Fear No Truth

by LynDee Walker

  His description of the victim filtered through Erica Andre’s trembly, raw alto. “My neighbor refinishes pieces for my studio.”

  I turned to the list on the whiteboard. Paint thinner.

  “Could it be Zayne’s voice on the video?” I swallowed hard, not sure I wanted to think a teenager could ringlead something like Archie’s description of what happened to Jessa.

  “I suppose it could. But why would his voice be familiar to a cop?” Graham’s forehead bunched. “What’s eating you?”

  I reached for my keys, nodding to the board. “Paint thinner. His mother refinishes furniture. I know where he lives. Let’s go.”

  Graham shook his head. “You underestimate these people. The tiniest crack in our case, and they’ll have it thrown out and sue the state for slander.”

  “We don’t have time to fill in detail, dammit. What if it is this kid? What if another young woman dies while we’re spackling cracks?” I shook my head, Tenley’s waxen, bluish face flashing on the backs of my eyelids with every blink. “That’s too much risk.”

  “So we spackle fast. How’s your midnight-oil supply? And who owes you a favor?”

  “We’re out of time. He’s getting braver.”

  “You’re assuming it’s all the same person, and we don’t know that yet,” Graham said.

  I glared. I knew. Somehow, in my gut, I knew they were connected. They had to be. It was the how I had an issue with.

  “It’s here, Faith. You know it is just as well as I do. Just slow down and let’s find it first.” Graham used his best soothe-the-victim voice.

  I stared at him for five heartbeats. His lips tipped up at the corners, crinkling the edges of his moss-green eyes.

  I could do this.

  We could do this.

  “Just tonight. Tomorrow morning, cracks or no, I’m picking him up.”

  Graham tapped the edge of the computer keyboard. “I know the family. Let’s call Jim, study the files, and get something stone-solid.” His stomach gurgled and he laid a hand on it. “And maybe some food.”

  “Who says all-nighters are just for college kids?” I turned for the door to fill Archie in, dialing our favorite pizza place from my cell. “I’ll get food.”

  “I’ll call my friend at the lab. She didn’t answer my texts yet.”

  He picked up his phone and tapped the screen twice before he put it to his ear. Speed dial.

  I strode to the stairs like it didn’t bother me.

  Halfway down, the girl at the pizza place told me it would be two hours for them to deliver an extra-large pepperoni and a small veggie lover’s. I told her I’d make the fifteen-minute trip to pick them up. She said they’d have them ready in twenty.

  I paused on the landing as Archie opened the door at the bottom of the steps.

  “I think we got him.” I grinned around the words, leaning on the rail. “Graham picked up the Marshall High quarterback on a sexual assault last year that was made to very quietly go away. According to Tenley’s friend, he was with her Monday night, and Instagram tells me he knew Jessa, too. Plus, his mom refinishes antiques.”

  “Paint thinner.” He double-timed it up to meet me. “Which means he might’ve killed the porn king to keep him quiet. Holy shit. Nice work. Address?”

  I raised one hand. “Graham says these people are very rich and even more callous. I’ll spare you the nightmare interview with the mom and just say we need this nailed down, bolted, welded, airtight dead-to-rights before we go anywhere near him or we’ll have to live with ourselves when he walks.”

  “Show me where the bolts are, kiddo.”

  “Can you check traffic cameras and security footage from both nights for any car registered to Zayne, Bethany, or Quentin Davenport? And maybe check the area the days the girls were discovered, too. He struck me as the type who might like to watch reactions to his handiwork.”

  Archie smiled. “Almost like you learned from the best or something.”

  “Almost.” I winked.

  “I’m on it.”

  “I’m going to run up to Mario’s and grab pizza. I’ll check on what Graham’s friend at the coroner’s office has for us on my way out.” I pulled the door to the first floor open and waved him through. “We’re going to get him, Arch.”

  Archie smiled. “You’re going to get him, New Girl. I didn’t do enough to take any credit, and this arrest will boost your status around here faster than any argument I could mount on your behalf.”

  I laid a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you. For believing in me.”

  He patted my fingers and reached for the phone on his desk. “You make it easy, Faith. You always have.”

  I smiled and squeezed his hand, hoping I could keep that up for at least a few more days.

  32

  Quiet helps my mind meander through things. And there wasn’t a damned thing on the radio to keep my thoughts busy on the way to the pizza place.

  Less than twenty-four hours after being exposed as a porn peddler of the vilest variety, Ray Wooley was dead. The press couldn’t get enough of it; this was Texas, after all. Rebels and vigilantes aren’t criminals to the masses here, they’re goddamn folk heroes. I clicked through six radio stations to get to one that wasn’t talking about whether Ray’s murder was a sin or a public service. And the only station not talking about Ray was playing Florida Georgia Line. “Oh for the love of God.” I poked at the knob to click the thing off, my thoughts running back through my day. Tenley’s slashed skin. Ray’s disgusting apartment.

  Parked in front of the pizzeria, I started to turn off the truck and get out. But my hand stopped short of pulling the door handle.

  Ray’s apartment.

  The couch, the trunk, the half-open fridge.

  They didn’t go with the neat stack of mail or the absolute lack of clutter.

  Wooley was certainly a pig of some variety, but he was a computer geek. Structure. Organization. It fit the personality like a neat string of code. He didn’t keep his house that messy.

  Which meant our killer was hunting something in that dive apartment.

  I hung a U-turn at the next intersection and laid on the gas, pointing the truck toward Ray’s place.

  Inching up his street a few minutes later, my eyes peeled for police cruisers and meat wagons, I was slightly surprised to find it dark and empty.

  They’d gone. Already. Not impossible, but weird that they’d close a scene that gruesome so quickly.

  I parked in front of the door, picked up my phone, and opened a text to Graham.

  Food will be there shortly. I want another look inside Ray’s place.

  I sent it and slid the phone into my pocket, laying one hand on my sidearm as I nudged the front door open with my foot.

  Thank God, someone had disposed of the chicken corpse.

  I flattened my back against the wall and crept silently up the stairs, even breathing quietly in the still, heavy darkness. Not surprising for this part of town, an all-day police presence seemed to have cleared the building, so it was just me and the darkness and probably a few hundred roaches, given what Graham said they’d done with the rats.

  Ray’s door was still taped off, but one side had come loose from the peeling hallway paint, so a low strip hung across the bottom of the doorway while the higher one lay flaccid against the left side of the jamb.

  I turned the knob. Stepped over the low-hanging tape. Reached for my phone and clicked on the flashlight.

  The stench was mostly gone, the place quiet and relatively neat.

  Which just made me more sure something was off.

  There should’ve been a computer. Hell, there should’ve been a lot of computers. The servers Archie had were taken from his business address, not his home, but a guy who worked in shady websites still should’ve at least had a laptop in his house. And we didn’t find Ray until well after Skye’s piece aired, but he had been dead a while at that point. So if he’d hidden his hardware, it was somewhere nearby. Maybe th
ere was a clue as to where.

  I shone the light into the corner near the TV, looking for a hiding place. Nothing.

  I tiptoed to the kitchen. Three cabinets, fridge, freezer, two drawers: all unremarkable. I checked every one for false bottoms, too. Nothing. Damn.

  I turned for the hallway. Turned back. Paused.

  My phone buzzed in my hand. I didn’t bring the light down to look. It had been a good ten minutes, which meant Graham had put down the files and checked his phone and he was pissed. Understandably—I knew the rules, and going into a murder scene alone wasn’t exactly smart. Today, it was necessary, at least to me. We had dead folks piling up, a well-insulated prime suspect, and zero hard evidence. If I’d gone back for Graham, he would’ve been obligated to call TCSO forensics and ask for permission to go into the apartment, and that would take hours we didn’t have.

  So I ignored his text, my feet shuffling toward the bathroom door. I didn’t want to go in there. But if I was going to hide something, I’d put it in the toilet tank. A computer wouldn’t fit, but a drive would.

  I pushed the door inward slowly, holding my breath even though I knew the room had been sanitized.

  The light bounced off the mirror and hit the tub. Plenty of black metal spots and rust stains, but not a drop of blood.

  I scooted to the toilet and lifted the tank lid, set it across the sink, and shone the light down.

  Just water and run-of-the-mill toilet innards. Strike two.

  I examined the tiny room, but no other hiding places jumped out at me.

  The bedroom? I crept back up the hall and peeked around the corner, but before I stepped inside, my eye fell on the cockeyed sofa cushions in the living room.

  Light. Mail. Press clippings. Kitchen.

  Everything here was orderly. Ray was a computer guy.

  Those cushions should’ve driven him batshit crazy, and he lived alone.

  I stepped past the bedroom and crossed the living room quickly and silently.

  Pulling the crooked cushion free, I peered underneath.

  The thing made out into a bed.

  Huh.

  I put the first cushion on the floor, added the second to the stack, and pulled on the bed-frame handle.

  A full-sized sofa bed unfolded, springs squealing a soft protest. I lifted the foot of the thin, yellowed mattress. Nothing unusual. I moved to the top and lifted there. Still noth—

  Wait. I moved the light, and it glinted off something in the dead middle of the head of the bed. Something shinier than the rust-speckled brown bedsprings.

  Something that looked a whole lot like the business end of a USB plug. A thumb drive, by the pink plastic lodged in the springs behind it.

  “Bingo.” The word actually came out on a sigh. Finally, I’d made a good move. My gut wasn’t totally dead.

  I leaned, reaching for the bit of silvery metal.

  My fingers closed around a sliver of the tip. Pinching until I couldn’t feel my fingertips, I worked the back end of it through the crisscrossed metal of the sofa bed and twisted my lips to the side when it came loose. I raised it into the light.

  A pink sneaker. The end of the little stick of data in my hand was a pink plastic sneaker.

  Coincidence?

  Not likely. I gripped the thing so tightly the plastic bit into my hand as I turned back for the bedroom. Ray was good at hiding things—and apparently, Tenley Andre was, too.

  I took one step toward the hallway and the air shifted in the warm little room. It wasn’t a sound so much as a feeling: my gut telling me I wasn’t alone.

  Shit. I shoved the thumb drive into my pocket and reached for my gun as I pivoted back toward the dark corner behind the sofa on one foot.

  I was fast.

  Someone else was faster.

  I didn’t even get my flashlight up high enough to make out a face before something hard and sharp connected with my skull just above my left ear. Darkness rushed in from every side. All I saw as I dropped to the dingy linoleum was a blurry red hoodie and Ray’s rust-stained walls.

  33

  Sirens.

  The high, ear-grating wail filtered through the darkness first. Somebody had hit me, and now the cavalry was nearby—so my best shot at seeing another sunrise was to get to them. I stiffened my abs, trying to sit up before I even managed to drag my eyes open.

  A warm hand landed in the center of my chest, holding me down. I landed two quick jabs to the arm attached to it and tried to roll away, but my stupid body wouldn’t catch up to my brain.

  “Whoa. Easy there, partner.”

  Graham? I cracked my eyelids and squinted.

  Even the dim light from Ray’s single-bulb overhead fixture sent an ice pick clean through my temple, but I blinked and tried to focus anyway.

  He was really there.

  I slumped back to the floor, groaning when my head landed a little too hard. My fingers moved into a sticky pool around my ear. Blood.

  “Ouch,” I whispered.

  Graham’s long fingers smoothed a lock of wayward hair out of my face, his green eyes a stormy combination of anxious and pissed off when I could focus on them. “I found something,” I said by way of a peace offering, reaching for my pocket. “He had it hidden well, too.”

  “Nothing is worth you almost getting yourself killed.” He shook his head, his fingers closing around my hand. “Pairs, Faith. You know the rules are the rules for a reason. Did you get a look at whoever was here with you?”

  I didn’t dare try to move my head. “No. Red hoodie. About my height. That’s all I got.”

  I swiped a finger through my pocket. Then two. Reached for the other one.

  “What is it?”

  “The thumb drive. It’s not here.”

  His forehead wrinkled. “Thumb drive?”

  “I found it. A pink sneaker. Like the kind of thing someone would give a runner.”

  I tried again to sit up, and again my head protested, this time by sending waves of roiling nausea surging through my middle. I locked my jaw, breathing through my nose. One upchuck was enough for today.

  “It’s not here.” I patted my pockets, trying and failing to look around when moving my head just made a kaleidoscope of color explode in my left peripheral. “Did I drop it?”

  Graham laid a restraining hand on my shoulder. “I’ll look. You be still.”

  He stood as a team of paramedics rolled a gurney in the door. I tried to follow him with my eyes as they descended on me, but they cared more about my bleeding head wound than my missing piece of evidence.

  I tucked my hands under a sore hip and closed my eyes as they poked and prodded and conferred. I needed stitches. Because my face was involved, they assumed I’d want a plastic surgeon—maybe it’s vain, but I kind of did. A really good one. But not badly enough to consider calling my mother.

  Nobody wanted to let me walk downstairs. Including Graham, who eyed me so sternly when I opened my mouth to argue that I snapped it shut.

  I shouldn’t have come alone. The odds were in my favor to walk in and out without incident, but fate also didn’t seem to be my friend this week. Fine. I let the medics scoot me onto the gurney and settled my head against the pillow. The cool softness did feel nice.

  “I’m sorry.” I said the words to my twisting hands, fidgety in my lap, but Graham knew I was talking to him.

  “Why didn’t you just come back and get me?”

  “I had a hunch. Figured what forensics didn’t know wouldn’t hurt anything, and I’d be in and out quick and then go get dinner and it wouldn’t be a big deal.”

  “You have a way of turning the ordinary into a huge deal.” He smiled when I glanced up at him. “I’m just glad you thought to text me—it was easy enough to find you when you took too long. I wish I’d been in time to get ahold of whoever did this, though.”

  He climbed into the back of the ambulance with me. “Scared the hell out of me, when I walked in there and saw all that blood and you weren’t moving
.” His voice was low, hoarse. He blinked double-time.

  I patted his hand without moving my head. “Thanks for coming to look for me.”

  I paused. How long was I out? “What time is it?”

  He glanced at his watch. “Eleven fifteen. It took a bit for you to come to, even with me poking at you.”

  The paramedic picked up my arm to start an IV, and Graham dropped my fingers.

  “We’ll be at the hospital in no time, Officers,” she said. “This is deep. You’re lucky your friend came when he did—you might’ve bled to death in there otherwise. But they’ll have you back out, good as new, in just a few days.”

  I smiled a thank-you at her, my eyes sliding to Graham. Could’ve bled to death. For what? “Did you find it?”

  He shook his head, his lips pinched into a thin line between his teeth.

  “What about your friend at the lab? Did you get ahold of her?”

  “She never answered me. But I do have something.” He held up his phone. “Bank records came in at four thirty. Damned spam filter.”

  I took the phone from him, squinting at the blinding white screen.

  “Does that say a hundred grand?” My eyebrows tried to move and my cut protested. “Tenley scammed a hundred thousand dollars out of her own parents?” I paused. Ray. Simpson. Maybe all the money didn’t come from her folks. “What the hell did she need that kind of cash for?”

  “Something she was doing Monday, it seems.” Graham pointed at the top line. “All but twenty dollars was withdrawn just before lunchtime.”

  I handed the phone back, shaking my head. “She was planning something big, this girl.”

  “And jumping off the dam is free. Time to call her folks?”

  “I hate to bother them, but I don’t see where we have a choice. It’ll wait until morning, though, given my current situation.”