by Elle Gray
The one survivor of the group is a woman named Gina Aoki. A quick Google search tells me she’s here in Seattle and has been for quite some time. She’s a freelance software and app designer who has apparently made a lot of money in the private sector. According to her website, she founded her company less than a year after my folks were murdered. It can’t be a coincidence that while my parents’ work group was apparently being purged, Gina fled and got as far away from the NSA as she could. There has to be something there.
I check the time and see that it’s too late to call her tonight, so I make a mental note to call her the minute I have some time. She has to know something about what happened. And I intend to find out what it is.
Twenty-Three
Criminal Data Analysis Unit; Seattle Field Office
“Mo, what did you find out?” I ask.
“I found out that I don’t like teenage girls very much,” she tells me. “Does that count for anything?”
“Not so much,” I reply.
“Fine. Okay well, Emily Tompkins was nineteen, in hairdressing school. She worked as a waitress at the Mermaid’s Gentleman’s Club,” she reports. “The night she was taken, she was out with some friends. According to those teenage menaces, they were at Sin, a trendy nightclub in Belltown. They said she stepped out for a smoke and never came back. She was found two days later and—well—we saw how that all played out.”
“Sounds like you were having some horrible high school flashbacks, huh?” Astra asks.
“You have no idea,” she replies.
“Did anybody see anything?” I ask. “Did anybody see her talking to anybody? Leave with anybody?”
Mo shakes her head. “Nope. She just vanished.”
I chuckle to myself as I pace at the front of the bullpen, absorbing the information Mo is reciting. So, just like Summer Kennedy and Serena Monroe, Emily Tompkins vanished without a trace. At some point, they encountered their killer, were apparently comfortable enough with him—or at least, not threatened by him—that they ended up being injected with ketamine and were taken without so much as a scream.
“Rick, can you pull up any street-level cameras around Club Sin the night Emily went missing?” I ask. “Or can you access the club’s surveillance cameras?”
“On it. I’ll let you know,” he calls out.
I nod then turn to Astra. “Your turn. What did you get from Serena Monroe’s friends and family?”
Astra smiles wide. “You’re going to love this.”
“Hit me.”
“I talked to her parents—lovely people, by the way—and they directed me to some of the friends that she was out with the night she went missing.”
“Uh-huh… and?”
“The only piece of information you need to know is that the night Serena went missing, the last place she was seen was—are you ready for this?”
I let out an exasperated growl. “Oh my God, you’re killing me. Tell me already.”
“The last place she was seen before she went missing was The Yellow Brick Road Tavern.”
My eyes widen and my mouth falls open. I gape at her, every neuron in my head firing as I make the connections. It almost seems too good to be true. And my cautious mind thinks it seems too easy to be true. Though it’s not conclusive of anything, it’s certainly suggestive. And it’s definitely worth another conversation.
“So… two of our three victims tie directly to the boyfriend,” Mo says. “What was his name again? Dylan…”
“Betts,” I say. “His name is Dylan Betts.”
“Oh, oh, oh,” Rick calls out. “But wait, there’s more.”
We all turn to him as one and Rick straightens up in his seat, a wide smile on his face and a mischievous glint in his eye.
“Are you ready for—”
“Spit it out already,” Mo, Astra, and I all shout in unison.
He laughs out loud and claps his hands. “I finally heard back from e-Taxi,” he announces. “And according to their driver information, Mr. Dylan Betts, driver number 430293, on the night Summer Kennedy went missing, logged off the app—meaning he wasn’t taking new fares—from nine-thirty until eleven-thirty that night. Which, if I’m not mistaken, blows a big ass two-hour hole in the man’s alibi.”
Silence descends over the bullpen for a long moment and I exchange a look with Astra. Both of us smile at the same time.
“Is today my birthday?” I ask.
“Funny, I was thinking it was mine,” she says. “Either way, I’d say that Dylan Betts has just taken the lead in our prime suspect race.”
“Oh yeah. I’d say he’s up there,” I reply. “Let’s go pick him up. I think we need to have another chat with Dylan. Excellent work, everybody. Really. Great job.”
Interrogation Suite Alpha-2; Seattle Field Office
“Aren’t you guys like, supposed to give me an attorney?” he asks.
“Do you need an attorney, Dylan?” Astra asks. “Did you do something you might need an attorney for?”
“Well, the way you two are coming at me, you certainly seem to think I did something I need an attorney for.”
“We’re just having another chat, Dylan,” I say. “I told you last time that we might be following up with you. This is us following up.”
He eyeballs us closely, looking for all the world like a cornered animal trying to decide whether to fight or try to flee. We’re sitting across the table from him, the same positions we were all in the last time we had him in here to chat. But he’s right. There is a tension in the air this time that didn’t exist the last time we had him in. He’s a pretty perceptive guy.
I open the file folder sitting in front of me and pull out the first DMV photo on the stack. It’s Emily Tompkins, the first victim. I turn it around so he can see her and lay it down on the table. I do the same for Summer and then Serena’s photos. Dylan stares at the three pictures; I notice his eyes lingering on Summer’s face. His expression darkens and I can see the emotion welling up within him. It strikes me then that perhaps the emotion isn’t love and the pain of loss, but guilt. Perhaps he’s coming to grips with the fact that he did something horrible to the woman he professed to love and he’s having a hard time with it now.
He manages to keep himself in check though and looks up at us with his cocky swagger. “So, what’s with this? Who are the other two?” he asks. “They related to Summer or somethin’?”
Without saying a word, Astra opens the file folder in front of her and withdraws the autopsy photos. First, she lays the picture of Emily’s lifeless body on top of her DMV photo and then does the same with Summer and Serena’s pictures. With each one she lays down, Dylan’s face grows slightly paler, and his eyes widen that much more. He stares at the pictures and licks his lips nervously, then looks up at us.
“What in the hell is this?” he croaks.
“We were hoping you could tell us,” Astra says.
He looks at her, his expression stricken. “What the hell is wrong with you? Why would you show me these? Are you sick? Do you get off on this or somethin’?”
“What’s the matter, Dylan?” Astra asks. “Don’t like admiring your handiwork?”
“My handiwork? What in the hell are you talking about?” he gasps.
I tap the DMV picture of Serena and hold his gaze. “Do you recognize this girl?”
He glances at her briefly, then looks up at me. “I’ve never seen her before in my life.”
“That the story you’re going with?” Astra asks.
“It’s not a story. It’s the truth,” he practically shouts.
“Never seen her before? Ever?” I ask. “Are you sure about that?”
“Are you deaf or something? I’ve never seen her before in my life.”
“Would it surprise you to know that the night she went missing, the last place she was seen was The Yellow Brick Road Tavern?” Astra chirps.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that where you work?” I ask.
&nbs
p; “Oh no. No, no, no, no,” he says. “I see what you’re trying to do, and that’s bullcrap. That’s not going to work. You are not going to hang this on me. I’m not going to let you do that to me. Oh, hell no.”
“We’re not doing anything, Dylan,” Astra says. “You have direct connections to two of our victims. Can you see how that looks?”
“It looks like that because you two are trying to frame me,” he snaps. “I didn’t do this. And you can’t prove anything.”
“Spoken like somebody who’s terrified that we can prove everything,” Astra says.
“There is nothing for you to prove because I didn’t do anything,” he growls. “Why can’t you get that through your thick skulls?”
“I need you to walk me through something, Dylan,” I say. “The night Summer went missing, you said you worked at the tavern until…”
“Until eight. And then I jumped onto my e-Taxi account and worked until around two,” he says. “Same as I do most every Friday night.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought you said. In fact, I remember you saying that,” I nod. “But do you know what I don’t remember you saying?”
“Enlighten me.”
“That you signed off of e-Taxi for two hours.”
His face pales immediately and his mouth falls open. But he quickly recovers and runs a hand through his hair. Dylan clears his throat and tries to regain some of that cocky swagger.
“I didn’t say it because I didn’t do it,” he says. “I worked straight through, only stopping to grab some food and a coffee once.”
“See, that’s funny,” I say as I pull a page out of the folder and set it down in front of him. “Because e-Taxi’s records show that you did indeed log out for two hours. Specifically, between the hours of nine-thirty and eleven-thirty.”
“And coincidentally, Summer was last seen around nine-thirty,” Astra adds. “We believe she was taken right around that time.”
He shakes his head, trying to deny it. “I didn’t do this,” he says. “I didn’t do this.”
“Then help us understand,” Astra says. “You were Summer’s boyfriend and she goes missing. Serena is in your bar the night she goes missing. You’re the common denominator.”
He looks up at us and taps Emily’s photo—which is the weak point in our case. I was actually hoping he’d save us all the trouble and confess.
“What about her?” he asks. “What’s my connection to her? And spoiler alert, I’ve never seen her before in my life either.”
“Our people are digging into that. We know this girl had an e-Taxi account, so we’re waiting to get her rider information from them,” I reply. “If she ever took a ride with you, we’re going to find it.”
“I didn’t do this.”
“So, you keep saying,” Astra says. “But don’t you see how lying to us kind of makes you look bad? You never told us you logged off for two hours—the very same window Summer went missing. Don’t you see how we might think you lied to us about other things—like you telling us you didn’t kill these women?”
Dylan crosses his arms on the table and buries his face in them, moaning and muttering to himself. Astra and I shared a glance with each other. She looks more confident than I feel right now. Everything we have is circumstantial. There are still big holes in our theory. On the surface, it looks good. It looks like Dylan is our guy. But there are still lingering doubts in my mind that I can’t quite put to rest. The biggest of which is that we can’t find a connection between Dylan and Emily. Yet.
Dylan raises his head and looks at us, his expression one of pure misery. He let out a long, loud breath.
“Fine. I logged off that night because I spent those two hours with my sidepiece.”
“Your what?”
“His sidepiece,” Astra interprets. “The woman he’s banging behind the back of the woman he professed his undying love for.”
I glare at him and shake my head. “You’re such a pig.”
“We’re going to need her name,” Astra says.
“H—her name?”
“You didn’t think we were just going to take your word for it, did you?”
“W—well, yeah.”
“You really are stupider than you look,” I say.
“Name,” Astra demands.
“I can’t. She’s married,” he says. “Please don’t make me tell you that. If her husband found out—”
“This story just keeps getting classier by the minute,” I growl.
“You either give us a name so we can verify your alibi,” Astra says. “Or, we can charge you and you take the full weight of all three murders.”
He bangs his head on the table, groaning to himself. He finally raises his head and looks at us again.
“Fine,” he says. “But if you can keep this between us and not tell the husband—”
“Name,” Astra demands again.
Dylan blows out a frustrated, scared breath. “Haley. Haley Edmunds.”
“There. That wasn’t so hard now, was it?” Astra chirps brightly.
“We’re going to detain you until we can verify your story,” I tell him.
“Please don’t tell her husband,” he repeats.
Astra smiles wide at him. “We’ll do our best.”
Twenty-Four
SSA Wilder’s Office, Criminal Data Analysis Unit; Seattle Field Office
“Great,” Astra mutters. “Now what?”
I shake my head. “Now we go back to square one.”
“I thought for sure he was our guy.”
We looked into Dylan’s alibi and it checked out. After a couple of tense moments with Haley Edmunds—wife of Tyler Edmunds, of MMA fighting fame—we managed to corroborate Dylan’s story. He was with her for those two hours on the night Summer went missing, and she had the compromising photographs taken in her hotel suite to prove it. He also had an airtight alibi for the night Serena Monroe was grabbed. So in other words, we were totally boned and had no choice but to kick him loose.
“Part of me hopes Tyler finds out Dylan’s been schtupping his wife,” I say.
“Only part of you? Every last bit of me wants Tyler to find out about him,” Astra says. “I’d like to see Dylan go a few rounds with ol’ Animal Edmunds. Pretty sure he’d be eating through a straw for the rest of his life.”
“Animal?” I raise an eyebrow.
She laughs. “Benjamin’s a big MMA fan. I’ve seen Edmunds fight before. Let’s just say the nickname is fitting.”
I lean back in my chair, laughing to myself. It is frustrating though, to have built up all this momentum in the case, only to come crashing into a dead end. Now we’re back at square one with nothing. No leads, no suspects, no nothing. I toss my pen down on my desk and blow out a disgusted and frustrated breath.
“You started to tell me about something you found last night,” Astra says.
I wave her off. “It can wait. We need to find a new lead. We need to get ahead of this guy before he kills again.”
“Sometimes getting your mind off it and thinking in a different direction helps,” she offers.
I nod, knowing she’s right. Sometimes you can think so hard on a problem, you only get frustrated, which oftentimes only makes it worse. In cases like this, I’ve found the best way to solve a situation is to avoid thinking about it. I’ve had a lot of answers just come to me out of the blue when I’ve been letting my brain work in the background while I’m focused on something else.
“Yeah. I was looking through some of the boxes of my family’s things that I kept. Pictures mainly,” I say. “Anyway, I found some photos I’d never seen before. Specifically, I found one of their NSA work group—and Mr. Corden. It was shot at a backyard barbecue at a house I’d never seen before.”
“Okay, so what’s so troubling about that?” she asks. “You knew they kept their NSA family separate from the real family.”
“So in that photo are my parents, Mr. Corden, and eight people I don’t recognize.”<
br />
“Okay?”
“Seven of those eight people are dead, Astra,” I tell her. “And they all died within a year of my parents’ murder.”
She sits back in her seat, a look of stunned surprise on her face. “All of them?”
“Except for one. Gina Aoki,” I tell her. “She apparently left the NSA during this—purge—and settled here. She’s been a software engineer and app developer for almost twenty years now.”
Astra whistles low. “Do you know what the others died of?”
I shake my head. “No, I wasn’t able to come up with CODs, but I only gave it a cursory search. The coincidence is enough for me,” I tell her. “It just seems too strange to be a coincidence. Don’t you think?”
She opens her mouth to reply but pauses, seeming to think better of her words. Astra looked off into the distance for a moment, seeming to be thinking of a better way to phrase things. She finally looks at me and I can’t help but see the skepticism in her eyes.
“So, you think this conspiracy that killed your mom and dad,” she says. “Also, in fact, killed their entire work group.”
“I do,” I tell her. “There are just too many coincidences piling up all around me. At some point, the simplest answer has to be the right one.”
“Or it could just be a series of unfortunate events that add up to a lot of coincidences.”
“I admit, that’s a possibility. But the fact that seven people in my parents’ work group died so soon after their murder—it defies belief.”
Astra nods, perhaps conceding the point. “We won’t know for sure, though, until we have somebody look into the CODs on those seven,” she says. “Otherwise we’re putting carts before horses again.”
Honestly, I want to know. I want to know if these were natural deaths—which, given the timing, I’m kind of doubting—or if there was something sinister about them. I want to know if there’s something that will put me onto the trail of this conspiracy—a conspiracy I’m coming to believe in the more I learn.
“I know you’re not a big fan of conspiracy theories, but hear me out,” I start.
