“What do you mean it’s a brick?”
“They think it was water damage, but they don’t know how it basically drowned when it was in his pocket.” The lawyer pulled out a black smartphone in a Ziploc bag. “They even sent it home with us when he was released into psychiatric custody. They took the SIM card and told us the rest of it was completely useless.”
Katherine held out her hand. “Well, I guess we’ll see.”
* * *
They drove away disappointed.
“Yep,” Katherine said. “Completely useless.”
“Are there, like, computer science experts that might be able to do something with it? A programmer? My seventeen-year-old daughter? I’m just saying, she’s constantly attached to hers, so maybe she has a way of absorbing information by digital osmosis.”
Constantly attached…
The vision came to her quickly. There was a man walking out onto a porch, limping a little and holding a hand flat to his abdomen as if he’d just had surgery. He sat and stared at the corral in front of his house. She could hear a flag flapping in the distance.
“Katherine?”
Her ears popped. “Megan, do you need to get home right away?”
“Why?”
“I just saw someone we need to talk to. Mario might be the key.”
“Mario?”
She put her phone to her ear. “Abby’s boyfriend. He might not have been part of the study, but he was living with someone who was.”
Megan’s eyes lit up. “Great idea!”
“Hello?”
“Baxter!” Thank goodness he’d picked up. “I have a favor I need to ask.”
* * *
After more than a little cajoling on Baxter’s part, Mario agreed to speak with them at his parents’ home in Nipomo. They drove through acres of farmland and horse ranches before they found the simple white ranch house beneath a grove of cottonwood trees. It overlooked a white-railed horse corral.
Sitting on the porch was a tall, long-legged young man with bronze skin and curly dark hair. He sat up and waved as they approached.
“Please don’t get up!” Katherine shouted as they approached. “Please. I know you’re still recovering.”
He waved and sat back down, holding his abdomen. “Thanks, Katherine.”
“It’s good to see you.” She smiled. “Even under these circumstances. This is my friend Megan.”
“Nice to meet you.” He nodded toward the door. “My mom said if you want anything to drink, just knock and she’ll bring you whatever. Sorry, she’s watching my nieces and nephews today, so she’s gotta stay with them.”
“Maybe it’s better that she doesn’t come out, because I wanted to ask about Abby.”
The pain was evident in Mario’s eyes. “Baxter said you’d want to talk about her.”
“First off, I need to know, did you have any inclination that—”
“Nothing.” His voice broke a little and he cleared his throat. “There was nothing. I’ve gone over everything in my head so many times, but there’s just… nothing.” He breathed out the last word. “You know Abby. She was… sunshine.” Mario looked heartbroken. “I was the pessimist in the relationship, you know? She was always upbeat. I used to tease her if she got mad because…” The corner of his mouth turned up. “I’m not gonna lie, it was so cute it made me laugh. She hated that.”
“She hated it?”
“Not like that.” His eyes turned inward. “We were good, Abby and me. It was good.”
Whoever had sabotaged these students belonged in jail. For a very, very long time.
“Mario,” she started, “I know you’ve talked to the police about it, but can you tell me what Abby’s demeanor was that day? Had she been drinking? Did she appear to be under the influence of anything?”
“She had a beer with lunch. Just one. So nothing like that. She never took drugs, just her prescription or allergy medicine sometimes.”
“And later?” she asked. “When it happened?”
He cleared his throat. “If I had to describe the way she was when it happened… It was like she was possessed. Her eyes were open, but there was nothing behind them.” He kept his voice low. “Don’t mention that to anyone because I honestly think my mother and father believe that she was actually possessed. They haven’t said that—they don’t want to look superstitious—but nothing else makes sense.”
“What if I told you we think we know what might have happened and it had nothing to do with Abby’s feelings for you? It didn’t have anything to do with Abby at all.”
He frowned. “What? Really?”
Katherine took a deep breath. “Abby was part of a study last year, right? The one about anxiety?”
He shook his head. “The police tried to get me to blame this shit on her meds, but I am telling you, that girl never abused her medication. She never had a weird reaction in all the time I knew her. No sleepwalking or altered states. Nothing like that. Like, how many people do you know on Xanax and shit? That was all she took. Fucking Xanax. Or… I don’t know, the generic of that one, I think. She’d been on it a long time.”
“But the study she did wasn’t related to her medication, right? It was related to biofeedback.”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “She talked to me about it before. Said there were no side effects. It was kind of like a meditation thing.”
“Biofeedback involves a laboratory component where Abby would have been hooked up to sensors to make her aware of her body’s reaction to stressors. Then, combined with that, there are visualizations that she would have done after the in-person treatments, and then she would report back on her independent exercises. That was part of the study.”
“Yeah. That sounds right.”
Megan piped up. “Do you remember her checking her phone a lot?”
Mario frowned. “I mean… no more than usual. Everyone checks their phone, right?”
“Did she have different reminder tones or alarms for the reporting app for the study?”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah. I’ve never thought about it before, but if I think back, yes. Her regular text tone was like… a lightsaber noise.”
“Oh, I remember that!” Katherine grinned. “She showed me how to get it once, but then I
