“He works on anything, man. Dude’s a motorhead genius. He even knows how to fix skateboards.”
Jeffrey took a mental step back. He only had one chance with this kid. “You two must be close if he’s working on your skateboards.”
“Nah, man, Axle never did shit for me. Can’t stand my guts.”
Jeffrey had started to sweat. He could feel he was close. “Who does Axle fix skateboards for?”
“His son, only the dude isn’t really his son, like, he never adopted him, even after his mom died.” Felix shook his hair out of his eyes. He was clearly more comfortable with this line of questioning, which is exactly what Jeffrey wanted. “My cuz, he’s the one who got me into skating. I been his shadow since forever. Dude was there when I pulled off my first alley-oop.”
My cuz.
Lena had looked up from her notebook.
Felix’s eyes darted her way.
Jeffrey weighed his options. They could do a search for Felix’s uncles, find the one nicknamed Axle who was in Wheeler State Prison, then drive over there and try to sweat the information out of the con.
Or Jeffrey could join Frank on the phones and call around and see if anyone knew about the kid Axle had raised who wasn’t legally his son.
Or Jeffrey could get the answer from this punk little jackass right now.
Again, he circled around the target, asking Felix, “What’s an alley-oop?”
“Dude, it’s awesome. You spin to one side and air to the other, like a fish breaking out of the water.”
“Sounds hard.”
“Oh, no doubt. You can get a gnarly hipper.”
“What’s your cousin’s name?”
Like a switch being flipped, Felix’s demeanor changed. He was no longer in laid-back skater mode. He was a kid from a criminal family who lived in a bad part of town who knew you didn’t rat out your own blood. “Why?”
Jeffrey knelt down, putting himself at Felix’s level. “They call him Big Bit, right? And you’re Little Bit because you’re his shadow?”
Felix’s eyes darted back to Lena, then to Jeffrey, then back again. He was trying to figure out if he had given too much away.
Jeffrey could only guess at the connections he was trying to make. He needed the words from Felix. He lifted his chin at Lena, indicating she should leave.
Lena folded her notebook closed. She clicked her pen. She walked out the door.
Jeffrey took his time standing up. He walked slowly to Lena’s chair in order to give her time to take position behind the one-way mirror.
He sat down. He gripped his hands together on the table.
He tried to keep his options open, saying, “Daryl’s not in any trouble.”
“Shit.” Felix’s foot started tapping against the floor. “Shit-shit-shit-shit.”
Jeffrey took that as confirmation that he was on the right track. He tried to put himself in Felix’s position. He wasn’t going to flip on his cousin. At least not on purpose. “Felix, I’m going to be straight with you. This is about the construction site on Mercer.”
The tapping stopped. “The storage place?”
“The feds are getting involved because of OSHA violations.” Jeffrey felt the lie spreading like a drug through his brain. “Do you know what an OSHA investigation means?”
“They, like, come in when people are hurt on the job because the bosses are cutting corners.”
“That’s right,” Jeffrey said. “OSHA is looking for witnesses against the bosses. They know Big Bit was working on the site. They want to talk to him off the record.”
His hands came up together because of the handcuffs. He picked at the pimple on his chin. “How bad were people hurt?”
“Really bad.” Jeffrey debated which way to push. Would the offer of a fake reward be too obvious? Should he go back to skateboarding?
In the end, Jeffrey chose silence, which was just as hard for him to pull off as it was for Felix to suffer through.
The kid broke first, saying, “I don’t want to jam up my cuz, yo.”
Jeffrey leaned forward. “Are you worried about his rap sheet?”
Felix’s expression gave him the confirmation. His cousin had an arrest jacket, possibly an outstanding warrant or two. That was why Big Bit had been working on the job site for cash like the other undocumented day laborers. He couldn’t risk his social security number going into the system.
Jeffrey said, “I don’t care if he’s been in trouble before. That’s not what this is about.”
“You don’t get it, dude. I told you—I’ve been like his shadow since I was a little grommet.”
Jeffrey gave up on the lie. He went with a more reliable motivator, self-interest. “All right, Felix. How badly do you want a deal? You haven’t been arraigned yet. I could kick the charge on the dub sacks. Hell, I could lose the paperwork. Just give me his name and you could walk out of here right now.”
Felix started digging at the pimple again.
Jeffrey breathed through his broken nose. He could hear a slight whistle. This was going nowhere. He was going to have to make a decision.
He gave the kid one last chance. “Well?”
“Well, what?” Felix had turned angry. “He’s not even my real cousin, okay? My Uncle Ax shacked up with his mom for, like, a minute before she OD’d, and then he was stuck with him. I mean, we’re close, but we’re not technically related. We don’t even have the same last name.”
Jeffrey clenched his jaw, waiting.
“Okay, yeah,” Felix finally said. “He’s been staying at Axle’s house, right? Like, I’m stuck in Dew-Lolly with damn meth freaks and he’s living it up in Avondale rent-fucking-free.”
“I need his name, Felix.”
“Nesbitt,” Felix said. “Daryl Nesbitt.”
Jeffrey felt his lungs open for the first time in two days. He had almost a full second of relief before the door banged open.
“Chief?” Frank said. “I need you.”
Jeffrey stood up. He felt off balance.
Daryl Nesbitt.
He needed to go back at Felix, figure out why Caterino and Truong had Daryl’s number in their phones. Was Daryl part of the pot business? Were the phone numbers enough of a justification to bring Daryl into the station?
Nesbitt had worked at the jobsite near the fire road. His father fixed damaged cars. Axle Abbott probably had a Dead Blow hammer set in his toolbox, a toolbox that his stepson could be holding onto while his dad was in prison.
Did Daryl have access to a dark-colored van? Was he in the vicinity of the college over the last two days? Jeffrey would need cell phone records. Credit-card statements. Arrest record. Social media.
“Over here.” Frank pulled him down the hall. Something was wrong.
Jeffrey tried to shut down the list in his head, telling Frank, “I already got Daryl’s—”
“The dean just called,” Frank said. “Another student is missing.”
Atlanta
22
“Ugh.” Faith looked up from her phone, giving herself a break from reading so she didn’t get car sick.
Will was driving while she searched police reports, newspaper articles, and social media to pull together a profile of Callie Zanger. Faith had gone into the task thinking that she would prove that Miranda Newberry and her eighty-tab, color-coded spreadsheet was wrong, but everything so far pointed to a victim who had somehow managed to get away.
Will asked, “Well?”
“First off, Callie Zanger is freaking beautiful.”
Will pulled his eyes away from the road to look at the photo on Faith’s phone. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. Zanger was gorgeous. Long, thick hair, perfect button-nose, a chin that could cut diamonds. She probably got up at four every morning to do Pilates and update her vision board.
Faith’s vision board was a tattered photograph of her sleeping.
She gave Will the summary. “Zanger is a named partner at a white-shoe law firm called Guthrie, Hodges and Zanger. Divorced. No children. She specializes in tax litigation. Forty-one years old. Lives in a six-million-dollar penthouse at One Museum across from the High. Was reported missing two years ago, March twenty-eighth.”
“Early morning?” Will asked.
“Probably. She missed a mandatory Wednesday morning meeting. Apparently, she’s a real Type A, never misses a meeting, so everybody freaked. Called the hospitals, the cops, went by her place, checked her gym. Her BMW was in the garage. Zanger’s mother, Veronica Houston-Bailey, was at the downtown Atlanta precinct by noon with her family lawyer, which is why I’m assuming APD didn’t tell her to come back in twenty-four hours.”
“Houston-Bailey of Houston-Bailey Realtors?”
“That’s the one.” The firm was by far the largest commercial real estate company in Atlanta. “For what it’s worth, I agree with APD moving fast on this. High-powered, politically connected, female attorneys don’t just disappear like that. Especially when they’re in the middle of a very nasty, zillion-dollar divorce that’s in the papers and on the news every day.”