.”
“He had an alibi for the night Jessa disappeared, though. Says he spent the night with someone he met at the bar. I got a number, left a message.”
“Damn.” I bit my lip.
“Listen, I have something else I’m not sure what to make of, and I’m hamstrung by the damn media at the moment.”
“How can I help?”
“That website Skye put all over the TV last night? APD took a dozen calls before midnight from women claiming their actual assault was filmed and put on the internet.”
“Good?” I winced at the ludicrous use of the word as it came out.
“Our cyber guys woke up a judge and got a warrant at one thirty. They went to the building she showed on TV and took the servers. One of them called me about an hour ago. There was a backdoor section of the site—invitation only, not traceable anywhere online, dark web stuff—with the most graphic of the videos, all proclaimed one hundred percent authentic.”
I froze with my hand on the truck door. “And?”
“The video in that section with the heaviest traffic is of a directed sexual assault. Multiple perpetrators. And the victim is Jessa DuGray. Faith, she—it looks like she’s wearing the top she had on the night she disappeared.”
“Christ almighty.” My eyes fell shut as I slid into the truck.
“Mr. Wooley seems to have vanished, but I’d sure like to know where he got that clip. Is Hardin with you? And do you have time to go by this scumbag’s apartment? His last known is 1253 Rollins Road, but we can’t find any trace of him since before her piece aired yesterday. No credit card use, no traffic cameras, nothing.”
I scribbled the address down, nodding. “We’re not far from there now. I’ll let you know what we find.”
“Thanks. Be careful.”
“Yes, Dad.” I shook my head as I touched the “End” button and started the truck.
“Why do I think I don’t want to know?” Graham buckled his seat belt.
“Because you don’t.” I gunned the engine. “Get me directions to Rollins Road, would you? Archie needs a favor.” I sped to the corner while he checked Google Maps.
“Nine blocks west of here, then four north.” Graham let out a low whistle. “That’s not a great neighborhood.”
“Then it suits the guy we’re hunting.”
“Why’re we hunting a guy?”
“Because it seems he’s making money off a video of Jessa DuGray being gang-raped, probably right before she died.”
Graham’s breath went in on a sharp hiss. “You got a cherry in this thing?”
I pointed to the glove box, and he reached out the window and put the portable light on the roof of the truck. I turned north at the next corner and stomped on the gas.
I nearly missed the turn on Rollins, jerking the wheel to the right when I caught the street sign with the corner of one eye. I slammed the brakes in front of what looked like it used to be a townhouse before it became a slum, threw the gearshift in park, and jerked the keys free, itching for a few minutes alone with the kind of asshole who could profit off a young woman’s assault and death. I’m not generally a believer in the use of force when it’s not strictly necessary, but excuses can be found in special cases.
“Ready?” Graham unlatched the safety strap on his holster when he stepped out of the car, and I reached under my arm and did the same thing, nodding as I started up the sidewalk. “Kinda like old times.”
Graham stepped around me when I stopped at the door to the building, one hand on the butt of his 9-millimeter.
I nodded and he flattened one boot against the door and pushed, freeing a hodgepodge of stench that made my stomach recoil into my spine. Sharp urine, sickly-sweet decay, and some kind of spice I didn’t recognize.
“On three.” Graham gulped a deep breath and turned back for the open door. “One.”
“Two.” I concentrated on shallow breaths.
“Three.” He plunged into the mail foyer.
I followed on his heels, a small scream escaping my throat when my eyes fell on the carcass in the corner.
28
“Who the hell leaves that in the hallway?” I swallowed hard, my grip on my Sig tightening as I moved into the building behind Graham.
“Is that a . . .” Graham squinted. “Chicken?”
I nodded, not wanting to risk another look. The thing’s head was missing, but the blood-soaked feathers looked very chicken-like under cursory inspection.
“Could somebody be planning to eat it?”
“Would you eat something that smelled like that? No way it’s been there less than forty-eight hours. Even the rats know better.”
“I wasn’t aware rats had a discriminating palette. Maybe there just aren’t any in here.”
I inspected the dismal alcove. Spray-painted graffiti on three walls, a layer of grime we were leaving actual footprints in on the cracked linoleum floor, and peeling stick-on labels with handwritten names marking the tiny mailboxes. “If there’s a rat in three miles that doesn’t frequent this place, I’ll shine your boots.” I nodded to the stairs. “The mailbox says Wooley is in 2A.”
“The boots will need it after today.” Graham prodded the dead chicken with the toe of one ostrich roper and jumped back when he sent up a cloud of tiny flies. “Seriously, who would do that? And why the hell wouldn’t the neighbors complain?�
� He followed me to the stairs.
I shook my head, a stomping sound overhead making me pull my weapon and slow my pace.
“Somebody’s up there.” Graham’s whisper was so low I almost didn’t hear him.
I chambered a round and took another step. Graham was so close behind me I could feel the heat coming off his skin. Hear his breathing.
What the hell was I about to drag him into?
I wasn’t afraid of anything. Hadn’t been in a long, long time. But standing in that stairwell, for just a minute, I was fourteen again, hiding in the closet, listening to men shouting over my sister’s screams. I swallowed hard.
Breathe. Focus.
That scared little girl was long gone. I was strong. I was fast. And I was a damned good shot. I had devoted every minute of my life since that night to becoming the hero I wished I could’ve been for Charity. Whatever was going on upstairs, I could handle it.
Two more steps and I crested the landing, the musty-smelling plaster wall warm against my back in the sticky, unconditioned air. I edged along, then whipped around the corner, elbows locked and Sig straight in front of me, index fingers resting lightly on the trigger guard.
Ten empty steps stretched into darkness. I nodded to Graham and he crept up to the landing, careful not to point his weapon at me.
I put one boot on the bottom stair. Steady and quiet, we climbed to the hallway above. Cops on TV always shout a warning when they’re entering a space, and truth be told it wasn’t a terrible idea in a situation like this—except I didn’t want to give the porn dealer a head start. Graham was on the same page, his lips pinched into a fine line, rapid breaths going in and out through his nose the only noise in the still, stale air.
The hallway split the second floor in half, one door on each wall. Ray’s apartment was to my right. I looked at Graham. He jerked his head to the door and nodded a Go-ahead, keeping his weapon lowered but still out. I holstered mine, raised one fist, and rapped my knuckles on the once-white-painted wood.
We didn’t breathe too loudly, both listening for any sign of movement behind the door.
Fear No Truth Page 18