He looks old. That’s the first thought that goes through my head when the screen blinks, and Travis’s face appears. It’s only been a few years, yet it looks like he’s been worn thin by the years in prison. He doesn’t look at me with nearly the amusement Jake did. In fact, I have the distinct impression he’s doing the call under a certain degree of duress.
“What do you want?” he demands. “Don’t you think you’ve already done enough to mess up my life?”
“I didn’t do anything to you or to your life,” I point out. “You’re the one who decided it would be a good idea to murder your wife and hide the body. That’s on you. I’m just the one who called you on it. But I’m not here to talk about that. I’m actually here to ask for your help.”
That brings amusement to his face. He leans back in his chair and crosses one ankle over his knee.
“Oh, really?” he asks. “The great Agent Emma Griffin is asking for the help of a lowly convict. How ever will you maintain your reputation?”
“Right now, I don’t care about my reputation, Travis. And I don’t even know if I’m going to be an agent anymore after this. But I need your help. I need to know more about Sarah Mueller,” I say.
He looks at me strangely.
“Sarah is dead,” he says. “Your boyfriend shot her.”
Apparently, watching the news is popular in this prison as well. Good to know the memory of me stays strong in the hearts and minds of those I helped put away. I wouldn’t want them to go to sleep at night, having forgotten my face.
“I know. But I need to know more about her before that happened. You know what she did,” I say.
He shakes his head.
“I don’t know anything about it,” he replies. He holds up his hands to show his innocence. “That was all on her. I didn’t tell her what to do or how to do it. I didn’t even know she was planning something like that. She and I had been cooling off, and I had a new girl.”
“I don’t think you helped her,” I tell him. “If nothing else, you simply don’t know that much about me. But somebody does. I just learned she knew far more about me than I thought. And figuring out how she knew that could be critical in solving several other cases. So, I need to know about her. Her friends. Family. Anyone who might have had influence over her.”
“What’s in it for me?”
“Don’t push it, Burke. You’ve got a long sentence left. Tell me first, and then we’ll talk.”
He sighs. “It wasn’t hard to have influence over Sarah. She didn’t exactly grow up with the most loving of family lives and got put through the wringer in high school. That’s why it was so easy for me to get her to fall in love with me.”
“So, if someone were to tell her she could make it so you were released from prison and the two of you could be together again, she would jump on that opportunity,” I muse.
“Absolutely.”
I nod.
“You know, I came up to Maine a little more than a year ago to follow a tip about a friend of mine who was missing. I couldn’t figure it out. I didn’t know where he could possibly be going. But all along, it was right here under my nose. Travis, how many men in that prison have tattoos of sea monsters on their back?” I ask.
“A few,” he notes. “Some are here for the long haul, but others come for shorter times.”
“Let me guess. They’re pretty popular. They always have money on their books; visitors come frequently?” I asked.
“Yes,” he says. “They are well taken care of.”
“Are you particularly close to any of the men with those tattoos?”
“No,” he says. “But there is a guy who came to visit one of them pretty often who I struck up a friendship with. Then he and Sarah got pretty close.”
I nod, trying not to express any of the emotions I’m feeling. I don’t want him to feel like he’s doing too much for me like he can start to manipulate me with the information he’s offering.
“What can you tell me about him? What did he do for a living?”
“He’s a construction engineer,” Travis says. “According to the guy he used to visit, he’s some sort of genius. He can design and create just about anything.”
“What’s his name?”
“Before I tell you. What’s in it for me?”
I let out a deep sigh. “I’ll make some calls.”
“You promise?”
“What’s his name?”
“It might not be his actual name. He would tell everyone to call him something else. They would announce the names during visitation, but I don’t recall what that was.”
“What did you call him?”
“Fisher.”
“Thank you, Travis. That’s all I need from you,” I say.
“That’s it?” he asks, obviously waiting for some benefit to come from the conversation.
“Yes. Have a nice day.”
I end the call and call Eric into the room.
“I need the security footage from the prison. Can you convince them to give you a peek at that?”
“Sure,” he says. “Any particular day?”
“Go back to a couple months before Sarah showed up in Sherwood. I just need to see the visitations.”
I put a call into Detective Mayfield to check a few things about Martin’s murder while Eric works on getting the surveillance footage from the visitation room at the prison. It takes some time, and eventually, I tip-off to sleep, somehow more comfortable in Eric’s office than the hotel. He wakes me up to tell me he has the footage.
“What are you looking for?” he asks.
“Someone talking to Sarah more than the usual visitors talk to each other,” I say.
I watch the people
