Page 86 of Never Stay Gone
“Lover?” Amanda’s voice was high, sharp. “Jessica wasengaged.”
“Yes, she was. She was also seein’ someone else—and havin’ another man’s baby.”
The water bottle Shane had given Joey had still been on the floor in interview room two, and Dakota had bagged it up and sent it to Dr. Trevino for a DNA match earlier that week. Dr. Trevino had confirmed it: the baby wasn’t Joey’s.
“Jessica?” Amanda’s hands were flat on the desktop, fingertips gripping the blotter. “No, she wouldn’t—”
“We found the motel because we were trackin’ this man.” Dakota laid out another picture, this time Frank Lynn’s driver’s license photo. Poor Frank Lynn, always in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was a mean drunk, a wife beater, and a deadbeat dad, but he wasn’t a killer. “We tracked a call from him to a pay phone in this parkin’ lot. We also had an APB out on his car. A few days ago, we found him and his car at the bottom of a stock pond ’bout ten miles from the motel. The water did a good job of gettin' rid of evidence, but we were able to see that Frank was killed the same way all the girls in the desert grave were: manual strangulation. The bruises left on his neck are the same size and shape as the bruises left on Wayne’s other victims.”
“You think Wayne killed this…” Amanda peered at the photo, her eyes narrowing. “Frank Lynn too? And dumped his car? Why would he do that?”
“We think Frank saw who Jessica was meeting that night in the motel.”
Finally, Drew went still. His fidgeting stopped. The frantic batting of his phone back and forth between his palms ceased. He kept his head bowed, eyes almost nailed to the ground.
“We believe Wayne was lyin’ in wait for Jessica in the motel parkin’ lot, but when he saw Frank, saw him lookin’ at Jessica and her lover, Wayne decided he had to act.” Dakota plowed ahead, even as Amanda opened her mouth to try to say something. “Everythin’ Wayne did—all of these other murders—were to conceal the only murder that really mattered to him: killin’ Jessica and her baby.”
“What possible motivation could Wayne have had for killing Jessica and her child?” Amanda cried.
“He was gettin' rid of inconvenient truths,” Dakota said slowly.
That was their signal. Shane, at the other end of the wire, dialed a number.
Inside the governor’s office, somewhere between Amanda and Drew, a phone vibrated.
Both of them went as still as death.
“You’re going to want to answer that,” Heath said.
“That’s not mine—” Amanda started.
Dakota stood, whipping out a search warrant from the back pocket of his jeans. He slapped it down in front of Amanda as Heath and Bennet sprang to their feet, circling either side of the desk to start ripping out drawers. “Call it again!” Heath called to the surveillance team as the vibration stopped. It started up again.
“What the hell is going on?” Amanda bellowed. “Dakota, what the fuck are you doing?”
“We have a warrant to search this office and both of your persons for that cell phone,” he said. The phone ringing, vibrating, clattering. Only once during the entire week had it turned on, pinging a location inside the governor’s mansion. After a lot of hand-wringing and a sealed filing with a judge, the Chief Ranger got permission to send a signal that would force the phone to turn back on for a more precise location trace.
Finding it, though, wasn’t enough.But you don’t know for certain.
Everything they had was circumstantial. Wayne on video at the truck stop was good, but not good enough. There weren’t any forensic ties between Wayne and the victims. No trace evidence left behind on their bodies. Wayne had used his burner phone when he was in Big Bend, keeping his personal cell off, for the most part. It was the burner that he’d used to text Shelly—Shelly’s number was one of the two left behind on it. The other number led them here.
They needed a confession to these crimes, from the only person still able to provide one.
“You can’t do this!” Amanda shouted. She lunged for Heath as he tore out her middle desk drawer. Bennet grabbed her, bear-hugging her from the back and dragging her away from the desk. She snarled, tried to scratch at him, kicked backward with her heels.
Dakota turned and found Drew plastered to the far wall, eyes wide, breathing fast. He looked like a rat caught in a trap.
Heath upended the drawer, scattering pens and lip balm and stationery and thumb drives across the carpet. They all heard the vibration, the clatter of a phone magnified like it was encased in a drum. Heath shook the drawer upside down, and a thin piece of wood followed the rest of the crap to the floor: a false bottom.
Amanda made an inhuman sound, something between a snarl and a scream, and tried one more time to fight her way out of Bennet’s hold.
The phone Wayne had texted from his burner fell into Heath’s hand. He passed it to Dakota.
Dakota answered the call. “Shane?”
“Read you loud and clear,” Shane said. “It’s a match.”
Dakota hung up and turned to Amanda. She wasn’t fighting for freedom anymore, but she still seemed like a caged animal, a tiger biding its time. Hatred gleamed from her eyes, a malevolence that crackled like lightning.
