Chapter 23
The stairs to the Strutz Agency were as steep as Callie said they were. He and Callie climbed single file and knocked at the top.
The door opened and Samuel Bridger stood on the other side in a fitted black shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, his hair pushed back, his jaw freshly shaved.
Behind him the office was warm with low lighting and the faint smell of coffee and something floral, hairspray or perfume or both.
A woman was gathering her things near a makeup station against the far wall.
"Thank you, Marisol," Samuel said over his shoulder. "Take the afternoon off. We'll pick up Monday."
Noah noted the name tag on her shirt.
"Gracias." Marisol Delgado zipped her case and slung it over her shoulder. She passed Noah and Callie in the doorway, her footsteps quick on the stairs behind them.
Samuel watched her go, then turned back to them with an easy expression. "How can I help?"
A gallery wall of headshots lined the space, young faces arranged in rows, all of them lit the same way, all of them smiling the same kind of smile. He pulled Hailey Benton's phone from the evidence bag and held it up. "Hailey Benton. We believe she did modeling through this agency. Is that right?"
"Benton." Samuel nodded. "Yeah."
"You always in the habit of phoning your models multiple times?"
"I have to communicate. Scheduling, callbacks, contract details. It's part of the job."
Noah pulled a printed sheet from the folder Callie handed him and set it on the desk between them. Phone records. Columns of calls and timestamps, dense enough that they covered the full page in small type. He turned it so Samuel could read it.
"This many times?" Noah said.
Samuel looked at the sheet. He didn't pick it up.
His eyes moved down the column of entries and his expression didn't change, which told Noah more than if it had.
A man seeing his own call log for the first time would react.
Surprise, confusion, the instinct to count.
Samuel just read it like something he already knew was there.
"I was worried about her," he said. "Her mental health. She said she'd been having some problems at home. I don't get involved too much, but she seemed like she didn't have anyone else to talk to."
"Problems at home?"
"Parents. Life. What she wanted to do with hers. The usual things most twenty-year-olds talk about."
Callie moved along the wall of headshots while Noah held the center of the room. She was looking for Hailey's photo. She found it in the third row, second from the left. Blonde hair, wide smile, the ring light reflected in both eyes.
"You called her on the day of her disappearance. Multiple times." Noah tapped the sheet. "And then not again until she showed up in hospital. Want to clarify?"
"Some of those calls were probably about modeling. The others were just me showing concern. When I didn't hear back, I figured she was busy. It wasn't until I heard through the grapevine that she'd been found that I reached out again."
"Through the grapevine," Noah repeated. "Who told you she was in the hospital?"
Samuel paused for the first time. A fraction of a second, barely visible, but Noah caught it. "I don't remember. Word travels in a small town."
"Did she ever come here outside of working hours?" Callie asked from across the room.
"No. I'm very careful about things like that. People might get the wrong idea."
"Of course," Noah said, watching him. He let the silence hold for a moment, then shifted. "So why did you get into this business?"
"What?" Samuel's head tilted.
"Modeling agency. I'd imagine it would be mostly females running this kind of business."
Samuel leaned back against the edge of his desk and crossed his arms. The question had caught him off guard, which was the point.
"I got into the business to model myself, actually.
Years ago. I saw firsthand some of the stringent rules they have to abide by.
The pressure. The way girls get used up and tossed aside.
I also saw the darker side of the business. "
"Oh yeah? Like what?"
"Girls that are taken advantage of. Photographers who cross lines. Agents who take too much of the cut and give nothing back. The industry is built on young women who don't know their worth yet. Some agencies exploit that. I wanted to do it differently."
"And so you wanted to save them from that?"
"I like to think I can make a difference. Give them a fair deal. Protect them from the people who would take advantage."
Noah held his gaze. The words were polished. They had the cadence of something Samuel had said in interviews, on his website, to parents who dropped their daughters off for test shoots. A mission statement. A brand. Whether it was also true was a different question.
"Can you give us a list of all the models that work here or have passed through?" Callie said, stepping back from the wall. "Current and former. We're just looking to check a few things."
"Of course. Anything I can do to help." Samuel moved behind his desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a binder. He began leafing through it. "I can print you a full roster. Names, contact details, dates of engagement. I keep thorough records."
"We appreciate that," Noah added.
Samuel printed the list and handed it to her. Twenty-six names. Noah noted the thickness of it. For a small agency in the Adirondacks, twenty-six models over a few years was a lot of young women passing through one man's office.
They left the way they came, back down the steep stairs and out onto the street. The evening air was cool and the storefronts along Main Street were closing up, metal gates coming down, Open signs flipping to Closed. Noah unlocked the cruiser and they got in.
Callie was on the phone before Noah had the engine running. She listened, said "okay" twice, wrote something in her notebook, and hung up.
"Just got some intel back on Bridger. He doesn't show up in the database for any criminal incidents. Not even a traffic violation."
Noah pulled out of the space and headed north.
"And yet most of the dead and missing girls so far have some connection to modeling or the deli.
" He wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand.
The streetlights blurred for a second before they sharpened again.
"Look, I need to get some sleep. You should too. "
"You keep saying that."
"Because it keeps being true."
The Daily Grind was quiet for a Wednesday evening.
A couple was in the corner sharing a laptop.
An older man was reading a paperback. The barista behind the counter was restocking cups.
And Lacey Montgomery was wiping down the tables near the window, her ponytail swinging as she worked, the pen still tucked behind her ear.
Ethan sat at the counter with a coffee he'd barely touched. He waited until Lacey came back behind the register before he spoke.
"Hey. When was the last time you saw Fiona in here?"
Lacey stopped wiping the counter. "Maybe the day before she went missing? She came in with Ruby. They sat over there." She pointed at the table by the window. "Same as always."
"Did she say anything? About where she was going, who she was seeing?"
"Ethan, she ordered an iced coffee and a lemon bar. We didn't have a deep conversation. It was busy." Lacey studied him. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine."
"You don't look fine."
"I said I'm fine, Lace."
She held up her hands and went back to wiping the counter.
Ethan stared at his coffee. The foam had collapsed into a flat white surface that reflected the overhead lights.
He'd been doing this for days now. Retracing Fiona's steps.
Asking people who knew her if they'd noticed anything.
Going over the same ground his father's department was covering, except without a badge or a warrant or any authority beyond being the boyfriend of a missing girl.
Nobody told him anything useful. Nobody had noticed anything.
Fiona had been there and then she wasn't, and the space she left behind was the shape of every conversation that went nowhere.
He heard the door open behind him. Felt the draft of evening air. Then a voice.
"Ethan, right?"
Ethan turned and almost walked straight into a man standing behind him. Tall, early sixties, silver hair perfectly styled back from a face with pale blue eyes. He wore a dark suit, no tie, the top button of his shirt was open. He was wearing a smile that showed just a few too many teeth.
"Sorry. I wasn't looking."
"No harm done." The man smiled. "My daughter has told me a lot of good things about you. How's your father?"
That’s when Ethan placed him. It was Luther Ashford. Natalie's father. He'd seen him once before, at a distance, at some event in town.
"Ask your daughter," Ethan said, and moved toward a table with his drink.
He was pulling out a chair when Luther's voice followed him, unhurried, conversational, as if they were already in the middle of something.
"A terrible thing, the disappearance of your girlfriend. Fiona Spence, right? But it must give you confidence to know your father is looking into it."
Ethan stopped. "I guess."
He sat down. Luther ordered a drink at the counter, exchanged a few words with Lacey that Ethan couldn't hear, and then made his way over.
"May I join you?"
"Free country," Ethan said.
Luther smiled and slid into the booth across from him. He set his cup down and folded his hands around it. "So I hear your sister Mia is considering joining the FBI."
Ethan grunted into his drink.
Luther tore a sugar packet and tapped the contents into his coffee. He stirred it with a small wooden stick, slow and deliberate. "Are you planning to follow in your father's footsteps?"
"Hell no."
"Ah. A Sutherland that doesn't want to enter the law enforcement field. I expect that ruffled a few feathers."
Ethan shrugged. "Like I care."