Then she went straight to afraid. “I…. Yes,” she said. “I had gone to talk to Marie, the kids’ mother, to sort out what we’d do with them. She lives in Vegas. I gave him the keys to leave the car here. Is that who took my car? Did he… did that man hurt that poor little girl?”
Cloister tucked the card into his pocket. “We don’t know that, Mrs. Lopez,” he said soothingly. “We don’t know anything yet. Even if it was him, there’s no reason to think that you’re in danger.”
“Well, I think there is,” she objected. “He can get into my house. We live in a gated community. How did he get past the guard? That’s why he’s there.”
“Did you give Hewitt a workman’s pass?”
Mrs. Lopez blanched. “Oh God.”
“I promise you,” Cloister said, “there’s no indication that this person—even if it was Hewitt—will come after you. If you’re worried, maybe there’s somewhere else you can stay tonight. A friend’s? Family?”
“How about an out-of-town hotel?”
Cloister nodded. “That sounds like a plan.”
While Mrs. Lopez packed for the hotel, Cloister tried to call Frome, but the call went straight to voicemail. When he checked in at the station, they didn’t know where Frome was either.
“He left half an hour ago,” Mel said. “How’s Sara?”
It was so rare to hear anyone called Tancredi anything but Tancredi that it took Cloister a minute to realize who she meant.
“I haven’t gotten there yet,” he said. “I hit a bit of a roadblock. Let me know when you hear from the lieutenant?”
“I will,” Mel said. She hesitated for a second and then said briskly, “Witte, I don’t know what’s going on, but remember what happened last time you pushed it too far. You got hit by a car.”
His next call would have been to Javi, but Javi called him first.
“Hewitt has Janet.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THERE WASstill no sign of Frome. In his absence Javi was in charge. It made sense. At least half the deputies had worked with him on the cartel raids in the hills. Yet there was still a small, selfish part of Cloister that wanted someone else to take point. If this went wrong, it would definitely be a black mark on Javi’s record.
Cloister growled at the thought.So make sure it doesn’t go wrong.
He kept pace with Javi as they stalked down the long hospital corridor, past grim-faced deputies trying to interview two and three people at once.
“We didn’t see anything.”
“What’s going on? We just brought a patient up from the ER….”
“Did someone die?”
“Please just stay in your rooms,” Ellie said as she stood in front of a pair of worried parents, their little curly haired daughter in a hospital gown between them. She looked excited, and they looked scared. “It’s safe here, but just stay in your room.”
The kid leaned forward between her parents’ legs. “Look! They let that doggie in. You said I couldn’t bring Patchy.”
Bourneville wagged her tail at the little girl as she trotted past, her toenails loud on the linoleum. She always seemed to particularly enjoy it when the job took her someplace dogs weren’t usually allowed. Cloister paused his curt recounting of his morning as they passed the door. Then he started again once they a few steps away.
“Hewitt had motive to hurt Macintosh,” he said. “But he wasn’t a killer. If he had been, the murders on that road would have been real. What changed?”
“Janet Morrow,” Javi said. “She told everyone in New York that her family was dead, but we know they are alive… at least until recently. Something happened between them—maybe they could tolerate a gay family member, but not a trans one—and she had to go her own way. That makes more sense now that we know Jessie faked her death because of an affair, not because she wanted to protect her kid from a homophobic dad. Once she was out on her own, not stuck with the guilt of being the reason they had to do this, parts of their story stopped adding up.”
“So she came back to what? Explain to her dad? Confess?”
Javi gave him a wry, sidelong look. “You’re a forgiving soul,” he said. “I think she just wanted money. Macintosh hadn’t been dad of the year before they faked their own deaths. I don’t imagine she thought he’d changed—not until she got here.”
“I don’t know,” Cloister said. “I think maybe she just wanted her family back. The parts of it that might not be toxic.”
