Page 67 of Never Stay Gone
“Well, sounds like maybe you didn’t get the full picture from the reports. Give me a call if you need anything else, Captain.”
They hung up as Shane opened the video. It was grainy, black and white and shades of gray, starting at twilight and lurching into darkness. Headlights from tractor trailers on the highway occasionally washed out the image. The picture was half a one-story motel, a concrete block of square rooms with boxy air conditioners looming in the windows, and half a cracked and potholed parking lot full of worn-down vehicles. Occasionally, a car pulled up and a man slouched across the lot to his room, most often lugging a case of beer in one hand. It was the kind of place people went when they had no other options.
Shane checked the time on the photo he’d taken of Jackson’s phone screen, then sped the video up to a few minutes before the call. He watched Frank come out of his room at the end of the building, sucking down a cigarette or a joint as he crossed to the pay phone. He looked out over the parking lot as he finished whatever he was smoking, then caged the phone’s plastic stand like he was going to wrestle the thing. He bounced the receiver in his hand before he shoved his quarters in. Took a long time to dial.
The call itself was short. Shane timed the video against the length of the voicemail left on Jackson’s phone. A match: nineteen seconds. Frank looked like he was at a loss for words, struggling to find something to say to his estranged son. He slammed the phone down when he was finished, then grasped the phone case like Shane had grabbed on to the window earlier, like it was all he had to keep him from coming apart.
Frank stayed like that a long moment, then pulled out his pack of cigarettes and lit one, sucking down the nicotine as he paced the length of a parking space between a truck and the phone. Behind him, at the far end of the camera’s view, another car drove into the lot. Parked. Frank reached the end of the spot and turned. He tipped his head back and stared at the sky. The car door at the edge of the video opened. A woman’s slender leg appeared.
Shane’s gaze slipped from Frank to the woman. She appeared in disparate parts: lower legs beneath the hem of a pencil skirt, slender thighs behind dark fabric. High heels, moving quickly toward the far end of the motel. As she walked, more of her came into view, her profile to the camera lens. She had on a flowing top, loose and sleeveless. There was something familiar about her.
Frank, too, seemed captivated. He’d stopped smoking and was staring at her, frozen like a leopard who had just spotted his prey.
Dread settled in Shane’s belly.
She made it to the motel, to the line of doors. Before she knocked on one, she turned, first to the left, as if sweeping the parking lot to see if anyone was watching. Shane’s gaze darted back to Frank. Surely she’d see him. But no: he’d slipped into the shadows beside the parked truck, melting into the darkness. Only his outline made a dent in the light. He peered around the truck’s cab, watching the woman.
It was when she turned to the right that her face came fully into view: Jessica Klein.
Jessica waited, still scanning the parking lot, until the motel room door opened. She smiled as she turned to face whoever was behind it, a big, beaming grin, and stepped inside. Shane couldn’t see who had opened the door.
The door started to close. The motion wasn’t smooth, though. It seemed to freeze halfway, hesitating. Then it rushed shut.
Frank stepped out from the truck’s shadow. He was still looking toward where Jessica had walked into the motel. From his angle, could he see who had opened the door?
Frank dug out another cigarette, lit it, and walked out of the camera frame.
What the fuck had Shane just seen? Jessica Klein at a motel on the outskirts of Odessa, on the night she went missing? In the same place and at the same time as Frank?
Frank was now connected to three of the murdered women.
And the way Frank had looked at Jessica…
But who was Jessica meeting there? He grabbed the case file and shuffled through the papers, searching for the timeline of Jessica’s Klein’s last night. She’d been working late at the office, then had ridden over to the rally for Governor Riggs. Dakota was even in the report and had given his own statement that he’d seen her at the rally.
Shane checked the time stamp on the video. A little before ten p.m., which was near the end of—but not after—Governor Riggs’s rally. Had she sneaked out? If no one knew she’d gone, then she must have. But why? Who was she meeting? Joey? Why would they go to a motel when they lived together?
He grabbed his phone and dialed Joey’s parents’ number. His foot tap-tapped in time to the ticking of the clock, in time to the pounding of his heart. “Hi, Mrs. Carroll, this is Captain Carson. I’m looking for Joey.”
“Captain, if this is something that is going to hurt him, please, I beg you. Call back some other time. He’s not well.”
“I have to ask him a few follow-up questions, ma’am.”
Joey’s mom sighed, but he heard her move through her house, then heard her talking softly to Joey. Joey sounded like he was in bed, like maybe had been in bed since Brian drove him out there and dropped him off. He mumbled and groaned and then choked out a sob when his mom said, “Questions about Jessica.”
Detective Cruz thought he was garbage, but Joey had loved Jessica. Shane recognized the pitch and key of his heartache, of a man who had loved someone with his entire heart and soul.
“Hello?” Joey finally mumbled.
“Joey, this is Shane. From yesterday.”
“Yeah?” Joey sniffed. His voice wavered.
“Joey, I have to ask you a few questions about Jessica. About the night she disappeared. When did you see her last that day?”
“I only saw her that morning. Before she went to work.”
Shane hesitated. “You didn’t see her during the day?”
