It's One of Us(23)

“You can do that? You know how to track people on the internet?”

“Duh. It’s not exactly hard.”

“Scarlett Flynn, if I find out you’ve been doing anything illegal...”

“Mom. Seriously. People put their lives online. They aren’t hard to find.”

Her mother sighs, heavy and long. “We don’t need you playing detective. And we don’t need anyone in that group coming after you.”

“You’re right, we don’t. But Mom, if one of us is a killer, we have to tell the police.”

Those strong, capable arms cross on her chest. Scarlett is losing this argument.

“I don’t want you getting involved. Not until we know how that little tidbit got planted. It could be completely false, and you’ll open a can of worms that ruins lives.”

“I am already involved. We can’t pretend that I’m not. And you’ve always told me to do the right thing. This is the right thing.”

“Oh, Scarlett.”

Scarlett knows that tone. She’s worn her mother down and she’s won. She feels a spark of excitement, tries to keep herself in check. This is happening, it’s really happening. She’s going to find out who her father is. She can just tell.

“There’s probably a tip line,” Scarlett says, careful not to seem too ebullient. “Or we can just call the non-emergency number and tell them we have some information related to the Cooke case.”

“I should never have let you listen to those true crime podcasts,” Darby groans, but Scarlett already has her laptop open and is searching for the number she needs.

“Got it, here on the story from WSMV. They have the tip line. It says we can leave an anonymous tip. Would you rather me do it like that?”

Darby thinks for a moment. “Let’s just call and see what they ask. They’ll have your phone number regardless. If they want to hunt you down, they probably can. If people are as easy to track as you say they are.”

Scarlett ignores that crack, dials the number and puts her phone on Speaker.

“This is the right thing to do, Mom. I know it.”



11


THE DETECTIVES

Joey Moore closes the lid on her laptop and stretches. “I’m getting nowhere fast. I don’t think we’re going to get anything else out of Chapel Hill PD until tomorrow. Anything back from the family? I’d really like to have a chat with them. I know it’s been twenty-plus years since their daughter died, but you never know what they might have to say.”

Will checks his phone. “Nothing.”

“Want to call them again?”

He does, leaves another message. “Mr. and Mrs. Rich, this is Detective William Osley in Nashville again. I’d like to speak to you about your daughter’s murder. Please call me back.” He leaves his number and shakes his head. “That’s five messages and no returned calls. They might not want to rip open this wound.”

“I know. Let’s pick it up in the morning, okay? Maybe once we talk to Chapel Hill, they’ll reach out to the family and tell them our intentions are pure.”

Osley gnaws on a toothpick. His booted feet are up on the edge of her desk, so she has a great view of the tattered, scraped soles.

“Yeah, all right.” He doesn’t drop his feet to the floor. She waits. It’s quiet in the homicide offices today. She can hear the soft screech of a marker; someone is writing on a white board across the cubicles.

“What’s wrong now?”

Osley sighs. “That dude knows something.”

“Who, Bender? Oh, I agree. But about what? The kid? The girl from Chapel Hill? His wife?”

“I thought without the wife there he might cave and admit who he had the affair with.”

Joey senses a longer conversation about to break free. Some of their best ideas come when they’re just shooting the shit like this, so she indulges Osley, even though she’s tired as hell and just wants an old-fashioned and maybe a pile of spaghetti.

“You’re assuming he knows,” she says. “It’s not out of the realm of possibility that he truly isn’t aware of a child.”

“You think you wouldn’t know if someone had your kid?”

“Interestingly, Will, this is a phenomenon limited to the males of the species. While we might be in a situation where we don’t who a father is, we do have a tendency to know when a kid is ours or not. Considering we give birth to them.”

“Point taken,” he says, saluting with two fingers. “Still. Something just smells wrong about this. The way he reacted. Like it was inevitable that we’d come calling.”

Now she leans back in the chair and joins his makeshift footstool. “Don’t you think that’s got a lot to do with his past? He was a suspect in a murder. Even though it turned out to be someone else, that’s gotta fracture a guy, right? He was a kid, and it went unsolved for a while. That’s hung over his head all these years.”

“Yeah. Still—”

Joey’s phone rings. “Moore. Yeah? Let’s hear it.”

She sets her phone on the desk and hits the speaker. “Tip line got a call about Cooke. Says it’s a live one.”

A girl’s quiet but excited voice plays through the speaker.