For You (The 'Burg #1)(150)

“He couldn’t have been plannin’ a spree when he withdrew that money,” Colt noted.

“No tellin’ what he was plannin’.”

This made Colt’s blood run cold but he ignored it and carried on.

“He’s in New Mexico, got a package there. Anything?”

“Zip. Guy’s a ghost.”

“We got the car he’s drivin’, photos of him out on the wire, we know where he is and who he’s after. How the f**k can he be a ghost?”

“Colt –”

“Jesus, Sully, this shit’s relentless. We got a boatload of evidence to nail this guy and we f**kin’ know where he is and he’s in the wind?”

“We have more on him, if you’re interested.” Colt didn’t speak so Sully continued. “You asked me to activate the Lorraine gossip tree and we’ll have to make a note to do that in future. Her women were a font of information. One of ‘em, married to a bank officer, knew all about Amy, the baby, the adoption, everything, ‘cept the rape and who the daddy was. Another knows Emily Hope.”

“Emily Hope?”

“Yeah, she was Amy’s best friend back in the day. She lives in Carmel now. She heard about Amy’s death from the Lorraine gossip tree and she heard a helluva lot more from it too. She came in this mornin’ before she went to the funeral.”

Emily Hope. Hearing her name and associating it with Amy’s friend, Colt remembered the name and the girl. He scanned his recent memories of the funeral and he tried to place the girl Amy used to spend time with there. He didn’t know her back then but he had a thing for faces and he didn’t recognize hers at the funeral.

“She’s who I think she is, she wasn’t at the funeral,” Colt told Sully.

“Was she big as a house back in the day?”

Colt called her up and remembered her as being passably pretty and nowhere near fat. In fact, she was flat-chested, slim-hipped and almost had the body of a boy. A skinny boy.

“Nope.”

“Bitch is huge now, Colt. Huge.”

“Sully.”

“No, seriously, couldn’t sit in a chair with arms. We had to bring her in one special. Enormous.”

“All right, she’s gained weight, what’d she say?”

“She said she always knew Denny was bad news, he always gave her a crap feelin’. She said she knew Denny raped Amy, told us without us askin’. Apparently, Emily was the only one she told and Amy swore her to secrecy. She said she hates Denny mainly because he raped Amy, obviously, but also because Amy, ‘faded away’, her words, after the incident. They lost touch when Emily moved to Carmel, Amy doin’ it, not returnin’ calls or, if they made plans to meet up, Amy would cancel. Emily eventually quit tryin’ and feels like shit now. She says she remembers the night Amy was drugged ‘like it was yesterday’, her words again and she’s the one who brought it up, I didn’t feed her nothin’. She remembers it because she just knew Denny slipped Amy somethin’. She’s willin’ to testify to the rape or anything we want her to testify to, hell, she’d try to convince a jury she was there when he hacked away at Marie, she’s so ready to testify. She’s pretty pissed Amy’s dead, probably feels some guilt. According to her, she has it figured out and her finger is pointed firmly in Denny’s direction.”

“Hearsay. She won’t help much.”

“Corroborate the note Amy wrote, should we need to use it.”

This was true.

“Also got a hit on the Audi,” Sully went on.

“Yeah?”

“Boys went over it, nothing there, totally clean, ‘cept it was so clean they figured he’d had it done professional-like so they did the rounds. Hit on a valet service on the other side of Indianapolis, out of his way, not close to here, not close to Cheryl.”

“Thinks to put us off the scent,” Colt noted.

“Yeah, ‘cept the Feds are persistent, they needed to, they’d check every professional car wash from here to Louisville, up to Chicago, over to Springfield and across to Cincinnati if they had to.”

“So they found something?”

“Yeah, man. He’d done a job on it himself but, as you could imagine, they found blood and not a little of it. They remembered it and were freaked by it but he gave them the same ole with the whole, ‘I’m Lieutenant Colton’ business, flashed a badge and told them he’d been injured in the line of duty or some crap.”

Colt felt his jaw grow tight before he stated, “That shit’s gettin’ old.”

“I can imagine,” Sully muttered, feeling his pain, then went on. “Identified him in a photo. Evidence is washed away but witness who cleaned is willin’ to testify to what he saw, or, more to the point, cleaned.”

“At least it’s somethin’.”

“We got more.”

Colt looked at his friend and Sully continued.

“Feds had some expert compare the note Denny sent to Amy and some writing we found at his house and the writing on the back of the high school note from Angie to Feb. Denny wasn’t bein’ so careful years ago when he sent his threat to Amy after she fell pregnant, he wrote it out long hand. Expert says all the writing matched. They’re sendin’ the glass from the frame to be analyzed.”