As the Wicked Watch(94)
After they left, I wanted to call my friends, but Ellen and our unfinished business loomed over me like a helicopter parent. It would have to wait, though, because we were interrupted again on this, my unlucky lucky day.
“Jordan.” Joey moved from the curtain to my bedside at warp speed. I could tell he was visibly taken aback by what he saw. My vanity kicked in. Realizing that I wouldn’t be able to go on air any time soon was one thing, but I didn’t want a man to see me looking like this, especially one who’d earlier today gazed into my eyes, flirting with me.
Before he could comment, I launched into my theory of what happened. “Joey, this was not a random attack. This was not a robbery. This had something to do with Masey, and I think they’ve been following me. A couple days ago, a guy followed me as I pulled into the garage.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Honestly, it had just occurred to me that the car that slipped in behind me and trailed me to my floor saw precisely where I parked.
“I think I was set up. These guys all know each other, and they’re all connected to Masey’s disappearance.”
Joey said, “Jordan, you may be right. I finally got some information on Terrence. Before he lived in Chicago, he lived in Albuquerque.”
“Yeah, Yvonne told me he moved here from New Mexico.”
“Right, well, things probably got a little too hot for him out there. He was arrested a few years ago for breaking and entering. I spoke with the prosecutor, and she told me that a sixteen-year-old girl lived in the house. They believe he’d been stalking her, but his attorney struck a plea deal and he was sentenced to a year’s probation. Then he moved to Chicago after that. But while they were investigating him, they uncovered a lot of creepy behavior toward young women. They also found out that he and the girl knew each other. Now, the girl would never admit it, but her friends told the prosecutor there’d been something going on between them.”
“Was he molesting her?” I asked.
“The prosecutor believes it was more like grooming, but the girl was under his influence and never revealed much more than that,” he said. “But that’s not all I found out. That story didn’t rest well with me. So I talked to one of the detectives out there. Some years before that, he was questioned about a fifteen-year-old girl who was found dead under a bridge overpass. She’d been sexually assaulted. She was killed in a wooded area not far from her home, and her naked body was found in a fishing riverbed along a lightly trafficked trail on the outskirts of Albuquerque. No evidence was ever recovered. It’s been a cold case ever since.”
“Jesus! How’d you find this out so fast?”
“I’ve been working with a few informants. This one guy, he owes me—a lot. He told me he’d heard rumors about Bankhead and underage girls. A lot of the stuff he was mixed up in out in New Mexico followed him here. His name has come up in one of those chat rooms where folks with an ax to grind put shady characters on blast. A former cop outed him on a website. He tried to get ahead of it after he moved here, telling his side of things, but I hear a lot of guys here don’t like him. He doesn’t have a lot of friends. His circle is pretty tight. Just him and this guy Brent.”
“Did you get an address for him?”
“Not yet, but he has a little storefront office space Uptown. I don’t know what he uses it for.”
“Well, he’s supposed to have ‘connections’ in entertainment,” I said. “What about his roommate?”
“This guy’s a ghost, a real loner. I’m not even sure Brent Carter is his real name,” Joey said.
I don’t know why, but my mind went back to that bizarre conversation the day of the vigil with Louise Robinson when she talked about a Red Moley character. She said, If there’s one, there’s probably two. Louise knew Yvonne. I wonder if she knew anything about these two guys.
“This is going to sound crazy, but I was at Louise Robinson’s and she started talking about, and I’d never heard of this before, the legend of Red Moley.”
“The legend of Red Moley? You never heard of that?” Joey asked.
‘‘No, I haven’t. Must be a Midwest thing.”
But now I was beginning to wonder why Louise mentioned it in the first place. Was it possible that Masey’s involvement with these men was an open secret? Did these people know all along what was going on in Masey’s life?
*
National news anchor: We have a strange update in the case of three boys charged with the gruesome murder of a fifteen-year-old Chicago girl. The reporter who broke the story has been the victim of a brutal attack. We go now to correspondent Grayson Michele in Chicago.
Grayson: Last night, News Channel 8’s Jordan Manning was discovered unconscious on the upper parking deck of her apartment building. I’m told the thirty-year-old suffered severe bruising to her head, face, and neck. She is in stable condition at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. A security guard in the building who interrupted the attack on Manning was stabbed by the assailant and remains in critical condition. Both were discovered by a tenant a little after 9:30 p.m. last night. Police declined to say whether security cameras captured the attack. There are no suspects in custody, but I’ve heard speculation of ties to Manning’s coverage of the troubling murder case. The three suspects, two eleven-year-olds and a thirteen-year-old boy, remain in custody.