Chapter 8
eight
Naomi had every intention of keeping her promise to Ghost, but as the day dragged on, her patience wore thin. Sitting still was never her specialty. Even less so when she had a missing woman’s case file staring her in the face and a dozen leads to chase.
She scrolled another page of casino payroll records, highlighting every shift Leelee had worked in the past six months.
Cross-referenced the names of regulars who’d tipped her over twenty bucks.
Most of them were locals, a handful from the reservation, a couple from out of state.
She made notes, the same way she’d been trained, but none of it felt like progress.
Mostly, it just felt like she was treading water. Drowning, maybe, and too stubborn to admit it.
Fuck it.
She grabbed her jacket and keys, and twenty minutes later, pulled into the small parking space next to Taren Finch’s house.
It was exactly what she expected: sad, tired, and looking like one good storm could blow its roof off.
Beer cans littered the porch. A rusty Mustang hunched behind the fence, windows filmed with grime.
The air smelled like old cigarettes and yesterday’s rain.
The background check she ran on him earlier told her he’d inherited the trailer from his mother after she died of a heart attack at the too-young age of forty-nine.
Local rumor claimed she’d worked herself to death while her good-for-nothing son couldn’t even bother to hold down a job at the feed store.
Taren Finch had never done a hard day’s work in his life, unless you counted drinking yourself unconscious or picking fistfights with guys who looked at him sideways at the Rusty Spur.
Naomi walked up the porch, boots crunching glass. Knocked hard enough to rattle the door in its frame.
Movement inside. A shuffle. The TV shut off.
“Taren Finch!” she called. “It’s Naomi Lefthand. Open up.”
A shuffling sound inside. Scrape of a chair. Then the door jerked open, chain still engaged, so only a sliver of his face showed.
Finch glared out at her, black hair loose around his shoulders, face puffy, eyes red-rimmed. He looked worse than his mugshot. “What the hell do you want?”
She leveled a flat stare. “I need to talk to you about Leelee.”
He jerked back from the door like she’d hit him. For a second, she thought he’d slam it shut in her face, but paranoia—or pride—kept him there, peering out through the gap.
“I already told her parents everything I know.” His words slurred, sour breath leaking through the screen. “I don’t need you poking around, too.”
She didn’t blink. “That’s funny, because I talked to the Padillas and they said you weren’t much help.”
“Because there’s nothing to say!” Finch’s eyes darted, scanning the yard behind her. Classic guilty move. “We broke up. She ain’t my problem anymore.”
She set her jaw. “Leelee’s missing, Taren. You get that? Nobody’s heard from her since Tuesday. You were the last person she texted. So unless you want me to haul you down to the station for a long, ugly interview, you’ll open the damn door and answer my questions.”
He hesitated, torn between giving in and putting on a show. The guy was a marshmallow, soft all the way through, but every drunk loser in Solace thought a little attitude would scare people off.
She waited him out.
A couple of seconds, a muttered curse, and he finally unchained the door. It banged open, nearly hitting her boots. Finch stood there in basketball shorts, stained T-shirt, and bare feet. He looked like he’d rolled out of bed and straight into a bottle.
“Happy?” he snapped, stepping aside. “You can see for yourself I’m not hiding her here.”
She walked in, careful not to snag her jacket on the busted doorjamb.
The place looked even worse inside: pizza boxes stacked on the TV, a smog of cigarette smoke clinging to the curtains, and a sticky ring of cheap beer cans crowding the end table.
Somewhere under the mess, a carpet fought for its life.
She took it in and didn’t say a word.
Finch shuffled to the couch and dropped onto it, rubbing his face with both hands. “Look, I told you, I haven’t seen her. She dumped me, remember?”
Naomi stayed on her feet, arms crossed. “Remind me when that was.”
He squinted up at the ceiling, thinking hard. “I dunno… Last week? Maybe Thursday. She came by to get her stuff. We argued for a minute, but that was it.”
“About what?”
He shrugged, then winced like the motion hurt. “Stupid shit.”
“Did you see her after that?”
“No!” Finch’s voice spiked, then dropped to a sullen mumble. “She told me not to call anymore. Said she was done for real this time. That’s why I was surprised when she texted Tuesday.”
She let the silence stretch, just long enough for his nerves to show.
“Tell me about the text.”
He dragged his phone from the cushions, blinking at the screen. A crack zigzagged through the display, but he found the thread and turned it so she could read. The text was short.
hey, you still up? can i tell you something?
Below it, a string of unanswered messages from Finch. All sent after two in the morning. All desperate, needy, and, honestly, kind of pathetic.
what do you want leelee?
if you’re just screwing with me don’t bother
why wont you answer?
you there?
lee?
Naomi scrolled up with her thumb, ignoring the sticky residue on the case. More of the same: Leelee reaching out maybe once every week or so, always late, always short. Finch, replying in fits and starts, sometimes drunk, sometimes angry, sometimes both.
“You wanna tell me what this was about?” she asked, stabbing a finger at the first message. “Last time she texted, you said you were surprised. Why?”
“I dunno…” Finch hunched his shoulders, refusing to meet her eyes. “We hadn’t talked in a few days. She dumped me, remember? Wasn’t like her to hit me up after that.”
“Except she did,” Naomi pressed. “So what did you do? Did you call her?”
He shook his head, greasy hair swinging, jaw set stubborn. “No! I figured it was a butt-dial. Or maybe she was drunk and didn’t want to say whatever it was. I texted back, like you saw. She never responded.”
She let the silence stretch out between them, waiting to see if he’d get nervous enough to fill it himself.
He didn’t, but his foot started tapping against a pizza box wedged under the coffee table, so she counted it as a win.
“Did she ever mention someone bothering her at work? Or maybe following her?”
Finch scratched at the back of his neck, shirt riding up to show off a faded tattoo—a barbed wire ring that looked more like somebody’s doodle than actual ink.
“Yeah, I guess. Sometimes she said guys at the casino were creeps. That’s why I used to go pick her up, you know?
Walk her out to her car. She hated walking alone at night. ”
“Which guys?”
He shrugged, mouth twisting. “I dunno. Some of the regulars were assholes. Couple of the pit bosses, too. But she never gave names. Said if she complained, she’d just get fired, so she kept her mouth shut. That’s how they do it at Lucky Feather.”
Naomi made a note of that. Every woman she’d talked to who worked at the casino said the same thing: keep your head down, don’t make trouble, and maybe you’ll keep your job. Classic garbage management.
“Anyone stand out? Anyone she mentioned more than once?”
He thought about it, eyes unfocused. “There was the developer guy, Craig something. He’d tip her stupid money. Like, hundreds. She said he wanted to sponsor her or something? But it sounded sketchy.”
“Craig Foster?” Naomi asked. It wasn’t the first time his name had come up in conjunction with a missing girl.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Did she ever meet up with him outside of work?”
Finch’s face shut down, all doors slamming at once. “You’d have to ask her. Or him. I don’t know shit about it, except it pissed me off when I heard.”
He was lying. Or at least, not telling the whole truth.
She let that ride for now.
“Where were you Tuesday night?” she asked. “Be specific.”
A flicker of panic, quick as a heartbeat. “Here,” he said instantly. “Home. I watched the game and passed out on the couch. Ask anyone. Ask my neighbor, Miss Kay. She called me after midnight to tell me to turn down my TV. She always does.”
Naomi nodded. “I will.”
Finch licked his lips, picking at a hole in the sofa cushion. “Look, I didn’t do anything to her. We fought, yeah, but I would never… you know. Hurt her.” The words had a desperate edge, like he was trying to convince himself more than her.
She scanned the room again, searching for anything out of place. But it was just more debris. Nothing that screamed “kidnapper.” Hell, the guy barely had the brain cells to keep himself together. He wasn’t escalating to murder.
But she didn’t rule him out. Not yet.
“Did you know she’d been feeling watched? That someone was following her home from work?”
Finch’s head snapped up. “What? No. She never said that. Not to me.”
“She told her mom. She told her boss. There’s a log of her complaints. But not you?”
A flicker of shame, or maybe just embarrassment. “Maybe she thought I wouldn’t care. Or maybe she didn’t want to get me all riled up again. I sometimes act before I think. She didn’t like that. It was one of the reasons she left me.”
Naomi filed that away. She stood there, arms folded, letting the silence work for her.
Finch fidgeted, eyes darting all over the room but never landing on her for more than a second.
The urge to push harder was right there, just under her skin, but she reined it in.
Guys like Finch folded better under boredom than pressure.
“Look, are we done?” Finch muttered. “I got work tonight.”
“Where?”
He gestured at the mess around him. “Here. I work from home now. Doing… online stuff.”
She almost rolled her eyes. “What kind of online stuff, Taren?”
He made a face. “Sports betting. They call it ‘freelance analytics’ but it’s really just gambling.”
Why was she not surprised?