Chapter 13 Rafferty
RAFFERTY
“Oh, fuck you,” Ronnie said as I dropped into the chair in front of her desk.
“What?” I asked, throwing my hands out. “I haven’t even said anything.”
Two days after Christmas, two days after Jesse walked out of my life, and I still had an ache in my chest that I couldn’t seem to get rid of.
I didn’t know which way was up, but I did know which way was out.
Ronnie sent a circular gesture in my general direction. “Your shoulders are relaxed. You look like you got laid. And you look like you have bad news.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “If I have bad news, why are you mad at me?”
“It’s not bad news for you,” she said, tossing her pen on her desk. “It’s bad news for me.”
I opened my mouth, not quite sure what to tell her.
“You are quitting?” she asked. “I am right about that, aren’t I?”
I snapped my mouth closed, pulling in my top lip.
“You went out there to think,” she accused good-naturedly. “To ponder what it all means.”
Called out, I could only lift a shoulder. “The cabin is a good place to ponder.”
Ronnie shook her fist at the stained drop ceiling and let out an exaggerated sigh.
“Meanwhile, my Christmas was interrupted because the asshole you put in jail got run off the side of a dam.”
“Wait. Are you blaming me for that?” I asked, hiding a smile. “And how did you get dragged into that?”
She sent me a knowing smirk. “Okay, not dragged so much as I got nosy.”
“Now that I believe.” I leaned in. “Is there any chance that any of them survived?”
“No,” she said, dropping the amused expression as she picked up her pen and tossed it on the desk again. “Those Rangers…”
“I don’t envy the person who had to tell their families,” I said, guilt heavy in my stomach.
“It’s awful.” She shook her head. “Do you know what a nightmare that recovery mission is going to be?”
“I can’t even begin to imagine the logistics.”
“The lake is full,” she started, going into explain-it mode. “Which means the water around the dam—which is really fucking cold this time of year—is at least a hundred and thirty feet deep.”
We shared a grimace.
“That means, what—specialty divers?”
“Yeah.” She drummed her fingers on the desk, considering. “And my guy on the inside told me that the only local Ranger certified for that kind of depth is sunning his ass in Key West until the new year…with his phone turned off.”
“So, what’s the move?” I asked, invested. “They’re gonna sit on a crime scene in a destructive environment for a week? What about the bodies? The families won’t stand for that.”
“Nor should they.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “My guy says the Rangers have someone over in Houston, an oil rig engineer who volunteers for these kinds of dive missions. They’re flying her in from some rig out on the Gulf.”
I wipe my hand over my mouth, shaking my head. “Jesus.”
“And that’s to say nothing of actually getting the vehicles up from the bottom, which they won’t even be able to start work on until the twenty-ninth. At the earliest.”
Ronnie spent the next ten minutes outlining the different methods they might use and had very specific opinions on each. She was right. It was going to be a clusterfuck.
Especially once they realize Jesse isn’t in the SUV.
After having exhausted the topic, she glared at me.
“What did I do?” I asked, knowing exactly what I’d done.
“You changed the subject.”
“Did not.” I gestured at her. “You’re the one who went on a rant about towing cables and keeping the vehicles intact for investigations.”
“You went and pondered!” she said, not quite shouting. “And now not only do I have to make up for ruining the family Christmas with my nosiness, I have to train someone else.”
“I’m not leaving tomorrow.”
“Damn skippy.” She scratched the back of her head, glaring at me. “Can you at least finish out your current open cases?”
I rolled my eyes, knowing that had been her main concern all along. “I’d be happy to finish out my cases.”
“Can I assume there’s an email in my inbox right now?”
I pulled up my phone right then, opened my Draft folder, and hit Send. “There is now.”
“Mother. Fucker.”
Despite all of the cursing, the corner of her mouth lifted ever so slightly. “Do you even know what you’re going to do?”
“Travel,” I said, keeping it vague. “See the world.”
“What part of the world?”
Maybe, if I were lucky, the non-extradition country of Jesse’s choosing.
“I’ve never been to Europe, figured I’d start there.”
“Lucky bastard.”
“They still haven’t found the body.”
Ronnie had taken to coming by my desk with the latest gossip about the Travis case, like I was her buddy instead of her direct report. I knew it was because I was leaving, and even though it weirded me out, I was glad I didn’t have to snoop for the information.
“What body?” I asked through a mouthful of burger, even though I damn well knew the answer.
“Jesse Travis’s body. The diver said the passenger window was only halfway down, but as best they can tell, he was able to make it out.”
I swallowed thickly, lowering my burger.
“Halfway down? How the fuck did he get out?” I asked, remembering how cold and haunted Jesse looked when I opened my door.
Ronnie pulled up her phone, thumbing through several screens before setting it on my desk. I gulped. There sat the empty SUV at the murky bottom of the greenish black water, lit up with powerful underwater lights, the bottom of the dam visible through the muck just a few yards away.
“That oil rig diver was able to help get the Rangers and the uncle to the surface. The uncle wasn’t in his car, but she found his body nearby. Next to another dead body.”
I turned to her, shocked. “Holy shit. Who was that?”
“Some old guy who’d gone missing last year,” she said, raising her brows. “God knows how many bodies are down there.”
We both shivered at the thought.
“Here,” she said, pushing her phone closer. “Clean your hands and thumb through the photos.”
I set the mangled burger on the greasy bag and grabbed a wet wipe from my desk drawer, carefully cleaning the meat juice from my hands. With the smell of chemical lemons in my nose, I picked up her phone, immediately zooming in on the murky photograph, specifically the half-open window.
Having had my hands on his body in the most intimate ways, I knew firsthand Jesse was trim, but not that trim. No wonder he was so bruised from head to toe—he had to have been desperate to get out of a gap that small.
“Holy shit,” I repeated, nausea rising.
“Yeah.” She rubbed her hands together. “The bloodhounds found Jesse’s scent on the shoreline and followed it into the woods.”
“Really,” I said evenly, glad I’d packed a go-bag.
I was pretty confident that no one suspected a connection, but my grandfather always said that if you stayed prepared, you never had to get prepared.
“Oh yeah. It was a whole thing. Got the local neighborhood association up in arms.”
Ronnie went on for a bit about how the weather conditions and timeframe can impact the hounds’ scenting ability, while I did my best to regulate my breathing.
“So, they know where he went?” I asked, popping a fry in my mouth.
She shook her head, then upnodded her phone. “Keep swiping.”
I swiped through the pictures that’d been taken by the diver.
The interior of the SUV, where Jesse’s boots and jacket lay in the rear foot well, his thick gold chain peeking out from the silt on the lake floor.
The uncle’s car, exterior. Interior. The uncle’s body.
The shoreline. The heavily wooded area between the lake and a wealthy housing development.
I thought my heart was going to beat out of my chest, waiting for her to get to the point.
“There,” she said, pointing to an opening in the tree line. “Dog lost the trail when he hit the asphalt. Days and days of rain washed away his scent.”
I flipped through several more photographs. “Wow. That neighborhood isn’t far from the cabin. Like, at all.”
“I know!” she said, stealing a fry. “You were getting drunk and pondering while Jesse Travis was making his big escape. If he’d had any idea you were so close, he’d have killed you.”
“He’d have tried,” I joked.
Ronnie laughed, then shook her head. “My friend with the Rangers is saying they had to push back the vehicle recovery until the fourth.”
“Damn.”
She held up her finger. “Which reminds me! My buddy sent me the video footage from the dam’s cameras. Wanna see?”
“Of course,” I said, forcing a smile.
I actually didn’t want to see Jesse plunging off the highway, but I didn’t have much of a choice.
It was just as violent as I’d imagined.
“Know what’s really weird?” she asked, clearly taken by this whole case.
“Huh?”
“Both Jesse’s father and his cousin are MIA.”
Shit.
“Really?”
“Yeah. San Antonio PD found Kyler’s Jeep parked at the airport. He bought a one-way ticket to Mexico City.”
That was actually kind of smart. Americans could travel from Mexico City to places that were otherwise inaccessible from our airports.
“So…Cuba?” I asked.
Cuba wasn’t exactly a non-extradition country, but they weren’t exactly offering up fugitives either. Even if the State Department managed to work out something with the Cuban government, I doubted Jesse had plans to stay there for very long.
That was just a guess though. I still couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t gone to DFW.
Or maybe he had, and this was just a distraction.
“That was my thought as well,” Ronnie answered, unaware of my internal conflict. “I wonder if that’s the rendezvous point for the Travis family reunion.”
“Wait, does that mean the department thinks Jesse planned for his uncle to go after his ride?”
Shit. The Rangers would not stop until they found whoever they thought was responsible for the death of their two officers. Dread pooled in my belly.
She shrugged. “Maybe? Though…” She re-ran the video. “That looks like his uncle was trying to kill him, doesn’t it?”
“Didn’t look like a rescue mission to me.”
“Hm.”