Page 103 of No Cap

“Hey, it’s me,” Devin Shaw, my contact in New Hampshire in charge of finding Alana El Dorado, said. “I have some news.”

There was a long pause and then I said, “Okay.”

“I thought maybe you might guess.” He chuckled. “This is about to blow another of your cases wide open.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I got Alana in here, and she was telling me all about herself.” She paused. “Did you know she used to be a resident of Dallas, Texas?”

I tried to widen my eyes to get the sleep out of them, but it was proving hard.

My mind was wide awake, though.

“No, I didn’t,” I admitted. “Alana was an afterthought. I didn’t do much research into her. Why?”

“Well, one, we just found a hit on a case you’re working. A train versus pedestrian one,” Devin murmured. “Two, we only had that because she offered up her DNA, then gave us two confessions. One from a few weeks ago when she was down in Dallas watching Taite’s show, and another from years ago. One involving a train and one of her best friends.”

Wide awake now, I sat up so abruptly that I knocked Hollis off of me.

“You’re such an asshole,” she grumbled as she curled into my back, her face pressing against my skin.

“Tell me everything,” I urged, my heart in my throat.

“I’ll let her tell you,” he said. “I recorded the confession. Sent it to your phone before I called. I’ll have her transported down there for the next step.”

After thanking Devin, I nervously went to my phone’s email and pulled it up.

The first email to pop up was the one from Devin.

Clicking on it, I hit the video play button and waited.

Alana, beautiful despite being in a barren interrogation room, was staring at the screen looking green.

“One, tell me what happened a few nights ago,” Devin urged.

Alana looked away from the screen and focused on Devin, reciting everything that happened that night, matching Taite’s story exactly.

A long time later, he said, “And tell me about this friend who was hit by a train.”

That’s when the woman beside me sat up, her hair a fuckin’ mess, and stared at the screen with me.

“Uh, well,” Alana hesitated. “I changed my name from Rose Bloom when I was nineteen. When I was eighteen, I left Dallas behind because I had a friend die.”

“A friend?” Devin asked.

“Yeah, a friend.” She looked back at the screen before turning back to Devin. “I, uh, pushed her.”

My mouth fell open.

“How did you push her?” Devin was confused.

“My friend. She was standing on the top of the tunnel. We were fighting, and I got mad, and I pushed her. She fell in front of the train right when it was going through the tunnel.” Alana looked down at her lap. “I didn’t mean to.”

“How about you start from the beginning?” Devin suggested.

A knock on the door had them both turning toward it, and Devin got up and answered it.

A police officer poked his head in and said, “Her counsel is here.”

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