The reporters have smelled fresh roadkill and they’ll pick the carcass clean for days, given the nature of the murder.
“The car has been towed already. I was cruising around and a deputy stopped me. I told him what I was looking for and he said he towed the car away from the marina lot yesterday. It was parked almost in the water.”
“The phone?”
“I found the phone under the mattress. One of the crime scene guys fingerprinted it for me and I have it with me. It’s covered in black powder but it doesn’t look broken.”
“We’re coming back to the office. Can you meet us there?”
“Hang on a minute,” she says to me. Then I hear her say to someone: “If you want a story, you need to go to The Tides and talk to Deputy Jackson. He found an important piece of evidence and a witness.” I can hear the clamoring increase in volume and Mindy repeating herself until the background noise stops.
“You didn’t,” I say.
“Yes, I did.”
“We don’t have a deputy named Jackson,” I say.
“By the time they find out there’s no deputy or witness there, I’ll be back at the office.”
“Slick. See you there.” I hang up.
Ronnie looks concerned. “Mindy won’t get fired, will she? I mean if the reporters complain to Sheriff Gray.”
“Mindy isn’t a deputy. She’s a contract worker. Sheriff Gray will tell them he will talk to her and that’ll be the end of that.”
“Cool.”
“Ronnie, you should never do that. You could be fired.”
“Okay. I promise.”
I look over and she’s got her fingers crossed. “Start calling those people,” I say, and we pull out into traffic. I hope we get lucky with one of them.
Twenty-One
Rylee and her red-haired detective friend had somehow gotten to Gabrielle’s house ahead of her. Ronnie. That’s the redhead’s name. Before they left, a big guy, he looks like a cop, came and is left guarding Gabrielle. She could kill him with one of her knives, and then do Gabrielle, but that isn’t in her plan.
Her plan is to make Rylee suffer. She’s begun that already. Tick, tick, tick.
And now there are other places to go, people to kill. Still, she would have enjoyed seeing the look she cut off of Gabrielle’s face.
She told Monique that she killed Gabrielle but it was a lie. She only said it to see the horror it caused, payback for the help Monique had given Rylee. Michael Rader threatened Monique several years ago. He told her he would kill her remaining daughter if she didn’t tell him if Rylee was still alive. Monique confirmed to him that the bitch was still breathing; not only that, he also recovered all the photos Rylee had taken from Marie’s house. According to Michael, there were enough photos to fill a wall. A shrine to his victims. A wall of memorabilia that could potentially put Alex in prison or get Michael a death sentence. She warned Alex about that. But Marie had more control over him. Marie was his motivator. But Marie was dead.
She watches the detective sitting on the porch with Gabrielle. She knows he’ll be fucking her before the night is over. That’s how policemen are. It isn’t a bad thing. Just reality. Watching them together, doing something as simple as sitting on the steps, drinking, not even talking, brings back a flood of memories of her time with Alex. The little time he could give to her. She appreciated every second. She hadn’t always been so happy. So safe.
She conjures up an image of his face. His dark eyes were so intense. That was what had attracted her to him. The kindness behind his tough exterior was what made her fall in love with him. He saved her from the streets. Took care of her. Gave her a safe place to live, food, money, whatever she needed or wanted.
She didn’t want much back in those days and she needed very little. After all, she’d subsisted on next to nothing in her native El Salvador. Her mother and father and brother were killed by the FMLN guerrilla faction for not joining them during the twelve-year war with the junta government. Her brother and father were killed in a hideous fashion of skinning them alive in public as a lesson to anyone that opposed them. Her mother was repeatedly raped before she was beheaded. She herself was raped and discarded by the guerrilla fighters. Left alone at the age of thirteen as an example. No work. No one