His first call was to Liz, and she answered her phone by saying, “Hello, Howard.”
“It’s me. I took his phone.”
“Rob? What in the…” He heard her take a breath, and the background noise told him she was in the newsroom and didn’t want to be overheard. “Oh, Rick. Sorry, your connection’s terrible. I was confused.”
It was an awkward cover, but he knew that she sat four feet from a colleague. He kept his voice soft when he said, “You know the gist of today, I take it?”
“The gist, yes. Details, no.”
“I found her at her father’s house. She’d been dead for a while. Needle at her side. A song playing on her phone that I can’t get out of my mind.” He cleared his throat. “She was an addict, Liz, but not a suicide case. On the same day someone tried to kill me, she randomly overdoses? I’m not buying it.”
She was quiet, and he said, “I’m hoping you had some luck with the ME reports. I really want to see the toxicology on those, Liz. I need to.”
“Hang on a minute, would you, Rick? I want to get outside. Maybe it’s my phone and not yours.”
He waited in silence while she left the newsroom and found a quiet spot, and then she spoke again, her voice hushed. “I’ve got a call in to the medical examiner, but I also received a call this afternoon. For you.”
“What? Who was looking for me?”
She took a deep breath. “I feel like I shouldn’t even tell you this, because it’s bound to get you in deeper trouble, but it was Bobby Girard.”
“Why did he call you?”
“Because he heard I might know you. He wants you to call him. Says it’s important. Wouldn’t say why.”
“You get his number?”
“Yes.”
She read it to him, and he scribbled it down on the back of a receipt that was jammed in the cup holder of the Mustang.
“You’ve gone from an emergency room to a police station in under twenty-four hours, Rob.”
For a long moment there was nothing but white noise on the line, and then she said, “Right. That won’t discourage you. So when you go missing today, I’ll tell the police you were headed to Bobby Girard’s before you disappeared. Got it.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Sure.”
She hung up, and he wanted to call back and say something better, but he didn’t know what that was. Instead, he called Bobby Girard.
“It’s Rob Barrett. Heard you wanted to get in touch with me.”
“And I heard you nearly got clipped.”
“What’s up, Bobby? I don’t have time to waste.”
“Ain’t no wasted time here, man. I got something to show you.”
“You’re two hours south of me. Just tell me what you have to say.”
“It’s not something I can tell you. I gotta show you.” When Barrett didn’t answer immediately, Bobby added, “Trust me, it’ll be worth the drive.”
“Isn’t much that’ll make Biddeford worth the drive for me.”
“I think I know how he did it. Still not worth the drive?”