Page 106 of 2045 Clementine Lane: Catherine

“Let me go back a step,” Sade says. “When we got his number—Christopher Torey’s—from Antoinette, we called it. It was disconnected. The number wasn’t registered.”

“A burner phone.”

“Yeah. That was when we first got suspicious.”

I lean back in my chair, my mind whirring with the new information.

“So, we followed the same background search patterns that Primrose did. Get this—everything was the same.”

“So, he exists?”

“But then,” Sade grins, “we added the records from the IRS and SSA, and they both came back saying that no such individual exists in their records.”

“So, he what? Faked all the information for his background search?”

“Primrose Proper wouldn’t have had a subpoena to contact the IRS and SSA. So, technically, she did a pretty good job.”

“If she were verifying his employment, he could have just put another cell number down, have someone say he was employed with—?”

“Crowtech.” Sade taps her hands restlessly on the desk. “Once we knew he wasn’t real, we started following up on verifying all the online information.”

“It wasn’t legit.”

“We’re still working on some of it. But essentially, yes. Do you know what this means?”

“Whoever faked the documents for the background search knew exactly what Primrose or Antoinette would be looking for.”

“Yes!”

I smile at the excited look on Sade’s face. “Catherine told me they don’t keep those records. That once the client has been verified, they give them the paperwork so that there’s no sensitive information stored.”

“So, whoever Elizabeth supposedly stood up had to have been a real client at some point.”

“Or someone else who knows how the agency works.”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s a long list to go on. But just the fact that he set up a fake identity and told Antoinette that Lizzie was a no-show…”

“Maybe she wasn’t,” I suggest. “Maybe Elizabethdidshow up to that last date.”

“And our suspect had already planned to kill her,” Sade finishes.

“Good work. Let’s keep trying to trace the origin of those fake documents. Start pushing for access to the cell tower data dump.”

She pauses for a minute. “How would that work…with a burner phone?”

“We start by finding that call to Antoinette, the one that he made to tell her Elizabeth was a no-show and go from there. Once we have a list of suspects, we can cross-reference their personal devices—see if any of them connected to the same cell towers at the same times as the burner phone. Most civilians using a burner wouldn’t think to power off their personal devices while using the burner.”

“Okay.”

I shrug, but I also can’t quite bank my excitement. “It’s a long shot we find anything. But whether it’s this or another lead, this guy made mistakes. We just have to find them.”

“It might take a while to get those records without an actual suspect to back the subpoena. But I’m on it.” She waves to the stack of paperwork I’m still holding. “We also walked the north-south block in either direction of the Moonlight Lounge. A bar two doors down—southside—had exterior cameras on the door. We identified Elizabeth York on Tuesday, June tenth, around one in the morning.”

I move through the stack until I am looking down at black-and-white pictures of Elizabeth, frozen in time. Alive. She’s dressed in the same black dress she died in. Although she and the man she’s with are walking past the camera, it’s clear, and there is no mistaking Elizabeth.

I tap the picture of the man who’s got his arm around Elizabeth’s waist. “We identify him?”

“Not yet.”

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