Dispatched Confessions (The Love is Murder Social Club Book 2)

by Talia Maxwell

  “Hey,” she said, tentatively moving forward. “Can we just wait until the one child I have is no longer a person of interest in a murder investigation?” She didn’t mean for it to sound witty or dry, only the truth. Alex was in trouble and she didn’t know how to help him, and she pined for the face of the man in front of her. Holly knew love and fear could feel the same. She didn’t know how to differentiate between the anxiety of an unknown future for Alex or an unknown future with Joel, and her mind-raced through a maze of different outcomes. The idea that she could survive this unscathed seemed remote.

  Looking at Joel, his whole body turned toward her, she knew she wasn’t imagining the connection. It was instant; it was intense. And it was inconvenient.

  “Be right back,” she said and slipped back out the room to get that glass of water.

  In the bathroom, she stripped out of her clothes and pulled some semi-clean options out of her hamper. A t-shirt with a small coffee stain in the corner and her yoga pants. She’d climb back into bed as a basic mom instead of a bad-smelling terror. She couldn’t believe that he spent the night and didn’t try to touch her.

  Holly looked at herself in the mirror. She grabbed her tumbler and brushed her teeth and drank some water and kept her eyes trained on her mirrored counterpart.

  There was a man in her bed.

  There was a sexy, well-endowed, soccer-playing gentleman in her bed.

  He’d already been inside her before and the thought of their romp made Holly instantly warm and breathless. But she knew she was going to walk back to that bed, crawl under the covers, ask to feel his body along her back and across her ass and her legs and she wanted to touch her cold toes to his warm toes and feel the softness of the skin on the top of his feet.

  And then she was going to say, “Yes, we’re still waiting.”

  Because she couldn’t stop thinking about her son and the way he looked at her when she said she was dating Mr. Rusk.

  Joel was off limits until Alex was safe because she didn’t think she could honestly orgasm while thinking of all the ramifications. She could barely remember to eat, walk, breathe—sex wasn’t on her radar when it was the first time in her life she felt truly helpless to protect her own child.

  The thought haunted her.

  Sex dreams about Joel were one thing—inviting him inside her as a distraction amid the chaos of her life was something different.

  Holly wasn’t in her twenties anymore. She was past wild abandon. She needed to be intentional with the men she dated. She’d been swept away by the girls and their cheering—she’d wanted to lose her ten-year-virgin-again cherry with a guy who made a great story.

  She walked back to her room and found Joel asleep. She hopped up beside him and felt his breath against her neck in a steady pulse; soon, he sleepily put his arm around her and that was it. There was no need to explain; no pushing him off or wiggling out from under oppressive kissing. He was content to hold her and she loved it, and before long she was asleep again, her breath steady with his.

  Someone wanted to get ahold of her. Badly. Her chipper ringtone kept cawing from the nightstand on the other side of the bed and it took Holly a long time to place the sound and then its importance inside her foggy morning brain. Joel stretched and rolled over, reaching his long arm to the phone and handed it to her wordlessly, a seamless transaction.

  She grabbed it and answered immediately. She felt Joel kiss her cheek and then the top of her head and he whispered, “Let’s go to breakfast,” pausing to bite the lobe of her ear gently before drawing back and away and leaving her alone to take the phone call privately.

  “Holly Gamarra,” she said.

  It was Gloria.

  “Hey, sorry to call so early,” her friend said. “I don’t mean to alarm you, but the kids got up a little bit ago—” Holly looked at the clock; it was eight, “—and they couldn’t find Alex.”

  Everything stopped. Her hearing became fine-tuned and she jumped off the bed. Alert.

  “He’s not there?”

  “No, Amiga,” Gloria said softly. “Holly. He left, from what we can tell, early this morning.”

  Holly’s heart pounded and her hand went numb holding the phone. She tried to take deep breaths and remind herself that he was a child prone to melancholy and a need for solitude. He was walking home; he was fine—he was smart, he was resourceful. He’d make it home just fine.

  “Four or five hours ago?” Holly asked her throat dry.

  And then the reality dawned on Holly in a burst. She was thinking like he was still her baby; a child in need of finding a way home safely. He wasn’t. He was a kid who stole his father’s gun. He was a kid who wrote threatening notes to girls. He was a kid who was angry all the time and hid things from her. He was a kid being looked at by the police. And he was a kid who felt things in big ways.

  Alex wasn’t walking home.

  “Yeah, Holly—and that’s not all. He took some things before he left…a sleeping bag, Nayeli’s phone and—”

  Alex was running away.

  Neither Holly nor Joel needed to be at work and so they drove. They drove and called people and checked his social media apps, waiting for the nightmare to end. Sometimes they drove together throughout the city, sometimes in two different cars. They searched the main arteries and they kept each other on speaker in the car when they were apart.

  But soon it was clear that either Alex was hiding or he’d already made his way out of the Mt. Scott neighborhood in the city; he wasn’t walking with his thumb outstretched waiting for mom and dad to rescue him—Alex was gone. They gave up. Holly and Joel rendezvoused at the high school after Holly left a note on her door in case Alex came home; she parked in the faculty lot and let Joel drive her to the police station. Her hands were shaking and she had calls to make; he gladly offered.

  She called Francisco first, leaning against the hood of Joel’s car. The conversation was short and hurried, but she knew he’d immediately call his mother, so that was two out of the way. When she climbed into Joel’s car, she leaned her head against the headrest and closed her eyes.

  No matter what choices she was making, she felt like she was making all the wrong ones.

  They drove in silence to the police station. After Joel parked, they sat there and he reached out his hand and let it linger on her knee.

  “What can I do?” he asked.

  Holly glanced over. She put her hand on top of his and intertwined their fingers. “You’re doing it,” she answered with a smile. “Just keep sticking around. This is gonna be so ugly.”

  He had no money or access to money. He’d stolen food and blankets from Gloria, but nothing concerning except for Nayeli’s phone, which was soon found discarded in some bushes through the Find My Phone app. If he’s sent anyone a text, it was erased. And there was one dialed number. The call lasted for less than a minute.

  “He called 9-1-1,” Holly repeated, accessing the information in front of her.

  The detectives working on the Gregor case nodded.

  “What did he say to the dispatcher?” she asked.

  They slid over a transcript. Holly didn’t need the actual recording to hear the voices at play. She knew the cadence of her son’s speech—she knew the professional calm of a dispatcher. She could read the entire scene in all its ramped up tension.

  Dispatcher: You’ve reached the emergency line of Multnomah County. Where are you located and what’s your emergency?

  Voice [altered]: I know who killed Claire Gregor.

  Dispatcher: Okay. Can you please tell me your name and where you’re calling from tonight? I have you in the location of Happy Valley…

  Voice [altered]: More girls are going to die. You have to protect them.

  Dispatcher: I’m sorry, I need more information to help you. Do you know who is going to be harmed? Are they in danger now?

  Voice [altered]: They’ll kill me, too. I think they’re trying to. They said they’ll kill me.

  Th
e call hung up.

  Then the line went dead. And the call was logged and an officer was dispatched to the area of the call and drove around a few times, but the caller was gone. The phone remained.

  “My son is in danger,” Holly said. She pushed the paper back toward the detectives.

  “We are very interested in speaking with him,” one of the men said.

  “That’s code for you still think he’s guilty,” she sighed. She felt her muscles tightening. Joel put a hand on her back.

  “No,” the officer said. The man had visible skin tags growing at the corner of his eyes and Holly had to look away. She didn’t know if she thought he was ugly because he was or because he was after her son. She felt a fierce protection growing up around her—there was no way she was letting them near him. “Mrs. Gamarra, your son has admitted he knows who killed the girl. He’s clearly involved enough to feel threatened. If that’s Alex on the recording then he knows something and we need to protect him before what he knows ends up causing him harm.”

  “It’s him,” Holly answered with a grim nod. “The low voice. I’ve heard him use it before, joking. And…calling 9-1-1. That’s Alex.”

  “Why do you think he called the emergency line?” the officer asked, pen poised.

  “I used to be a dispatcher,” Holly confessed. She didn’t mind giving them morsels. Maybe they’d see her as human and not a woman they needed to break. “When he was a boy. He used to ask about my calls every night. I told him sometimes I pretended I was a special part of the investigation that helped stop bad guys and helped good people.”

  It was true and the memory of it caused Holly to tear up and need a second to collect herself. She didn’t care if fourteen sounded old enough; he was a baby, a child, hardly capable of knowing what to do or why. She didn’t know if Alex called the emergency line because subconsciously he knew that the people on the other end would help him—when he felt the rest of the world couldn’t—but she hoped it was true. She hoped that the best pieces of her time in that control room trickled down to her boy. The message was always: good people will help.

  There are always good people around. Find them was her advice. Mr. Rogers and Holly Bloom, twenty-first-century icons.

  Her boy was scared and in danger and Holly’s shock was wearing off as the reality of the situation grew brighter.

  “Call us first if he comes home,” the detective said and slid a card over to her across the table. She nodded. She and Joel stood.

  “He’ll call again,” Holly said. “I promise you he will.”

  “And we’ll be ready,” the man assured her. She hoped he was right.

  Gloria and Nayeli were waiting on the front porch of Holly’s house when Joel drove up, a silent Holly in the front seat. They’d ridden the entire way in silence—it wasn’t oppressive or meaningful silence—the two of them were too tired to form complex thoughts. His arm rested between them, his pinky searched for hers. He was providing comfort and she was taking it without apology.

  When they parked the car, Gloria emerged. The porch swing drifted behind them as they stood to greet them. Holly noticed Gloria’s taut expression, full of silent intensity, and Nayeli’s eyes were red from crying. At first, Holly thought they’d heard of something about Alex before her. She had a renewed burst of energy and jumped out of the car, rushing toward her friend.

  “Did you hear anything?” she asked, her voice wavering and betraying her fear.

  “No, no,” Gloria said quickly trying not to rile up Holly’s emotions. “We haven’t heard anything. We’re here to talk to you.”

  Joel appeared behind Holly. He put a hand on her shoulder and Gloria’s eyes flickered to it for a second before she sighed and pointed inside. Nayeli couldn’t look at Holly; the girl hung her head and clutched her arms in front of her, shying away from whatever responsibilities her mother thrust upon her. Holly recognized the look of embarrassment and shame in her own face enough times to infer that Nayeli had come to confess something of great magnitude.

  “Let’s go inside,” Holly offered and she led the group indoors, grabbing her note off the door for Alex as she went. Despite the fact that she had no use for the paper anymore, she kept it and folded it in half and put it on the front table. It had read: Gone to look for you. Stay here; I’m coming back. I love you. Mom.

  She’d been in a hurry and hoped that if he needed her words, those would be the ones to hold him in place until she could get to him.

  She’d been wrong.

  Holly and Gloria sat down in the open living room. Joel sat in an armchair to the side, one foot brought up to rest on his knee—his glare wary.

  Gloria prodded her daughter.

  “Go on,” her friend said. “You need to tell Holly what you told me. Everything. Don’t leave anything out.” Gloria glanced to Joel and then back to Holly as if asking if the guy was okay to stay. Holly turned to Joel.

  “Do you want me to leave?” he asked.

  “No,” Holly answered swiftly and without reservation. To Nayeli she said, “I’m ready.”

  And Nayeli, through tears, told them all a terrible tale.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It started off innocently enough.

  It was a dummy account used to troll their friends whose pages were heavily monitored with raunchy comments that seemed to imply misdeeds. They bullied three kids that way, making more accounts, switching up profiles. Nayeli alone said she had nine different profiles. Each one for a different purpose and a different audience.

  This, alone, wasn’t news to Joel. Appropriating different identities to attack the same kids wasn’t new or novel, but the Internet made it easy. Some parents were only starting to understand the damage done to their child through their secret online worlds. The scope of that was beginning to dawn on Holly. Joel watched it happen—the stages of grief: the denial, the anger, the acceptance.

  Nayeli, it would seem, was not there to school this older generation on tech, but rather because she found herself in the middle of Alex’s online narrative.

  Alex took her phone on purpose.

  “You want to walk us through it again?” Joel asked after Nayeli had muddled her way through her story the first time. They’d obtained the necessary pieces of the puzzle, but there was a lot missing from her story as well. Joel knew he could treat this like a counseling session and work some magic, but Nayeli was not charmed by him. She eyed him with wariness. Holly and Alex were longtime friends—their mothers had the Social Club together and they’d grown up as cousins, more or less. Joel was the intruder.

  “Who are you?” Nayeli asked as if noticing him for the first time.

  “He’s an old friend,” Holly chose as an introduction and Nayeli rolled her eyes—she didn’t care for speaking in euphemisms, and Joel admired that.

  “We’re figuring out if we want to date,” Joel offered instead and Holly slowly turned her head—as if that was news to her. He didn’t miss the subtle look she gave her friend, her mouth open. But he didn’t care if she was moved by the truth, if the girl shared her story openly, he was open in return.

  And it worked.

  “And what do you think so far?” Nayeli asked. “I’m close to Holly, you know. I think she’d come to my mom for advice, so it isn’t a done deal until the friends say so.”

  “Dating by committee,” Joel tried to reword.

  Nayeli shrugged. “You haven’t met the Love is Murder Club yet then, have you? Started by women scorned.”

  “I see,” he said with a nod to both Gloria and Holly who bit their tongues considering the circumstances.

  “They just wanted to bitch about their exes. And Holly’s almost killed her so…the Love is Murder Social Club.”

  “That’s enough, Nayeli,” Gloria chastised softly.

  “Can I ask you something, Miss Hernandez?” Joel asked, adjusting his posture on the chair to level with her. Nayeli nodded. “I get that it started as fun. Because the guys were scum.”

&nb
sp; “Sure. We targeted the ones that were pedos or gross. Strangers. But we made a strict rule. No catfishing people in our state or school,” she said, looking down. “That was important. Everything was a lie. It had to be. And you had to maintain it.”

  “So, how do you know this is what happened to Alex?”

  That was part of the story she hadn’t told yet. Nayeli glanced up at her mother, as if asking for permission to decline to answer, but Gloria nodded and motioned her to continue.

  “Because of last night…because of why he left our house.”

  Holly’s face twitched with visible agitation, but she kept her calm as the teen looked to the floor and confessed the next part to the ground.

  “We were playing around. It was late. I got a message on my phone and Alex checked it first…and it was from a boy. And he grabbed my phone…and was teasing. Then he saw that it was….some older guy…and he freaked out. Told me it wasn’t safe. So, I told him it wasn’t real…I was just playing the guy for fun because he’s a creep who DMs little girls. Which is true and…” Nayeli trailed off, glanced again at her mom for support.

  Holly kept her eyes on Nayeli, her mouth tight, her face neutral. Joel’s eyes went between the storyteller and the listener. Nayeli took a breath.

  “I thought it was a game,” Nayeli said. “Like, haha, look at these losers falling for us. And most were losers, I promise. But that’s not what happened to Alex and he just…said that I was a bitch.” She grimaced. Joel could tell she felt she deserved the insult. She felt responsible. “He freaked. Said that the girls at his school wound up dead for the same thing I was doing and that I was…playing with fire. And then I kinda shrugged him off. An hour later he was gone… with my phone.”