Run Away(93)

Ash knew this smile—the smile she saved for extreme violence—and he didn’t like it.

“Is it different for you?” Dee Dee asked him. “Killing a woman instead of a man.”

Ash was not in the mood. “Where’s her phone?”

“It’s still in the glove compartment.”

Ash had put a battery-operated jamming device in the glove compartment, so if someone was tracking her whereabouts—and he suspected that they might be—they’d be getting a no-signal. “Pull the car around back and bring me the phone.”

Dee Dee put her hands on either side of his face. “You okay, Ash?”

“I’m fine, but we have to move fast.”

She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and hurried outside. Ash started to wrap the body in the tarp. They’d already dug a hole, so that no one would find her. When Dee Dee brought him Elena’s phone, he would send out a few “I’m fine” texts to anyone looking for her. It would take a few days, probably more, before someone started seriously investigating Elena Ramirez’s disappearance.

By then, Ash and Dee Dee would be done with the jobs. There’d be no clues.

“Ironic,” Dee Dee had said when Ash told her the plan. And while the actual meaning of the word “ironic” seemed elusive to Ash—he remembered people saying that Alanis Morissette had gotten it wrong in that song—it seemed to fit here. Elena Ramirez had been hired to find a “missing” Henry Thorpe. But Thorpe had been dead the whole time. And now, Elena Ramirez would be “missing” too.

Dee Dee came back into the house with the phone and jammer. “Here you go.”

“Finish wrapping her up.”

She mock-saluted him. “You’re in a mood.”

Ash bent down next to the body and picked up Elena’s hand. There should still be enough electrical impulse traveling through her body, so that her thumb could still unlock her phone. He pressed the phone against the pad.

Bingo.

The phone’s wallpaper was a photograph of Elena smiling widely, her arms wrapped around a far taller man who was smiling just as wide.

Dee Dee looked over his shoulder. “Do you think that’s her Joel?”

“I’d suspect so, yes.” Ash had listened to the whole conversation in the car because Dee Dee kept her phone on. “Do you even have an Aunt Sally?” he asked her.

“No.”

He shook his head in amazement. “You’re good.”

“Do you remember our middle school production of West Side Story?”

Ash had worked building the sets. She’d been one of the Sharks girls.

“I should have been Maria—I killed the audition—but Mr. Orloff gave it to Julia Ford because her father owned that Lexus dealership.”

Dee Dee didn’t say this with anger or pity. She was being accurate. Ash was enamored, no doubt about it, but Dee Dee had real star quality. You could just see it. Everyone in the auditorium, even though she’d just been in the chorus, couldn’t take their eyes off her.

Dee Dee could have been a great actress, a big star, but what kind of break was she, a foster beauty constantly fending off male adults, going to get?

His tone was tender. “You were great in that play, Dee Dee.”

She worked on the tarp now, wrapping it around the body.

“I mean it.”

“Thank you, Ash.”

He clicked on the Settings key and then found the Privacy icon. From there, he tapped Location Services and scrolled all the way to the bottom to where it said System Services. He scrolled again and found Significant Locations. When he pressed to see it, the screen asked for the thumb again. He grabbed Elena’s and used it. Then he changed the password so he could get in without the thumb next time.

People don’t realize how much of their privacy they casually give away. On any iPhone at any time, you could do what Ash was now doing: see the complete history of where the phone’s owner—in this case, Elena Ramirez—had recently visited.

“Damn,” he said.

“What?”

“She’s been to the tattoo parlor.”

“We had to figure that was a possibility, Ash. That’s why we had to act fast.”

He checked through the list of locations and saw several spots in New York City. Most recently, Elena Ramirez had been at Columbia Medical Center near 168th Street. Ash wondered why. Then he noticed something more troubling.

“She’s been to the Bronx.”

Dee Dee finished tying the rope around the tarp. “Same location?”

He clicked it and nodded.

“Oh, that’s not good,” Dee Dee said.

“We have to hurry.”

He scanned through her phone log and texts. The most recent text, coming in eight minutes ago, read:

Have you met with Alison yet? Please fill me in when you can.



Dee Dee saw the look on his face. “What is it?”

“Someone else is getting close.”

“Who?”

Ash flipped the phone around, so Dee Dee could read the screen. “We’re going to have to do something about a guy named Simon Greene.”





Chapter

Thirty-Three



Simon collapsed into a seat on the subway. He stared out the window across the car without focusing, letting the underground whirl whiz by in a hazy blur. He tried to comprehend what he’d just learned. Nothing made sense. He’d gotten more pieces to the puzzle, important pieces, perhaps even an explanation of what had started his daughter’s spiral into drug addiction. But the more pieces he got, the less clear the final image was becoming.