“Watch out for those older guys. They’re nothing but trouble.”
You’re getting off track here, Pat. Decide if you’re staying here or going to Denver.
“So, seriously, Raven.” My cell phone started to ring. “You want to stay?”
“Yeah,” she said. My phone rang again. “I want to stay here, see the beach, the aquarium. The sharks. All that stuff.” Phone still ringing. She stared at my pocket. “Are you gonna answer that already?”
I flipped out my phone.
“Dr. Bowers, it’s Aina. We found the boxes but no girlfriend.
We contacted the aquarium. Ms. Lillo never showed up for work today.”
Hunter’s keys were gone from his apartment. Maybe they took off together.
“Aina,” I said. “That’s great. But I’m in the middle of something.”
“Her car’s still in the parking lot of the aquarium, though. Dispatch sent a team of criminalists to look through it.”
She told me that last part on purpose. I know she did.
“Thanks, Aina.” I hung up.
“OK,” I told Tessa. “I don’t want to argue with you here. If you’re good to stay, we stay.”
“I’m good to stay.”
“OK.”
“Good.”
Lien-hua returned with her coffee, and I asked her, “Was everything all right over there?”
She nodded. “The boy is allergic to peanuts. His mother saw him eating one of the cinnamon rolls with walnuts and pecans and was afraid it might contain peanuts as well. But the manager assured her that there weren’t any.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” Tessa said, staring at the boy. She’s allergic to peanuts, so I knew she could relate.
“Good.” I really wanted to inspect Cassandra’s car and work space before the criminalists got to them. If Hunter was the arsonist, it was possible she was working with him, and we could wrap this whole thing up if we could locate her. I stood. “Tessa. I think Agent Jiang and I are going to go check-”
“Can I come to the aquarium with you?” Tessa asked.
I blinked. “I never said we were going to the aquarium.”
“But you are, and I want to come too, and don’t tell me it’s not safe or anything, because if Austin Hunter really is the arsonist and he was taking off with Cassandra, they wouldn’t hang out at the place she works; they’d get out of town. Right? Besides, it sounds like you should be looking for him at a Keva Juice or a Laundromat, not an aquarium.”
Lien-hua and I just stared at her. Before I could say a word, Lien-hua said, “Tessa, how do you know all that?”
“I was listening to you guys. He talks loud on the phone, and you oughta know that when you whisper something it just makes people nearby listen more closely.” She pushed back from the table.
“It’s a good thing you two aren’t spies.”
“But you only heard my side of the phone conversation,” I said.
“I filled in the rest.”
Forget college. I should send her to the FBI academy.
“Sharks are cool, right?” she said. “Remember? So, can I come?”
Something didn’t quite jibe. “Hang on, Tessa, you’re always asking to go off by yourself, to do things by yourself, to be left on your own. But whenever I’m working a case, you want to tag along. It doesn’t make sense. It’s not consistent.”
“I’m a teenage girl. I’m exempt from being consistent.”
I looked at Lien-hua, who shrugged. “She’s right about one thing, they wouldn’t hang out at the aquarium.”
Well, that was helpful.
“So,” said Tessa. “Can I come? We were gonna go to the aquarium anyway.”
“OK. Look. You stay in the public section while we check out Cassandra’s office. You stay by a crowd of people. No sneaking around. You’re never alone. Got it?”
“Got it,” she said. “No problem.”
27
As Tessa went back to her room to get her satchel, she thought about the conversation she’d just had with Patrick. On the one hand he was right, it didn’t seem to make sense-she wanted to live her own life, but she also wanted to be part of his: to need him but also be free of him. It was kind of weird, or maybe it was normal, she didn’t know. She was still trying to get used to the whole idea of having a dad around.
Besides, Patrick wanted two things just like she did. He wanted to work on his cases but also spend time with her. Both were important to him, she knew they were. So what was the difference?
Maybe she and Patrick weren’t all that different after all.
She grabbed her satchel, as well as the lotion to rub on her scar, and walked back to the elevators.
On my way to the car, the medical examiner returned my call but scoffed when I asked about an autopsy. “We already know how John Doe died-death by trolley. Besides, there wasn’t enough left of him to put in a Ziploc bag, let alone enough for an autopsy.”
You have to hand it to these MEs. They really know how to humanize a tragedy. “I was hoping we could look into this a little more,” I said. “There’s something here that doesn’t add up. Have there been any other suicides like this recently?”
“Bowers, this is the sixth largest city in the country. What do you think? The guy had no driver’s license, no social security number, no passport, and thus, no identity. As far as the system’s concerned, he doesn’t exist.”
“What about relatives?”
“No one showed up to claim the body, and no one will. This is a city of 1.3 million legal residents, plus nearly three hundred thousand illegal ones. What do you want me to do, interview each one of them, see if I can find someone who’s related?” He paused to catch his breath. “I need to get back to work.”
I thought maybe I could speak to one of John Doe’s relatives at the funeral, but when I asked the ME about the time of the interment, he said, “Unless someone claims the…” I could tell he was searching for the right word and body wasn’t it. “Unless someone claims the remains, there’ll be a public burial on Thursday. That’s all I know.” And then, in a tone bordering on compassion, he added, “So, why does this guy matter so much to you, anyhow?”
“Because he deserves to matter to someone.” I reached into my pocket and felt John Doe’s tooth, then the ME ended the call and Tessa arrived.
Trying to put the tragedy of his suicide out of my mind, I slid into the car next to Tessa and we headed to the aquarium, where Lien-hua had agreed to meet us.
At exactly 11:56 a.m. Creighton Melice discovered Randi’s cell phone in his car.
He’d decided to move the car eight blocks away from the warehouse so there would be no way of connecting him to it, or it to him.
But when he opened the car door and saw a phone on the dashboard, he realized it was hers. A tight knot formed in his gut.
Where was the phone Shade had provided him? Creighton searched between the seats and then beneath them and then behind them, but the phone was not in the car.
Creighton remembered Randi grabbing a phone as he shoved her out of the car.
She took the wrong one.
Randi now had the phone Shade was going to call.
And in that moment, despite how strongly he felt about not blaspheming, Creighton Melice did exactly that.
