Page 8 of Heartbreak Bay

4

GWEN

I get home again before dawn, but not before Sam’s up; I hear him in the shower as I enter. I dump my purse and coat and move off down the hall; I check the kids and find them still sleeping soundly before I get to my office. Kez’s unease haunts me, and however tired I am, I can’t lay myself down and catch an extra half hour. I can’t keep Lanny from taking stupid risks, but maybe if I can help ease Kezia’s burden, even a little, that will make me feel less helpless.

I open my laptop and log in to the office’s mainframe. One of the less-than-comfortable perks of my job is the ability to trace cell tower pings on a number, and sometimes,sometimes, trace the movements. It’s only quasi-legal, one of those services that’s a loophole if you know which buttons to push. It’s an open back door for people like me if they know how to navigate it.

Kezia’s sent me a written transcript and an audio file. I transfer both to my laptop and pull them up. I read as I listen.

“911, what is your emergency?” It’s a marvel to me how most emergency operators sound bored and impatient. Male or female—and this one is a deeper male voice—they share a detachment I sometimes envy. “Hello?”

The second voice is fainter, but I think that it, too, has a deeper timbre. Male? I think. “Y’all need to send somebody out to Crease Road and Fire Road Twelve,” he says. “Something’s goin’ on up there.” The most important impression I have is that the accent is fake. Very fake. Definitely a bad actor’s version of the rural South. Not even Vee Crockett—with the most backwoods accent I know—would sound like that.

“What’s going on, sir?” The operator sounds like he couldn’t possibly care less. But at least he’s asking.

“There’s a car up in there stopped. I heard a scream. Woman driving out here alone, bad things can happen. You’d best send someone.” I tense up. The caller hasn’t said anything about a woman until now. A scream, yes. But still, it seems off the way he phrases it. So does the tone ... almost flat, which seems odd.

“Sir, can you describe the car, or the driver—” Maybe the operator’s picked up on it, too, because suddenly he sounds engaged and interested.

But the caller hangs up. I listen to the operator try a callback. No one answers. But the operator did manage to snag a number, and I look at the entry on the transcript.Bingo.Kez was almost certainly right, it’s likely a burner phone, but at the very least I can trace other towers where the cell pinged, if the caller keeps it on.

I log in to the J.B.Hall system and access the proprietary program; it’s plugged into all carriers in the area, and it works like a charm. Like I said: Not exactly legal, but not illegal either. It’s a dark shade of gray that sooner or later will be completely erased by new legislation, but the government moves too slowly to keep up with a lot of innovation in the tech industry. Private investigators don’t need warrants, just access agreements since we’re paying for the data use.

I put the phone number into our reverse database on another screen, but as expected, it comes back without a registered name and address. I switch back to the tracking and try that.

I watch the program as it highlights the path of the call. Not surprisingly, it’s hitting towers close to Stillhouse Lake, but the interesting thing is, when the call comes in, it’s already movingawayfrom the spot where the car was discovered in the pond—and along a different road than the one where the pond is located. Logically, it’s already made at least one turn away from the crime scene ... if it was ever on that road to begin with. It keeps moving, but not toward the lake, and not toward Norton. It navigates narrow back roads, then turns east.

I get a sinking feeling as I watch it steadily move forward. I know where it’s heading, and sure enough, the signal pings near a major freeway.

Then I lose the track completely. He’s almost certainly switched it off and removed the battery; he would have pulled off to do that before entering the freeway. Heading north or south? I have no way to know unless he activates the phone again.

Unless he’s already ditched it,I think. I imagine him rolling down the window and tossing the phone off on the side of the road. I mark the coordinates of the last signal. It might be worth a look. If Kez can retrieve the cell itself, it could reveal call logs, photos, texts, DNA, all manner of interesting information. Not to mention old-fashioned fingerprints.

He was enjoying himself.That impression makes shivers move over my skin. He said just enough to tease, not enough to give anything away. I’m honestly a little amazed the 911 operator sent a patrol at all, or that the county cop was lucky enough to spot the drowned car. God wanted those girls found. But what about the driver of the car? I imagine a mother bound and gagged in the back of that second car, screaming for her children. Not knowing, hopefully, what’s happened to them ... though I don’t know which would be more torturous, knowing the fate of her babies, or not knowing at all. I can’t imagine. I don’t want to. I identify way too closely with it. I’d honestly thought that as my kids grew up and became more independent, I’d be less anxious. Instead, I findmyself endlessly cycling through a horrificwhat-ifcatalog of disasters now more than ever, because I can’t protect them like I once could.

Maybe I’m wrong about the abduction. The other, colder possibility is that the woman was the one who rolled her own car into that murky water and watched her children struggle and die. That she had a ride waiting to take her away.

I don’t want to place bets on which scenario is worse.

But in that case, why make the 911 call?

I put everything I’ve got into an email and send it to Kezia, along with a note that I’m available if she needs anything, anytime. No immediate answer, but I don’t expect one. I’m hoping she’s finished up at the crime scene, and heading to rest a little ... but I know it’s unlikely. A homicide is a ticking clock.

I shake it off with a sigh and prepare to shut down the laptop, but a message alert catches my attention. It’s not from an email I recognize, but I do get things in from other investigators, even client referrals; there have been more of those recently. I look at the message without any particular worry about it; the trolls who tend to come after me and the kids seem to have mostly moved on, though there are always a few showing up.

The message, I realize a tick too late, is not a client referral. Not from a colleague or a fellow investigator.

Too late to stop reading it now, so I dive in.

You’ve always been on my mind. But never really at the top of my list either. What a strange coincidence that our paths are crossing now. That does make everything so much more difficult, and so much more interesting.

The only thing that’s held me back has been doubt—doubt about whether or not you truly were guilty of helping Melvin Royal commit his awful crimes. But there’s enough reason to think you did. I know you walked away once. Let’s see if you really are innocent, Gina Royal. Once and for all.

He’s eloquent, I have to give him that. Proper spelling and grammar, which isn’t usual for this kind of thing. It doesn’t have the fetishization that most of the other trolls display; he doesn’t tell me how he plans to hurt me, kill me, kill my kids. There’s a certain measured rationality to it that alarms me more than if he’d indulged in the standard-issue lurid death fantasy.

I look at his handle, but it’s just a string of anonymous letters and numbers. Most trolls are fairly careless in their internet habits. They use all or part of their not-very-clever false identities in other, mundane places. I caught one who changed only two numbers on the end of his screen name and posted with his regular handle on hockey forums; from there I was able to track him back to his real name, address, workplace. I didn’t do anything with that information. I just make it a point to have it ... in case things get worse.

So far, I’ve tracked down about 60 percent of my stalkers. The other 40 percent are smarter, cleaner, and better at their trollcraft. But they’ll screw up or get bored and move on. Eventually. I’m playing a long game.

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