The photoshopped rendering I’ve gotten back from our forensic artist is better than I could have hoped. I enlarge it on my laptop screen and lean back and laugh. “This is perfect. Black hair, heavy eye makeup.”
Rollins is driving our rental car tonight, since I don’t want to attract attention in my Jag, and he glances over at me. His breath smells like cough drops, which he sucks on every waking moment, probably to hide the alcohol smell. “Is that how she looked?”
“I only saw her in my headlights for a second, but this is it, man. She just came out of nowhere. Freaked me out. I didn’t know how long she’d been there, what she saw. I tried to find her but she got past me. There were families pulling out of the parking lot, and it was dark, and I looked into each car and didn’t see anyone who looked like her. I still don’t know if she left on foot or drove right past me.”
“Here’s the list of local media who are waiting for the email,” Rollins says, pulling an index card out of his pocket. “Want to send it now?”
“No, the motel guy said she was in a red wig. I’m waiting for that rendering. Maybe I should get a picture of Dylan to send them too.”
Rollins stares through the windshield at the traffic ahead of us on I-20. “Listen to me for a minute,” he says, rubbing his chin.
I turn and look at him. “What?”
“I think you’re making a mistake. You can’t name him as an accessory when we don’t know for sure he’s helping her.”
“Then explain to me how our tracking him led us right to her room tonight. He’s about to lead us to her again, mark my word.”
“But what if that’s not what happened? What if he was tracking her too? We need to talk to him and find out if he saw her.”
“Rollins, what is it with you? You got a man-crush on this guy?”
“Come on,” he says. “I’m just saying that the chief is not going to like it if we make a big stink about him outsourcing the hunt for Casey Cox, and insinuate that his guy flipped, when we don’t know that he did. Why would he, anyway?”
“Okay, the alcohol is addling your brain, dude. You need to dry up.”
He grunts and looks at me. “What are you talking about? I haven’t had a drink all day.”
I twist in my seat and reach into the backseat for the Igloo cooler. I open one of the bottled waters and take a swig. “Vodka.”
He broods for a minute. “I didn’t drink it,” he says. “I’m making sense, Gordon, and you know it.”
“Okay, you want to know why he would turn on us? Maybe he figured the whole thing out, idiot! Maybe he’s talked to her. Maybe he believes her! And if that’s true and he rats us out, then we’re sunk, you and me. Do you get that?”
He gets quiet as he always does when I rag on him. I bite my lip until I taste blood, then I check the GPS locator app that I’ve linked to Dylan’s phone. We’re catching up to him. Should be another fifteen minutes or so.
I think over what Rollins has said. Maybe he’s right about Chief Gates getting a burr in his saddle over our outing Dylan to the world. It would be an embarrassment and would upset Jim and Elise Pace. Maybe it is an overreaction.
A new email appears in my inbox. “Here’s the other picture of her. I’ll just send her pictures for now.”
Rollins is still sulking. I get the index card and turn on the interior light so I can read it. I type the addresses of our contacts at the news outlets, draft the official statement I’m giving them about her recently being seen in their area, and attach her picture.
Then I press Send. “You sure they’re waiting for it?”
“Yep,” Rollins says. “With bated breath.”
“So how close are we to him?” I click on the GPS banner and enlarge it so it fills my screen. I try to locate the blue ball that indicates Dylan’s location, but I don’t see it anymore. “Wait a minute.”
“What?”
“The location. It’s dropped off. Are you kidding me?”
“Maybe he stopped.”
“It’s tracking his phone! There’s no reason it would go off just because he stopped. What the—”
“His battery died?”
I let that sink in, then I slam my hand on the dashboard and curse. I punch the light back out and put my hands over my face. “I don’t believe this. How can this moron let his phone die in the middle of an investigation!”
“So what do we do?” he asks.
“Keep driving. Maybe he’ll realize it’s dead and plug it in.”
But we drive for half an hour more and never find him. Finally, we give up and I seethe as we head back to Dallas.