The Truant Officer (15 page)

A knock rattled Eicher and Dava to attention. A bespectacled man in a white lab coat entered the office, carrying a manila folder. It was Kurt Wilson.

“I got your results,” he stated proudly, as he barged into the office.

Dava looked stumped. “Results for what?”

“From the hands they found during the raid in Brooklyn. The ones you guys asked me to ID.”

Dava’s looked annoyed that she wasn’t in the loop.

Eicher tried to explain, “They are Audrey Mays’ hands. They were discovered in a freezer at the Moziafs’ butcher shop. The tattoo is identical to Audrey’s. I just wanted to send it to the lab to make it official before I told you.”

Judging from her icy stare, Dava accepted the apology, but had put him on probation.

“That’s why I ran up here so fast,” Wilson said excitedly. “Those hands don’t belong to Audrey Mays.”

Eicher was stumped. “But they’re a match.”

“If you are speaking some alternate language in which match means they
don’t
match, then I would have to agree with you.”

“Are you sure you’re not mistaken. What are the odds of another female hand with an identical tattoo being found in the Moziafs’ freezer?”

Wilson shrugged—he was about the science, not speculation. “In this specific case, 100%. With the low temps in that meat locker, it is possible that the hand shrunk, distorting the ink, so perhaps it wasn’t the same tattoo. But the fingerprint science doesn’t lie—it definitely isn’t Audrey Mays.”

Dava looked at the report, her normally placid expression turning agitated. “Then whose hands are they?”

Wilson smiled. “That I do know. Her name is Rachel Grant. Ms. Grant was a ‘professional’ dancer here in the city who used the stage name Carrie Grant. Her prints were in the system because she was arrested on a couple of occasions for prostitution, a few years back. Her parents, who are from Wyoming, reported her missing about a year ago.”

“Is it possible,” Dava asked, still studying the report, “that this Grant woman is the one who is buried in Oklahoma?”

It was connected somehow. It had to be. “If the girl who was slaughtered in that apartment was Rachel Grant, what was she doing in Audrey’s apartment? And what the hell happened to Audrey Mays?” Eicher asked.

“Maybe somebody is trying to throw us off. I think we need to exhume the body in Oklahoma and do a DNA match to the hands,” Dava thought out loud.

When Wilson left, Eicher instructed Dava to work on getting information on Rachel Grant. And most importantly, anything that would connect her to Audrey Mays.

Eicher cleaned the coffee off his pants, and then reviewed the case in his head. He felt like he was missing something.

It all began with Karl Zellen’s arrest on money laundering charges, and things went downhill from there. On the surface, what followed was both logical and primal—Zellen was going to take down Sarvydas, who responded to the threat by having the wife of his longtime business associate killed. Karl sought revenge for Paula’s murder, and he ended up dead.

All of this would have landed in the large pile of lore and myth about the Russian mob—just as it did years ago with the ambush that brought Viktor to power—but Nick happened to make an unscheduled visit home that day, and witnessed his father’s murder.

But with the events of the last twenty-four hours, Eicher was now starting to wonder about how easily the case came together. Especially how Karl Zellen, with little persuasion, was willing to turn evidence against his longtime business associate.

Zellen was also known as the brains behind the Sarvydas Empire, who knew the monster better than anyone. And while Alexei was no genius by any stretch, he was brilliant when it came to murder, and Eicher wondered about all those clues he left behind. As he stared at a pair of hands that didn’t belong to Audrey Mays, he wondered if it fit too well.

Was it possible that he was so intent on finally catching a break against Sarvydas that he overlooked all the coincidences and questions about the case, Lilly McLaughlin included?

Eicher’s phone rang again, knocking him out of his distressing thoughts. He was expecting LaPoint, but it wasn’t.

“You lied to me, Eicher. You said you’d protect me, but you didn’t keep your promise.”

He immediately recognized Nick’s voice. “You are not safe out there. Tell me where you are, so we can pick you up.”

“I’m safer than I’d be with your people guarding me. You have a leak in your office, Eicher. They found me. If I stayed I’d be as dead as my parents and Audrey.”

Eicher kept the part about Rachel Grant to himself, until he had more answers than questions on that subject. “I admit we made mistakes, Nick. But whoever you’re trusting now is leading you toward danger.”

“Maybe I don’t have a choice,” he paused to let the statement hang in the dead air. “Maybe the decision was made for me. Like I said, if I stayed I was a dead man.”

He again thought of Lilly McLaughlin. “What are you trying to tell me, Nick?”

“Remember what you told me about not believing in coincidences?” he said and hung up.

Chapter 32

“The gas pedal is the vertical one on the right,” Becks snipped.

She hadn’t been a ray of sunshine since they met, but ever since Darren took away her driving privileges on account of her crazed tantrum at her school locker, she’d been downright surly.

“Turn here,” she demanded. Darren continued to follow her orders.

But he wasn’t a total pushover—he had changed the original plan. Darren knew nothing good could come of going to Las Vegas and confronting Lilly. Or as Becks preferred—kill her. It was best to allow the professionals to bring her into custody and then they could figure out what happened together. And if it was some sort of mental illness, he wanted to make sure Lilly got the best medical care.

They arrived at Brett Buckley’s house. The place Darren had met Becks—fist to face—just hours ago. She hopped out of the car and jogged toward the house, craning her neck back at Darren and blazing a “what’s taking you so long” look.

Becks ran around to the backyard and began scaling a cedar fence. The Buckley house was impressive, built on the shore of a man-made lake. He remembered Mara Garcia saying something about the parents owning a software company.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” he shouted to Becks, as she scooted over the wall like a cat. Or a cat burglar.

“What, don’t you think you can get over, old man?” her muffled shout came from the other side of the fence.

He couldn’t believe that he let a teenage girl talk him into breaking and entering. A long jail term seemed like the one thing that could actually make this day worse. “Let’s take a moment and really think this through.”

“No wonder your wife left you for a younger man.”

A cheap shot, no doubt, but motivational. He aggressively scaled the wall and leaped into the lushest backyard he’d ever seen in Arizona. Not the usual sand and cactus design. The yard sloped down to a lakeside dock.

Becks was busy working on a fuse-box at the back of the house. She smiled like a Cheshire cat. “You would think that since the Buckley’s business is to make security software, that their own house would be better protected.”

“We are compounding the problem by being here,” Darren proclaimed.

“No, your wife is com-
pounding
my boyfriend, that’s why we’re here. Don’t worry, Brett gave me the code so I could sneak in at night when his parents were sleeping. Shoulda been my first clue that he had honesty issues.”

Once the alarm was deactivated, Becks found a ladder and set it up against the house. She scooted up to the second floor and pried open a window with a gardening tool, before disappearing inside.

Darren continued to follow the juvenile delinquent. Probably straight to prison. But something told him that she was the one who could lead him to the truth.

He landed in a 21st-century teenage room. It wasn’t much different from Darren’s day—just the Heather Thomas poster was replaced with Brooklyn Decker, and Darren’s boom box and television with rabbit ears was now a shiny Mac computer and an iPod docking station.

“The FBI was just here an hour ago, they could come back,” Darren warned.

“The FBI?” she scoffed. “They couldn’t even figure out that a bunch of guys on terrorist watch lists signing up for flight school was a bad idea.”

“What about his parents? The authorities probably called them.”

“Trust me, the Buckleys are not going to cut a Hawaiian vacation short because Brett skipped town with some chick. Those stuck-up sons of bitches never liked me anyway.”

“I can’t imagine why.”

Becks feigned laughter. “Good one,” she said and picked up a picture and handed it to him. It was a prom photo of her and Brett. Darren had to admit she cleaned up well. The form-fitting gown matched the streaks in her hair. With the Arizona sun setting in the background, they looked a striking couple.

“Look at me—I’m damn cute. You’d do me, right?”

“Um…what?”

“I mean if you weren’t married and I weren’t in high school. If we met at some bar, you’d find me attractive, no?”

“Sure, I guess,” Darren stuttered uncomfortably, expecting that
Catch a Predator
guy from Dateline NBC to jump out at any moment and slap the cuffs on him.

“But obviously not as hot as our chaperone—the lovely and talented Lilly McLaughlin. Wearing her skanky dress and prancing around in her stripper kicks. Always bending over so all the boys can see her tramp stamp right above her ass. And I’m not talking about the prom—I mean everyday at school when she was trying to steal my boyfriend!”

Becks grabbed the picture from Darren and launched it into the wall. The frame shattered off of Brooklyn’s nose.

“Lilly’s not like that—there has to be an explanation,” Darren stated.

“Oh, she’s not?” Becks replied, her eyes now burning with a competitive fire. She hurried to the computer stand where a laptop was plugged in. “We’ll just see about that.”

Chapter 33

Becks booted up the computer and began furiously typing.

“What are you doing?” Darren asked.

“Breaking into Brett’s computer,” she said coldly. “I want to show you something.”

She filled in all the appropriate passwords and was logged on.

“You stole your boyfriend’s passwords?” he asked.

“What can I say—I was a dedicated girlfriend. I wanted to know what was going on in my man’s life.”

“Relationships are built on trust,” he lectured.

She looked at him incredulously. “You
can’t
be serious. Maybe you shoulda done a little more checking up on your wife.”

The comment, besides angering him, turned his thoughts to the computer. “Don’t you find it odd that that the FBI confiscated Lilly’s computer when they searched our house, but they left Brett’s computer. I know they were here because I talked to Agent LaPoint when I came by.”

“Maybe because she’s the one who committed the felony.”

She had an answer for everything. She was also making the proverbial woman scorned look contented.

She pulled up the Internet and called Darren over. What she showed him made him understand her hurt. He viewed endless blogs, Facebook pages, and random websites created in honor of his wife. The most creative was called
Pictures of Lilly
based on The Who song of the same name—actually an updated techno version of the song made by some hip-hop artist that Darren had never heard of. The song played over and over, as the photos from the infamous post-prom party looped endlessly in slide-show format.

The majority featured Lilly and Brett Buckley nestled on a couch, her arms and legs wrapped around him like she didn’t want to let go. When Darren saw that she was still wearing the corsage he bought for her, his heart broke.

The pictures were bad enough, but one site had an amateur video taken on a student’s phone. It followed a kissing Lilly and Brett into a bedroom. The giggling couple finally shooed away the cameraman so they could have some “privacy.” His mind kept trying to make up excuses—maybe someone gave her that date rape drug—but it was obvious that at the very least, Lilly was a willing partner, if not the aggressor. He felt sick.

The blogs and chat rooms were even worse. He was amazed how vicious the kids on these sites were. The names they called Lilly were far worse than anything Becks said about her. Becks referred to them as “keyboard commandos,” who were only tough when they could hide behind an online alias. She didn’t seem to be a fan.

Becks was determined to keep his nightmare going. “And if you think she just had a bad night, maybe you should take a look at this.”

She displayed an archive of text messages sent between Brett and Lilly over the past month. Darren didn’t even want to ask how she got access to them.

As painful as the Internet photos were, the correspondence between them hurt even more. Words are by far the most intimate stimulus.

Lilly expressed how she felt their relationship was “wrong,” but she “couldn’t stop.” How Brett took over her mind, body, and soul. How she craved him when they weren’t together, and how she never wanted to return home when they were together. he realized why she was distracted—she was thinking about him.

It also detailed the places where they’d been intimate. Different classrooms in the school and parks around the Chandler area. Darren felt most betrayed when they plotted a rendezvous at their home while he was out of town on a flight. The thought of this boy in his bed made him nauseous.

As time went on, their actions grew riskier. Brett wrote of avoiding his “rents,” which Becks explained was the millennium generation’s term for parents.

But after that infamous prom party, the tone of the messages turned to damage control, discussing the importance of getting their stories straight, and even plotting their escape in general terms. The messages came to an abrupt end, likely because they suspected the authorities were onto them.