I get to Dallas in the wee hours of the morning and check into a small independent motel as Miranda Henley. I sleep for three or four hours, then wake up and spend time on Facebook checking out Candace Price.
I scan down her Timeline and see that she loves shopping. She posts many of her purchases as if she were a fashion blogger. She seems to be in real estate and posts some of her listings. None of them is very high priced.
I open the pizza that I got on the way, and as I read the screen and flick through her pictures, I take off the peppers and onions before biting into it.
Candace Price is clearly a partier. Every few days she posts selfies of where she was the night before, usually in a club or a bar with lots of people in the background.
I click through her photos as I eat, and there are many of them. Finally I click to one of her sitting in a stadium at a ball game, Gordon Keegan sitting next to her, staring at the field. This one was only taken last fall.
I recognize Keegan’s profile, but would anyone else? I scroll my cursor over his face, but it’s not tagged. Even so, I’m convinced now that Candace is a key person to help me take Keegan down. I get my legal pad and list everything I can figure out about her. I get her real estate office name and phone number from the signs in the yards of the listings she’s posted. On those listings, I find her personal cell phone number. I scroll through her posts and find where she likes to shop, narrowing it down to an area of town. I see her car in another photo. It’s a white Mercedes SUV, a high-ticket item. Her license plate is even visible, so I get her tag number.
Then I see pictures of her on a Viking cruise ship, floating past the Greek Islands, a picture of her at the Vatican, another of her in a bikini at the beach in Turks and Caicos. She gets around. It seems like she makes a lot of money for a Realtor with low-priced listings. I spend the next couple of hours writing down every fact I can find about her, every potential lead to follow. Then I do a search on the Internet and find her address. It isn’t that hard.
I’ll have to get a car today so I can follow her around. I’ll need to stay in Dallas for a while. That makes me nervous, because it’s only three hours from Shreveport, but I don’t have any other choice if I want to expose Keegan and get my life back.
After I shower, I turn on the TV and watch an hour and a half of the news cycle, waiting for anything about myself.
After a couple of hours, Fox News’s show Outnumbered comes on, and I’m in the fourth segment. As they show pictures of me as my former self and talk about what I did in Shady Grove, they play clips of Laura and her family reunited. Miss Lucy is sobbing as she embraces her granddaughter. It makes all I went through worth it. Sandra is holding her grandchild as if they’ve already bonded. They show pictures of their horrific captors.
Then they talk about me.
“This morning, a Shreveport TV station aired photographs of the Brent Pace crime scene. This is a grim reminder of what Casey Cox is alleged to have done to her close friend.”
They flash a picture of Brent’s body on the floor, just as I’d found him. His face is blurred out, along with the knife wounds, but the blood is visible. I can’t even look.
“Casey Cox should be found and prosecuted for the brutal murder of Brent Pace, regardless of what happened in Shady Grove. Mark my word, there is something sinister that explains why she was in that house and saw the kidnapped girl.”
“I agree,” one of the other leggy panelists says. “And the fact is, the Shady Grove events won’t even be admissible in court. The jury won’t be told what she did in Georgia.”
“But you honestly think the jurors won’t have heard about that? Let’s face it, it’s going to be hard to get objective jurors who haven’t followed the news about her.”
“They will be instructed not to consider anything except the evidence presented regarding Brent Pace. These pictures will be imprinted on their minds.”
I feel sick, like the waitress in the diner. But the nausea just hovers in my chest, with no relief.
“Well, police have to find the girl first.” The blonde who’s been quiet stops the others with that comment. “I have to wonder if she really is the one who murdered Brent Pace. If she risked her own exposure to rescue the kidnapped girl, does she really have it in her to be a killer?”
“If she didn’t do it, why did she run?” one of the other women says. “Police haven’t been able to find her to interview her, so we don’t know what she might have told them. And let’s not forget all her DNA left at the scene, plus the knife found in her car, along with a blood trail.”
It’s almost like it’s a game to them.
If only there were other journalists courageous enough to dig like Brent did, but then they’d just end up dead. When the segment is over, I turn off the TV and sit alone on the bed, hugging my knees. I want so badly to go home to see my little niece, breathe in the scent of her. I want to see her reach out to me, and teach her to call me Cay-Cay. I want to see my mom.
I think back to the things that Dylan said in the emails we exchanged with each other. He’s been through a lot, too, and he leans on the Bible. Maybe I should give it a chance. I reach into the bed table drawer for the Gideon Bible that always seems to be there. There’s a navy-blue book with the stamp of the Gideons at the bottom, but there’s also another one there—a leather-bound Bible that looks well used. I pull it out and open the front. There is a name inside—Cole Whittington—and I see a folded paper sticking out of the top. I pull out that page, unfold it, and read:
Dear Daphne,
By the time you find this, I’ll be dead.
I almost choke, then catch my breath and read on.
I didn’t want to do it without saying goodbye, but I want you to know how much I love you. You have been a beautiful picture of God’s love for me since the day I met you, and I cherish it. But these last few weeks have been a nightmare for all of us, and I want it to end. I love our children, and this threat hanging over our heads is too intense. I can’t let them suffer while I’m dragged through the gutter. It has to end for the sake of everyone I love. Please remember me to the kids the way I was before the accusations, not after, and let them know that their daddy cherished them too.
He signs it Cole. My heart hammers as I look around the room for signs of blood or anything that indicates he killed himself right here. But if he’s dead, they clearly didn’t find the note or the Bible.
If he killed himself, then his wife needs to have this Bible.
I summon my strength and go down to the desk. A girl is working, busy over her computer, but she looks up at me and smiles. “May I help you?”
“Yes,” I say. “I’m in room 138, and I was just wondering, has anything weird happened in that room?”
She frowns. “Anything weird? Like what do you mean?”
“Like maybe a death? A suicide, maybe?”
She doesn’t bat an eye. She just grins and shakes her head. “No, ma’am. I’m sure I would know. I’ve worked here for five years. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’m just getting a vibe.”
“If the room’s not acceptable, I could move you.”
I think of telling her about the suicide note and the Bible I found, but then I’d have to hand it over for her to return it, and what if they just throw it in Lost and Found? No, someone’s got to make sure his family gets it. “No, that’s okay,” I say. “I’m fine. Just . . . never mind.”
I know she thinks I’m a kook, and now I wonder if I’ve called too much attention to myself. “Could I get a Diet Coke?” I say, hoping to change the subject.
“Sure,” she says and reaches into the little store next to the desk. She gets one out of the fridge, sets it on the counter. “You want to add this to your room?”
I pay cash right there, then ask, “And how late is the pool open?”
I hope these last questions will distract her from thinking I’m a wannabe medium. I take my Diet Coke and go back to my room. I read over the note again, extracting all the clues I can. I feel an intense sense of responsibility, as if this should trump all else in my life, but I know that’s crazy.
I should just let it go and turn the Bible in at the desk. But what if he killed himself somewhere else, and his family members don’t know there’s a note? What if it could give his wife some comfort?
I can almost hear my sister’s voice, telling me to mind my own business. Any departure from my plan puts me more at risk of being caught and killed. But the thought of that note plagues me.
I stuff the Bible into my bag. I’ll decide what to do later. But first I need to do what I came here to do, and for that, I have to find a car.
I search Craigslist and find one that looks like it’ll do, one that I can afford that is offered by an individual, so I call them and ask about it. They’re willing to bring it to the Kroger parking lot a block down from my motel so I can test drive it. I leave the hotel and walk down.
It’s a ten-year-old black Honda Accord with 100,000 miles and a scrape on the back left fender, but it drives fine. The person selling it is a seventy-year-old man, and he says it belonged to his deceased wife. I offer him cash, and he accepts it. He doesn’t remember to take off the tag that’s in his name, and I don’t remind him. Armed with the title signed over to Miranda Henley, I drive back to my motel.
My main task will be following Candace Price in hopes of getting some sort of condemning evidence about Keegan. Even so, I can’t get that suicide note out of my head. I decide to take a detour. I have to find Cole Whittington’s family to see if he carried out his suicide plan somewhere else, and give them these last words from him. Once that’s done, I’ll be able to move on.