Page 26 of Just Now

“What’s that?” Connor asked.

“I’m seeing here that she connected to Wi-Fi via a VPN, and only used her phone’s signal when she was out and about. There’s literally no history of her using local Wi-Fi. This makes it much harder to hack into her phone and get her information.” Cami shook her head.

She could see Connor was frowning. “So in terms of tracking someone, that makes it more difficult?”

This case sure wasn’t getting any easier. “Yes. It makes it a lot more difficult and it’s not what I was expecting. I was guessing that the three of them might have come across the same person at some stage, somewhere, who’d hacked into their networks and gotten their personal information. At an internet cafe or similar. The other two victims didn’t use VPNs and had much weaker security. But now I’m wondering if that’s the case at all, because hers is good.”

“That means that the killer couldn’t have gotten her personal information off her phone?”

“It would have been extremely difficult or impossible.”

“Maybe he tracked them in person?” Connor suggested. “A more low-tech solution than we’ve been thinking of?”

Cami thought Connor sounded enthused by the prospect of low tech, because boots on the ground was where his strength lay.

Cami nodded. “I guess if he saw all the victims somewhere, if he used a hunting ground and followed them, or got information from them in some other way, then he could have done that. I’m just going to check for any other possibilities.” She scrolled through the phone. “No dating app. No sign of one, not even deleted. It doesn’t look like she was interested in that. And no messages from any love interests that I can see. Just a few work-related texts and texts from her friends in Ohio. She moved out of state when she divorced. Doesn’t look like she had many friends here yet.”

Connor nodded. “You’re getting quite a lot off that phone. Was the divorce acrimonious?”

“Yes, it was acrimonious,” Cami said. “Her husband and her split on bad terms. It seems, from what I’m reading here, that he cheated. He stayed in their home, where he’s living with the woman he was having an affair with. I guess that’s why Priscilla moved out of state.”

“Okay. Makes sense.”

“Exactly,” Cami agreed.

Connor continued, sounding thoughtful, “We need to look at the movements of these three women. Maybe they met someone at a bar or a coffee shop, someone who seemed harmless but was actually gathering information on them.”

“A bar? I’m taking a look now,” Cami said, scrolling through the phone.

“You finding anything?”

“I’m getting something here,” she said. “Priscilla went to a bar twice last week. It’s called Endpoint.”

“Did the others go there?” Connor asked. “Any common ground between them?”

Cami checked the phones, scrolling through, looking for any check-ins, any signs that the others were there.

“I can’t find anything on Kate’s phone,” she said. “But she didn’t use her GPS, or check in to locations, so I can’t see where she physically went. She might have gone there with friends, or paid cash, or been there without leaving a trail behind her. There is a message here to a friend, saying that they’d meet at ‘the usual’ bar, but I don’t know which one that would be. I’m looking in Gracie’s phone now. If we can get two out of the three, I guess we’re getting somewhere?”

“Two out of three would be a start,” Connor said.

Cami continued to scroll through Gracie’s phone, her eyes scanning for any mention of the Endpoint bar.Any check-ins, any arrivals there, any arranged meetings.

How about payments? Were there any payments she could track? Gracie had used an app for a lot of her payments. In fact, she seemed to use it almost all the time, whereas Cami thought that Priscilla had mostly paid cash.

“Now here is something,” she said. “I’ve got a payment here to Endpoint. It’s from about six weeks ago. Do you think that’s too old?”

“Six weeks is possible, I guess. And two out of three confirmed as being there is worth following up. Let’s go there and see. The barman might remember Kate, there might be camera footage.” Connor checked his watch. “It’s two p.m. already. So Endpoint should be open. Let’s take a drive there, see what kind of place it is, and do some digging.”

He stood up, and Cami hustled out of the police station alongside him.

The drive to Endpoint gave Cami the chance to think that this bar was well named. The route led them out of the city, through respectable suburbia, into less respectable suburbia, and finally to a road leading out of town, past a few derelict homes.

There was the bar.

It seemed like a biker bar. There were several motorcycles outside, along with a few muscle cars and trucks. She got the impression, immediately, that this was a rough place.

As they arrived, a customer was leaving, a solid chunk of a man in a black leather jacket with gray jeans encasing his beefy legs. He stared at them, a mistrustful expression materializing on his square, unfriendly face.

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