This one's different.
GARY HOLLIS CASE - NEW DETECTIVE ASSIGNED
My hands go still on the two-by-four I'm measuring. The job site noise of saws, hammers, and someone's radio playing classic rock fades into background static.
I pull out my phone with hands that don't shake because I refuse to let them falter. Years of controlling my reactions, of staying calm when everything inside me is screaming, have trained my body to obey.
The article is from a North Arizona news site. Small, regional, the type of outlet that covers local crime and high school football with equal enthusiasm.
The Arizona State Police have assigned Detective Lily Chen to reexamine the death of Gary Hollis, a truck driver found murdered in his vehicle three months ago. The case, whichwent cold after initial investigations yielded few leads, is being reexamined following new forensic analysis and witness testimony.
"We believe there may be connections to other incidents that occurred around the same time," Detective Chen stated in a press conference yesterday. "We're asking anyone with information about Mr. Hollis's movements in the days before his death to come forward."
Witnesses from a small town near the Arizona-New Mexico border reported seeing a couple matching descriptions of persons of interest, a tall man with dark hair and tattoos, and a young woman with long black hair driving a camper van. Both individuals were seen in the area during the timeframe of Hollis's death.
The article continues, but I've stopped reading. This has got to be a joke. Witness descriptions. A couple. Camper van.
They're looking for the old us. I thought this shit had been buried.
I pocket my phone and tell the foreman I need to leave early with a family emergency, and that I'll make up the hours tomorrow. He waves me off without question. I'm reliable, professional, the kind of contractor who shows up on time and does good work. James Brennan is exactly the kind of person no one suspects of anything.
The drive back to Ten Park feels like it takes forever. On the journey, I spend the time running a checklist in my mind of any situations that could arise to find us here.
It’s been three months since Gary Hollis. Three months since we became the Brennans. The IDs are solid, I know Marcus doesn't do sloppy work. Our financial trail is clean. Our story is air tight.
But witness descriptions are a spanner in the works, and descriptions can be circulated, especially online with all of the internet sleuths wanting to get involved.
Detective Lily Chen.
I pull up everything I can find on her at a red light. LinkedIn profile. Department bio. News articles about previous cases.
She's good. Thirty-eight years old, fifteen years with AZDPS, specializes in cold cases. Her clearance rate is impressive and isn’t that fucking wonderful, she doesn't give up, doesn't let cases die just because the trail goes cold. I roll my eyes. Whatever happened to lazy policing? She is exactly the kind of detective we don't need sniffing around.
Roxy's in the darkroom when I get home. I can see the red light bleeding under the door, smelling the faint chemical smell that's become a permanent fixture in our apartment.
I don't interrupt her. Instead, I open my laptop at the kitchen table and start digging deeper. More articles. More details. The forensic analysis that triggered the reopening was DNA evidence where they found trace DNA under Gary Hollis's fingernails that didn't match him. Male DNA. Unknown profile.
My fucking DNA, from when his nails scraped my arms during the struggle.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
DNA in the system means they can run comparisons. If I ever get arrested, if I ever have to give a sample for any reason, they'll match it to the Hollis case. But James Brennan has no criminal record. No reason to be in any database, as long as I stay clean and invisible, the DNA is just an unknown profile sitting in a file somewhere.
But it's still a thread. And threads can be pulled.
The witness descriptions are vague though, a tall man, dark hair, tattoos. Young woman, long black hair, camper van. Nothing specific enough to generate a sketch, but specific enough to narrow a search if someone's looking.
And Detective Chen is looking.
The article mentions she's reviewing traffic camera footage from the area, interviewing witnesses again, building a timeline of Gary Hollis's final days. She's thorough. Methodical. Exactly the kind of investigator who might notice patterns, connections, things that don't quite add up.
Fuck this. I close the laptop and lean back in my chair, running through scenarios.
Worst case is she finds the camper van. Traces it to Roxy's old identity and discovers that Roxy disappeared around the same time as Gary Hollis's death. That will give her a starting point to look for where she went.
But the camper van was sold for cash in Nevada before we became the Brennans. No paper trail connecting it to us now. And Roxy's old identity is dead with no activity, no traces, nothing to follow.
The best case scenario is that the investigation stalls. The DNA profile sits in a database and witness descriptions are too vague to be useful. Detective Chen moves on to other cases.
