Louise stands with Cutty just outside the yellow tape, arms folded against the evening chill, as the slate-blue Jeep Wagoneer is wheeled up the flatbed ramp.
“Confirmed the vehicle is his.” Officer Nardulli steps up beside her, flapping his notebook. “Registered to Finley Michael Brice.”
The technical response unit techs open the doors on each side as if in sync.
“Bag and tag the whole interior,” Louise tells them. “Check for latent prints, trace hair, fibers—especially steering wheel, gearshift, door handles.”
“You got it, Lou.” The techs are already photographing the console and dashboard.
A shout from the front passenger seat, more like a triumphant song. “We have phones!” A moment later, the tech produces two evidence bags. Each bag holds a standard iPhone. One, with a red case, has a cracked screen protector. The other has a customized Chicago Bears case and appears intact.
“Twophones,” says Cutty. “Huh. One for Finley, the other our offender?”
“Get both boxed and over to digital, to Ruby,” Louise says. “Rush order. I want every call, every text, every GPS breadcrumb we can pull.”
“Copy that,” says the lead tech.
“Also pull the ECU,” she adds. “If the car’s onboard system’s intact, I want the ignition logs. Time stamps on when it started, when it stopped. And the nav system. Maybe he had a destination punched in. Did I mention rush job?”
“You did.”
Louise takes a breath, looks around the neighborhood. Fairly standard middle-class, blue-collar hood. People who live paycheck to paycheck, go to church on Sunday, help each other out but mind their own business.
“Why here?” she says to Cutty. “Why does Finley come here?”
“If Finley drove,” he says. “Maybe he was already dead. Someone else drove him.”
“Okay, but why come here?”
Cutty looks around, purses his lips. “Maybe it has no meaning. Maybe that’s the point—an anonymous suburb, no connection,” he says.
Louise strolls toward their car. Cutty follows. “We need something to break here.”
“Now I’m gonna mimic you,” says Cutty, “and remind you that it’s still early. We just got Allison’s and Grayson’s phones. We haven’t even glanced at them yet. That could be a treasure trove of information. And we’re being told that tomorrow, we’ll have the historical cell phone tracking data on all four of our principals—Finley, Allison, Luke, and Grayson. And probably the license plate camera data, too. We put all that together, I’ll bet we’ll have a pretty complete story.”
“I guess.”
“Tell you what.” Cutty pats her back. “We get that big info dump tomorrow with the cell site location data and the license plate cameras. We have their phones. So let’s just sit and review that information. Friday and over the weekend. I’m not doing anything this weekend. And come Monday, we might have the story.”
Louise sighs. “You’re right. I like that plan.”
April Fools’Day
63
Allison
—9:40 p.m.—
I sit on the floor of the bedroom, panting. I almost can’t believe I did it.
I thought wrapping Finley would be the hardest part. And itwasdifficult. Lifting up one side of him enough to shove the cloth beneath him. Lifting him from the other side to pull the cloth through. Repeating that process over and over to cover his entire body, though the legs were admittedly easier. I got one wrap around him, not exactly mummy-like, but a start. I used duct tape to fasten the cloth in the front.
Getting Finley onto the luggage cart was the single greatest physical challenge of my life. I braced the cart against the dresser and forced him forward, a little at a time. There were times I thought it wouldn’t happen. But I got there. And I laid a second drop cloth on the cart, so that once I had him on there, I could wrap a second cloth over his front and duct-tape it closed.
Now I’m ready to roll the cart to the elevator—a small risk, to be sure, but my unit is close to the freight elevator, so I only need about thirty seconds’ worth of luck. Then I’ll be in the elevator down to the parking garage and ready to load Finley into the rear of his Wagoneer.
Before that, I have some additional cleaning to do. I won’t wipe down every surface of the place. That would look suspicious. They will know that Finley’s been living here a while. They will know Graysoncame to visit tonight. They will know I came to visit earlier. And I plan to return tomorrow, under the guise of checking on things out of worry.
