Moving Target (35 page)

“GHOST?”

“Maybe he gave it up, and that’s what he’s saying sorry about.”

“If he did knuckle under to a blackmailer’s demands, which copy would he hand over?” Ali asked. “The one with the working passwords or the one with the exploding cigar?”

“Maybe neither,” B. muttered. “What if Jackson decided to end it all instead of giving up the program? With him gone, the blackmailer might have decided there was no point in releasing the video. Had it been made public, that video would have gone viral in minutes.”

“I’m assuming our next step is to try to identify the girl and figure out if she played a part in what happened to Phyllis Rogers yesterday.”

“I’m calling Stuart,” B. said, picking up his phone. “If the video was sent to Jackson’s school address, a file with the words ‘Teacher’s Pet’ shouldn’t be at all difficult to find, especially since the San Leandro
school district was and is one of our clients. If it’s on Jackson’s personal e-mail account, that’ll be a little more difficult.”

“What if it isn’t there at all?”

“We’ll figure out something else.”

As B. went to dial Stu’s number, Ali stood up. “You do that,” she said, kissing him goodbye. “I’m going to get dressed and drive to San Leandro. I’ll pick up Leland and our luggage and be back in time for lunch.”

“I’ll be at the hospital,” B. told her. “Detective Hernandez says the FBI will be paying Lance a call. I told Sister Anselm to let me know when they get there.”

It was ten past ten when Ali collected the car from the parking valet and headed north on I-35 with her half-charged phone on the car seat next to her. As she drove the long straight stretch of highway through the wide expanse of Texas landscape, she couldn’t get the images from the video out of her mind. There was no question that it had been consensual sex. Rather than looking as though she had been forced into the act, the girl had looked downright gleeful. Triumphant.

“She targeted him,” Ali said aloud, “nailed him, and now he’s dead. Now we need to nail her.” She picked up the phone, dialed Stu, and punched speaker. “Did B. send the video?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” Stu said. “Hot stuff.”

“Was it on the server?”

“Nope. Not on the school’s, but from correspondence there, I was able to locate Jackson’s personal account. It’ll take me a while to get into that server, but I’m sure I’ll manage.”

“What if you don’t find it there?”

“I’m already putting it out in the world of FR,” Stu said.

“FR?” Ali repeated. “What’s that?”

“My favorite new science: facial recognition. A search like that takes time, and I have to go through certain channels, but if our hot little number happens to have a Facebook page, we’ll be able to find her.”

When Ali arrived at the hotel in San Leandro, Leland Brooks was
waiting for her in the lobby, suitcase at the ready. Seeing the car, he came outside to greet her. “I thought about prevailing on the doorman to let me check you out of your room,” he said, “but then it occurred to me that you might want to change into fresh clothing.”

“To say nothing of having a chance to put on some makeup,” she said. “I promise I won’t take long.”

“No rush,” Leland said. “No rush at all.”

Grateful for his understanding, Ali went up to their otherwise unused room, where she showered for a second time and changed into the last of her clean clothes. She was putting the finishing touches on her face when B. called. “How are things?” he asked.

“After the past several days, nothing can top the pleasure of showering and putting on clean underwear,” she said. “How are things with you?”

“Lance evidently had a bad night after we left. They took him somewhere for PT as soon as he woke up.”

“Does he know about the video?”

“Not yet. I didn’t want to drop that on him until after the FBI finishes up with him. Everett Jackson’s widow still lives in this town. If we can prevent that video from becoming a public circus, we will. I was afraid if Lance knew about it before the interview, he might be tempted to lie about it. Lying to the feds is always a bad idea.”

“Are they there now?”

“They stopped by just after the therapist wheeled Lance downstairs. Sister Anselm told them to take a number and wait. Instead of sitting here in the waiting room, they went downstairs for coffee. Sister Anselm and I were a little surprised that Lance’s mother hasn’t shown up and that we haven’t heard from her. We’ve tried calling LeAnne’s numbers, both her cell and her landline, as well as her mother’s cell phone. The calls go straight to voice mail.”

“That seems odd,” Ali said. “Leland and I will be leaving the hotel in a few minutes. We’ll stop by the house on our way out of town. It’ll only take a few extra minutes.”

“Good thinking,” B. said.

Twenty minutes later, driving B.’s rented Cadillac, Ali turned onto Twin Oaks Drive. Nearby yards were dotted with Christmas decorations—plastic manger scenes and some deflated blow-up snowmen—that looked forlorn rather than cheerful on the winter-dry grass. An older-model Honda with Oregon plates was parked in the driveway. Ali stopped the Escalade next to it. “I’ll be right back,” she told Leland.

She got out. The door to the garage had a row of small windows along the top. Peeking through, she saw the silhouette of a parked car. When she punched the doorbell, the sound was greeted by a chorus of barking and the scrabbling of paws on tile as two dogs, no doubt Phyllis Rogers’s pugs, raced to the door. The dogs came, but no one else did. Ali rang the bell again, and the dogs went nuts. Giving up, she was walking back to the car when she heard a cell phone ring.

The sound seemed to be coming from inside the garage; after several rings, it stopped. She looked at the garage door. It was closed and locked. She was almost back to the Escalade when she glanced at the Honda. The passenger door was unlocked. On a whim and remembering Phyllis’s cigarette break from the night before, Ali leaned over and looked inside. Sure enough, there were two garage door openers perched on the driver’s visor. When she opened the car door, the air inside the vehicle was thick with cigarette smoke. Reaching across the seat, Ali punched the button on the first opener. Nothing happened, but when she punched the button on the second one, the door clattered, shivered slightly, and then rose.

Ali was just closing the door on the Honda when two dogs, no longer barking, came racing through the garage. They dashed past Ali without a glance, making a purposeful beeline for the dead grass in the front yard.

“Mom?” It was a child’s voice, wary and uncertain. “Are you home? Where were you?”

“It’s not your mother,” Ali said. “My name is Ali Reynolds. You must be Connor, Lance’s younger brother. I’m a friend of your mother’s.”

The wooden door slammed shut in Ali’s face. “I’m not supposed to let anyone into the house when I’m home alone,” the boy said from the other side. “Where’s my mom?”

“I don’t know,” Ali said, turning back to the parked Taurus. “I heard a phone ringing in here a moment ago. Let me see if I can find it.”

She opened the car door and looked inside for the phone. That was when she saw what was in the backseat. Who was in the backseat. The girl from the video lay faceup on the cloth bench seat. With her eyes wide open and a bullet hole in the middle of her forehead, there was no doubt she was dead.

The phone rang again. This time Ali was able to follow the sound. On the far side of the car, lined up on a workbench, were three cell phones and two purses. The caller ID readout on the ringing phone said, “Oakwood Lutheran Church.” Leaving that phone and the others where they were, Ali backed away from the car, reaching for her own phone and dialing as she went.

“Nine-one-one. What are you reporting?”

“A homicide,” Ali said. “At 4034 Twin Oaks Drive.”

“Who’s calling?” the operator wanted to know. “Do you know the victim? Are you sure the victim is deceased?”

They went through the standard list of questions. By then, Ali had reversed course and was back at the kitchen door. So were the dogs. “Connor,” she said. “Please. You need to let me in. What happened here?”

Slowly, the door inched open. A child wearing a pair of faded Spider-Man pajamas peered out at her through teary eyes. He had a mop of long blond hair. Several missing baby teeth gave him a wry look. He was probably six years old. Maybe seven.

“I don’t know what happened,” he said in a rush. “When I woke up and climbed down from the top bunk, everybody was gone—Mommy, Grandma, and Thad. I thought they’d be right back, because Grandma hardly goes anywhere without her dogs. I thought maybe they took Thad to a basketball game or something. So I had breakfast and
watched cartoons. I even put the milk away. When one of the dogs made a mess in the house, I tried to clean it up. I hope I’m not in trouble. But then I started to get worried. I was going to call Mom’s cell phone and ask her when she’d be home, but the phone in the house isn’t working. I don’t know what’s wrong with it.”

The words spilled out of him in a torrent. When he finally paused for breath, Ali heard the sounds of approaching sirens. Connor must have heard them, too. “Are they coming here?” he demanded, his eyes wild. “Did something happen to my mom?”

Ali let the kitchen door close behind her. “Let’s go wait in the living room,” she said, taking him by the hand.

“Wait for what? What’s happened?”

“The police will be here in a little while,” she said. “They’re going to need to talk to you.”

“But I don’t know anything,” he insisted with stark terror on his face. “If the police are coming, they might take me away like they did Lance. Don’t let them, please. I want my mommy.”

Ali wanted to hold the boy and comfort him, but he slipped out of her hand, darted across the living room, and threw himself, sobbing inconsolably, on the couch.

There was a hard rap on the front door, the distinctive knock of an arriving cop. “Police,” someone said. “Open up.”

At once the dogs set off on another barking rampage. “Help me with the dogs, Connor,” she begged. “Please.”

Still sniffling, the boy straightened up, scrambled off the couch and grabbed one of the milling dogs while Ali caught hold of the other. With a struggling dog gripped in one hand, she swung the front door open.

“We had a call about a homicide?” A uniformed officer loomed in the doorway. He didn’t have his weapon out of its holster, but his hand was poised an inch above the handle. He peered warily into the room, assessing the threat. Seeing only a woman, a child, and two very frantic dogs, he relaxed some but not completely.

“She’s in the garage,” Ali answered. “In the car. The garage door’s open.”

“Anyone else in the residence?”

“No,” Ali said. “Just the boy and me.”

Nodding, the cop backed away from the door.

“You said homicide,” Connor said accusingly. “I know what that is. It means someone is dead. Is it my mommy?”

“No,” Ali said evenly, “it’s not your mommy.”

“Who is it, then?”

“I don’t know.”

Her phone rang. B. sounded exuberant. “Stu just called. That most recent facial recognition program works like a charm. He’s identified the girl in the photo. It’s Jillian Sosa.”

“Lance’s ex?” Ali asked. “Are you kidding?”

“Not kidding,” he said. “That girl must be something else to be dating Lance and screwing around with his teacher at the same time.”

“She was something else,” Ali said.

“What?”

“Past tense, B. If Jillian Sosa is the girl in the photo, she’s dead. I’m back at LeAnne’s house. I just found the girl from the video out in the garage. Someone put a bullet through her head.”

T
here was a moment of stark silence while B. internalized what had been said. “What about everybody else?” he asked finally.

“Connor’s here. The dogs are here. Everybody else—LeAnne, Phyllis, and Thad—are gone.”

“Crap,” B. said.

Ali had a far stronger term in mind, but with Connor in the room and hanging on her every word, she didn’t dare use it. “You can say that again,” she said.

“Is LeAnne the shooter? Maybe she figures out that Jillian betrayed Lance. The two of them have some kind of confrontation. LeAnne shoots Jillian, and afterward she goes on the run.”

“No,” Ali said. “That can’t be what happened. LeAnne didn’t leave under her own power. She wouldn’t have left Connor here alone all morning. He’s only six. If she’d left willingly, she would have taken her purse and phone. She didn’t. That’s why I looked in the garage. Leland and I were about to drive away when I heard the phone ringing.”

“Any sign of a struggle?”

“Not inside the house, and not in the garage, either, except for that single gunshot.”

“Someone came into the house and marched them out at gunpoint,”
B. theorized. “This sounds like a rerun of what happened to Phyllis yesterday, probably by the same people. They’re pissed because they discovered Lance screwed them over with his worm. Now they’ve upped the ante and taken three people instead of one. You’ve called the cops?”

“They just got here. What’s going on there?”

“Lance is downstairs for PT, and Sister Anselm went for breakfast. I’ll give him all this bad news when he gets back up here. It’s going to hit him hard.”