Page 77 of Liar's Point

“No,” she said. “Agent Driscoll was in the middle of something. But he said he’d take a look later today.”

Nicole already knew what the special agent was going to say when he opened up the file. The black-and-white footage was grainy at best, and the view of the man in the dark hoodie was from a distance—at least a hundred feet. But who knew? Maybe the FBI’s tech wizards would be able to enhance it into something usable. Nicole was more hopeful about the first video they had submitted because the shot was closer, and it actually showed someone behind the wheel of Aubrey’s car.

“And what about the other thing? The video of the Subaru driving out of the gate?” Brady asked. “They’ve had that for days now.”

Nicole slid behind the wheel of her unmarked police unit. Emmet had beaten her to the new car this morning, and this older one definitely smelled like vomit.

“Yeah, he told me that’s next on their list,” Nicole said. She turned on the heater, and a blast of cold air shot out.

“You mean they haven’t started yet? What the hell have they been doing up there?”

“I think they’re pretty swamped,” Nicole said, trying to shake off the image of the video she’d seen on the agent’s screen when she stepped up to his cubicle. Driscoll told her he’d been at his desk since seven this morning combing through videos. “Agent Driscoll’s got a child-trafficking case brewing, and it seems to be demanding his whole team’s attention.”

Brady made a frustrated sound.

“But he promised they’d get to us.” She passed through a gate and waved at the guard who’d checked her ID on the way in. “He said he hoped to have something for us by Friday.”

“Friday.”

She could tell by the chief’s tone that he wasn’t happy. Neither was she. But Brady’s contact was inundated with child porn, and the man had been downing antacids and coffee throughout their brief meeting. She was lucky he’d even agreed to see her, much less do a favor for Brady.

“Chief?”

“Yeah, I’m just thinking.”

“If it makes you feel any better, he gave me his personal number. He said to call him by Saturday if we hadn’t heard anything by then.”

Nicole exited the FBI campus, which was set apart from the rest of the city. The San Antonio field office had once been located in the heart of downtown, a stone’s throw from the Alamo. But the combination of the Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11 had resulted in many federal offices being relocated.

“Well, thanks for making the trip,” Brady said.

“No problem,” she told him, even though it had killed half her day.

“As long as you’re up there, I’d like you to swing by the county crime lab on your way back here. See if we can rattle some cages there, too—see what’s going on with that DNA evidence.”

Nicole cursed inwardly. The county crime lab wasn’t “on her way” at all—it was an hour detour, minimum.

“I checked in with Miranda yesterday, and she said—”

“Talk to the lab director,” Brady cut in. “See what you can get from him.”

Right. Because the lab director probably had nothing going on today and was just waiting for surprise drop-ins from impatient detectives. Brady had sent Nicole on this mission before, and she’d ended up cooling her heels in the lobby until she was lucky enough to get five minutes of the man’s time.

Brady was a big proponent of rattling cages to get results, and he always said it was better to do it in person. He believed electronic nagging was too easy to ignore. Nicole didn’t disagree with him, but she’d burned her morning driving to San Antonio, and now it looked like the afternoon was going to get derailed, too. She was still trying to track down the Sam Pacheco lead.

Not to mention the other interesting item she’d discovered in the victim’s phone records. There were numerous calls between Aubrey and Cassandra Miller—more than Nicole would have expected if the women were mere acquaintances, as Cassandra had indicated. It was yet another bit of info about Cassandra that seemed odd. Clearly, she and the murder victim were closer friends than she had let on. The question was, why mislead a detective about her relationship to the victim? Nicole was tired of being lied to, and she needed to get a straight answer. She had planned to pay another visit to Cassandra at home today and pin her down.

But her follow-up with Cassandra, like everything else on her list today, had been torpedoed by this road trip.

“Lawson? You there?”

“Yes, sir. I was just thinking, we’re really swamped today, and I’m wondering if driving out to the lab is the best use of time when—”

“I want you networking,” he interrupted. “You need to build relationships with key contacts. That’s how things get done around here.”

She sat there, at a loss for words. Was Brady mentoring her? Was that the reason he’d sent her driving all over the state to meet with people face-to-face? She’d thought he’d just been wasting her time because he was old-school when it came to phones.

“All right. I’m happy to go by there,” she said. “But I had also hoped to make some headway on tracking down the address of the victim’s ex, Sam Pacheco—”

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