Every Last Fear(82)

“She and the other girls stayed in rooms above the club. We searched her bunk and locker. She left her passport. And the rental car—she shared it with two other girls—was found abandoned in Chan Chemuyil, about fifteen minutes from Tulum.” Escobar paused. “I’m sorry.”

Keller let out a breath. “What else do we know about her? Any priors? Known associates?”

“She had a prior for cocaine possession in Oklahoma, but that’s it. Nothing that identifies the man with her in the photo. She’s had a tough run, Ms. Grace. Her father died in the Oklahoma City bombing when she was young, she spent her teenage years in foster care, then worked at a gentleman’s club, which is where she probably got hooked up with the party girl company.”

“Nothing on the man with the cleft lip scar?” Keller’s blood pressure was rising, her jaw clenched. She shut the curtains and sat on the bed. She needed to calm down, think clearly.

“He’s a ghost. It does look like he rented the place at the address you sent me.”

The address tenacious Maggie Pine had found through a cell phone aggregation service. Keller had a random thought: Maybe Maggie would’ve become an FBI agent.

Escobar continued. “He gave the last name Smith, paid in cash. The owner never dealt with him in person—he sent the money by messenger—but the neighbor saw him a few times. And the rental property, it was scrubbed down with bleach. I don’t think it has ever been so clean.”

“Cleaning crews usually aren’t that detailed. I can send a team and—”

“I don’t think you’re hearing me. The place was clean. And not by any maid service. More like a forensics expert.”

“A professional,” Keller said. It was consistent with the staged crime scene, the wiped phones.

Escobar said, “Makes sense.”

“CCTV cameras in the area?” Keller knew the answer, but had to ask.

“I’m sorry. But this isn’t Manhattan, Agent Keller.”

“Is there anything—anything at all—that will help us ID the guy?” Keller knew the answer to this as well.

Escobar paused, then said, “I feel like Gutierrez knows something. It’s a pretty corrupt force.”

“The cop who gave us trouble releasing the bodies? The one who threatened Matt Pine.”

“Sí.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“I tried, but he refuses to speak with me.”

Keller worked through this. She couldn’t force a foreign municipal police officer to cooperate with them. And Carlita Escobar was the person the State Department said had the best chance of dealing with the Tulum force. Now even she was getting stonewalled. “I’m open to ideas,” Keller said.

After another long silence, Escobar said, “There may be a way to get Gutierrez to tell us what he knows.”

Keller wasn’t sure what she meant by that. The way Escobar said it made Keller wary.

“What do you mean?”

“He won’t answer my questions. He knows I’m constrained by American interview techniques.…”

Keller tried to digest where Escobar was going with this, and didn’t like it.

“But I’m family friends with a state senator. He holds sway with the Mexican federal police. And I’m sure he could get them to question Gutierrez.”

Keller was starting to wonder whether, despite her protests to the contrary, Escobar was in fact related to Pablo. She imagined the local cop in a basement that had a drain in the middle of the floor.

Escobar said, “Of course I would never ask them to do that. But if the senator knew Gutierrez was making the US State Department unhappy, he might take the matter into his own hands.…”

Keller wanted the man with the cleft lip. He was now linked to the disappearance of Joey Grace and death of the Pines. But she wouldn’t break the law. “Let’s call that Plan B,” Keller said.

“Of course, I wasn’t suggesting—”

“Did you find anything else?” Keller said, sparing Escobar the false denial.

“One more thing,” Escobar said. “The bartender where the girl worked. He said he’d seen her with a man who fits the description. Just one time. But he remembered because Joey Grace made the bartender an unusual offer.”

Keller felt a flutter of excitement again. “What was it?”

“She paid the bartender four thousand pesos to call a cell phone number if anyone came to the bar looking for an American girl.”

“Did he ever make that call?

“Sí. He said a man, an American, showed up at the bar one night looking for a girl.”

“Evan Pine,” Keller said.

“Sí. I showed the bartender a photo, and he confirmed.”

Keller played this out in her mind. The man with the cleft lip scar hired a local party girl to pose in a video as Charlotte to make a deepfake and lure Evan Pine to Tulum, perhaps making it easy for Evan to trace her to the particular club. Then he paid the bartender there to call him when Evan arrived and started asking questions.

This had to be a professional.

“Thank you for all your hard work on this,” Keller said.

“My pleasure.” Then, in a matter-of-fact tone that sent a chill down Keller’s back, Escobar said, “I’ll contact you when we find the girl’s body.”