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“Busy down there. Check-in time.” Hayes’s chattiness barely registered. “I picked up a list of nearby restaurants that deliver from the concierge. How do you feel about Indian food?”
She blinked, struggling to push away the intrusive memories. As he put his purchases away, she said, “Your computer dinged while you were gone. You said you were running a search?”
He came over carrying two bottles of water and handed her one before sitting down in front of the laptop again. “Yeah. I was cross-referencing addresses for Thorne and Bradbury. Nothing showed up so I…” He pulled the computer closer to study it.
She watched excitement flicker across his expression. “What?”
“I tried his mother, Patti Wallace, and Bradbury.” Reese got up and rounded the table to view the screen. “They shared an address almost twenty years ago.”
“For how long?”
He scrolled, searching for the answer. “At least eight months. Wait. Wallace applied for utilities in her own name a year later. So eight to twelve months.”
“She moved in with him six months after Stephen Thorne burned his mother’s house down.” They looked at each other. “Wallace’s best friend said Patti landed with her for a while after the fire, but Stephen was sent away for a few years.”
Hayes nodded. “The sealed juvie record. I’m guessing a defense attorney made a case for self-defense, given the abuse he’d endured as a kid. That and his age would have been mitigating factors.”
“But just because Thorne didn’t live with them at the time doesn’t mean he and Bradbury never met.” The man could have accompanied Wallace on a visit to her son. Wallace and Bradbury could have remained friends even after they split up.
“I’ll message Loffler.” Reese grabbed her phone.
“And I’ll take Mendes.”
Another text came in as she was finishing up.
U coming or not???
She stood, staring at the note. It was shortly after five. Kervin must have just gotten to his car after work. The message bespoke all the urgency he’d displayed earlier that day. A moment later, he shared a location pin for the crematorium.
“Is that from Loffler?”
“No.” She drew a breath. Readied for combat. “It’s Kervin. I want to meet him tonight.”
She saw his answer before he even spoke and hurried on. “You heard Mendes. They’re closing in on Thorne. They may already have him in cuffs before we leave. And we’ll have a police escort to a building that should be deserted except for Kervin.” When he didn’t answer immediately, she pressed, “It shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes. And it’s like you said earlier. It’s maddening to depend on other people for information. But we don’t quit looking for it just because the answers will come from someone else.”
“His info isn’t going to change for having to wait a few days.”
“This is important to me, Hayes.” Her quiet words had the desired effect. “I wish I didn’t have to depend on strangers to color in what little I know of my only remaining family.” Reese wished, quite desperately, that she could continue hiding from those details. “But that’s the hand I’m dealt. I’ve waited too long already.” She’d been a willing participant in her own ignorance on the subject. She could afford to be while Julia was alive. But now her brother’s well-being depended upon her being at least cognizant of his needs.
“What time did he say?”
Her heart leaped at the resignation in Hayes’s tone. “Eight.”
“I’ll call Starr. Have him meet us here and escort us to the crematorium.” His expression hardened. “But you’re not paying that leech a grand, no matter what he claims to know.”
She nodded. “We’re agreed on that.”
The sun was doinga slow bleed into the horizon when they left the motel. Rolling Acres Crematorium and Aquamation was in Escondido, only a few miles from Tranquility Lakes. But at Reese’s urging, they’d set out forty-five minutes early. Fridays in San Diego meant heavier than usual traffic, although at this time, they might escape the worst of it.
Hayes was at the wheel of Julia’s vehicle. Reese leaned over for a better look in the rearview. Officer Starr’s cruiser was still right behind them.
“I have an idea contextually, but explain aquamation to me.”
“I had to look it up myself when Kervin mentioned it,” Reese admitted. “Basically it’s another form of cremation, a greener option than a furnace. It uses water, heat, and an alkali solution to reduce a body to its bones without releasing air emissions, or greenhouse gases. The liquid can be disposed of through the sewer system.”
“Intriguing.”
That was one way to describe it. But the idea of dissolving someone’s DNA in a manner of hours left her a little squeamish.