Walk a Crooked Line

by Susan McBride

  Jo nodded, considering how Kelly must have felt the day after. She and her best friend weren’t speaking. Trey Eldon was sending her encrypted e-mails, probably telling her to keep her mouth shut. Her mom was busy taking care of other people’s children. It made sense that Kelly had felt disconnected.

  C’mon, Kelly, Jo willed, trying to conjure up a Ghost moment. You’ve got to show us more than that. Tell us what happened to you, what made you take a flying leap.

  “She has a Snapchat account,” Bridget said, “but it looks like she abandoned it, too. I did find her on Facebook . . .”

  “So did I,” Jo said. “I got on her page this morning. She had some rough comments left by a girl named—”

  “Angel, yeah, I saw,” Bridget told her. “I looked into that account as well. I think it’s a shell. I could try to get the IP addresses for you.”

  But then they’d have to prove to a judge that the bullying online was threatening enough to get a warrant. Jo wasn’t sure they had that much, not yet.

  “So what’d you find on Trey Eldon?” she asked, pressing forward.

  “Plenty,” Bridget said, “for Trey and his dad. I Googled them both, actually. There’s a lot about Mr. Eldon, though it mostly involves his cybersecurity company. I skimmed through the business articles on him and through the endless football stats and game scores for Trey. Not surprisingly, Trey’s public presence is almost exclusively sports related.”

  “He wouldn’t want to screw up his chances for a football scholarship.”

  “I found a lot of pics and rah-rah captions from football games and pep rallies,” Bridget went on, looking unimpressed. “Though why anyone would willingly play a game that beats you up like a car wreck, I will never understand.”

  “I wouldn’t say that too loudly,” Jo joked, “or they might kick you out of Texas.”

  “Right.” The young woman half smiled. “I couldn’t even find many pics of Trey with the opposite sex. He’s probably playing it safe there, too. But he does have a bunch of selfies with him and his buddies watching sports, drinking beer, hunting. Nothing crazy.”

  So they’d hit another dead end?

  Jo sighed, disheartened. “Is that it?”

  “He was tagged in a few posts that referenced a closed Facebook group called the Posse,” Bridget said and tapped her mouse so that now all three of her monitors were filled with the Texas flag tailgate banner that had been on the screens when Jo entered the room.

  “So it’s Trey’s group? He’s the administrator?” Jo asked, noting the tiny profile pic and name. She could also view the names and profile pictures of three other members, who all appeared to be male. The group was labeled a “Club” and had only a one-word description: Brotherhood.

  Brotherhood?

  Was the Posse a secret fraternity?

  “Can we get into the page to take a look?”

  “Not unless we belong.” Bridget pushed at the bridge of her glasses. “Only members can see content, unless someone posted a photo or video without double-checking the privacy settings. If they left any open, I can probably find them. I’ll work on that today, in case there are any pics posted from Trey’s party that slipped through the security cracks.”

  Jo nodded, frustrated. No matter how patient she tried to be, it always felt like things never moved fast enough.

  “Whatever you can do,” she said, staring past Bridget’s shoulder at the closed-group page for the Posse. She squinted at the names listed beneath Trey’s:

  Scott Gray.

  Dan Trent.

  Jason Raine.

  Jo got that prickle at the base of her neck. She’d heard that name the day before.

  “You see something, Detective?”

  “Jason Raine,” she said.

  “Ring a bell?”

  “Yeah, a loud one.”

  “He drives a big, noisy truck with a Texas flag painted across his rear tailgate. I can hear him every time he comes and goes.”

  Could be that very painted tailgate in the Posse’s Facebook banner.

  “His family lives next door to Amanda Pearson, a woman whose dog was snatched the other evening,” Jo said. Snatched and found dead up in Celina. “Apparently, the Raines had a dog vanish, too.”

  “Weird.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I intend to look into the Posse members’ personal Facebook pages,” Bridget told her. “But I haven’t had enough time. I figured you’d rather have me poke around in Kelly’s laptop, anyway.”

  “Yes, definitely. How’s the code cracking going, by the way?” Jo asked. “Have you reset the password to read the encrypted e-mails?”

  Bridget frowned. “I wish I could. But there’s a PIN involved as well, and I can’t reset that. You might want to ask Robert Eldon if he can help out. It’s his company’s encryption software.”

  Of course it was. Jo had suspected as much. No wonder Trey hadn’t seemed too nervous about coughing up the code for the e-mails—or anything else, for that matter. Daddy held the key, and Daddy probably took care of all the Third’s messes.

  “It’s okay,” Jo told her. “Keep digging into Kelly’s files.”

  “Will do,” Bridget said. “I’ll e-mail you all the passwords I reset for her social media, in case you want to look around some more.”

  “Great, thanks,” Jo murmured, but her mind was somewhere else.

  “We drank too much, yeah, but I wasn’t pushing anything, not with her. She was outside, hanging with a couple of my bros by the pool.”

  Was Kelly hanging with Jason, Dan, and Scott, or some combination thereof? Did one of them go up to the guest room after an unconscious Kelly had been deposited there?

  “I did not hurt Kelly that night . . . I swear it on my mother’s life.”

  Too bad for Trey that Jo wasn’t gullible enough to take his word for it.

  “You okay, Detective Larsen?” Bridget asked.

  Jo realized she’d been staring at the screen but seeing nothing. She shifted her eyes away to look at the other woman. “Keep at it, will you? Try to see if you can get into the Posse’s closed page. I want to know what they’re hiding.”

  Bridget chortled. “They’re hiding, but they’re not really hiding.”

  “How’s that?” Jo waited for her to say more.

  “Well, it’s kind of surprising they didn’t make their group secret if they were so bent on nobody finding it.” She shrugged and reached for her noise-canceling headphones, hooked around the back of her chair. She hesitated before she put them on. “It’s like they wanted people to know it existed. They just needed to be able to keep them out.”

  That sounded illogical. Or did it?

  Why would Trey Eldon and his buddies set up a page on Facebook that wasn’t open to everyone, that exposed nothing but its outermost layer, just enough for people to recognize that it existed?

  Did it make them feel more powerful somehow, like they were holding a prize beyond everyone else’s reach?

  Was it enough that classmates knew about the Posse?

  Did it make them feel, what? Jealousy? Fear? Admiration?

  What exactly was this posse, and what were they trying to get away with?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Jo went straight back to her desk after she left Bridget’s office. She got on the computer, digging into the department’s database and pulling up driver’s license information on each of Trey’s buddies. She studied the DMV photos of their clipped hair and blandly handsome faces, and she wondered who they were at the core. Maybe they were great kids, respectful of their parents and teachers, kind to old folks and children, and concerned about the environment.

  Or, maybe they were silver spoon–fed brats completely devoid of conscience.

  But did they have it in them to rape and threaten a fifteen-year-old girl, driving her to suicide? Was one of the boys a dognapper, too? Did that explain the disappearance of Jason’s pooch, as well as Amanda Pearson’s?

  Unfortunately, t
hose answers weren’t stored in the DMV’s files. But she learned a few facts, at least. Trey Eldon, Scott Gray, Dan Trent, and Jason Raine were all eighteen. Also like Trey, they either owned pickup trucks or SUVs. None of them had registered as organ donors, not that the latter told her anything except they probably weren’t thinking about dying anytime soon.

  Next, she delved into county property tax records. She was not surprised to find each lived in a home at or above 3,000 square feet, though Trey’s was the largest, eking its way just past 10,000 square feet. Once she knew more about where they lived, she brought up the map she’d used to pinpoint the dog-theft locations. She overlaid the addresses of Trey’s buddies, curious to see if any others lived in the neighborhoods where pups had disappeared, like Jason Raine and his next-door neighbor, Amanda Pearson.

  She let out a little “Hmm” at finding that both Dan’s and Scott’s houses bordered the park not two blocks from the residence of Jill Burns.

  Just another coincidence?

  Jo was beginning to have serious doubts.

  About an hour and half into her probing into the searchable lives of Trey’s crew, Hank phoned her from downtown Dallas. He murmured something about Kelly’s autopsy not being over yet, but that he’d slipped out when they’d stared cutting the scalp so the flesh could be rolled back and muscles beneath examined.

  Jo knew that meant the surgical bone saw would be coming out soon enough, and all kinds of chips and bone dust would go flying. It was not a pretty sight and involved stepping away from the table a safe distance so as not to get bits of corpse in your eyes.

  “You know how I don’t like that part,” he grumbled.

  Did anyone?

  “Learn anything?” she asked.

  “McCaffrey said they’re looking for bruising or blood beneath the scalp and any signs of skull fractures so they can rule out if she had a seizure or head injury before she fell from the tower.”

  Jo doubted that they’d find anything. “If she’d seized up there or if someone hit her on the head, she’d probably have ended up on the catwalk, not on the ground beneath, not unless she was tossed.”

  “McCaffrey said they’ll check her neck muscles to look for signs of strangulation, like if someone tried to choke her in a fight before she went over.”

  McCaffrey said. McCaffrey said. Jo had to smile. Adam would get a kick out of hearing he was so imminently quotable.

  “Any surprises?” she asked.

  “Not really. She didn’t look so bad on the outside, but her insides looked like they’d gone a round or two in a blender. Bits of her ribs cut up her lungs. Her heart was carved up like a pumpkin, sliced clear through by splinters of bone, ditto her liver and her spleen. The pelvic girdle was shattered.”

  Jo took a breath, leaning over her desk to rest her head in her hand.

  “So far, it’s all consistent with death by severe blunt-force trauma. The ground’s so dry from lack of rain that it’s nearly as hard as concrete.”

  It wasn’t as though she didn’t believe Kelly had killed herself. It was the “why” part and what had come before that troubled her.

  “ME’s doing the usual specimen collection so they can work up a tox report,” he said. “Then we’ll know if she had any alcohol or drugs in her system.”

  Jo didn’t think she would. If Kelly had been a drug user, they would have found some evidence of it already.

  “Her mom asked about getting the body for burial,” she said.

  “It won’t be long,” Hank replied. “We’ve got the manner of death down pat.”

  Jo nodded. “The blunt-force trauma from the fall.”

  “Yeah. But it’ll be a few days before the ME can sign off on a cause.”

  Which would be suicide, Jo was thinking. There was nothing to suggest that anyone had been up on the water tower catwalk with Kelly, and they had the goodbye note she’d left for her mom. It was all pretty cut-and-dried.

  “Did you see Emma Slater when you dropped off the panties at the lab?” she asked next.

  “Yeah, and she said to tell you ‘hey’ and that she’ll do her best for a quick turnaround, but they’re kind of backed up, so . . .”

  “Don’t hold my breath,” Jo finished. It was the same-old, same-old, though Emma was the best evidence tech Jo had ever met. She’d known her from her years with the Dallas PD and trusted her instincts and her expertise.

  “What about you?” Hank asked. “Any progress?”

  “I might have something,” she told him. “But it can wait until you’re here.”

  “Give me another hour or two. I’m about to head back into the chop shop. Just hoping they put away the bone saw and the full-on face shields. Makes me feel like I’m in a horror movie.”

  “Go get ’em, partner,” she teased, and he grunted before hanging up.

  She sat back in her desk chair and rubbed her eyes.

  Her mind sifted through an overload of images and information: Kelly Amster’s body lying broken beneath the tower, the suicide note, the strange behavior (was she raped?); the missing dress (stolen?) and the panties she’d hidden away (her proof of assault?); the abducted dogs and the dead dogs (beaten to death?).

  The soft spots at her temples started to thrum.

  Was everything tied together somehow? Was she just missing the connection?

  She had no evidence of anything, just a lot of feelings and conjecture.

  She sighed. Were they tilting at windmills? Was Cassie inflating what Kelly had told her after the party so she could get more attention? Was the real truth more akin to what Trey had suggested—that nothing had happened at the party except Kelly getting drunk, then being dropped off at home the next morning, albeit unceremoniously?

  So why couldn’t Jo convince herself that it was all a big nothingburger?

  She believed she could, and so she did.

  Kelly’s handwritten quote wormed its way into her brain.

  She couldn’t give up, not yet. If Kelly had felt let down in her life by the people around her, Jo wasn’t going to let her down in death.

  Pity party over, she told herself. Get back to work.

  She found the passwords Bridget had sent to her e-mail and used them, logging on to Kelly’s accounts and into her Facebook. The wall had spontaneously begun to fill with comments relating to her death. At least a dozen had popped up so far, though, as Jo watched, others quickly appeared. Rest in Peace, a few said, and another, Jesus is the answer, not suicide!

  Jo didn’t see anything from Angel.

  Cassie Marks had posted on the wall, sharing a photo of herself and Kelly with broken-heart emoticons beneath. I love and forgive U, she had typed. I know U R in a better place.

  Jo scrutinized the words, confused. She forgave her?

  What did Kelly need forgiveness for? she wondered. Killing herself? Going to Trey’s party solo? Trying to come out of her mousy shell?

  She stared at the screen for a moment longer, finally clicking on Home and going to Kelly’s news feed. Not surprisingly, she found a lot of posts about Kelly’s death, links to news reports, even photographs of Kelly with classmates. Was Kelly’s suicide the latest entertainment, like one of those Kardashians pushing butt padding or lip gloss? Or was Kelly truly missed? Where had all the interest in her been before her death, when she had to twist Trey Eldon’s arm to get attention?

  A few trolls appeared to have tagged Kelly in their posts as well. Loser! one said, and another, Who was this duster? One less ho on the planet.

  Jo wished technology had advanced enough that she could shoot a Taser through the screen and jolt the angry trolls into silence.

  Next, she told herself, leaving Kelly’s page to search for Jason Raine’s and finding it easily, thanks to the familiar Texas flag tailgate he used as his profile pic and the Plainfield, Texas, locale.

  Since Jo had logged in as Kelly and Kelly wasn’t on his Friends list, she couldn’t see much. But, apparently, they had at least one friend in common
—Trey Eldon—which doubtless was the reason Jo could read the few tidbits that weren’t hidden from prying eyes.

  Jason noted in his bio that he was “Gunslinger’s Right Hand,” which Jo assumed referred to his position as an offensive lineman for the Mustangs. It also explained the broad shoulders and neck as thick as his skull. She viewed a few older posts with pics: Jason lifting up Trey after a win; chugging a Shiner Bock by a fire pit; and dressed head to toe in camo, a dead buck at his feet, holding up its antlers like he’d won a prize.

  She couldn’t view much beyond the most recent posts. It wouldn’t let her access anything older, though she wanted to go back a month or so and see if he’d mentioned losing the pit bull mix that Amanda Pearson had mentioned.

  Jo didn’t find anything illicit in what she’d viewed except underage drinking, and that wasn’t even a crime if he was hanging out on his own property and his parents didn’t mind.

  From everything Jason Raine put out for public consumption, he appeared to be the poster child for high school jocks. He was athletic. He was popular. He’d probably even thank his mom when he signed a letter of intent with a Big 12 university.

  But Jo never trusted what she saw on the surface.

  He had to have been at Trey’s party. Even without Trey providing a guest list, she was sure that Jason, Scott, and Dan had attended. They were Trey’s posse, after all, right?

  She kept going, gathering as much intel as she could from looking at their social media via Kelly’s accounts, thinking they all seemed too good to be true. Did she want to pin some blame on Trey so badly that she was misjudging his friends?

  The only way she knew how to fill in the blanks was old-fashioned footwork. So by the time Hank returned, Jo was ready to hustle him right back out to the car.

  “Where are we going this time?” he asked.

  “To the Winding Brook subdivision,” she told him.

  “Amanda Pearson’s house?” he said as he got the motor running on the old Ford, and Jo belted herself in. “You want to pay our condolences to Duke?”

  “No. We’re going next door.”

  She had a lot of questions to ask Jason Raine, and she wanted to be sure to get to him before he had any more time to talk to Trey and change his story.