Page 152 of Tenderfoot

Trev, on his stomach, lying in a pool of blood, photographed at different angles.

Then more of Trev on his back on an autopsy table, again, from different angles.

Then the screen went black.

“He’d been worked over,” Jessie whispered.

Uh, yeah, he had.

“Big time,” Raye agreed.

“Torture?” I asked.

“ME report says cause of death was definitely the severed carotid,” Luna reported. “She also reported he’d been beaten pretty badly. However, her estimation was, the blows were sustained in the midst of a fight.”

The screen filled with the picture of a man’s hand, definitely Trev’s as it was lying in a puddle of blood. There was minor bruising and new splits on the knuckles.

“He fought back,” Willow said.

She sounded relieved, but that was Willow. Obviously, Trev was a douche, but at least he didn’t go down without a fight, and that made Willow feel a little better.

“Yeah. But there were no ligature marks on his wrists or ankles,” Luna said. “Police report states that they believe Trevor’s apartment was searched, but some of the mess in the living room and kitchen hinted at a struggle.”

“Ready for the doozie?” Raye asked when Luna finished reporting her bit.

We all nodded.

“In the awesomeness of what went down on Saturday, I managed to catch a partial on the plate of the BMW,” Luna told us. “I reported it to Arthur, along with asking for this.”

The screen filled with some semi-grainy footage that was obviously outside Oceans 44. Precisely, the camera was aimed at the valet station.

And the footage showed Trev coming out and giving his ticket to the valet. A few minutes later, the valet drove up in a rather nice Mazda SUV. Trev got in and drove off.

But moments later, a flash BMW exactly like the one that had chased Cap and Gabe followed it.

“Holy shit,” Jessie breathed.

“Arthur tracked that partial with make and model and found a BMW registered to…anyone wanna guess?” Luna asked.

“Sun Dial LLC,” Shanti said.

“Bingo,” Luna confirmed.

“We can assume the Nightingale boys have all of this,” Jessie noted.

“We can for sure,” Raye told her. “And probably more, since the cops think their shit doesn’t stink and practically roll out the red carpet any time they show at a station. So, if they have any leads or theories, they’d definitely feed them to the Hottie Squad.”

I munched a fry, considering all of this.

“We asked Arthur if he could get anything from Trev’s or Kev’s phones without us having Trev’s or Kev’s phones,” Raye said. “Same with anything from their laptops or any clouds they have. He’s working on it. The phone thing might not happen. The cloud thing is a better bet.”

“So, boiling this down,” Willow started. “The boys have Kevin and the bad guys, so we can’t get anything out of them. And we have no way of knowing who has Trev’s or Kev’s phone or laptops. Either the bad guys have them, or the Nightingale boys have them, at least Kev’s. So, unless we can cultivate some cop informant in about twenty-four hours to get some info not in the report that will give us some kind of lead, which would be impossible, we’re dead in the water.”

“That’s pretty much the gist of it, unless Arthur can get us anything from the phones or a cloud,” Raye affirmed.

“Okay, I have an idea,” I said.

Everyone looked to me.

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