Keep Her Safe(48)

It’s Dwayne Mantis.

I don’t recognize the others, but maybe I’ve met them; men change so much with age. Mantis hasn’t, though. Even with less hair and an extra twenty or so pounds, he’s impossible to mistake. That gleam in his eyes is just as menacing. The only thing that softens his look is the fact that he’s standing next to Abe, whose smile stretches across his face.

So, Abe and Dwayne Mantis were friends. Or, at least, they knew each other. They obviously played on a team together. “It’s probably the police league basketball team.”

“That would make sense.” She hands me a photocopy of an article, torn from a newspaper. It’s from April 23, 2003. “That’s the same guy, isn’t it?” She points out Mantis in the picture of four cops standing proud over a pile of small white parcels.

“Looks like it.” The picture is grainy, but there’s no mistaking that forehead. I quickly scan the bylines. It’s a major drug bust by Austin’s notorious drug squad at an Austin motel called The Lucky Nine.

The pieces begin clicking together.

These must be the “hounds” that George Canning was raving about.

Dwayne Mantis was one of his hounds.

Mantis, who now heads the Internal Affairs department of the APD, a department that was recently investigated for falsifying evidence to clear police officers, according to Silas.

Mantis, who is likely being investigated by the feds.

Someone marked up the original article, circling the line listing the drugs seized—three kilos of cocaine, marijuana, and meth—along with four guns. And below it, added notes in tidy scrawl.

Harvey Maxwell.

I frown. That’s Maxwell, the ADA I work with. Why did someone write his name down on here?

Below his name is a more concerning note.

$98K.

“Holy shit,” slips out.

“Don’t tell me that’s a coincidence, Noah. You just brought me a bag of ninety-eight thousand dollars. A hundred? I’d believe that was a coincidence. Not ninety-eight thousand dollars.” She jabs the article with her finger, where the date of the bust is clearly printed. “Not when this was ten days before my dad died, at the same motel where he died.”

She’s right to be suspicious.

Should I tell Gracie about Mantis?

And why did Dina have this hidden under the trailer?

And how did my mother end up with this money?

Gracie’s gaze drifts over the parking lot, watching a woman and a small child head toward the hospital, a bouquet of pink carnations in the woman’s grip. “I’ve always wondered if there was something my mother wasn’t telling me.”

Exactly what I’m wondering, too.

I notice a crinkled, worn picture in the box that looks like it’s been passed through a hundred sets of hands. It’s of a young, fresh-faced Dina, posing in front of the typical blue backdrop of a school picture. “You two have the same eyes,” I note absently.

“Oh, right, and then there’s that,” Gracie scoffs. “Do you see that heart-half charm on her necklace?”

“Yeah?”

“She told me that my dad gave that to her.”

“So?”

“She didn’t meet my dad until she was seventeen.”

“And she can’t be more than twelve or thirteen here,” I say, catching on.

“Exactly.” Gracie shakes her head “Why lie about a stupid necklace?”

“Maybe she got mixed up?”

“Maybe.” She doesn’t sound at all convinced.

“I find the best way to get information is to . . .” I flip the picture over to check the back, and my voice drifts as I see the name scrawled across the top right corner in blue ink.

Betsy, 2002.

“Is to . . .?” Gracie prompts.

“Ask questions,” I mutter absently, struggling to make sense of the pieces. My mother said the name Betsy that night. Why is it written on a picture of Dina? Does Dina have another name? What was it my mom said when I asked her who Betsy was? Something about her biggest regret, or— “What the hell!”

Gracie’s panicked voice grabs my attention, even though my mind is swimming in all these bits of new information. Her gaze is locked on the sidewalk near the hospital entrance, where Dina rushes along in the pair of light blue pajamas that Gracie brought to her earlier, her arms hugging her frail body, casting furtive glances this way and that.

Looking every bit the escapee that she is.

“Stay here.” Gracie, her clothes and face and legs streaked with soot, climbs out of my Cherokee and goes charging toward her mother.





CHAPTER 19


Officer Abraham Wilkes

April 21, 2003

“I’ve noticed you around here these past few days, talkin’ to folks.” The man smooths his calloused hand over the ice-maker, frowning at the dent. The tool belt strapped around his wiry hips tells me he’s some sort of maintenance man for The Lucky Nine.

“Yes, sir. I’m looking for a girl.” With no luck, after five days of searching, before and after shifts, on my days off. Here, and every other motel, and on the streets. I’m beginning to think Jackie was telling the truth and Betsy doesn’t want to be found. “You spend a lot of time around here?”