Chapter Twenty-One #2
“Okay. We used our facial recognition software and…a few other tools in our tool chest.”
“And?” he prompted when she stopped talking.
She sighed. “And we found him.”
“So has Elle. She’s found him on the footage from Spokane.”
“No, we found him here. In San Francisco. At the airport. He was on the surveillance footage. And I know who he is.”
Ronan immediately pulled his car over.
This required his full attention.
Mendocino, California
Wednesday, February 4, 3:30 a.m.
“There he is,” Elle muttered. She hadn’t been able to sleep and, after an hour of staring at the ceiling, had gotten up to check the facial recognition software’s search of the Bakersfield footage.
Their killer had popped up several times, usually in a crowd.
Except for once. Elle recognized the location.
She’d come out of the hotel where she and Orrin had been staying while they searched for a skipper who’d dealt drugs to middle schoolers.
They’d just turned him over to Bakersfield PD, who would make the transfer back to San Francisco and were heading home.
Orrin had gone back to get something he’d forgotten while Elle had stood in the loading zone with the Tahoe.
She’d been leaning against their vehicle, her pendant body cam positioned to capture the hotel she’d just left.
She hadn’t intended to catch anything important.
She probably hadn’t even needed to wear the body cam.
She and Orrin were off duty. Sara only required them to be recording while in pursuit of a skipper.
But the body cam had become as much a part of Elle’s superstition as her moto jacket. Dashcams had saved her bacon after the accident. She never wanted to chance having to defend herself again.
As Orrin went into the hotel, a man came out.
The man they were searching for now. He’d actually brushed against Orrin as they’d passed each other in the doorway, but he hadn’t made eye contact with Elle.
He’d been so close. Close enough to literally touch her partner.
He didn’t look like the young man who’d so rudely demanded she sign the photo two years ago.
His hair was longer, his body more filled out.
He’d put on some weight and no longer dressed all in black like some two-bit thug.
He wore khakis and a button-down shirt. He was clean-shaven, appeared well rested, and his limp was barely noticeable.
Elle hadn’t looked at him twice at the time.
She was looking now.
She closed her eyes, trying to recall the name of the woman who’d worked night shift at the front desk there in Bakersfield. Mara? Moira?
No. It was Myrna.
Myrna was a grandmotherly woman who’d always saved some cookies for Orrin and Elle. She wondered if Myrna would remember her.
She wondered if Myrna would tell her the man’s name.
It couldn’t hurt to ask. And if she said no, Elle would tell Ronan and they could get a warrant. She found the phone number for the hotel and, fingers trembling, dialed.
“Good evening, this is the EasySuite hotel.”
“Hi, may I speak with Myrna, please?”
“Speaking. How can I help you?”
“Myrna, I don’t know if you remember me, but my name is Elle Randolph.”
“Oh, of course I remember you. You’re the lady who rescued the baby.”
Elle wanted to sigh, but sometimes having a memorable face and a viral internet photo came in handy.
“I am, yes. I’m trying to track down someone I met at the hotel while I was staying there.
” She grimaced, hating to lie to Myrna. “I don’t remember his name but he was young, maybe twenty-five or so?
He checked out the same day we did. October twenty-seventh. ”
“Why do you want to find him?” Myrna asked warily.
“Because we had a nice chat. He wanted to become a bounty hunter and he asked if we were hiring. We weren’t then, but we are now. Unfortunately I’ve lost his contact information.”
“Oh, well, let me have a look. It’ll take me a few minutes. October twenty-seventh, you say?”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you. I’ll hold.”
Her phone buzzed with an incoming text and she pulled it away from her ear, putting it on speaker in case Myrna came back quickly.
The text was from Ronan. I see the kitchen light on. Are you awake? Sorry, but it’s important.
I’m here but on the phone.
Can I come over?
Ofc. Penny reset the alarm code. It’s your birthday.
The front door opened just as Myrna returned to the line.
“Elle? You still there?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Ronan walked into the kitchen and Elle held up a finger, asking him to wait. He looked both handsome and grim as he pulled out a kitchen chair and lowered himself into it.
She didn’t think she was going to like whatever was so important that he’d come by in the wee hours of the morning.
“I have that name for you,” Myrna said, “but the address isn’t a San Francisco one.”
“He said he’d be moving to the Bay Area,” she lied.
“Oh, okay. His name is Bradley Albertson. His address is on Pineapple Avenue in Sarasota.”
Elle flinched. Pineapple Avenue in Sarasota? Her stalker came from Sarasota? She’d lived on Pineapple Avenue. With Todd.
“Do you have the house number?”
Myrna gave it to her and Elle’s stomach began to churn. Fucking hell. That was the condo building Elle had lived in.
Bradley Albertson gave Myrna my address.
Was this some kind of a joke? Was he mocking me?
“Albertson,” she repeated to Myrna. “Bradley Albertson?”
“That’s his name. I don’t have a phone number on record, though.”
“That’s…that’s okay,” Elle said faintly because the expression on Ronan’s face said that he already knew this. That it was important. Meaningful, even. But she didn’t know the significance of the name. “Thank you. Take care of yourself.”
“You too, dear.”
The call ended and Elle sat there, trying to figure out who this man was.
“Bradley Albertson,” she murmured, and then shock hit her like an iron fist when it clicked. “Bradley Albertson?”
Her voice had become shrill. She knew that name. Or names. She remembered them now, remembered them clearly.
She’d read them in an obituary. She’d read it over and over again until she could recite it by heart.
Because she’d felt so much sorrow. So much guilt.
Reading about those two lives, ended too soon, had been incredibly difficult.
It had been penance.
“Still together, in death as in life,” she murmured.
Ronan reached for her hand, covering it with his. “Elle?”
She met his eyes, not wanting any of this to be true. It was cruel.
Bradley Albertson had intended to mock her. To remind her. To taunt her for the part she’d played that night.
Not your fault.
But she’d been the only one to walk away.
“Albert Michael Dempsey, born on April 20, 1961,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper because she had no air in her lungs, “and Fiona Bradley Dempsey, born on December 2, 1962, died together on June 18…”