After fifteen minutes, I gave up. Told myself to relax. He’d done this before. He’d come home when hungry.
The bath was a bust. I lay in bubbles up to my chin, sadness and worry foreclosing any relaxation.
Lily, dying before her twentieth birthday.
Ryan, excluding me in his time of sorrow. Forever?
Katy, fighting in Afghanistan.
Pete, marrying a bimbo with a boob size exceeding her IQ.
D’Ostillo, trying to do right, getting murdered and mutilated.
Candy, perishing on a two-lane, alone and terrified.
How had Candy ended up on that dark stretch of road? Was she trafficked? Lured by someone she trusted? Stolen and caged like stock?
What fate awaited her had she lived? To be brutalized, her body a commodity exploited until its value was gone? What then?
Were others out there suffering the same hell?
My mind was in overdrive. I had to do something to squelch the terrible thoughts and images ping-ponging in my skull.
I got out, dried off, and pulled on sweats. Yanked my hair into a pony and headed downstairs.
I shouted through both the front and kitchen doors. Shook a bag of his favorite treats. Still no Birdie. My annoyance was joined by a tickle of apprehension. Why?
Ping.
Blanton had mentioned my cat. He’d been waiting just a block from the annex.
Paranoia, Brennan.
I brewed coffee, went to the study closet, and pulled out a large erasable board I use for structuring lectures. Then I got Scotch tape and a marker from the desk.
After propping the board on the mantel in the parlor, I collected every picture I’d accumulated over the past two and a half weeks. Snapshots, crime-scene photos, Polaroids, printouts, mug shots.
I started by taping up a picture of Candy, the hit-and-run victim whose real name we still didn’t know. Beside it I placed one of the snapshots I’d liberated from John-Henry’s Tavern. Pictured was John-Henry Story, the man whose US Airways club card Candy had inside her purse lining.
Using the marker, I drew a line between Candy and John-Henry.
Next I posted the second “borrowed” snapshot, Dominick Rockett at the tavern with John-Henry Story. Rockett, the smuggler who traveled to South America and made mysterious trips to Texas. Rockett, customer or maybe more than a customer at the Passion Fruit Club, owned by John-Henry and his brother, Archer, via SayDo. And employer of Candy.
I drew lines connecting Candy and Rockett, Rockett and John-Henry Story.
After jotting the name Passion Fruit on the right side of the board, I drew lines connecting the massage parlor to Candy, Rockett, and John-Henry.
Next in the lineup went the mug shot of CC Creach. Creach’s semen was found on Candy. Creach was a patron of the Passion Fruit, and said Candy and the other girls were afraid of Rockett. And of Ray Majerick, who was often there.
I added Majerick to the row. Majerick’s semen was also found on Candy. Majerick had a history as a sexual predator.
I drew lines between Candy and Creach, Candy and Majerick, Majerick and Creach, Majerick and Rockett, Majerick and John-Henry Story. Then between both Creach and Majerick and the words “Passion Fruit.”
I paused to consider.
Majerick had been seen at the Passion Fruit and had sex with Candy. Did that mean he knew John-Henry Story? I erased parts of that line, converting it to a dotted connector.
The last photo to go up was Rosalie D’Ostillo. My stomach still tightened on seeing the hideous mutilation.
D’Ostillo saw Candy at the Mixcoatl. The taquería was located close to the Passion Fruit. Like Creach, D’Ostillo thought Candy and the other girls spoke Spanish. D’Ostillo was murdered within hours of talking to me. Her tongue was left on my doorstep.
I drew a line from D’Ostillo to Candy, a dotted link to the words “Passion Fruit.”
Then I stepped back and surveyed my work.
The board showed a maze of interconnections. Which ones were meaningful? Which were spurious? Was Candy’s killer one of the men whose pictures I’d posted? Was I staring at his face right now?
How did the lines link up?
I moved my eyes from photo to photo.
Candy, lying on her morgue gurney. How did John-Henry Story’s US Airways club card end up in her purse? How did semen from Creach and Majerick end up on her skin? Turning tricks? Voluntary sex? Rape?
Dom Rockett and John-Henry Story sharing a beer. The two were partners in S&S. How had Rockett acquired the money to invest? Aware of his illegal trafficking in antiquities, did Story approach Rockett about doing the same with humans? Rockett was a smuggler, knew the routes, the cops and agents who could be bribed, the border-crossing points most easily breached.
Or had it gone the other way? Had Rockett proposed a moneymaking scheme to John-Henry, knowing Story had the infrastructure to make it work?