“He wasn’t just killed,” Serrano said. “That was some biblical wrath stuff that was done to him. Even if there are kids in there who want to talk to us, they’ve gotta be scared out of their minds. People won’t come forward because they’ve seen what happens when they do. I don’t think we’ll get much help here.”
Serrano and Tally drove back to the precinct and settled in at their desks.
“OK, let’s start from the top. What do we know about Matthew Linklater?” Tally sipped a cup of coffee and grimaced. “Ugh, I’m starting to think they use washing machine runoff in the pot.”
“Other than the fact that he died in a way that should be reserved for pedophiles and telemarketers?” Serrano said. “Matthew Linklater was a single, Caucasian male, forty-eight years old. No prior arrests, no marriages, no children. He worked at Ashby High for the past thirteen years, and prior to that was on the faculty at Pemberly Middle School in Chicago. I spoke to his former headmaster at Pemberly, who recalls Linklater as an exemplary educator with no known legal or personal issues. No reprimands or warnings in his file. He was Mr. Freaking Rogers.”
“I pulled his bank statements and got his employment records from Principal Alvi,” Tally said. “Linklater was making a shade over sixty-seven grand a year, paychecks deposited biweekly. No deposits out of the ordinary. The only thing that raised my eyebrows was a onetime deposit of eleven thousand dollars on March eighteenth of last year, but we were able to trace it to a horse racing bet at Fairmount Park. Linklater nailed a trifecta. Lucky, but not illicit. He even declared the winnings on his tax return.”
“Nobody on the faculty had an unkind word to say about him,” Serrano added. “But none of them seemed to know him all that well either—you know, quiet, kept to himself, seemed nice, et cetera, et cetera. Principal Alvi said there were absolutely no hints of any sort of impropriety.”
“But somebody went to a whole lot of trouble to kill him,” Tally said. “He did something or had dirt on someone. But he was scared enough of the potential repercussions to keep it quiet. Until he emailed your girlfriend.”
Tally drained the rest of her mug and set it on her desk. Photos of Tally’s three stepchildren covered the sides of the mug. It was last year’s birthday present from Claire’s children. Serrano remembered the day she brought it into the office. Tally’s face glowed like someone had turned on high beams behind her eyes. Serrano’s partner always had purpose, but that day she had passion. The mug was proof that Leslie Tally was no longer just somebody’s wife but part of somebody’s family.
Claire’s ex-husband, Alonzo, the father of her children, had been out of their lives for several years. He lived in Baton Rouge with his new wife, a Pilates instructor fifteen years his junior. Serrano had heard Claire wonder how Alonzo might even meet a Pilates instructor, given the extent of his physical exertion was lifting nachos into his mouth. Serrano knew it had taken a long time for the Wallace children to come to terms with Claire’s admission of her sexuality and even longer to accept Claire and Leslie’s relationship. That mug was a symbol. You’re one of us now. The Wallace children approved. Tally drank from it every day, washed it diligently, and when she left for the night, always placed it on her desk with the kids’ pictures facing out.
It made Serrano burst with happiness for his partner. But her good fortune reminded him of the hole in his own heart that would never mend. Even though Rachel had brought him into her life, he was not her children’s father. Unlike Alonzo Wallace, Rachel’s husband did not abandon his family. He was torn from them, a page ripped from a book that could never be replaced.
Tally’s cell phone pinged. She opened her email app. Smiled.
“We might have something,” she said.
“Go on,” Serrano replied.
“Linklater’s cell phone hasn’t been found yet. More than likely it was taken or destroyed by the killer. But we got the carrier to send over Linklater’s cell data, including texts and emails from the weeks leading up to his death.”
“Anything interesting?” Serrano said.
“Mostly work-related emails. A few calls and texts to his sister, debating whether to move their mother into an assisted-care facility. But there are over a hundred texts to and from a woman named Gabrielle Vargas. Their most recent communication was confirming a dinner date from last Monday. Ms. Vargas is an accountant, forty-six, divorced, and lives with her sixteen-year-old son, Antonio, in North Ashby. Antonio also happens to be a junior at Ashby High.”
“Looks like somebody had a girlfriend,” Serrano said. “None of Linklater’s colleagues mentioned him being in a relationship. He obviously kept things with Ms. Vargas under wraps since it’s dicey to date the parent of a student. Think their relationship could have something to do with him getting killed? Jealous ex?”
“Let’s talk to Ms. Vargas and find out,” Tally said.
“Be gentle,” Serrano said. “Her boyfriend just got killed like he moved into the wrong house in a Stephen King novel. Go easy. But get answers.”
“Gentle is my middle name.”
“That’s a lie.”
“Maybe so, but it should have been.”
Serrano laughed. “You have an address for Ms. Vargas?”
“421 North Grove Street.”
“All right,” Serrano said. “Here’s hoping Ms. Vargas knows what information the good professor was keeping to himself.”
Serrano and Tally went to the lot outside the precinct and got into their Crown Victoria.
A woman sat at a bus stop across the street. She held a cell phone. She nervously chewed the thumbnail on her other hand, caught a cuticle in her teeth. Peeled it off, tasted her own blood. When the detectives pulled out, Evie Boggs snapped a dozen pictures of the car, zooming in on the make, color, and license plate. She then sent a selection of photos via text message. A minute later, she received a text message back.
Moonlight diner. Two hours. In person. Come alone or we hurt someone you love.
Evie had to stop herself from crying out. She wiped an errant tear from her eye, slipped the phone into her purse, and walked away.
CHAPTER 13
Gabrielle Vargas lived in a modest two-bedroom apartment covered in wood-paneled floors and decorated floor to ceiling with poorly assembled IKEA furniture. Drawers that didn’t close fully, dressers tilted at a slight angle.
Detectives Serrano and Tally sat on one end of an L-shaped green microfiber sofa. Gabrielle sat on the other end holding a cup of tea that she had not sipped from. Her eyes were bloodshot from crying, lack of sleep, or both. She was an attractive woman with shoulder-length hair, brown speckled with hints of gray, tied in a ponytail. She wore a thin gray cashmere sweater over a white tank top. She held her face over the full cup of tea, even though it was no longer hot enough for steam to rise.
“The truth is I didn’t know Matthew that well,” Gabrielle said softly. “We only went out a handful of times. And whenever it seemed like we were getting closer, he would stop responding to my texts. I think the kids call it being ghosted. But then he would pop up again a few weeks later. My friends all thought it was because he wanted to see other people, but he always struck me as kind of lonely. I’ve dated players, and Matthew wasn’t that. It was more like he didn’t know how to be in a relationship or handle going steady.” She laughed wistfully. “Do people even use that term anymore?”