Page 79 of Liar's Point

“And, so you’d been here, what? Two days, by this point?” Emmet asked.

“Three, man. I told you, I checked in Saturday.” He nodded at Adam’s notepad. “Be sure you get that right.”

Adam looked at Emmet.

“All right, and you said before that you were staying at your folks’ place in Austin?”

“Yeah.” He took another drag.

“How long was that?” Emmet watched him, trying to get a read on his gaunt features as he walked through the series of events for the third time.

“So, I wrecked my car two weeks ago.” Pacheco ran a hand through his longish brown hair. “February second.”

Emmet nodded. He’d already jotted down the details about Pacheco’s car accident in Corpus Christi.

“My dad drove down to pick me up, and he was like, hey, this is it. You’re going to rehab, or your mom and I are done.” He flicked his cigarette. “So, they set all this up, and as soon as a bed here opened up, we drove down. That was Saturday morning.”

Emmet had already confirmed his check-in date. But he still wanted to nail down some details—namely, what had he been doing since his accident and where had he spent Friday night? Aubrey’s whereabouts the night before her murder were still unknown.

“And you were at your parents’ place that whole time?” Emmet asked.

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t go back to Lost Beach? Pick up any stuff? Maybe connect with any friends?”

“My dad went and picked up my stuff at the place where I was staying.”

Emmet would bet money Pacheco had at least tried to get in touch with his dealer, if not driven back to Lost Beach to try to see him. And if he’d been in town, had he reached out to Aubrey?

“Did you go with him to help?”

“No, man, I told you. I was at my parents’ house in Austin. My fucking car’s totaled. I was stranded.”

Emmet let his cigarette burn down as he stared at the guy, gauging his credibility. His story was consistent—Emmet would give him that. He’d answered three different versions of the same questions over the past half hour as Adam took notes. But Emmet still felt like he was missing something, like this guy knew something about Aubrey that he wasn’t saying.

Emmet stubbed out his cigarette as Pacheco savored his last few puffs.

“So, let me ask you this,” Emmet said. “If you had to guess where Aubrey was Friday night, what would you say?”

“I told you, she wasn’t with me. I was in Austin.”

“No, I got that. I’m saying, if you had to guess.”

“I don’t know.” He tossed his butt on the ground and flattened it with his plastic shoe, and Emmet shot Adam a look. “Did you try Lauren, her roommate?”

“She told us Aubrey didn’t come home,” Emmet said.

“Yeah, but I mean did you ask her about who Aubrey was with?”

“Was she seeing someone?”

“Yeah, I mean, she was talking to other people online. We both were. That’s how we met in the first place.”

“You mean the dating app?”

“Yeah. I think she’d met someone.”

“You know a name?” Adam asked.

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