“At the time, of course. I think we provided lists for all our tours in Cancun that week. But there were probably two or three other companies offering spring break packages at the same time as ours.”
“I don’t suppose you’d still have those lists,” Powell asks.
He hesitates. “Jeez, that was twenty-five years ago. I don’t know that we have records going back that far. Things weren’t as fully computerized as they are now. You know what I mean?”
Mills stands. “Sir, I’d appreciate it if you could check,” he says. “Maybe at the office. Or in storage. Wherever. It would be easier than having us come in with a search warrant to turn everything upside down.”
Mills was careful, in the leveling of his tone, to not make that sound like a threat. It wasn’t a threat. It was a practicality. Junior’s death, alone, is enough to secure the warrant.
Gaffing gets out of his chair. “I’ll do what I can. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we destroyed records that old.”
“Even records that noteworthy?” Powell asks.
“Like I said, I’ll do what I can.”
Out front Powell asks Mills if she can go meet her boyfriend for lunch. He tells her sure, go ahead, whatever. He gets in his car, but sitting there, before he starts the engine, he has a crack of an uneasy feeling. Something. He rests his face on a closed fist and surveys a fill-in-the-blank proposition. Nothing. Then he gazes at himself in the rearview mirror, his eyes searching, and, for no conscious reason, it hits him. A photograph. A photograph hanging on the wall. He jumps out of his car. He sprints to Gaffing’s front door and presses the bell as if he’s calling for a nurse in the ICU.
He hears the man approaching from inside. “What is it? I’m coming for Christ’s sake.”
The door swings open.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Gaffing,” Mills says. “But I need to see one of the photographs on your wall. Back on the porch.”
“What for?”
“May I? Please?”
Gaffing steps aside, then follows Mills, who heads into the house. On the porch, Mills sees it immediately: a picture of Gaffing and his late wife posing on a beach, behind them a stone jetty strewn with seaweed, in the distance a pier. Surely there are a million backdrops like that in the world, but this can’t be a coincidence; maybe it’s the angle at which Gaffing and his wife are standing—that’s it, it’s the angle. Replace Gaffing and his wife with Klink, Schultz, and Torento, and it’s the same exact beach in the same exact place. Mills points. “That photo. Where was it taken?”
Gaffing looks at him cautiously. “Cancun.”
“The same year Kimberly Harrington disappeared?”
“Of course not,” he says. “I wouldn’t want that memory hanging in my den. It was several years later.”
“Same hotel?” Mills asks. “Same hotel where Kimberly’s tour group stayed?”
“Actually that spot is right between the hotel we used for tours and another, much fancier place.”
“What hotel did you use for tours?”
“It was called the Playa Grande Resort,” Gaffing replies. “But it’s changed hands a few times since. Been totally renovated. I think it’s now the Playa Caribe Excelsior.”
Playa Caribe. The words roll over his chest like a truck. He quickly recovers from the impact and asks, “Does your company still use the property?”
“As far as I know. But as I told you, I’m not really into the day-to-day.”
“Right,” Mills says. “I don’t know why I didn’t notice this the first time I came here, but I have a photo of two of our victims standing, I believe, in the exact same place as you and the Mrs.”
Again, the man eyes Mills suspiciously. “Do you think I did it? Are you trying to build some kind of case against me?”
The question, like a reckless driver, makes Mills suddenly swerve. “What? No. No. Do you think that’s why I’m here?”
“I don’t know why you’re here. But you’ve been here twice. Or three times if you want to count this little stunt with the photograph.”
“Just doing diligence, Mr. Gaffing.”
He slams his fist into a wall. “I did not kill my son!”
Mills faces him, eases his stance, and says, “I’m sure you didn’t, sir. But we do want to find the person who did. That’s our number one concern, right now. That’s the only reason I’m here.”
“Can you go now, please?” the man begs.
“Of course,” Mills says. “I’d like to take the photo with me if possible.”
Offense is taken. It’s in Gaffing’s eyes. “Are you serious? That’s my favorite picture of me and my wife. You can’t have it. You can’t.”
Mills nods. “I understand,” he says. “But again, I’m doing anything and everything I can to find your son’s killer.”
“No. You can’t have the photograph.”
“When will you be in the Student Blast office again?”
“I don’t know.”
“Unless you can do it here, could you maybe go into the office and scan the photo to me?” Mills asks. “My email address is on the card I gave you.”
The man says he can do that. Mills is not convinced he actually will.
They have a quiet dinner. The kind of dinner when the whir of the AC dominates the conversation. They chew, sip, and there’s nothing particularly wrong, just an unspoken agreement to decompress. Kelly smiles at both of them. Mills nods. Soon, though, Trevor is up, clearing his dishes, offering to clear theirs. Like most teenagers, he’s Pavlovian for a Friday night. “Should we be grounding him?” Mills asks his wife.
“Dad!”
“The chores, Alex. You gave him endless chores.”
“But where are you going tonight?” he asks his son. “You’re not seeing Lily, are you?”
Trevor snickers. “Of course not.”
“Better not.”
“We haven’t broken up,” Trevor says. “If that’s what you’re asking.” He’s nearly at the front door, keys jangling, when the doorbell rings. “I’ll get it,” he yells to his parents.
Kelly looks at Mills, but he shrugs. He hears a hushed conversation out front, then Trevor calling, “Mom, Dad, we have visitors.”
They head to the door, where they find a dour Mr. and Mrs. Heathrow standing there. “Is everything all right?” Kelly asks them. “Please come in.”
She leads them to the front room, where she asks them to sit. “We’ll stand,” Dan says. “We won’t be long. We’re sorry to drop in unannounced. But this is about Trevor. We thought you’d like to hear it from us first.”
Mills closes his eyes for a second as the chill goes right to his skin, the hair on his arms standing on end.
“What about me?” Trevor asks Dan.
“Relax,” Mills tells his son. And then he turns to Dan. “We’re all ears.”
The man, his bowling-ball head as red as a ripe tomato, clears his throat and says, “We’re thinking of pressing charges against Trevor.”
Mills takes it in the gut. So much so he can’t speak.
“What?” Trevor screams. “What the fuck!”
“Trevor, please,” Kelly says, her eyes storming. Then she turns to Lily’s parents and says, “You had better explain.”
“There’s really nothing to explain,” Dan says. “Your son forced himself on Lily.”
“Bullshit! Total bullshit,” Trevor cries. “That did not happen.”
“In Lily’s version of things, it did,” Dan says. “And we believe our daughter.”
“That’s bullshit. I would never do that. Ever. Mom? Dad?”
“Trevor, why don’t you hang out in the office while your mom and I sort this out?”
“I’m not leaving until this bullshit—”
“Trevor, do what I said. I still make the rules around here.”
When Trevor retreats, Kelly steps closer to Dan and his wife and says, “You better know what you’re doing.”
“The more I hear how your kid beh
aves, the more I believe he forced himself on Lily,” Dan says.
Mills shakes his head. “It’s a ‘he said, she said’ situation.”
“Typical denial,” Dan says. “A good parent wouldn’t try to cover up for his kid.”
“Get the fuck out of my house, Dan!” Mills howls.
“No, wait,” Kelly says. “Let me just prepare the Heathrows for the very real scenario of fighting this out in court. You’ll be asked to put your daughter in a courtroom to claim Trevor did what? Rape her? Sexually assault her? If we had any inkling our son was capable of that, we’d be right there with you. But we all know that didn’t happen. Don’t we?”
“My daughter doesn’t lie,” Corinne squeaks from the corner of the room.
“I suggest you call the cops and file a complaint against Trevor,” Mills says. “It’s your right. Go ahead. We don’t fear the truth.”
“Wait,” Kelly insists. “Can’t we all take a deep breath? I’d rather we agree to an intermediary step before we end up in court. It makes much more sense. I know some great private mediators who the court uses from time to time. I’ve sent my clients to plenty of them. Would you consider that?”
“Yeah, right, so you can handpick one of your liberal shrinks or somebody to decide what really happened? I don’t think so,” the bowling ball mutters.
Kelly laughs a bitter laugh. “No,” she says. “Not at all. In fact, we’ll let you pick the mediator.”
Corinne starts to say something, but her husband interrupts her. “What about our priest?”
“That would hardly be an impartial mediator,” Mills says.
Corinne steps forward and says, “We’ll find someone.”
“But if we’re not happy, we’re pressing charges,” Dan says with a poke to Mills’s chest. “And your son can kiss his football scholarship goodbye.”
Mills wants so desperately to take that squirrely, little finger and twist it until it breaks. But instead he says, “Okay, now, will you get the fuck out of my house?”
“No wonder your kid’s a thug.”
Trevor appears from the hallway, having ignored his parents’ instructions to sit it out in the office. “I did not force myself on her, Mr. and Mrs. Heathrow,” he says. “In fact, it was her idea to have sex in your bed. Her idea.”
Corinne whispers, “Oh, my God. . . .”
“Trevor,” Mills warns him.
“No,” the kid says. “Ask her about that. And ask her why.”
Lily’s parents slam the door shut behind them as they leave.
Mills is shaking.
30
The case of Kimberly Harrington’s disappearance involved several FBI agents over the course of the investigation. The Mexican authorities led the investigation, of course, but they were assisted by Special Agents Jeremy Hicks and Henderson Garcia, both legal attachés assigned to the US Embassy in Mexico City. Hicks retired six years ago. Garcia is still based in Mexico.
“So, I talked to Garcia, and he knows the case well, says the files are accessible, given that the case was never closed and they regularly get tips, although most of them are lousy,” Preston explains. “He’s sending me a PDF of the lists of people they interviewed in Cancun. But he said it will take a while to actually get me all their statements because there are numerous files and they take forever to upload. He was, shall we say, very curious about our interest.”
“Of course he is,” Mills says. “Did you fill him in?”
“Yeah. He’s even more curious now.”
They’re standing at the coffee maker outside Mills’s office. It’s 11:20 a.m. Monday morning.
“Good. Just start with what you have and go from there.”
Preston takes that as his cue to leave.
By three o’clock in the afternoon, Mills still hasn’t heard from Joe Gaffing. He picks up his phone, dials. The man picks up on the fourth ring.
“What?” is all Gaffing says.
“Mr. Gaffing, this is Alex Mills with the Phoenix PD.”
“What is it?”
“I thought you were going to scan a copy of that photo for me.”
“I am,” the man says. “I’m just finishing up at the office now.”
“Good. So I suppose you’ve had a chance to check on those customer records for me.”
“Right. We have no records from that far back, like I warned you.”
“So, let’s say I get a search warrant for your computers and whatever other records you have in the office, we won’t find a manifest for the tour Kimberly Harrington was on?”
“Are you threatening me?”
“No,” Mills says. “Just clarifying.”
“You will not find a manifest.”
“What about in storage? Would you have it in a storage locker somewhere?”
The man exhales a puff of disgust. “Jesus, do you know how many boxes of shit I have in storage? You just asked me about this on Friday. There’s no way in hell I’d get through all that crap in three days.”
“I can send a team to help you sift through the boxes, sir.”
“Not necessary.”
“Do you have any reason to believe that any of my victims, excluding your son because we already know he was there, was in Mexico on the same tour as Kimberly Harrington?”
“It’s possible,” the man says. “But let me tell you this. The FBI must have the manifest in their file. Every single student who was on my tour with her was interviewed by them as potential witnesses. I remember that. Most of the students were hysterical.”
“I bet.”
“But, you realize, those boys didn’t have to be on my tour to be in Mexico that week. It was a popular week. And, like I told you, other companies ran trips there, as well.”
The man’s patience is obviously frayed, his last nerve on its last nerve.
“But the groups mingled?” Mills asks.
“If you’re asking if the kids were confined to their own tour groups, the answer is no.”
“That’s what I’m asking.”
“So checking for every student on my tour would not necessarily get you what you’re looking for.”
“Gotcha,” Mills says. “I’ll be waiting for that photograph. Thank you, Mr. Gaffing.”
Gaffing is gone without another word.
The photograph arrives about thirty minutes later. Mills chalks up the delay to an old man with a scanner. He finds the photo of Torento, Schultz, and Klink posing on the beach. He lines the two images up side by side on his screen. There’s no mistaking it. He prints them out and summons his squad to the conference room. Powell and Myers show up together, and Powell says, “What’s with the goofball smile, Alex?”
Ignoring her, Mills tapes the photos to the whiteboard, then dials Preston from the console on the table. “You coming?” he asks.
“Oh, sorry, man. I just got the first PDF from Mexico City. Can I just listen in while I go through it?”
“Sure. No problem. How’s it look?”
“Massive, when you consider there’s another PDF to come, and these are just lists,” Preston says. “I think I could use some help.”
“You can borrow Myers or Powell tomorrow,” Mills replies. “Just listen in as best you can for now.”
“All ears.”
Mills points to the photos. “We’re looking at two photos most likely taken in the exact same place on the exact same beach. It’s a beach in front of the hotel where Kimberly Harrington went missing during her spring break trip twenty-five years ago this week.”
Myers whistles.
“We know this,” Mills continues, “because the tour company that operated that spring break trip has confirmed as much.”
“But that doesn’t mean Torento and our victims were in Cancun at the same time or even the same year the girl went missing,” Powell says.
“True,” Mills concedes. “But let’s say our victims were on the same tour as Kimberly Harrington; they would have been interviewed by the FBI, according
to what the tour company tells me. So, I’d rather be eye-balling those lists instead of flight manifests at this point.”
“I’m eyeballing as we speak,” Preston says.
“Can you find out if agents interviewed students who were on other tours, as well?” Mills asks him. “Our victims could have gone there through another company. It might be hard to place them.”
“And if we do place them, what exactly does that tell us?” Powell asks. She’s leaning back in her chair, her arms folded across her chest, not easily impressed this afternoon.
“It tells us,” Mills begins patiently, “that we need to look deeper into their backgrounds, further back than the occasional reunion, back to this beachside photo and whether or not the guys encountered Kimberly Harrington in Cancun. Wouldn’t it be interesting if they were all on the same notorious trip as the missing college student, and now they’re dead?”
Preston scoffs. “It’s twenty-five years later.”
“Never too late for shit to happen,” Mills says.
“But our congressman’s in the photo, and he isn’t dead,” Powell reminds them.
“Not yet,” Mills says. Then he tells them all to have a good evening, grabs the photos, and walks out.
31
That night, while Mills is in bed, nothing happens. He pulls Kelly close, he strokes her back, and she makes a purring sound as if she’s happy with his touch, but when he moves his hand around and brushes her torso and then her breasts, she inches away. Those mere inches might as well be miles. He leans in, kisses her neck, his mouth lingering just long enough to taste a tear that rolls off her cheek. “Kelly? Babe, what’s wrong?”
He gets up on his side, partly balancing on an elbow, and he pulls her toward him until she’s on her back, and then he runs his hand lightly across her face and finds the rest of her tears. She’s weeping. He reaches back to his nightstand and flips on a light. “Kelly, what’s going on?”
She stares at the ceiling. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m just not in the mood anymore.”
“I’ve noticed. Is it me? Is it all the stress about Trev?”
“It’s not you, and it’s not him.”
Dig Your Grave Page 30
