“What?? No, I–” He choked a little on his Twix, still with that infernal chocolate daub at the corner of his mouth.
Doug let out a quiet huff of amusement from the bench beside them.
“Seems to me,” Melissa went on, “that if someone was questioning me about a serious crime, I’d take the whole thing a little more seriously.”
“I do! I am! I mean – aw, shit. Look, it’s just…like you said, that won’t happen to me, and so I–”
“Digging the hole deeper, Daniel.”
“I’m not trying to!” He was pink in the face, now, panting hard.
Good, she thought, savagely.Be afraid. Feel a little of that panic.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and she gave him a stone-cold glance and a raised finger. “Hold that thought. This is Dixon,” she answered, cartwheeling internally because the screen informed her it was the lab calling.
“Hey, Detective, this is Gloria Ross,” greeted a tech she didn’t know, voice positively frothy with excitement. “We got a hit in the system on that blood sample you brought us. Tobias Santini.”
Melissa had taken a sip of coffee, and struggled to swallow it, stomach gone cold and hollow. “What?” she croaked, and put her back to Daniel, who was still breathing like a lathered horse. “Can you repeat that, please?”
“Tobias Santini,” Gloria Ross repeated, and the name was just as much a one-two punch as it had been seconds before.
Dana hadn’t been hallucinating. Melissa pictured him, hood drawn up over his dark hair, dark eyes glittering in the wash of light from inside the apartment, crouched, waiting, watching.
She shuddered. “What’s he in the system for?”
“Aggravated Assault, fifteen years ago. Had to drop out of his senior year of high school. Spent three years in Rikers.”
Melissa’s head felt full of wool. “How did we not – we didn’t know. When we did preliminary interviews–”
“Ah, okay,” Gloria said. Sound of a keyboard clicking in the background. “The sample pinged a Toby Renfroe, but he’s dead – died four years ago, according to records. It was an exact match, though, for one of the DNA samples you and Detective Contreras collected a few days ago: Tobias Santini.”
“Does that mean…twins?”
“No. It means they’re the same person. Renfroe had the assault record and did the time. Sorry, I didn’t – I got ahead of myself before.” She let out a nervous, squeaky laugh. “I’m new, and this is my first big case, so I didn’t–”
“Ross.”
“Right. Toby Renfroe did three years, struggled when he got out, and, apparently faked his own death. HeisTobias Santini.”
“Good God,” she said, lips numb.
“The lab’s been backed up,” Ross said, apologetically.
And therefore their initial database searches of “Tobias Santini” had revealed nothing criminal nor concerning.
“Thanks,” Melissa said, “I gotta go.”
“You’re–”
She hung up and fired off a quick text to Contreras, not sure if he would read it.Tobias using alias. Did 3 for AA. Toby Renfroe.
Her heart was knocking hard as she turned back around. Daniel had retaken the bench, sitting glum and curled in on himself. Doug was, as before, staring into the middle distance.
Should she walk back down the hall? Interrupt the interview to give Contreras the new info in person? At the precinct, the answer would have been yes. There was no point in holding these two if Tobias – Toby, whatever – had just leaped to the top of the list. And, shit, Contreras might even be in danger one-on-one with the guy, given his record, and what he’d done to the girls.
She felt sick.
“Guys, I’m–”