Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10)(71)

Flora shrugged. “I doubt it. By that point, I’d lost a lot of weight. My hair was hacked off. Most of the time I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror. Jacob had been taking me out in public for months, and no one ever looked at me twice.”

“Did Conrad try to make eye contact, send you any other signals?” D.D. tried again. “Morse code isn’t exactly the easiest way to establish contact. And risky, given Jacob was a long-haul trucker and had experience on the radio.”

“I kept my gaze down. Jacob didn’t like it when I looked up. Conrad might have tried something. I wouldn’t have known. And Jacob never left us alone. He had his hand on my shoulder the whole time.”

“When did you leave the town?” Quincy asked now.

“The next day. Up and out. Jacob was hardy. He could drink all night, still get up at four and start driving. He’d been off road for a week. I imagine he had to get back to work.”

“Motel Upland,” D.D. provided. “Last time we talked, you thought you recalled a flashing motel sign that read Motel Upland. Something more for us to check out. Maybe we can even find a record of Conrad Carter or one of his aliases staying there or nearby. Of course, it would help if we had a state and not just ‘someplace in the South.’”

“Try Mississippi,” Quincy suggested. “Given the Abita beer.”

“I think Jacob promised Flora to Conrad, made some kind of deal.” D.D. noticed Keith didn’t look directly at Flora as he said this. He spoke evenly, his tone strictly professional. It made D.D. wonder if Flora would hurt him now or later.

“I don’t think that’s much of a stretch,” Quincy said drily.

While Flora added, “You think Conrad intended to take me away. Jacob would’ve thought it was to abuse me. But maybe Conrad was really trying to rescue me.”

“Interesting thought,” Dr. Samuel mused. He nodded toward D.D. “Does Conrad have any history in law enforcement, military service? Time with at-risk kids?”

“Not even a volunteer at a soup kitchen,” she assured him. “Which makes this all stranger still. But he did have a box of fake IDs. Meaning whatever he was doing in that bar, he was working ‘undercover,’ so to speak. The question remains, to what end? One predator networking with another? Or some lone gunman trying to save the day? But how would he know about Flora? And if this is really what he did, shouldn’t there be some record of other girls he rescued, or crimes stopped? Certainly, his wife doesn’t know about any of this. She appeared as shocked by the fake IDs and cash stash as anyone. Though again, she shot up his computer, which may prove his travel activities weren’t altruistic after all.”

“What do you know about his other aliases, the names on the IDs?” Quincy asked.

“Nothing yet. One of my fellow detectives, Neil, has been working on them. He’s running each name through state databases with the license number, but given how common the aliases are, he’s getting too much information. The few he’s managed to whittle down to the ‘right’ Conner or Carter or whatnot, there’s no attached credit history, criminal records, anything. He suspects the IDs are hollow—not representative of whole new lives, just literally a piece of plastic procured for getting into a club.”

“But didn’t you say Conrad had a connection to Florida?” Quincy pressed. “And Jacob was from Florida. Surely that can’t be coincidence.”

“I don’t like coincidences any more than the next person,” D.D. assured her. “But Florida is a big state. Conrad’s family lived in Jacksonville. Jacob Ness’s mother lived on the west coast, north of Tampa. They were hardly neighbors. On the other hand, Jacob drove all around on his job and Conrad traveled all around on his, so anything is possible. Neil will keep searching. But we just learned about the aliases today, so it’ll take a bit more digging.

“I don’t think we should worry about Conrad’s reasons for meeting Jacob and Flora.” Keith spoke up. “We can speculate why Conrad came to the bar all we want, but at this time we lack adequate data.”

An IT geek through and through, D.D. noted.

“The real question is, how did Conrad and Jacob make contact. You said Jacob had a cheap burner phone. Did you see him call anyone before you entered the bar?” Keith asked Flora.

“No. But he could’ve done it while I was in the bathroom cleaning up.”

“But Conrad knew exactly how to find you. Walked straight over to you.”

“I guess.”

“Clearly the meet was planned in advance. By a guy who didn’t really use his cell but had the Tor browser on his laptop.”

Once again, Flora shrugged. The rest of them simply waited.

“All the more reason to suspect that Jacob was active on the dark web and networking with other predators there. Now, Tor works to obscure a user’s IP address by encrypting internet traffic while bouncing it through odd routes. However, it’s not as anonymous as people think. A user’s information is briefly unencrypted when entering and exiting the dark web, meaning there should be some recoverable information.”

Quincy shook her head. “I already told you, the FBI turned the computer inside and out. Nothing.”

But Keith wouldn’t be denied. “To access anything, dark web, deep web—”