Whisper to Me(99)

Blah.

Blah.

Etc.

Here’s the important part:

After the group was finished, I hung back. I was bursting with my insight; I was such an idiot. So naive. Thinking I could get Dwight to help me.

When Dwight was leaving I kind of followed outside the bowling alley to the 7-Eleven. At the coffee counter where the sugar and stuff was, I touched his arm. He had a bag slung over his shoulder.

“You’re working on the Houdini Killer case, right?” I said. “With Agent Horowitz and the other guy, the fat one?”

“Cass! I shouldn’t—”

“But you are?” I had told Julie not to talk to the cops, but I trusted Dwight. I had heard him talk about his voice, about the way his dad abused him. I knew he wasn’t the Houdini Killer. I knew that. I thought I knew a lot of things.

He sighed and nodded.





“There must be something I can do.”

“Leave it to the police,” said Dwight. “That’s what you should do.”

“She could be … being killed. Right now.”

“Or she could have run away. Gone back to New York.”

“Horowitz said that too,” I said. “But why would she? She left New York because her dad … because her dad …”

“I know,” said Dwight. “I was in group with her, remember?”

“So what about him?” I said. “Have you checked him out?”

Dwight nodded. “Parents say they haven’t seen her. And the dad has an alibi. A woman from his work who’ll swear he was with her.”

“You believe her?”

“It’s not like a movie,” said Dwight. “When people lie it’s not obvious. Point is, it’s a dead end. We have her photo with every police precinct on the East Coast. If she turns up, she turns up. Other than that, we have nothing. No evidence, no clues. Nothing.”

“He’s lying,” said the voice. “He’s a ******** liar. He knows something, but he’s not telling.”

“After six p.m.,” I said quietly to the voice.

“Your voice?” said Dwight.

“Yeah. And it’s saying that you’re a liar. That there’s something you’re not telling me.”

“There’s an ass-load I’m not telling you! I’m a cop. This is all confidential stuff.”

“It’s Paris,” I said. “If you know something important, I need you to tell me.”

“I don’t know something important.”

“But you suspect something.”

“No! Leave it, okay?”

“Dwight, please …”

“Jesus, Cass. I shouldn’t even be having this conversation. And I have nothing more to tell you; nothing that will help you or Paris. I promise.”

I sighed. I could sense I wasn’t going to get anything more out of him voluntarily.

So I held my breath for as long as I could—I mean, literally held it in my lungs.

“Cass, you okay?”

I was, but I was hoping I looked pale. I let my eyes go droopy and slumped a little. “I get … low blood sugar,” I said. “Would you get … some candy?”

“Candy?”

“Yeah. It has to be …” I kept my body floppy, kind of leaned on the counter, as if to hold myself up. “… nut free. Can you check with them?”

Dwight hesitated.

“Please?”

“Sure,” he said finally. He dropped his bag on the floor by my feet and went over to the cash register. I saw him talking to the Mexican guy there, finding out what was safe.

“Quick,” said the voice. “While his back is turned.”

I took out my cell phone and reached down for his bag.





And there it was, inside his briefcase. A thick brown file, closed with loops of elastic: OAKWOOD PD ACTIVE FILE LF-098

I flipped it open quickly, took as many photos as I could, turning the pages. I got maybe twenty, and then I saw Dwight coming back over—a rack of Jersey Shore car magnets was partially shielding me—and I dropped the file back into the bag and straightened up.

“Skittles,” I said as he leaned against the counter and handed them over. “My … favorite.”





The next morning I was sitting at home on my bed with my cell. I started paging through the photos of the case file. I hadn’t been able to check what I was capturing—had just pointed and shot, getting as many pictures as I could. You would have been proud of me. I mean, I had to learn to use the camera function specially, practiced the previous night, taking pictures of my wall, pages from my books.

Almost immediately I stopped cold. Staring at the photo in front of me, of maybe the very first page in the case file. I should have known, I thought. It should have been obvious.

It was right there in black and white on one of the first pages:



Investigation into the disappearance of Lily Eleanor French.



Lily.

Eleanor.

Not Paris. She must have taken the name for herself, maybe when she started … working. Because of her surname being French, maybe? Or before that, I don’t know.

I remembered her saying to Shane that she was more Paris, Texas, than Paris, France, and now I thought: not Paris at all.