Chapter 47
Louise
At her desk in the station, Louise leans over her phone. “Bruce, are you on?”
“I’m here,” says Bruce Ghadiali through the speakerphone.
“I have Cutty here, too. Did you get the email?”
“I did. So this is a transcript of all the text messages Luke Rankin exchanged with Allison for the last three months?”
“That’s right. And they organized them in the order they’d appear on the phone, reverse chronological order, most recent first. So turn to the second page. An exchange on the Thursday before April first—March twenty-sixth.” She reads along with him:
Thu, Mar 26 at 7:44 AM
Did you *really* look hard at the state’s evidence in my case? I think you missed something in that car inventory.
Allison
I see the thumb drive. What’s on it?
I think we both know, don’t we?
Allison
What are your intentions? What are you going to do with it?
Wonder what Finley will say about it
Allison
Please don’t. Not Finley. I’m begging you.
“Does this exchange make sense to you?” Louise asks.
“Well…we did a standard inventory on Trinity Casto’s car. I’d already disclosed it in list form, and I’d given Allison photos of every item.”
“So…I take it that one of the items found in Trinity’s car was a thumb drive?”
“I’m looking that up right now. Yes. Yes, a thumb drive.”
“Did you look at it? Check what’s on it?”
“No. I just thought it was another random item found in someone’s car. For a drug possession case, it didn’t seem significant.”
Louise leans forward. “What about now?” she asks.
He laughs. “Yes, obviously, it seems significant now. I don’t have it here. The evidence was shipped off until trial. But I can get it, probably by tomorrow, and share it.”
“Please do. Whatever it was, Allison seemed pretty desperate that Finley not see it.”
“Know what I find just as interesting?” says Bruce. “Luke Rankin.”
“How so?”
“Well, he won’t talk to you, right? He cut off questioning almost immediately.”
“Correct.”
“Yet he freely hands over his phone. Doesn’t demand a warrant. Just hands it over.”
Louise nods. Cutty does, too. “You think he wants us to see this.”
“I do, Louise. I think our friendly neighborhood baseball coach, the one whose hair we think was found in the Brices’ condo bedroom—I think he might be trying to deflect attention away from himself.”
“Maybe,” she says. “Or maybe he truly believes Allison killed Finley. These two don’t seem to have much of a relationship anymore.”
“Let’s just see what the video shows,” says Cutty. “We’ll take it from there.”