Sinclair Justice (Texas Rangers #2)(42)
Abby said, “Ms. Rothschild came by late to see if I’d care for a cocktail, and when I invited her in, she asked about Jennifer Russell’s Internet communications. Given I’ve seen Ms. Rothschild’s name many times in both victims’ e-mail accounts, I thought it might be of use to interview her. Forgive me if I overstepped my bounds and should have brought her to your office tomorrow, but . . .”
Ross waved an impatient hand. “I trust you to do what’s right, Abigail, and I’m also sure you know how to conduct an interview. You recorded it?” When Abby nodded, some of his sternness was piqued to eagerness. “What did the two of you find out?”
Abby spread out three different pages of the printed Internet communication file. “There are three e-mails from an account we previously dismissed as junk mail from one of the many bars Ms. Russell frequented in downtown Baltimore. A flyer announcing live music, another inviting Ms. Russell to karaoke, and a third advertising a St. Patrick’s Day party.” Abby looked at Emm. “Please tell him what you told me.”
“I was at that St. Patrick’s Day party a bit over a year ago,” Emm said. “The bar owner has his own publicity firm—they did the flyer and e-mail blast—but that was the night Jennifer met him. His name is Brett Umarov, a former rock star whose stage name was, I think, Reefer Marty and the Stoners.”
Ross’s eyes narrowed. He looked at Abby. “That’s a Chechen surname. You cross-reference it?”
Abby nodded, showing him the master list of the users of each IP address. “There is no e-mail account under either of those names.”
“I’m not surprised if Jennifer kept her contacts with him mostly quiet,” Emm inserted. “The night she met him, she was swept away by his guitar playing and stayed out all night, the first time ever, upsetting Yancy. I’d forgotten about this until I saw the flyer. Jennifer was an honor student, and Yancy tried to get her away from this guy, a former rock star who opened his own bar and introduced her to the wrong crowd, but Jennifer was at the rebellious age and wouldn’t listen to her mom.”
Emm tapped the next e-mail listing Abby had highlighted. “This was the karaoke event Yancy invited me to, but I was preparing for my orals and didn’t go. I don’t know precisely what happened, except that she and Brett had some type of confrontation and Jennifer moved out of Yancy’s apartment and into his.” She looked at the date. “This was only a month or so before she was grabbed. The last event I missed, too, for the same reason, but I know it was a big rock music concert, and Jennifer dressed entirely inappropriately.” Emm showed Ross her cell phone. “I e-mailed these pictures to the Baltimore police, but they seemed clueless. They told me they interviewed the employees at this bar but didn’t find anything that led to a person of interest, even though Jennifer disappeared a few days later. I believed them and didn’t realize how key the dates were until I saw these e-mails.”
Ross looked down at the photo of Jennifer in skintight jeans with holes and a tank top that revealed her slim waistline and impressive cleavage. “E-mail me these pictures, please.”
Emm nodded. “Anyway, Yancy told me after Jennifer disappeared that she thought Brett had introduced her to cocaine at that concert. She said the powder was everywhere like snow, and that she suspected he might be a dealer as his band had never sold a bunch of CDs, yet they seemed to have very expensive equipment and played gigs nationwide that she was pretty sure they had to pay for. She’d enlisted me to go with her to Brett’s place to try to talk Jennifer away, but by the time I could schedule it, Jennifer was gone.” Emm’s eyes filled with tears. If only she’d put that meeting first, before her own ambitions . . . Emm started when Abby put a gentle hand on her shoulder and squeezed.
“It’s not your fault,” Abby said. “This is indeed a very viable lead, and we should have questioned you earlier.”
Ross skimmed through the rest of the e-mails. Emm saw his strong throat flexing from some emotion, but she wasn’t sure what. She got control of herself, blew her nose fiercely on the Kleenex Abby offered, and then asked, “Now what?”
Tossing the e-mail list back, Ross said, “Now you come into the office tomorrow for an official finding. Abigail, would you please bring Yancy’s Internet communications also, so we can get Emm to take a look at those? And I’ll put my best people on, making follow-up phone calls tomorrow, do some more digging on the activities at this bar, see if we can come up with some witnesses at these events. And I’ll ask the Baltimore police to interview this Brett character again in more depth.”
Emm frowned. “Don’t you have someone besides the Baltimore police who can interview him? They already did and said they got nothing. I don’t fully trust them.”
“That’s obviously out of my jurisdiction, but I can make a couple of phone calls. You think they’re incompetent or . . . ?” Ross trailed off, obviously not liking what he was hearing, but drug and trafficking money turned a lot of formerly good cops into crooks.
“I don’t know, but the older cop—Ruiz, I think his name is—makes me uneasy. He was very . . . dismissive and cursory in his analysis, so far as I could see,” Emm replied. “I asked about Brett specifically at one point, and he said they’d interviewed him, but he seemed clean and genuinely upset at Jennifer’s disappearance.”