“You okay?” Winston asks.
“Sure,” I lie. “Call me when you get ready to proceed.”
“Gonna be a while,” he warns me. “I got two suspicious deaths came in earlier this afternoon.”
I meet his gaze and hold it. “Those cases can wait.”
He pauses for a second before he says, without a flicker, “Okay. You sure you want to observe the autopsies? Pretty tough. I could just get you the report.”
Somebody needs to be a witness, I think. These two girls died alone, not even their momma by their side. Alone, cold, terrified. The least I can do is stand that lonely watch. “I’ll be there,” I say. “Call me when you’re ready to start.”
Winston nods. The deputy climbs out of his car and says, “I’ll secure the scene. Y’all want the pond searched?”
“If there’s so much as a tadpole in there, I want it,” I tell him. “You’re here until relief comes. Don’t leave for nothing.”
He nods, miserable, cold, and unhappy as hell, but he knows better than to cross me on this. Or should.
I head down the road while Winston loads the two limp bodies, still in car seats, into the coroner’s van. Once I’m in my car with the door safely shut, I just sit and shake and breathe for a while. It feels like I’m decompressing after walking on the bottom of a very deep sea. I find myself sucking in short, shallow gasps, and force them slower. My hands are too tight on the wheel.
I need to go to Sheryl Lansdowne’s address in Valerie. Someone will be waiting there, I hope—a husband, a father, a mother. Not that I’m looking forward to breaking the worst news of their lives. Fact is, every day in this job I see people at their lowest points, but nothing’s as difficult as delivering news of a death.
Like attending the autopsy, it isn’t something I can turn away from. Not and stay the person I want to be.
I put the car in gear and go.
4
GWEN
I get home again before dawn, but not before Sam’s up; I hear him in the shower as I enter. I dump my purse and coat and move off down the hall; I check the kids and find them still sleeping soundly before I get to my office. Kez’s unease haunts me, and however tired I am, I can’t lay myself down and catch an extra half hour. I can’t keep Lanny from taking stupid risks, but maybe if I can help ease Kezia’s burden, even a little, that will make me feel less helpless.
I open my laptop and log in to the office’s mainframe. One of the less-than-comfortable perks of my job is the ability to trace cell tower pings on a number, and sometimes, sometimes, trace the movements. It’s only quasi-legal, one of those services that’s a loophole if you know which buttons to push. It’s an open back door for people like me if they know how to navigate it.
Kezia’s sent me a written transcript and an audio file. I transfer both to my laptop and pull them up. I read as I listen.
“911, what is your emergency?” It’s a marvel to me how most emergency operators sound bored and impatient. Male or female—and this one is a deeper male voice—they share a detachment I sometimes envy. “Hello?”
The second voice is fainter, but I think that it, too, has a deeper timbre. Male? I think. “Y’all need to send somebody out to Crease Road and Fire Road Twelve,” he says. “Something’s goin’ on up there.” The most important impression I have is that the accent is fake. Very fake. Definitely a bad actor’s version of the rural South. Not even Vee Crockett—with the most backwoods accent I know—would sound like that.
“What’s going on, sir?” The operator sounds like he couldn’t possibly care less. But at least he’s asking.
“There’s a car up in there stopped. I heard a scream. Woman driving out here alone, bad things can happen. You’d best send someone.” I tense up. The caller hasn’t said anything about a woman until now. A scream, yes. But still, it seems off the way he phrases it. So does the tone . . . almost flat, which seems odd.
“Sir, can you describe the car, or the driver—” Maybe the operator’s picked up on it, too, because suddenly he sounds engaged and interested.
But the caller hangs up. I listen to the operator try a callback. No one answers. But the operator did manage to snag a number, and I look at the entry on the transcript. Bingo. Kez was almost certainly right, it’s likely a burner phone, but at the very least I can trace other towers where the cell pinged, if the caller keeps it on.
I log in to the J. B. Hall system and access the proprietary program; it’s plugged into all carriers in the area, and it works like a charm. Like I said: Not exactly legal, but not illegal either. It’s a dark shade of gray that sooner or later will be completely erased by new legislation, but the government moves too slowly to keep up with a lot of innovation in the tech industry. Private investigators don’t need warrants, just access agreements since we’re paying for the data use.
I put the phone number into our reverse database on another screen, but as expected, it comes back without a registered name and address. I switch back to the tracking and try that.
I watch the program as it highlights the path of the call. Not surprisingly, it’s hitting towers close to Stillhouse Lake, but the interesting thing is, when the call comes in, it’s already moving away from the spot where the car was discovered in the pond—and along a different road than the one where the pond is located. Logically, it’s already made at least one turn away from the crime scene . . . if it was ever on that road to begin with. It keeps moving, but not toward the lake, and not toward Norton. It navigates narrow back roads, then turns east.
I get a sinking feeling as I watch it steadily move forward. I know where it’s heading, and sure enough, the signal pings near a major freeway.
Then I lose the track completely. He’s almost certainly switched it off and removed the battery; he would have pulled off to do that before entering the freeway. Heading north or south? I have no way to know unless he activates the phone again.
Unless he’s already ditched it, I think. I imagine him rolling down the window and tossing the phone off on the side of the road. I mark the coordinates of the last signal. It might be worth a look. If Kez can retrieve the cell itself, it could reveal call logs, photos, texts, DNA, all manner of interesting information. Not to mention old-fashioned fingerprints.
He was enjoying himself. That impression makes shivers move over my skin. He said just enough to tease, not enough to give anything away. I’m honestly a little amazed the 911 operator sent a patrol at all, or that the county cop was lucky enough to spot the drowned car. God wanted those girls found. But what about the driver of the car? I imagine a mother bound and gagged in the back of that second car, screaming for her children. Not knowing, hopefully, what’s happened to them . . . though I don’t know which would be more torturous, knowing the fate of her babies, or not knowing at all. I can’t imagine. I don’t want to. I identify way too closely with it. I’d honestly thought that as my kids grew up and became more independent, I’d be less anxious. Instead, I find myself endlessly cycling through a horrific what-if catalog of disasters now more than ever, because I can’t protect them like I once could.