Chapter 11 #2
“It was him,” Bonnie said. “He threatened us and then somebody just runs a light and smashes into Rosa and vanishes from the scene? No. This was him. It was him. He did this to Rosa.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Diane said.
Bonnie tapped her phone to call Sam. He picked up on the first ring, even though he was on duty. “Mom, how is she? I’m just walking into the hospital.”
Bonnie started to cry, then clenched her jaw and wiped her eyes. “I need you to tell me what happened, Sam. I need to know. What happened to our friend?” She then tapped the phone’s speaker button.
“Hold on. Hold on, Mom. Let me go back outside.”
She heard movement, doors, background chatter, keyboards clicking.
Then traffic sounds. Sam said, “We still haven’t found the driver of the truck.
There are no skid marks, no sign he tried to stop.
Some witnesses even thought the truck accelerated and speculate it was deliberate.
I think it’s more likely the driver was looking at his phone.
When they leave the scene, it’s usually a sign they’re drunk or high on something. ”
“But you said the truck was stolen.”
“Yeah. Joyrider.”
“That doesn’t sound premeditated to you?” Bonnie asked.
Sam was quiet for a moment. “No, because I have no reason to suspect anyone might want to hurt Rosa. Do you, Mom?”
“Do I what?”
“Have some reason to suspect somebody did this on purpose?” Sam asked.
Bonnie recognized the change in his voice. It was subtle, but it had shifted into cop mode.
“She’s a successful Latina businesswoman, Sam,” Christine said loudly. “You do the math.” Bonnie pinched her arm for being mean. “Ow!”
“Go easy, Christine, it’s my first day,” Sam said. “Look, I know you ladies are upset and angry but I promise you, we’ll find this guy. Right now, though, it looks like he was joyriding, hit someone, and took off to avoid a breathalyzer or drug test.”
“That happen a lot, does it?” Christine asked, her tone sarcastic as hell.
“Sounds like you have a different theory,” Sam said. “Do you ladies have anything you want to tell me?”
Bonnie lifted her brows, looking at Chrissy, then at Diane. They had a very different theory. But they couldn’t tell the police about it. Even though the police in question was her Sam.
“I appreciate you telling us what you know, Sam. Please keep me posted.”
“Are you okay, Mom?”
“Of course I’m okay. I’m with my best friends.
” She cleared her throat. “Love you, hon. Don’t wait up.
” She disconnected, then looked at the others.
“We have the content of the phone copied onto a flash drive, and we have the phone itself. I say we write the passcode on the phone in Sharpie and deliver it anonymously to the police,” she said.
Diane nodded hard. “I like this idea.”
Christine arched one perfect eyebrow. “And when the police catch him and he shows them video of their newest detective’s mom bashing his missing person’s brains in with a frying pan?” Bonnie winced. Christine said, “Sorry. That was graphic.”
“But you’re right. And he thinks we know what’s on the phone.” Bonnie’s tone was dire.
“But we don’t, do we?” Christine asked. “Have you even looked at it yet, Bon-Bon?”
“I was waiting for you so we could look together.” Bonnie took the phone out of her beach bag and typed in the code she’d memorized.
There were no apps on the screen like a normal phone.
Just a long list of files. “Video files with girls’ names,” she said.
Cathy one, Cathy two, Kelly has four. And there’s a file called Ammo.pdf. ”
She clicked that one and it opened. “Holy God,” she whispered. “It’s a screenshot of a spreadsheet with dates, girls’ first names, and what’s that currency symbol? I don’t recognize it.”
She held the phone forward between the seats.
“I don’t know,” Diane said.
Christine tilted Bonnie’s hand. Streetlights painted then repainted white stripes across her fingers, her phone, the image. “It’s a crypto symbol,” she said. “That stuff’s hard to trace. The IRS can’t keep up with it. It’s what all the upper crust criminals use.”
She stopped speaking as Bonnie pulled back her phone and gaped at her. Diane did too, but intermittently, because she was driving.
“What?” Christine said. “I know a lot of sleazy rich people.”
“Not your fault,” Bonnie said. “You married into it.” Then she said, “How’s that going, by the way? A few days ago, you thought Jeff might be cheating again. But he seemed like a prince at the hospital.”
“We’ve been distracted, haven’t we?” Diane asked.
“Must’ve been,” Bonnie said. “We let Rosa’s illness slide past us.”
They exchanged sad glances around the car, but no one said more. Bonnie didn’t think they were ready to talk about the possibility that their sister might be dying. So she said, “How are you, Chrissy?”
Christine looked relieved, even though sharing personal stuff tended to make her uncomfortable.
“He’s…been better actually. I mean, you saw how friendly and helpful he was that night.
And then at the hospital he was like…like he used to be with me.
Caring. Attentive. More affectionate, too.
I don’t know what to think, but I’ll take it.
Although, him being around more will make it harder to keep our… side project a secret.”
Christine reached back and took the phone from Bonnie’s hand, then looked at the image on its screen. “Jesus, this has everything but the bastard’s names. There’s some kind of alphanumeric code in the first column. Ten of them.”
“That’s the same number of voice recordings there are.”
“It has to be a way to identify the men. A client code,” Diane said.
Christine nodded. “That’s why it’s called ammo. They can be identified from this. He intended to use this against them.” She scrolled. “Wait, some of these aren’t just numbers and letters, they’re misspelled words with numbers for letters and…”
She inhaled audibly and blinked at the screen.
“What?” Bonnie asked. “What is it?”
Christine handed the phone back to her. “They’re license plates. The most recent entry has Sara’s name and the date of Mr. Terrence’s final exit. The license plate of the live-streaming perv who hired someone to hit Rosa is N-zero-T, P-zero-zero-R.”
“‘Not poor,’” Diane said softly. “What kind of asshole would have that for a license plate?”
“A rich asshole,” Christine said. “The kind of rich asshole who’d pay for kiddie porn, apparently.” Her voice had gone very flat and low.
Bonnie said, “Christine, do you know whose license plate that is?”
She was staring straight ahead and didn’t answer.
“Christine?” Bonnie reached out and poked her.