Chapter 16 #2
“What did they fight about?” Arthur asked against his better judgment.
It didn’t seem particularly relevant to the case, but Arthur knew better than to dismiss teenage squabbles outright.
There might be something important embedded deep in their threads of selfies and acronyms Arthur would never understand.
“Well, a few weeks ago two of his friends got a crush on the same person—but it looks like they resolved that by simply all dating each other. Very modern of them. I like their style.”
“Anything actually important?”
“I’m getting there, darling.” Salvatore clicked a different text thread and scrolled up. “A couple days ago, someone named Shelly confronted Brody about his new friends.”
“She must be the girl we met. I definitely got the sense she wasn’t pleased about them.
” Arthur recalled the girl’s body language as she’d discussed Brody’s buddies.
He’d thought perhaps she’d developed feelings for her friend and was simply grumpy he’d ditched her for a group of seniors, but perhaps it was something more sinister.
“Yes, see, here she calls them a bigot brigade—very inflammatory language—and he says it’s not like that.”
“It very much is like that,” Arthur grumbled. “But I don’t see how any of that is related to the mayor’s death. If Brody was running about with those kids now, why would he kill the mayor? Roth was the leader of the bigot brigade, so to speak.”
“You tell me—you’re the detective here.”
“We need something more concrete,” Arthur muttered, shaking his head.
“Well, the best I can do is that Shelly texted him a skull emoji. Perhaps it’s a death threat of some kind.”
“Unlikely, considering how popular those little pictures are among kids these days.”
“There’s more.” Sal sat on the unmade bed, moving the laptop over so they could both see the screen. He navigated over to another text thread. “His friend’s emojis might not have been a threat, but this certainly looks like one.”
I know what you did. This isn’t over.
Arthur nearly dropped the box he was holding as he shuffled on his knees to close the distance between them. “What did he do?”
“No idea!” Sal pointed to the screen, which showed the solitary text on an otherwise blank page. “This is all they said. But it seems our friend Brody was up to something that caused someone’s displeasure.”
“What about you? Find anything good in the Playboys?” Sal asked.
“They’re letters,” Arthur said, pushing the box onto the bed beside Sal before getting to his feet. “From Brody’s mother.”
Salvatore perked up. “Oh? Now, that’s interesting.”
“She seemed to want to reach out to him, but there’s no indication he wrote back.
If he did, his father didn’t seem aware of it.
” None of this was painting any sort of compelling picture of a would-be murderer, though Arthur supposed in real life, murderers didn’t usually leave a clean trail of evidence or obvious death threats.
It would be more complicated than it ever was on TV.
“I’ll check his email. Maybe he sent her a message that way? I mean, honestly, who writes on paper anymore?”
“Some people like old-fashioned correspondence.”
Arthur shrugged and flipped open his notebook to jot down the threatening texter’s phone number from Brody’s computer. Perhaps they could look it up later. Phone books might have been passé, but Arthur felt sure Sal could work some Internet magic.
“What are you doing? I can just put the contact directly into my phone and google to find out who it is.” Sal waved his cell phone in Arthur’s face. “Oh! We could prank call them!”
“Don’t you dare!” Arthur snatched the phone from Sal’s grip and pocketed it. “They could be a killer!”
“I don’t see what difference that makes. Prank calls are always funny.”
“For now, let’s finish examining the potential clues here.”
Sal grunted, but he got up to help Arthur search all the same.
Brody’s room didn’t exactly scream criminal the way he’d expected.
Arthur hadn’t known Brody as more than his dentist’s son for the few months they’d lived in Trident Falls, but since finding George Roth’s body in the garden, he’d built an opinion of the boy that was now being complicated by hard evidence.
Arthur had thought of him as a misbehaving teen, then perhaps a murderer driven by hate, but now Arthur couldn’t help but see Brody as the child of an estranged mother and a boy whose zest for art was being ignored by everyone except the vandals his friends so despised.
Arthur couldn’t help but empathize. It had to be lonely to be so unseen by everyone around him.
“Well, this is odd.” Salvatore leaned over to stare into the little wastebasket by the desk. “There’s crumpled-up notebook paper in here.”
“How is that unusual? It’s a trash can. It’s probably his math homework.”
Salvatore lifted one of the crumpled pages and smoothed it. “It’s a letter. Oh my, is everyone in this town as old as you, Arthur?”
“Me? You’re six hundred, Sal!” Arthur threw his hands up but made his way across the room to lean over Salvatore’s shoulder nevertheless. “What does it say?”
They read together, and it didn’t take long. It was an attempt at a letter to Brody’s mother, though it was a false start.
Dear Mom, it read, Sorry for not writing back sooner. I hope you’re good.
The letter stopped there. The other pages in the wastebasket were different attempts at the same letter, though he never got more than a few sentences in before giving up and trying again. It seemed Brody was struggling to find the right words to greet someone who’d left him so long ago.
Arthur felt a little twinge of pity for the boy, until he remembered the video of Brody tossing the body of George Roth into the bed of his truck.
Arthur pulled open a desk drawer to find it as disorganized as the rest of the room.
Among the loose pens and other office supplies, there was a messy stack of papers.
“Not everything is digital these days, Sal.” Arthur flicked through the pages.
They were pay stubs, the checks detached.
Judging by the amounts, a part-time job.
The name of the issuer gave Arthur pause, however: McMartin Ranch.
Arthur recalled the sheriff saying Brody had worked for him for a time, but he had assumed it would’ve been at the station.
As he flipped idly through the old pay stubs, which didn’t seem to be in any order, one caught his eye. The check hadn’t been removed yet, and the amount made his eyebrows rise.
“I didn’t realize ranching was so lucrative,” Salvatore said. “A check for fifteen hundred dollars? And look, it says he only worked three days that pay period.”
“This was his last check, too.” Arthur skimmed all the dates to verify.
“Perhaps McMartin is more generous than he lets on?” Sal asked.
“No. This isn’t a bonus for a job well done. Dr. Young said Brody got fired. Who fires someone, then pays them this much extra?” Arthur glanced up at Salvatore.
“You’re right, then. What if it’s hush money? Or some sort of bribe?” Salvatore’s eyes lit up with mischief. “What if McMartin is the one funding all the anti-paranormal graffiti, and this was his way of paying Brody and his friends to see it done?”
“That seems a little far-fetched.” Arthur tucked the check and pay stubs back where they belonged.
“At least take a photo for evidence,” Sal huffed.
“Is that really necessary?” Arthur asked, hesitant to use the phone.
“I can do it if you’re not up to the task.”
“No, no, I can handle this.” He was a detective, after all. He opened the camera app to take a few shots.
“What are you doing? That’s panorama, Arthur. No, now you’ve selected video.” Sal scrambled for the phone, but Arthur tugged it out of reach. “Oh, for the love of— No! Why!”
A bright flash of light filled the room and Sal dramatically stumbled back.
“My retinas! They’re burning!”
“No, they’re not,” Arthur said, leaning closer to the phone screen to select the correct photo option for one last shot of the incriminating documents.
Sal gasped. “I can’t believe you’d use flash, you heathen.”
“I’d rather not use anything at all,” Arthur grumbled. “I don’t see why cameras need to be so complicated. Why are there so many options? I liked those ones we used to use before the turn of the century—the disposable ones with the little clicky slider on the side.”
“Technology evolves, my dear. In my day, we had to sit for portraits and hope the painter didn’t accidentally sneeze on the canvas.”
“We don’t have time for that.”
“Of course we don’t!” Sal flung his arm around Arthur’s shoulders. “We have shady evidence to inspect!”
“Shady enough that we’d better ask the sheriff about it.” Arthur glanced around the room one last time. He hoped Brody would one day see this space again, and he hoped the boy wasn’t a murderer, though nothing here could erase the video footage they’d seen.
“Does this mean we have to go back to the station?” Salvatore whined. “That place is so drab, it’s taken decades off my undeath already.”
“No,” Arthur said with a smile. “We’re going somewhere better.”