ass to plant before I walked over to the closest framed photo, holding it in my hands. Easily identifying the girl, I pointed the picture toward him while Rivera scouted the rest of the room, and I asked Little, “You obviously know Kerry Mills has been missing for six months, so why don’t you tell me why you have photographs of her in your home?”
He shrugged. “She’s someone I knew.”
“How?”
“I took a few classes at Northeastern. Kerry was in one. We hung out a few times.”
We knew Mills was a part-time student. If Little had taken classes at Northeastern, we would have found that information, and it would have been flagged.
“We have no record of you enrolled in any class at Northeastern.”
“And that’s my problem?”
There was something so smug about this asshole, and I wanted to punch the look right off his fucking face.
“I’m asking why you’re not registered in their system.”
While I waited for him to respond, I took my time in studying the photo. Mills was on her knees with her hands behind her back. A white dress covered her body that almost resembled a maid’s costume. Behind her was mostly darkness, beneath her a dirty, bare mattress.
“I don’t know why I’m not,” he answered.
I didn’t believe that.
I met his eyes again and said, “How many classes have you taken there?”
“Just the one we were in together.”
His story was already changing.
In my earpiece, one of the guys in the van said, “I’m digging into the school’s system right now. Give me thirty seconds.”
I turned the framed photo toward Little and said, “Explain this picture.”
“What’s there to say?”
I walked closer to where he was sitting and dropped the photo on the table in front of him. “Don’t play fucking games with me. When I ask a question, you answer.” I pointed at the frame. “Why are her hands behind her back? Why is she in a dress that’s unlike any style we saw in her closet at home? Where was this picture taken?”
He sighed, like I was wasting his goddamn time. “She liked to be dominated. She wore that outfit, and it was a little game we used to play.”
A team member said in my ear, “We’re reaching out to her mother right now to see if she can locate the dress in Mills’s room.”
“How long were you two intimate?” Rivera asked him.
“Couple of months.”
“Did she bring you home? Did you meet her family?”
He laughed, and even though his glasses didn’t fall, he pushed them high against the bridge of his nose. “I’m thirty years older than her. I’m not the guy you bring home to mama.”
“Then, what kind of guy are you, Mr. Little?”
He tilted his head, almost like a dog. “The one who likes to fuck after the bell rings and not speak again until the next class.”
“There’s zero record of Ronald Little at Northeastern,” my team member said in my ear. “We’ve tried running his address, phone number, work line, and Social Security number. He doesn’t exist in their system.”
I glanced at Rivera, who had just heard the same information in his earpiece, and then looked back at Little. “When was the last time you saw Mills?”
He crossed his legs, his hands folding in the center. “I’m not positive, but it was before tax season. She stopped coming to class, and I never saw her again.”
“Did you try to call her?”
“I didn’t have her number.”
“Did you stop by her house to see if she was all right?” Rivera inquired.
My thoughts were interrupted again as a team member came through my ear and said, “The mother has never seen that white dress before, and it’s not in Mills’s closet.”
“I didn’t have her address.” Little scratched his bald scalp. “Like I told you, we were fuck buddies, nothing more.”
“Tell me how someone—a business owner, a homeowner, a man who, on paper, seems to follow all the rules—attends class at a university, and the school has absolutely no record of him being there.”
He stared at me for several seconds before replying, “The school needs to take better records.”
He was lying.
Rivera knew that; the team listening to this conversation knew that.
A stranger off the fucking street would know that.
Little could have used an alias, so nothing could be traced back to him, or he’d never attended the class in the first place.
“Mr. Little, what class was it that you took with Miss Mills?”
There was another pause and then, “A business course.”
“Mills was enrolled in Communications II and Basic Algebra,” the