Jayden Roe Mystery 02-The Final Lie

by Lily Campbell

  Jay half smiled, a little surprised at the ambition. “Even then, I am the investigator, you have no real qualifications yet. I am still the boss.”

  Dave glanced away then turned to pull his bag and started heading in the direction of the hotel. “So what’s the plan for the few hours of daylight that we have left?”

  He really is a lot like I was back at the beginning. Almost ruthless in my desire to prove myself worthy. But I had Goldstein. I wonder what his ultimate goal is? Could it really be as simple as a life that doesn’t feel stagnant?

  Jay caught up, locking his car with the touch of a button. “In your case, exercises and updating our files with our progress in Shreveport and any new leads coming out of Salisbury.”

  A muscle jumped in Dave’s jaw, and Jay sighed. “I’m going to drop in on Gary. See if I can convince him to play nice. It is an attack better handled alone. If it doesn’t work, you and I will both be hitting the streets tomorrow.”

  Dave frowned. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  Jay tilted his head, then had to hold his response while he booked a double room. “Is one okay? I can get two separate…”

  “No. That’ll make this harder. One is fine.”

  As the request was processed, Jay fought down a wave of nostalgia. Back before he had used all he had to take down Goldstein, he would have simply been able to purchase a house here in Carthage for the duration of his stay. Now, instead, he was looking at a prolonged hotel stay, with a time limit given that his funds were smaller than he’d like.

  “So, why didn't you like my plan?” Jay asked as they entered the elevator.

  Dave threw a disbelieving glance in his direction. “Because Gary Peters hates you. I know all about how you shamed him back then when you were learning from him. He won’t work with you. Have you ever considered that he is the one behind all this?”

  Jay had been building up a dismissive laugh, but Dave’s last thought shattered it. He hadn’t actually considered Gary a suspect, partially because he was normally on the side of the law, catching criminals, not becoming one. The Gary in his mind was too much of an idiot to plan something so methodical.

  Dave stepped from the elevator with him and weighed his expression. “I thought so. You’re underestimating him because of your past. Don’t you think it is possible that he has changed in the years? In fact, isn’t it more likely that he did, never wanting to be trod on like that again?”

  Jay opened the door to their room and let Dave enter ahead of him. “So what do you propose then?”

  “Do you really want to know, or are you going to stick to your plan no matter what I say?”

  Jay swallowed a curse. “If your point has merit, I’ll listen.”

  Dave nodded and claimed the bed by the window, sitting on the edge and dumping his bag beside it. “I suggest we take tonight to dig into Gary’s life since you last knew him. See what successes and failures he has had. Try and find out how he came to be in Mr. Haraby’s employ. Was it a recent hiring to find Stella, or does their relationship run longer? Does he still work alone as you used to, or has he taken on a team member like you?”

  “That sounds good so far. We can add how long he has been in Carthage to the list. He wasn’t based here back when I worked under him. Anything else?”

  Dave tilted his head to the side. “Hang on. Are you testing me again?”

  Jay smirked. “Yes and no, but go on, finish your plan.”

  Dave shook his head in defeat then spoke. “We can also check out the town virtually, see if there’s anything that doesn’t seem to fit. I also think we should check the real estate market, see if we can’t find something a touch more homey than an endless string of expensive hotel rooms. It’s how you’d usually operate, isn’t it?”

  Jay arched an eyebrow. “Back when I had more than enough.”

  “I have the funds now. I’ll get us a place.”

  “Whoa, hang on there. Look, I said—”

  Dave waved all his concerns away. “I said money wasn’t an issue for me, remember? I owned a house in Shreveport. It sold two days ago. I have the funds.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. Are you going to follow my plan?”

  Jay stared a moment longer then raised his hands in surrender. “Your plan is a good one. Adequately careful, with a good line of thought and long term goals. Yes. We’ll follow it.”

  Dave smiled, bright and cheerful, then he frowned. “So that was all a test?”

  Jay chuckled. “No. I hadn’t actually considered your first point. You were right. I was tackling Gary in my mind as I knew him back then. Once I had realized that, the old plan would have been immediately out. So I thought I’d see if you’d come up with something decent first.”

  “You know, the media may not be right about you being a big-headed ass, but you definitely are not easy to work with.”

  Jay smothered a laugh. “Am I worse than your old manager?”

  Dave chuckled. “Not a chance. I’m going to go shower.”

  Jay nodded and waited for the sound of running water then pulled out his phone. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Dave, it was more that he felt like the more people who knew about Ruby’s meeting with him, the greater the chance the wrong people would find out and then she’d be in trouble.

  “Hi, Keira,” he said as her distinctive, husky voice came on the line.

  “My cousins told me you were impatient, but this is a first. I left less than twenty-four hours ago and you already want results?”

  Jay smiled at the receiver. “If my guess about you was correct, then you have something to report.”

  Her laugh tinkled down the line. “Alright, hot shot. I found them easy enough. They’re a little edgy, tracking the news coming out of Salisbury like it is gospel.”

  Jay winced then nodded. “Thanks. Keep them safe, please.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Jay, come and look at this,” Dave hurried him from the desk.

  Jay left his laptop on the other desk and hovered behind Dave.

  “Who’s Lloyd Bailen?”

  Dave glanced back at Jay and seemed to be suppressing a smirk. “Weren’t you digging into Gary too? I thought this was a competition?”

  Jay raised his eyebrows and huffed a laugh. “I was only trying to get a tab on him here in Carthage. Looks like he’s been here only for the past eight months. So who is he?”

  Dave looked vaguely disappointed, but answered the question. “He’s a debt collector, or I should really say, was.”

  Jay felt his eyes narrow. “Was? Is the reason he stopped why you have him up here?”

  Dave smiled. “Mostly. Can you guess the rest? Maybe if I tell you that his significant other was a lawyer.”

  Jay shifted to the side so that he could see Dave’s face clearly. “You’re testing me now?”

  “I want to see how you work. So far, you’ve kept whatever you’re doing secret, so I won’t just give you my answers.”

  Jay resisted the urge to roll his eyes in annoyance. It seemed saving his life had given Dave a rather high opinion of himself.

  Or maybe he is just being honest, Jay thought, knowing that he was keeping a lot to himself.

  “Alright, I’ll play,” he swallowed a laugh as Dave grinned triumphantly.

  Jay moved away and began to pace slowly. “Is this what you had to begin with? A name, career, and spouse?”

  Dave’s lips twitched, and he nodded. “Yes.”

  Jay paced the length of the room in silence twice before turning to Dave. “Okay then, here’s my guess. His significant other must have been Goldstein’s old lawyer. You didn’t drop that angle, so that’d be the link. I destroyed his career, now his lover wants my hide, which will also be the reason you said he was a debt collector.” Jay caught a subtle nod and continued. “The fact that you have him up there means that upon following those leads and establishing motive in your mind, you also found him to be present in Salisbury eith
er at the time of the abduction or the fires.” Jay stopped and took in Dave’s expression carefully then smiled. “Ah, I see. You’ve linked him not to those incidents, but to someone else you are suspicious of. Is he working with Gary Peters?”

  Dave’s eyes flickered, and then he gave a small laugh. “That was nearly spot on. And the information you didn’t guess is because there’s really no way you could have.”

  Jay tilted his head to the side. “What did I miss?”

  Dave nodded slowly. “You are right on his link to Goldstein, but the main reason he might hate you is because Frederick Kline committed suicide after your work dismantled his life.”

  “I see. So now he’s teamed up with Gary, and you think that means they’re behind Stella’s disappearance.”

  “Not entirely. He first met Gary when trying to collect debt from Mr. Haraby a year ago. Gary been working for Mr. Haraby for three years by that point. I guess they found some common ground.”

  Jay raised an eyebrow. “You’ve gotten an impressive amount of research done already.”

  “This is easy if you know how the internet works. The programs you have on here…” he gestured to his laptop and grinned, “… make it even easier.”

  “Okay. Let me see if I can make another guess then. With Gary in Mr. Haraby’s employ for so long, he’d be primely placed to know about Stella’s continued correspondence with me. He’d also be able to easily discover her whereabouts and plans. A year ago, Gary teams up with Lloyd, then eight months later they’re both here, in Carthage.” Here, Jay paused and his eyes fell again on Dave, drawing out whatever he could from the man’s expression. “Given your tone of voice when this conversation began, I think you feel your suspicions have been proved correct. Going on that assumption, while I couldn’t possibly guess exactly what it was, I can say that around that time, something started happening here in Carthage. Something that was enough to make them both relocate and, more importantly, make you believe they have Stella.”

  Jay also caught the glimmer of hunger in his eyes, making it clear that this was why Dave had left his old life firmly behind him. The ability Jay had just demonstrated was what he hoped to be able to do one day too. Jay smirked. “By that look, I’m guessing I was as close as anyone could be expected to get. Care to fill in the details?”

  Dave laughed. “How long did it take you to get this good?”

  “A couple of years, but I, like you, had an above average natural gift to start off with.”

  Dave’s cheeks colored faintly at the praise, then he cleared his throat and gestured to his laptop. “I thought the same way you did and looked up incidents preceding their move to Carthage. As you suspected, I did so under the filter of incidents that could link in to Stella.”

  Jay came closer again to look over Dave’s shoulder.

  “The first body turned up eleven months ago. Female, early thirties, blond, cause of death was labeled as drowning, though a little hacking also showed me that she was tortured before death. Periods of slow starvation, bondage, that sort of thing. A month later, another one showed up, all stats the same. The next month another one, the same again. And on the pattern went until Gary turned up in town.” Dave turned to find Jay’s eyes glued to the women pictured there as missing persons. They all resembled Stella in some way. “I have no proof yet, but what seemed a shoo in to become a media sensation and hunt for a serial killer, simply vanished, just a week after their arrival.”

  Jay said nothing and Dave leaned back in his chair. “I don’t know if they’re in league with the killer or just using his dumping ground as a safe base in case things go wrong with Stella, but it would take a lot to convince me that they aren’t involved at all.”

  Jay finally pulled his eyes off the screen. Dave’s words made him feel terror right in his very bones. “There have been more? More victims matching these criteria of age, gender, and appearance?”

  Dave nodded slowly, his face showing sympathy for what he could see plainly on Jay’s face. “They’ve been hushing it up. That’s why I’m digging into Lloyd at the moment. His previous line of work would have furnished him with the sorts of dubious contacts required to keep an entire town silent.”

  Jay stumbled back a couple of steps and collapsed on the edge of his bed. Dave’s logic had not only been sound and his research fast, but his finds made this entire game suddenly so much more dangerous. If there was a genuine serial killer involved in this mess, then getting Stella out alive was going to be difficult.

  He put his head in his hands and shut his eyes. Dave remained silent, but when he opened his eyes again, he saw that the man had not stopped watching him. He smothered his fear knowing that Dave was probably waiting on him for a plan.

  Jay stood and pulled a piece of paper toward him and wrote Dave’s two options on it. One: Gary and Lloyd were in league with the killer, keeping him safe in exchange for him keeping Stella. Two: Gary and Lloyd had no idea who the killer was, but thought that if they held their sick game here and Stella accidentally died, it would be easy to pass it off.

  Then he met Dave’s eyes after writing down a third option. Three: Gary and Lloyd were being used, believing Stella to be safe and well, and all this was only a trap.

  Dave looked down at the writing, and his face paled underneath the multitude of freckles. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “The trick now will be trying to figure out which option is right without tripping any alarm bells.”

  Jay drew a deep breath and felt his eyes growing dark. If anything happened to Stella out of some misguided attempt to get revenge on him, anyone even slightly involved would meet his wrath.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  They spent the next week in the hotel room. Dave dug into Lloyd and his contacts, and Jay investigated Gary, trying to use his prior knowledge of the man to see if he seemed to be behaving on his own or if he was being led. So far, while Dave had been right and Gary had changed a lot of his operating methods, he still wasn’t careful enough. By looking over cases Gary had handled prior to his joining with Lloyd, he had lost several due to carelessness. Jay’s memory of Gary was of a man who would take the easy path over having to carve one out himself any day. All someone skilled would have to do would be to present their path in a way that would make Gary feel like he had everything he’d need to pull off a victory.

  He felt certain that Gary was being led, that someone had convinced him to come here. What he couldn’t figure out yet was how they had managed to do it without leaving a visible trace. He had already been over Gary’s emails and texts, with the help of Joe’s fantastic malware ghosts. Apart from Lloyd being slightly too hard line in promoting the move, there was nothing suspicious. Lloyd’s words were concerning though, making Jay wonder exactly how long he had been meddling in Carthage.

  Jay loosed a breath and ran his hands over his tired eyes, but he didn’t dare let his mind relax. Every second he wasn’t completely focused on a task, he felt worry gnaw away at him until he knew that while this covert method was definitely safer, it wasn’t going to work with his personality. He’d eventually explode and do something stupid.

  He opened his eyes slowly and glanced over at Dave. The man had been working diligently, digging into Lloyd’s life with near expert ability. While Joe’s programs were far more sophisticated than anything else he had dealt with, he knew the basics.

  Jay felt the good memory replaced by another and stifled a sigh. Late last night, Dave had brought up Ruby again, asking if Jay could be sure she wouldn’t work against him. Though the question had been timid and Jay’s answer swift, there had been a prickly silence around the man ever since.

  Jay shook the thought away. Dave would be too busy to dig into anything with his new task of sifting through this town to find Lloyd’s cronies.

  And I should be busy too, Jay scolded himself and reached for his computer again.

  He couldn’t spend another day in this room merely proving Dave’s finds. He needed to
be out there. That was how he worked, on the ground, in the middle of the chaos, thinking on the fly. The only reason he hadn’t given in yet was because mistakes would mean Stella might suffer. He had forced himself to go over all the police reports of the eleven women who had been killed. The results had increased his fears and made him force himself to be more cautious than usual. The analysis of the torture marks and such seemed to show a learning curve. The tortures had grown more deliberate and less hesitant.

  Jay rolled his shoulders and got back to work. He had to convince Gary that he was being used. It was a long shot not helped by Gary’s hatred of him, but he knew that Gary Peters was ultimately like Hector Piers, a man of honor, who strove to always work within the bounds of the law. The tricky part here would be getting him to listen without tipping off Lloyd and whoever it was that held Lloyd’s leash.

  He glanced over at Dave again. “Finding anything on Lloyd’s backer?”

  Dave hit a few more keys before shifting in his chair to look at Jay. “Not yet. The program is running though. I will go through the hits when it is complete.”

  Jay raised an eyebrow. “Then what are you doing now?”

  Dave held his gaze for a long moment. “Honestly? I’m wondering why you lied to me. I can understand not trusting a stranger, but I saved your life and even after that you haven’t taken down the walls.”

  Jay watched Dave stand and resisted the urge to do the same. He didn’t want a conflict with this man. He had never imagined how useful Dave would actually be. Like so many things, he had offered him a job on the fly, trusting his observations and gut instinct that he’d be helpful.

  “What was the lie?” Jay asked.

  Dave’s eyes flickered, clearly having expected a denial. “You said that Ruby Wei was not involved in this.”

  Jay felt his eyes narrow and they flickered to Dave’s computer. “You looked her up behind my back?”

  Dave shook his head. “No. I wasn’t looking for her, but I found her all the same, because, as you well know, she is involved in all this.”