17

DYLAN

The file Rossi left me under the trash can is full of things I’ve been wanting to see. Crime scene photos of Andy Cox’s death, pictures of Rossi’s injuries after his beating, lists of extortion victims, the money laundering flowchart, and a picture taken through glass at a café downtown. The photographer has zoomed in, making the subjects blurry. But I see Keegan and Rollins and three other cops. The photo itself isn’t evidence of anything. They could have been just shooting the breeze over lunch. But the fact that Rossi gave it to me tells me these are men who were part of Keegan’s money-making scheme thirteen years ago.

I don’t know any of them—except for the two I already knew about—and since these were taken over a decade ago, I can only guess there are more involved now. Keegan’s son is suspect, for instance. I played football with him in high school—he was a decent guy and now is a cop—but it’s hard to believe that his dad wouldn’t cut him in on the action. One of these guys might be Maroney, the captain of Rossi’s precinct then. I’ll have to look them all up and make sure I have their names.

I flip the page. The next bit of evidence is a statement given by Casey Cox, then twelve years old, telling Rossi about an anonymous phone threat against her family. The person on the line told her that she needed to shut up about her father’s death, that if she kept insisting it was a murder, she and her mother and sister might wind up “committing suicide” too. Casey interpreted it exactly as she should have.

No wonder she ran after she found Brent. Who would she have gone to with this allegation? She’d clearly trusted Rossi with that information, but if she knew he’d been beaten for his push-back, and that he’d now disappeared, she might have feared he was dead now too. She might have kept her mouth shut for the next decade to protect her mother and sister, and now her baby niece and her brother-in-law. She’d have no choice but to disappear to stay alive, and she’d also think it would keep them from going after her family. No wonder her family was so quick to tell me they believed in Andy’s suicide. It was self-preservation.

The file isn’t conclusive. It’s not enough to put them away, but it’s a start.

I can’t help wondering about Casey, if she’s scared, or tired, or lonely. She seems like a social person, so being on the run might take its toll on her. But I still have no clues as to where she is.

I tell Jim Pace I’m following some leads in the Great Lakes area and have him set up a charter flight to Michigan. I want to find the other man on my list, Gus Marlowe.

Marlowe seems to have gone off the grid, too, but the guy is ex-military, so I manage to get an address through my military database, something I hope Keegan hasn’t had access to. The man gets a military disability check every month. Surely that address will get me close to him.

When Keegan asks where I’m going, I tell him I’ve worked out where she might have gotten off a train, and they buy it.

I get into Grand Rapids near ten o’clock at night, eager to seek out the address I have for Gus Marlowe. I get a rental car and program the GPS on my phone. I follow the directions, but halfway through, the road disappears and my GPS says that it can’t continue.

So the guy lives off a dirt road south of town. Not easy to find at night. I decide to get some sleep and try again in the morning.

I check into a Drury Inn off 28th Street and turn the TV to Fox News. I turn it down low while I’m trying to fall asleep. Sometimes it helps; the background noise stops my brain from processing, and I’m able to relax.

Then I hear Casey’s name. I sit up and grab the remote, turn it up.

       “So if Casey Cox is apprehended, do you think what she did to help that girl will be admissible in court? I mean, that was heroic. She risked her life . . .”

              “She didn’t risk her life,” some attorney says. “She saw the girl after breaking into a house to rob it.”

              “We don’t know that. The grandmother of the girl says that Casey had reason to believe the girl was there. She knowingly walked into danger to get her out, even after being arrested for breaking into that same house once. She knew she could be outed by all this, but she chose to save the girl. I’m just saying that the jury might—”

              “It’ll never be admissible,” someone else interrupts. “She’ll be tried on the murder she allegedly committed. Period. No sane judge would allow the waters to be muddied by what happened in Shady Grove.”

They move on to political talk.

I’m sick that the publicity will make it much harder for her to hide. If I were her, what would I do? She has probably already dyed her hair some color that would distract people from her face. She has likely cut it shorter. I try to imagine her hair in different colors. Which one would she try?

As tough as she is, she’s also fragile. I hope she doesn’t feel hopeless. If only I could talk to her again.

I open my laptop and check the email account we’ve communicated on before. Nothing. I don’t blame her.

I turn off the TV, letting darkness envelop me. I’m so tired that this time I don’t fight sleep. I fall into a surface slumber, the kind where my nightmares have a field day. Suddenly I’m back there, in the Humvee that day, and I get that feeling where the hair on the back of my neck rises, and Tillis curses as he sees something up ahead, and before I can even look, I’m flying back, my ears bursting with the sound, the smell of flesh and fuel burning and the metallic taste of blood . . . then that silence as things seem to go into slow motion.

I wake up drenched with sweat, and I’ve wet myself, as I did that day. As we all did. I’m shaking, so I clean up, then wrap myself in the bedspread, tight enough that I can’t move. It doesn’t help.