As we walked out to the car, a text from Shooter popped up.
Two women went missing from Hambis. Three days before Freddie’s death. Quinones had searched this out for Richie.
Frank was staring at the same message as I unlocked the car.
“If this is El Médico,” I said, “he’s moving around. Hunting in different areas of the state.”
“Why move?” Frank asked. “No one had a lead on him in Shilo.”
A second text came in from Shooter, who was obviously chasing a lead on an unsolved missing.
Two more girls with similar looks missing. Lucas Beach. Where you guys are.
I got in on the driver’s side, and Frank plopped onto the passenger seat. He examined the text. “You think there’s anything with this Natalie woman? You got pretty aggressive there.”
I glanced back at the house. “She displayed all the micro-expressions of deceit.”
Frank squinted, turning so he faced me. “Right up until the last minute, it looked like you couldn’t get out of there fast enough.”
I turned the ignition switch, and the car thrummed to life. “The plan was to talk to anyone Richie did, right? Chase what he chased?”
“Right.”
“Richie was never here,” I said. “Never called her.”
“Sure,” Frank replied. “But if you think she’s holding back…?”
“She flushed when she saw the sketch,” I said. “Studied it for ten seconds. It might not be conscious, but she recognizes something about that face.”
I flipped a U-turn to head back toward the state highway and threw on my wipers to clear away the oncoming rain, which began to fall. Frank thumbed through the tip line messages that we’d flagged as urgent.
“Back to Shilo?” I said.
Frank shook his head. “No. Drive up that way, will ya?” He pointed. “Toward the water.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because we’re here, and she mentioned it.” His voice rose. “It’s good police work.”
I swung a right where Frank directed me. We moved over the inner waterway and found ourselves on the parallel peninsula. I could smell the salt water, and Frank pointed again, directing me to go straight until we were almost at the beach. We turned left and headed up the main drag.
As we moved farther north, I noted what Natalie Kastner had mentioned. The large estates had disappeared; in their place stood a dozen hotels and resorts of various quality levels and price points. The towers above Lucas Beach rose ten stories high. At the base of each, chunky parking garages faced Atlantic Boulevard.
We moved past them and approached a strip of large houses.
“Pull over there,” Frank said.
I pulled into the bike lane, and he got out. Started walking backward, in the direction from which we’d come.
A car honked its horn at me. I was blocking a driveway to a boutique hotel. A sign readTHE OLIVEin one direction, andAURORA HOUSEin the other. I put the car in reverse and moved backward ten yards. The sidewalk became rounded, and I placed my car tires up on it to keep out of the road.
“Where the hell are you going?” I said aloud, even though Frank was gone.
I turned off the ignition and followed him. The structure we’d parked beside was the back of a property. To my left, as I walked south, a tall wrought iron fence rose sixteen feet in the air.
I caught up with Frank, who had badged a man on a riding lawn mower. The man was dressed in baggy jeans and a green shirt, and a bandana covered his face. The rain was picking up, but more than that, a wind howled in from the beach.
“How many houses are here?” Frank asked him through the gate.
