Page 41 of The Lies We Believe

I don’t know how long I sat there staring at the screen, but by the time I’d blinked back to reality, the screen was black and locked. Tapping it to bring it to life, I prayed I’d see a message icon, but there was nothing. Clicking into our chat, nothing. Not even a read receipt.Call him!But I couldn’t. Instead, I checkedthe tracker app and saw he was still safely tucked away in his room. That would have to be enough for now. I needed to remain focused on my job.

My obsession with my broken angel would have to wait.

“All good?” Montoya asked as I pulled my chair from my desk and sat on it backwards next to her.

“Yup.” I glanced at the grainy CCTV footage on her screen. “Are those the docks?”

“Yeah, from three days ago. I’ve been working backward from today and other than the guy who found our vic, there’s been nothing untoward. I’ve crosschecked the comings and goings of everyone that’s shown up against the shipping logs, and it all matches up. No one else has been near that area.”

I mulled her words over as I signaled Jenkins for a coffee by holding an empty mug in the air. The guy looked wrecked, but nodded as he headed to the kitchen. “What was the guy who found the vic doing there?”

Montoya snorted. “He went for a piss.” She scrolled through the footage to show him walking down there, unbuttoning his pants. “Only advantage to being a guy as I see it.” I arched my brow at her in question. “The ability to piss wherever you want.”

“Mmm.”

“You all have an advantage on a stakeout. You can just whip it out and go in a bottle, whereas I need to get cover in, so I can go to the local store.” She rolled her eyes at me. I’d never thought about it like that, the disadvantages women faced.

Brushing it off, I asked, “Has he been contacted for an interview?”

“Yeah, James Michaels will be in once his boat comes back in. Jenkins took preliminary notes from him first thing.”

It struck me as odd how the guy could go about his day as if he hadn’t witnessed something horrific. Maybe he hadn’t gotten a good look at what was in there, or perhaps the stale scent ofblood was enough to send him packing. We didn’t know now, but we would. Soon.

“Alright, let’s do a full background search on him to see if there’s any way he could be linked to Black Dahlia. Something?—”

“Smells fishy?” She grinned. “I know. It’s all a little too convenient, isn’t it? We finally get the identity of the real Dahlia, and then one of the guys we brought in turns up dead. Doesn’t take a genius to put it all together.”

The day passed slower than molasses, and every minute made the ache in my splintered heart grow larger until it was all I could think about. River was at the forefront of my every thought, no matter how hard I tried to push it down. It turned out James Michaels was a twenty-year-old who’d been working part time for his uncle while attending a university, where he was studying computer science. His mother’s health insurance didn’t cover the full treatment she needed for her quickly advancing multiple sclerosis, so he took on an extra job to help pay for it. The kid was badly shaken up, even though he admitted to only glancing in the container before he called us. The station kept a list of therapists for situations like these, so Montoya referred him to one. Mental health still held a lot of stigma, but Montoya and I were leading the force by providing it for witnesses.

Once we’d concluded his interview, which only served to waste an hour and a half of our time, Daniel called to officially confirm our vic was Max Woolf. My heart sank at the confirmation, even though I already knew it was one of River’s friends. We then spent the rest of the day trawling through reams of CCTV footage of the docks and surrounding areas from the last ten days to see if there were any unusual patterns or individuals that cropped up, but nothing changed. The ebb and flow of people stayed the same until James stumbled into the container this morning.

My eyes felt like they were bleeding. Everything seemed to be made of little black and white blocks. No matter how many times I blinked, my vision didn’t clear, and it only served to aggravate the pounding in my head. “Have you submitted that report to Bower?” I asked Montoya as I leaned back in my chair and stretched my arms over my head, trying to alleviate some of the tension in my shoulders.

“Yup, all done. I could use a stiff drink after today,” she said, signing out of her computer and spinning around to look over my shoulder. “I thought doctors were meant to have the worst handwriting?”

I snorted as I stared at the dockmaster’s shipping logs. “Whoever they are clearly haven’t met fishermen.”

“Come on, up.”

“Ow! What the hell?” I rubbed the back of my head where she’d slapped me. “What was that for?”

“You owe me a drink and pizza.” She pushed up from her chair and kicked it under her desk with a bang.

I pointed at my screen. “Got too much to do, Montoya. Raincheck?”

“Hell no, big guy. You can’t get out of this. Don’t promise a girl food, then take it away. That’s when you get the teeth. Meet you out back in ten.”

“Fine. Fine.” I sighed and rolled my neck as she stomped off with our dirty mugs. The tightness building in my muscles all day hadn’t abated. If anything, it had only increased with every hour that had passed that I hadn’t heard from River. I picked up my phone and swallowed my pride to call him, but the damn thing went straight to voicemail.

A little holein the wall on the west side served the best pizza in Holme Oaks, run by a small Italian family that had been here for three generations. They also made the cheesiest Alfredo pizza, and Montoya was a slave to her taste buds. Apparently, as her pseudo big brother, it was my responsibility to feed her. I was working on the assumption that as long as her mouth was full of the cheesy goodness, she couldn’t fire questions at me.

“So…” My stomach dropped at the weight of that one word. “What happened this morning?” She pinned me with her dark eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. The don’t fuck with me attitude radiating off her even had the servers taking a different route to get to customers.

I tipped my head back and swallowed down a few mouthfuls of beer, trying to come up with anything but the truth. Unfortunately for me, my mind was blank. “I fucked up,” I said simply.

“Well, duh! But how?”

“That’s not a simple question.” I spun the now empty bottle between my fingers.

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