Chapter 10
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Langford, Texas
Cody Patterson closed the third drawer of the Keane house’s kitchen island and moved to the fourth, which was filled with useless nonsense like the others.
For the past forty minutes, he’d thoroughly searched the five downstairs rooms. He might as well have skipped the entire exercise.
He was no closer to finding his brother now than he had been an hour ago when he’d picked the lock to gain entry.
He walked to the back of the house. He’d saved the office for last.
He started at the top left drawer of the walnut desk. The checkbook balance was under a thousand dollars and had been for months. No bank activity in the account since then.
The Gulfstream had gone down about six months ago with both Nancy and Craig Keane aboard, so that tracked. Both the husband and wife were dead. There were no children or siblings and no one else had accessed the joint checking account. So far.
He searched the filing cabinet and found what you’d expect to find.
Folders, insurance and utility bills, bank statements.
Nothing much for Keane Development. Those were probably in the main office in the old part of downtown.
He’d driven past and the office was closed and abandoned, like the house.
Cody sat in the desk chair to look around. What was he missing? His brother, Kyle, had been so certain when he’d called from San Diego.
“It’s him, Cody. I swear it’s him. I looked him in the face and he knew I knew.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“Quinn. Edward Quinn.”
Cody hadn’t challenged his brother at the time. Now he wished he had.
Cody spied two framed photographs resting on a shelf over the fireplace. Each was a photo of Craig and Nancy Keane standing on a beach somewhere looking happy. In the photos, Craig Keane looked to be in his mid-forties. Dark hair going gray at the temples.
Point was, Cody knew Quinn’s face. This guy in the photo did not look like Quinn. Cody was a trained and experienced cop. He knew faces and people. Whoever this guy was, he didn’t ring the bell for Cody.
So why had his brother been so sure?
Next to the wedding photo was a digital photo frame. Cody unplugged it, wound the cord around the frame, and set the frame on the coffee table.
Maybe the cloud account that fed the digital frame stored more pictures. Maybe one of them would show Craig Keane from an angle that made Cody recognize Quinn. Like Kyle had.
“Or maybe Kyle was wrong,” he said aloud, trying the words. “What were you thinking, Kyle? What did you see here that I don’t see?”
Cody picked up the digital photo frame and tucked it under his arm. He had one more thing to check before he gave up.
It was just a hunch. But hunches had paid off for him many times before. Hell, cops like Cody made some of their best judgment calls based on instincts in the blink of an eye. He’d read a book about it once.
He pulled the bottom right desk drawer all the way out, set it on the top and ran his fingers along the back panel. The panel came loose when he pressed it just right. It slid up and revealed a compartment the width of the drawer and about two inches deep.
He grinned quickly. Hunches rule. But it was empty. And oddly clean. No dust, not even in the corners. Which suggested the compartment had been used recently enough that dust hadn’t had time to settle in. Surely more than enough time to accumulate dust in Texas.
Could this have been where Craig Keane kept secret things? Possibly. But whatever had been there before wasn’t there now. He slid the panel into place and returned the drawer to the desk.
Which was when he heard a car door close on the street.
He looked through a gap in the blinds. A white midsize sedan pulled in and parked at the curb.
Michael Flint and Kathryn Scarlett stepped out.
“Crap!” Cody’s pulse kicked up hard. They were coming inside. He had maybe two minutes to get out.
He grabbed the digital photo frame and hurried toward the kitchen and out the back door, locking it behind him. He crossed the patio and hopped over the low back fence into the neighbor’s yard.
He slid behind the tall grasses along the fence, dropped down onto his belly in the dirt. His heart hammered harder in his ears. He could see the side of the Keane house and the kitchen window through the grass. He made himself breathe slow and listen.
After a while, he saw something move inside near the kitchen window. Flint was opening drawers and moving through the kitchen the way Cody had done earlier, with the same result.
Cody eased up enough to see across the yard into the living room window. Scarlett was standing at the shelf over the fireplace with the wedding photo in her hands. She studied Craig Keane’s face the way Cody had studied it.
After a long while he heard the front door of the Keane house close. He eased up and saw Flint and Scarlett on the front walk talking to a neighbor watering her plants.
Cody was too far away to catch any of the conversation, which lasted three or four minutes before the neighbor returned home.
Flint and Scarlett walked back to their rental. Cody caught one word that traveled on the morning air.
Airport.
They climbed into the car, started the engine, and pulled away from the curb.
Cody waited another minute until they rounded the first bend in the road. Then he picked up the photo frame and hustled to his sedan parked a block and a half away.
He tossed the frame onto the passenger seat, settled behind the wheel, and followed a safe distance behind while he made a call.