Chapter 28
U pon John’s recommendation, Beth retreated to the bedroom to call one of the network executives who had been as close a friend as Max had had. She was told that he was out. Although she impressed on his assistant how important it was that he call her back, Beth had little confidence in the woman’s smoothly spoken promise to pass along the request.
Then, as much as Max would hate it, and hate her for even thinking of it, she called the production company for which his son worked and asked for him. Being Max’s only blood relative, he would wield more influence over the network than she. She hoped to convince him to intervene.
She identified herself to his assistant and was put on hold. When the assistant returned, she said, “He’s unavailable, Ms. Collins, but he did ask me to give you a message. He extends you his condolences, but wants to hear none you might wish to extend him.”
That renunciation discouraged her from reaching out to any of Max’s ex-wives. She hadn’t heard back from Richard, but it was doubtful he would have the courage to approach Winston Brady on her behalf. Asking anyone else affiliated with the show to take up her banner would be pointless. She knew how these things worked. Whenever there was a shake-up in personnel, even a close ally would suddenly become a competitor.
She returned to the main room and sat down beside John, who was scrolling through what she now recognized as Crissy Mellin’s case file. “Looking for anything in particular?”
“I just checked Billy Oliver’s autopsy report to see if a tattoo had been noted. None was.”
“Did you ever ask Carla if Crissy had one?”
“Yes. She said no. It’s in my notes of the first interview Mitch and I had with her when she provided us a detailed physical description of Crissy.”
“Some people frown on ink, so she might not have wanted you to know about Crissy’s. I’ll call her and ask again.”
“Better idea,” he said. “Let’s ask her in person. We need to bring her up to date on several things.”
Beth checked her watch. “She’ll be at work.”
“Good. She has to let us in and can’t kick us out.”
When they walked through the entrance of the emergency clinic, Carla looked up from her computer monitor and scowled when she saw them. “If you’re here for a booster shot, we’re currently out. If you’re sick, there’s an hour and a half wait. Fill out this form.” She slapped one onto the counter and set a pen beside it. “If you’re here for any other reason, you’d had just as well turn around and leave.”
John said, “We only need a minute.”
“Too bad. I don’t have a minute, and if I did I wouldn’t spend it talking to you. I’ve said all I’m going to.”
John looked around the waiting room. Several people were watching them, one a young mother trying to pacify a squalling infant who was making a hell of a racket. “Is there an empty room where we can talk?”
“I’m busy .”
A coworker, who’d had her back to them when they came in, was now looking curiously over her shoulder. “I’ll cover for you, Carla.”
John smiled and thanked her, then said to Crissy’s mother, “She’ll cover for you, Carla.”
She growled with aggravation. “Go through that door.” It opened off the lobby into a hallway. She led them into an empty examination room where she assumed a hostile stance and crossed her arms over her chest. “All right, you’ve got me for one minute.”
Beth said, “We thought you’d like to hear what Isabel Sanchez told us about the night Billy hanged himself.”
Between the two of them they summarized what the former deputy had told them. Beth said, “She was never convinced that Billy had written that note after he was returned to his cell. She’s almost certain, as we are, that it had already been planted on him. She’s been too afraid of reprisal to point fingers at the men responsible.”
“With reason,” John said. “Yesterday one of Tom Barker’s heavies showed up at her house and subtly threatened her children if she talked to me.”
“Well, that’s something, I guess,” Carla said. “Her story helps exonerate Billy, but only helps. It doesn’t change anything.”
“It changes the content of the Crisis Point episode. A large portion of it is patently untrue.” Beth explained to her the consequences that would result from the broadcast being moved up by a week. “I haven’t made any headway toward getting it cancelled.”
“I’m not the least bit concerned about the ruination of your TV show,” Carla said. “Wasn’t it that Max Longren’s idea to do the story on Crissy in the first place?” Ruefully Beth admitted that it was. “Then why should I care if his legacy is blackened?”
John said, “You should care because this information from Deputy Sanchez not only helps to exonerate Billy, but it also shines a spotlight on Tom Barker’s corruption. His ambition undermined the investigation and got in the way of our catching whoever took Crissy. That’s why we’re here, Carla. The guy is still out there, and tomorrow night there’s another blood moon.”
“Not that nonsense again.”
John didn’t acknowledge her eye roll. “Might be nonsense to you and me, but he takes it seriously. Ever heard of Luna?”
For a moment, she gave him a blank stare, then said, “Of course.”
“Really?” Beth said. “In what context?”
“Luna, as in luna -tic.”
John and Beth exchanged a look, but he was undaunted by the woman’s sarcasm. “Good one, Carla.”
“I thought so. Y’all have a nice day.” She made to go past him, but he sidestepped to block her path.
“You’ve had more than your minute, Mr. Bowie.”
“Was Crissy into numerology?”
“What the hell?” She looked at Beth with scorn before coming back to him. “She read her horoscope. Big deal.”
“Did she ever refer to the double letters in both her first and last names? Did Billy? He also had double letters.”
“Why are you wasting my time with this crap?”
John took off the white gloves. “Because, Carla, it might help find the person who took Crissy and in all probability killed her.” She flinched as though he’d slapped her, but he pressed on. “Isn’t getting justice for your daughter worth a few minutes of your precious time?”
She backed away from him. “That was unnecessary and cruel.”
He stepped forward and got right into her face. “What was done to Crissy was cruel. It was cruel to you, too, and the culprit got away with it. Now, talk to me, damn it.”
She pursed her lips into a stubborn moue.
In an attempt to defuse the animosity on both sides, Beth said, “Please, Carla. Answer our questions.”
She didn’t respond, but she didn’t walk out. John backed down. With exaggerated patience and politeness, he asked again, “Did Crissy have any interest in numerology, or any acquaintances who did?”
“I never even heard her say that word. Now, there, I’ve answered your question. That desk gets busy. I need to get back.”
“One more question.”
“I—”
“One more,” John said. “Did Crissy have a tattoo?”
“You asked me that the morning after she disappeared. I gave you and that other detective a physical description of her.”
“I know I asked you then. This morning I went back to my notes and that’s what I’d written down. No tattoos. But I’m wondering, Beth is wondering, if Crissy might have had one you didn’t know about.”
Beth said, “The reason we’re asking is that the girl who disappeared a few months before Crissy had a tattoo she’d kept hidden from her parents. No one knew about it until yesterday when the young man accused of her disappearance told about it. It was under her arm, covered by her bra. It was a red crescent moon, the goddess Luna’s symbol.”
Carla snorted. “Back to Luna.” She divided a disparaging look between them. “Crissy would never have gotten a tattoo.”
“Perhaps without your knowledge.”
“Nope.”
“Maybe peer pressure—” Beth began, only to be cut off.
“No. Wouldn’t have mattered if I approved it or not, whether it was hidden or in the center of her forehead, under no circumstances would she have gotten a tattoo, because of the needle. She had a needle phobia like none other. She’d scream like a banshee. Whenever she had to get a shot, I practically had to hog-tie her.”
She looked each of them in the eye, hard, then said, “Call me if you ever catch the bastard who took my girl. I want to see him shackled, in handcuffs, and an iron collar around his neck. Otherwise, leave me the hell alone.”
After leaving Carla, her strong admonishment still ringing in their ears, John suggested they pick up a late lunch of carryout and find a place to park and eat. “That warrant hasn’t gone away, so I don’t want to risk going into a restaurant.”
“I’m not really hungry,” Beth said absently as she checked her borrowed phone for messages.
“Well, my breakfast has worn off. Besides, it’ll give us a chance to figure out where we go from here. Any luck?” He chinned toward the phone in her hand.
“No. I wish to heaven Richard would grow a pair and storm into Brady’s office, demanding that he talk to me.”
“How likely is that?”
“As likely as Carla having us over for afternoon tea.”
At a drive-through he got a loaded burger for himself and a salad for Beth, then drove around a sleepy neighborhood to a municipal park. He pulled into the crushed shell lot, turned off the car, and dug into their lunch.
Around his first bite, he said, “I don’t get Carla’s hostility toward us.”
Beth was squeezing dressing over her salad. “She still holds you—and everyone on the police force—responsible for failing to find Crissy.”
“Of course, but I’ve owned up to all the foul-ups. I’ve apologized for my part in letting her down, and now I’m trying to make amends by getting justice for Crissy and Billy. None of that has made a dent with Carla. In fact she’s thornier now than—”
One of his phones rang. He checked the readout. It was Morris, whom he hadn’t expected. He answered and put it on speaker. “Hi, Gayle.”
“You bastard.”
“Sorry?”
“You laid a guilt trip on me. I skipped lunch so I could talk to the Whitmores and just wrapped up a conference call with them. I told them about the numerology stuff and asked if Larissa or any of her acquaintances were into the paranormal of any stripe, as you phrased it.
“They reminded me that I’d already asked them that. I apologized but told them to stretch. Was anyone in Larissa’s sphere a little ‘off’? After a moment’s thought, her dad said, ‘That tree trimmer.’ They’d hired him to do some work in their yard, and he was good, so neighbors also retained his services.”
“Which kept him in proximity to Larissa for a length of time.”
“You got it. The two of them talked, flirted, and hung out for a week or two. But then Larissa tried to close it down. She told her folks that he was into some ‘weird stuff.’ This coming from a reputed party girl.”
“Indicating that the ‘stuff’ must have been really weird,” John said. “Do you think he influenced the crescent moon tattoo?”
“I asked. They didn’t know, because they didn’t even know about the tattoo. But it’s possible.”
“Did you get his name? Is he still around?”
“Yes to the first, and he lives in Beaumont. He has two priors. Both for stalking, which resulted in restraining orders. He was never even looked at because we had Dobbs naked and stoned and Larissa’s DNA all over him and his boat. Which brings me to the best part.”
John said, “The stalker has a boat.”
“Yes, sir. I’m going to get Beaumont PD to keep an eye on him, but not to spook him until I can get the log books from every marina along at least one hundred miles of coastline, Texas and Louisiana. Let’s see if his boat launched from one of them on May sixteenth of ’22.
“And before you ask,” she continued, “I already checked your date in November. This guy was serving thirty days in jail for harassing one of his stalking victims. He’s not Crissy’s abductor. But I think you’re on to something, John. It’s multiple perps. They’re the common factor, not the women.”
“Gayle, I can’t thank you enough.”
“Don’t thank me. If this is the guy who took Larissa, we completely dropped the ball and made a suspected murderer out of Patrick Dobbs. I’ll keep you updated, but right now I gotta run and get busy. You asshole, you just doubled my workload.”
She hung up before he could form a comeback.
He clicked off and looked across at Beth. “What do we do with this?” she asked.
“First off, call Roberts in Jackson, report this, and urge him to take another, closer look at the dark web guy who gets his jollies exposing himself.”
John quickly demolished his burger. While Beth was finishing her salad, he called Roberts and fortunately caught him at his desk. John related what he’d learned from Gayle Morris, and, as he’d anticipated, the information was galvanizing. “I’m on it,” the detective said.
“Go back to the wife, too. Words like aiding and abetting, complicity, and conspiracy may alter her memory of that night.”
“Will do. Thanks, Bowie.”
He clicked off. Beth stuffed the last of their trash into the sack. “Now what?”
He gave her a slow and suggestive grin. “Want to get a room?”
She looked at him with surprise and answered with smoky eyes and a sexy smile. “Yes.”
“And rid each other of clothing?”
“Definitely. As quickly as possible.”
“God, don’t I wish,” he groaned. “Another time.”
He slid his pistol from its holster. “But we have a tail, and I recognize the car by the hail damage on the hood. It belongs to one of the men the ogre uses. So kiss me. Good. Make it look like the kind of kiss that counts. I’ll take it from there.”