Joule showed McQueeny all the information they'd gathered from the tire tracks.
“Here are the license plates of the two other cars that match tracks,” she'd said, scrolling by the pictures, stopping just long enough for him to write them down. “I’d love to have them checked out.”
The officer pulled out his own phone, a blocky, industrial black thing, and he started tapping something for a moment.
Joule and Malcolm stayed silent, the urge to fidget overwhelming. Her fingers interlaced with each other, and it made her think of Cage and the way he wore out the cuffs on his jackets, how he had a fidget toy in his hand or his pocket so often. She watched as Jacob McQueeny wrote down names and addresses, one of which was in a different unit number at the apartment building, and another of which appeared to be a visitor from somewhere on the other side of town.
He tapped at the paper and the neat, tiny addresses he'd written, sliding his notepad slightly closer to them. “I'm not allowed to share this information with you,” he said, even as he tapped his finger and Joule nodded.
Malcolm got into the game then. “I think there's a bug on the wall behind you.” He pointed over the man’s shoulder.
McQueeny managed to sound interested. “Oh, is there?” He turned around and inspected the wall, lingering as he said, “I don't see it.”
“Oh,” Joule grinned as she snapped a picture of the second address, “I think it's gone now.”
Malcolm smiled sideways at Joule as Officer McQueeny turned back around. “Oh, well. I'm sure it's not important.”
The officer nodded and moved back to his paperwork. Joule was going to like officer McQueeny.
She did have to say, “We didn’t find any gravel or specific identifying marks on the other tires, unfortunately.”
They worked piece by piece through the evidence. Until they got to the body they'd found in the desert.
“It hasn’t been ID’d yet?” Joule was stunned.
“No. Not only does the preliminary information not match any missing persons that have been filed, the body was also older and desiccated. Therefore, it’s a very low priority for the San Antonio Medical Examiner's Office.”
Joule hated hearing that. She was certain that finding a body so close to where Sarah was last seen had to mean something. But it couldn’t tell them more if no one examined it.
While she tried not to sulk—there was no time for it—Malcolm talked to the Officer about the things he and Aurora had remembered from Sarah talking to them before she disappeared.
Officer McQueeny then looked to Joule. “When you talked to her, did she say anything unusual?”
“I didn’t talk to her recently,” Joule had to confess. “We hadn't actually talked in a handful of weeks, though we did chat on social media or via email. We were roommates on a previous job. My brother and I, we lost a good friend recently—” It was still hard to say even that. “So, we took a leave of absence. We aren’t part of this job. We weren't here until after Sarah disappeared.”
Would they have been assigned to this job if they had stayed on with HST? It was plausible.
McQueeny turned his attention to Malcolm then, “And you, when did you last speak to your daughter?”
“We spoke to her every several nights. Family check-in, that kind of thing.”
“Wonderful.” McQueeny didn’t look up from the notes he was taking. “And what, if anything, unusual might she have said?”
Malcolm went through all of it, recapping his and Aurora’s recent conversations with Sarah. But Malcolm didn’t change his tone at all, didn't give any hints about what he thought of the things Sarah had said. Things he’d already told Joule and Cage. He was probably hoping for McQueeny to sort the information for himself.
McQueeny stopped him when he talked about Sarah volunteering. “At the Y?”
“Yeah,” Malcolm nodded.
“There's no Y here. She would have had to go into San Antonio on a regular basis.”
“She didn’t mention that. And after she went missing—” his voice cracked but he kept going, “—we got her phone records from our cell provider.” Malcolm had brought a bag with him. He and Aurora had become quite the sleuths in their search for their daughter. He pulled out a stack of printed papers and laid them on the table for the officer. “Phone records from Sarah for the last month. I can get further back.”
There was a pause then Malcolm filled in information that was new to Joule, too.
“She wasn’t going to San Antonio often enough for her to be regularly volunteering two nights a week at the Y. Look where the cell towers ping.” He pointed to several names on the list of each tower Sarah’s cell had linked to and when. “She is going into the desert on those nights, it would appear.”
McQueeny had shuffled through the pages, pulling out the call and text lists. He seemed to have noticed calls to a couple of numbers. “Hold on a second.”
He punched them into his tiny industrial phone. Then he said, “Your tires are a match. Because this phone number that she contacted repeatedly, and it contacted her, is registered to Pablo Torres.”
“They’ve got to be related. That’s the name that holds the lease on one-oh-four.”
“How did you find that out?” McQueeny eyed her, but Joule just pressed her lips together.
She nodded her head and left it at that.
Things finally felt like they were clicking. She didn't know yet what the puzzle picture was, but at least a piece of it was coming together. “Sarah had been calling Torres and Torres had been calling her on a reasonably regular basis?”
McQueeny turned the phone log around to face them. She could see the number came up often. One of them should highlight it.
Malcolm then told McQueeny about when he and Aurora had been knocking on doors. He held up his phone once again. No picture. Just information.
“Hold on.” This time it was McQueeny who held up the phone to Joule and Malcolm. “Is this her?”
It was not a flattering shot, and Joule didn’t know if that was the same woman. She hadn’t been there. But Malcolm did.
“Yes, that’s her. She looked a lot better at her door though.”
“Well, this is a mug shot.”
“Ah yes. We found out she's been arrested multiple times for run ins with Federal Agents.”
Again, McQueeny looked at them as if to ask how they’d gotten that information. Again, both Joule and Malcolm ignored the implied question.
But the officer wasn’t done. “I think I found something that might help.”
Joule’s heart, pounding heavy and full of hope, came to an abrupt stop. She leaned forward, hand splayed out on the table as the officer spoke.
“One of the arresting officers here,” he showed the picture again, “is my mother.”
The ATF one, Joule remembered as she read the name Maeve McQueeny.
But the officer was still going. “I think I know what Sarah was volunteering for.”