Page 73 of Never Stay Gone
He waited while Dr. Trevino lit another cigarette. “I don’t believe I have, Ranger Jennings. And that, I will tell you, is unusual.”
“I believe you there, Doc. Look, lemme get the file and send it to you. Maybe there’s something you can use. She was a missing person I worked for a bit when I was brand-new to the Rangers. I know she was a special kind of case, but I was too new to know all the details.”Jessica made a call.“It’s just a hunch I have right now, but I wanna run it down.”
“Ranger, I have a feeling you’re like a dog with a bone when you get a hunch. I’ll take a look at the file. I can’t make any promises.”
“Just a look, that’s all I’m askin’.”
“Two nights of fajitas.”
“Done.”
She smiled. He could hear it in her voice. “I’ll call you.”
When he hung up, he had a text from Bennet waiting.Carly Hurst? You’re working the desert graves, right? Connection?
Yeah.
His phone rang almost immediately.
“Hey, Bennet.”
“Jesus, don’t tell me you pulled Carly Hurst out of that grave with the other bodies.” Dakota stayed quiet. “Je-sus.”
“We’re keeping the ID under wraps, so you don’t know shit, okay? It looks like the killer thought he was a clever SOB and tried to keep her identity concealed from anyone who might find the grave by fuckin’ her up every way he could.”
“No kidding?” Another curse. “I’m sorry to see this one end like this. I thought she’d run away to Mexico. I really did. Ditched her life and started fresh.”
“Unfortunately, that’s not how it ended.”
“Hell, now I wish you hadn’t texted. But since you did, what can I do for you?”
“What all did you pull during the investigation?”
“Everything. Phone records—which was how we got her location for her lovers’ weekend in Big Bend—bank records, car records, toll road records. Nothing on her bank or credit cards since she disappeared, which makes sense now, since she’s been in the ground, and nothing wildly unusual on her phone records either.”
“Nothin’?”
“For a woman with an interesting and varied love life, she didn’t go to any great lengths to conceal it. All her lovers were right there on the phone bill. We could read her texts, too, once we got the data from the phone company. I don’t know how she kept up with her own life. I couldn’t do it.”
“Can you send over that file? I wanna go through it.”
“See with your own eyes?”
“Yeah, somethin’ like that.”
“Sorry to hear that. I’ll shoot it to you right now. I hope it helps.”
He thanked Bennet, promised he’d swing by and buy him a beer the next time he was in Fort Stockton, and then waited for Bennet’s email. As promised, the file whooshed in a moment later, a bundle of PDFs all neatly labeled:Hurst_Bank, Hurst_Cell, Hurst_Vehicle.He ignored everything except the cell records.
Something dug at him, like a piece of sand stuck in the corner of his eye. Something like a feeling, a curl of a thought, tickling his brain.Jessica made a call.Another case, ten years ago, that had been shelved, declared unsolved, left to gather dust. When he’d pulled it out of archives to review it, he’d been told, “No, not that one.”
The phone company had provided the last ninety days of billable call records and text messages in response to Bennet’s warrant, and, like Bennet had said, they were voluminous. He skipped to the end of the file and worked his way back, ignoring the unanswered calls and texts from after she went missing. There was a long string of missed calls from the same number—noted in the margins as “Husband” in Bennet’s handwriting—and then, all of a sudden, Carly started texting. He checked the date. He’d caught up to when she was still alive.
Nothing much of note. She was texting three other men at the same time she was with her airman lover—damn, she had some endurance—and fielding texts about a variety of social and business obligations. Confirmations of photo shoots and hair appointments, orders placed for limousines to pick her up in Abilene the next week. Fundraisers and political gigs, local dinners and charity functions.
And then, the last day she was in Big Bend, mixed in with all the other texts:Nice to see you! What a surprise!
It would have been lost among the other social texts, another in a long line of similar messages about how great it was to catch up and how nice it had been to meet for coffee or lunch or run into each other at church. Maybe it meant nothing, just another innocuous greeting, a catch-up with an old friend. But maybe it meant something else, like she’djustseen whoever owned that phone and was reaching out to say hello.
