"Yes, it was her turn."
"I'll find them, Xavier."
When I walk out of the processing room, I find Detective White standing just outside.
"Noah," I frown, adjusting my gun in its holster and tucking my phone away in my pocket. "What are you doing here?"
"I thought I'd find you here, Emma. I need to talk to you."
"Creagan already called me. He told me you asked for official help from the Bureau."
"Yes. Without you, we'd still be at a complete dead-end. But that's not actually why I came to find you."
He holds the door for me as we walk out of the jail.
"Oh?" I ask. "What did you need?"
"She called."
I stopped and turned to him.
"The blonde woman?"
"There's a video call scheduled in half an hour."
Chapter Forty-Four
My palms feel sweaty as I wait for the call to connect. It finally does, and she’s finally there. The blonde woman I've been looking for, for more than a year, comes into focus. It looks as if she's sitting in a living room, the floral pattern of the overstuffed chair just visible behind her shoulders. She offers me a smile, but I'm not feeling as generous.
“Who are you?” I ask.
She looks stung, taken aback by the blunt beginning of the conversation.
“My name is Lydia Walsh,” she says.
“I'm Agent Emma Griffin, FBI,” I tell her.
“I know who you are,” she says.
“And yet, I know nothing about you. Even though I've been trying to track you down for over a year.”
She shifts uncomfortably, glancing away from the screen for a second.
“I know. I'm sorry it took so long. You have to understand,” she starts.
“No. I'm going to stop you right there. Because I don't have to understand anything. I will take your explanation, though. I want to know why you were with Greg Bailey the day he left that hospital, and why you showed up again with Lakyn Monroe, and why neither time you responded to public calls for you to contact the police. Because as far as I can see, that's two people who had contact with you very shortly before they were found dead,” I say.
“I did contact the police about Greg,” she says.
The revelation is like a kick to my stomach.
“What?” I ask.
“It took a while. I was really afraid at first. I barely even knew him, and that was the first time we saw each other. Then I found out he was dead, and people were looking for me. I didn't want to have anything to do with it. I didn't know what happened or who was involved, and I didn't want to get tangled up in it. It was too dangerous, and it would compromise what I do,” she explains.
“What you do?” I ask. “What do you mean?”
“I'm a digital criminal investigator,” she says.
“You're a—what?” I ask.
“A digital criminal investigator. I specialize in cold cases. I research cases and do investigations, then network with other like-minded people to try to find solutions to cases that have been overlooked or aren't moving along,” she says.
I can't believe what I'm hearing. She is staring at me through the computer screen with an almost smug expression on her face, as if I should be impressed by what she’s saying.
“You mean you read true crime articles and interfere with people and investigations. Actual investigations,” I say.
“It's more than that,” she protests. “We make a real difference.”
“Yeah, the difference you made for Greg is that he's dead now, and you didn't come forward to say what you knew. Do you realize that his case is still unsolved?”
“Yes, I do. And I hate that. But, as I said, I did come forward. Six months after it happened. I spoke to the police detective, told him everything I knew, and he said I didn't have any information that was pertinent to the investigation,” she says.
I feel as if I could snap the top off the table I'm sitting in front of and crack it in half.
“And when we continued to put out notices looking for you and asking for your identity, you didn't think to contact the people looking for information?” I ask, barely keeping myself level.
“I had already given them everything I knew. I figured their continuing to ask was part of the strategy.”
“It wasn't,” I snap. “I've been trying to find you for over a year. How did you know Greg? What were you doing with him?”
“He got in touch with me just a couple of weeks before he died. He reached out to me online and said he needed to speak with me about a case I was looking into. We started talking, and he warned me the cold case I had started investigating was dangerous, and I needed to be careful. He wouldn't get any further into it. He said I didn't need to know all the details," Lydia says.
"What case?" I ask.
“I'd really prefer not to talk about that when I don't know who may be listening,” she says. “But I'll be happy to send you the notes I took.”
I give her my contact information and wait while she writes it down.
"If this was just about a cold case he didn't want you getting involved in, why did you go see him at the hospital? And why did he seem so happy to see you?" I ask.
An uncomfortable mix of sadness and embarrassment flickers over her face, and she glances down at her hands before looking back at me.
"We didn't know each other well. That's true. But we had gotten pretty friendly in the conversations we had. I wanted to meet him in person, and he agreed. We were going to talk about cases and spend some time together. I went to pick him up, and he said there was something he needed to do, but that he would call me later. He never did. Three days later, I found out he was dead."
"And you don't know what he was going to do? He didn't mention anyone's name or anything?"
"No," she tells me.
