she might be from there. He didn’t want to tell us before because he thought he was betraying a confidence. You weren’t there. You didn’t see his face. So don’t give me a hard time for giving my little brother a break.”
Eric looked straight ahead.
“Eric, come on…”
He gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were white. “Do you want me to go home? Because if you don’t want me around, I’ll leave. It’s not like I don’t have responsibilities back in Ohio. The soup kitchen, my mother, my job. As you said, this is your brother, not mine, so if you think you’ll do better without my help, I’ll just go.”
Casey went to snap back that he should probably just go home then if that was the way he was going to be, then realized she didn’t want to say that. She didn’t want him to go home. It was nice having a companion who was actually a person, and not some horrific afterlife character from legends. “I don’t want you to go.”
His expression remained stony.
“Please, Eric. I said I’m sorry. I am. I’ll be nicer, I promise.”
His mouth twitched.
“What?”
“You just said you were going to be nicer.”
“So? Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“I just never put you and ‘nicer’ in the same sentence.”
Great. Now he was doing the thing Death was always going on about. “I’m not always…Okay. As long as you’ve known me—” three whole weeks, if she was correct “—I haven’t exactly been nice. But I can be.”
“All right.”
“Really.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Casey shook her head. She could be nice, couldn’t she? Whatever. It didn’t matter. Eric was staying, so that was good. She could at least pretend to be nice.
“I checked out Hometown Interiors while you were in there,” Eric said.
“He never hired them.”
“Not surprised. They’re a small, start-up company out of Boulder. Only a few employees, only a few jobs done. Only things I can find are on paper—on the computer, I mean. No people who have actually hired them.”
“Sounds fishy.”
“Of course it does. Because it’s a fake company.”
“But the cops can’t see that?”
“It seems all they see is your brother and the evidence against him.”
“Fake evidence.”
They drove for a while, Casey fuming, Eric concentrating on the traffic.
“So what now?” Eric said.
Casey pulled out her notes on the women. “We figure out which, if any, of these women is the one we’re looking for, and continue going through the lists of Texas women until we find the right one. And we figure out who we can call who can find out about this stupid home renovation company.”
“Leave that to me,” Eric said. “As it happens, I know a few people in the business world, even if my family is now officially out of it.” His father had run a big business back in Ohio until he was arrested for fraud a few weeks earlier. Now, Casey hoped, those connections could be used for something positive.
They drove to Casey’s house, where Eric made a few calls to get that ball rolling. They then went on-line, paid the fee to belong to some People Search database, and began looking for the right Elizabeth Mann. After forty-five minutes they were left with five possibilities, having eliminated the Elizabeth Manns who a) had non-Colorado address and phone information as recent as June, b) had current employment information that was not at The Slope, or c) had indicated their race as African-American, Asian, or “other.”
“Think we should take out the ones with husbands and children?” Eric asked, looking at the five. “She wouldn’t take off without at least one photo of her kids, right?”
Casey thought of her own travel bag, which hadn’t included any photos until Ricky had sent her one the week before—probably only a day or two before his own life had been destroyed. Death had always given her a hard time about not carrying pictures. But it was just too difficult. “Can’t count those out, Eric. What if it’s her husband she’s running from? Or if she’s afraid for the lives of her children? She wouldn’t want any sign of them. Or maybe it was just too painful to have the daily reminder.” As if she would have needed photos to remember. As if there weren’t enough images in her head.
“You didn’t have any pictures.” He had gone through her bag a few weeks earlier, when she’d run from Ohio, leaving her bag behind as she’d desperately put distance between herself and the man she’d killed.