Chapter 41
Tuesday late afternoon
Sabre was still at her work office when JP came in.
Most of the building had emptied an hour earlier.
Elaine remained in the front lobby, and Sabre’s office remained bright and crowded with open files, legal pads, and two cups of cold tea she’d forgotten to drink.
I can’t believe I’m struggling so hard with a case I’m not even on.
JP stepped in without knocking, Stetson in hand. “Are you planning to sleep here?” he asked.
“Considering it.” She looked up.
“How long have you been standing there?”
“Long enough to know you haven’t moved in ten minutes.”
Sabre rubbed her eyes. “How’d you know?”
“Because you were doing that thing where you stare at paper like it insulted you.”
Sabre almost smiled. “I had a productive afternoon. Bay talked today.”
JP pulled the visitor chair around and sat backward in it, folding his arms across the backrest. “Now you have my attention.”
Sabre shut the file and gave him a full account of the visit: meeting Bay alone, the change in strategy, and the answers Bay gave about where she would go and how she’d survive.
JP listened without interrupting, which meant he was listening hard. “Those weren’t guesses; they were rules.”
“She knew the answers too fast,” Sabre said. “How to move, how to avoid attention, how to use cash, and how to disappear.”
“So, not homeless or drifting.”
Sabre stood to stretch. “She’s been living in apartments, houses, regular places, but mostly temporary. The longest was two years.”
JP’s eyes narrowed. “Do you think they move when neighbors get curious?”
“Yes, or when landlords ask questions, or before anyone starts noticing too much.”
JP tapped a finger against the chair. “That takes money, planning, and someone organized.”
“And someone who understands records, leases, routines.”
JP gave a short grunt. “Or someone who knows how to ask the right questions without sounding suspicious.”
The intercom on her desk buzzed.
She pressed the button. “Yes, Elaine?”
“It’s Ethan Vale. He said you were expecting him.”
Sabre buzzed him in. A minute later, Vale stepped into the office carrying a thick file.
“I’m not interrupting, am I?”
“Yes,” JP said.
“No,” Sabre said at the same time.
Vale hesitated in the doorway.
“Sit down,” Sabre said. “Ignore him.”
“I’m hard to ignore,” JP said.
Vale sat.
Sabre gave him the condensed version of Bay’s statements, emphasizing not the words themselves, but how Bay said them.
“She wasn’t imagining what she’d do,” Sabre said. “She was remembering what’s always been done.”
Ethan frowned. “You think she’s been coached?”
“More like conditioned. I got the impression they never stay where suspicion builds.”
Vale looked grim. “That sounds like someone hiding from law enforcement.”
“Or hiding a child,” JP said. “Which means her silence might not be defiance. It could be survival.”
Vale sat back, absorbing it. “That helps me argue behavior.”
“It helps you explain behavior,” Sabre corrected. “Don’t overstate it.”
He gave a quick nod. “Where are we procedurally?”
“You tell us,” JP said.
“Arraignment’s done. We’re set for a readiness conference before preliminary hearing. Prosecution wants to move quickly.”
“Of course they do,” Sabre said.
“They think they have enough.”
“Do they?”
“Enough to get through prelim, maybe.”
Sabre’s expression sharpened. “Then your job is to make enough feel thin,” Sabre said.
JP smiled. “That’s why she gets paid the medium bucks.”
Sabre ignored him. “File for everything: supplemental reports, notes, scene diagrams, digital extractions, and any prior witness contacts.”
“I already requested some of it.”
“Request more.”
Vale scribbled that down.
JP reached for one of Sabre’s yellow pads and wrote three words in large block letters:
MONEY. ACCESS. PATIENCE.
He turned it toward them.
“That’s who we’re looking for,” he said. “Someone with enough money to keep moving them. Enough access to secure places. Enough patience to do it for years.”
“A family member?” Vale asked.
“Maybe,” Sabre said. “Probably someone trusted.”
“Someone useful,” JP added. “A person people let into their lives.”
Sabre’s eyes stayed on the pad. There were too many kinds of people who fit that description.
“Do you really think this can change the case?”
Sabre answered carefully. “I think it can change how the case is understood.”
“And Bay?”
Sabre took a breath. “That depends on whether she starts really helping before someone realizes she already has.”
Silence followed.
Vale stood. “I’ll get the motions filed tonight.”
After he left, Sabre looked out through the glass panel in her door at the empty hall. “Whoever did this,” she said quietly, “didn’t just hide two girls. They built a life around the hiding.”
JP stood, and put his hat on. “Then we’d better find the builder.”