Page 44

It took a short amount of time to realize one is of the cellar doors that went to the torture room in the abandoned house. I compared his drawing to one of the old photographs from fifteen years prior and it’s amazing the details he remembered. Another shows two silhouettes – a dark, heavy-handed one in the foreground, obviously male while a lighter,almost blurry silhouette of a woman in the background. Tyler is convinced that he had been drawing Porscha’s ghost.
It sounds silly now, since Porscha is among the living, but maybe it was the ghost of his troubled thoughts.
Another is just a bunch of lines, but it’s got his initials like the others so it’s meant to be a drawing. We’ve tried connecting them, laying maps over them, and it does no good. From where I’m standing it just looks random.
There’s a few more that appear to be nature drawings of nothing in particular, and then the one that bothers me the most. It appears to be stones, each growing in size down a long line. There’s fourteen in total.
Maybe it represents the victims. But does it mean Alastair killed fourteen himself, or are we reading too much into this looking for clues? He put all these things on the walls that surrounded him for years, so they have to mean something.
Tyler’s phone goes off, and I pull my attention from the wall of art. Jensen walks up to my side, staring at the same pictures. “Heard from your father?”
My mouth goes dry. I didn’t tell any of them about the chat I had with Bradshaw earlier in the month, but I did phone my father afterwards for answers. He didn’t pick up, and Mom finally took my calls when I blew up the house phone. She told me he was off playing golf.
That was weeks ago.
“He’s avoiding me,” I reply, not looking his way. It’s a touchy subject, and I’m not even sure I want to talk about it until I’ve spoken to him. My father might lie, but I want to hear things from his side and see if it even lines up with what others have told me. “Let’s just… focus on this.”
“I wish the book she wrote told us a location,” Jensen replies, flipping back to the topic at hand without question. He’s good at backing off when he needs to. “It’s like a fetish story.”
“It’s creepy,” I agree. I didn’t end up telling my team Vinny read the book first. Usually when it comes to a case I keep no secrets between myself and my team members regarding anything that could affect our work. Vinny read the book, and I’m certain he’s set his sights on Porscha now. I don’t know if he would actually ever make a move against her, being Jo’s mom and all, but he wasn’t a fan of Porscha to begin with. The book definitely didn’t help.
“All it proves is she had a thing for Alastair,” he goes on. “But why? He was dating Jo.”
“Maybe she didn’t know that in the beginning. If the two of them were in on the murders together, they likely crossed paths before Jo would’ve introduced them. She said in her interviews that she avoided doing so until she felt she absolutely had no choice. Vinny was already her boyfriend and mommy dearest didn’t like that. I can’t imagine Jo thought it would go over well to mention a second boyfriend.”
Jensen chuckles. “Probably not. But Porscha writing a love story between herself and a high school kid is pretty gross. And what about the Professor? Hermes?”
“Artemis.” I correct and he smirks. Jensen thinks he’s funny. “She’s still unemployed after being let go by the university.”
“And no suspicious activity since?” I confirm. I haven’t been following the professor much. Gabe’s been focused more on suspects from the school, and Jensen’s keeping his eyes on the Ajellos so he can learn more about the family and organized crime. He isn’t as familiar with them as Gabe, and I want fresh eyes watching them. Xeno bringing the book to Vinny was a show of good faith, but the family still isn’t really on our side.
“Not that we can tell. Soto said she hadn’t had any new activity on her socials, and the only people appearing at her house are delivery drivers.”
That’s unhelpful. “And nothing about the tunnels at the penitentiary?"
“The interim warden is a little bitch, remember?” Gabe tells me with a chuckle. “She’s hellbent on keeping everyone out of there. We did our initial search, but the tunnels aren’t structurally sound. Porscha probably didn’t have the time to reinforce them, and when we did a sweep through there initially there didn’t seem to be signs that she preplanned. She’s lucky it didn’t collapse while they were escaping.”
“Porscha got the penitentiary blueprints from someone,” I sigh. “Bradshaw is adamant it wasn’t him. It could have been Kyle, but he shouldn’t have access to them. He was just a guard and a new transfer at that. Keep looking into it, though.”
Jensen nods, clearing his throat. “There’s also the part about the original case missing details-”
“Uh, guys?” Tyler says, shoving her phone into her pocket as I turn my attention to her. “That was the tipline. I was checking to see if anything new came in. While I was on the phone, someone called about a woman matching the description of Porscha. They said she’s bleeding, wandering down the side of the highway.”
Chapter 15
Because Russell is one of our best friends who does some of the most illegal work, he calls Vinny when his phone alerts him that the FBI tip line has certain key words from a caller. I don’t really know how he set that up, and remaining oblivious to his methods feels like the safer route.
Once my husband relays the message to me, I reach for my shoes. “We have to go meet them.”
“That’s a bad idea,” he tells me instantly, not moving towards the door. “The report didn’t say if it was actually Porscha that was bleeding. It could be someone else’s blood.”
“My mother may be a nutcase,” I tell him, “but she’s careful. If she’s casually walking down the side of the highway for everyone to see, something happened.”
He nods, knowing I’m right. She’s been cautious all this time, and now suddenly she’s letting herself be seen in broad daylight ? If the blood isn’t hers, I’d be surprised.
I wait for the panic and fear to set in, the worry that my mother might be hurt, but the feeling never comes. My hearthas gone cold when it comes to Porscha Surwright, and there’s nothing she could say or do now to change that.
Maybe this is all she ever was.