Hidden Victims: A Nichelle Clarke Crime Thriller by LynDee Walker

Author:LynDee Walker [Walker, LynDee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn River Publishing
Published: 2020-04-20T22:00:00+00:00

17

I locked the door behind Aaron at 8:30 and yawned like it was 3:30. Darcy bumped her head against my ankle and trotted back to her bed.

I followed, my legs slow and my brain racing.

Charlie Lewis had been my drive to research harder, make the extra call—even occasionally go into offices I hadn’t been invited to enter—since I was a cub reporter who barely knew the difference between grand theft and armed robbery. I missed the daily competition with Charlie as much as I missed talking to Aaron nearly every morning.

New normal. I just needed time to get used to it. That’s what I’d been telling myself for months, and I was catching the wafts of bullshit in my own self-talk.

Time wasn’t the answer. I needed a new mission.

Tucker Armstrong needed me to tell his story. Maybe we could help each other.

I checked my email and found one from a Gmail address for Aaron. He really wasn’t leaving anyone knowing he’d sent me these to much chance.

Opening the first report in my PDF reader, I clicked up a browser window and typed the victim’s name into the search bar. Not that Aaron would have skipped this step, but I notice different things than he does.

Social media was all locked down except the profile pictures. Instagram had only one: of a Charlie Brown Christmas tree. No help. Facebook’s most recent was a skinny young man sans shirt posing in a knit skull cap with duck lips, flashing a sideways three sign at the camera. I scrolled down, watching him morph from that to a teenager in a private school polo with a wide, Invisalign-commercial smile and a crew cut.

“Another guy who came from an upper middle class family, had an education,” I muttered to the dog. That was a weird common thread for murder victims in a dangerous part of town, but I couldn’t ignore any similarity, no matter how silly it might seem. Not yet.

I started a list, added the guy on my screen, Tucker, and, after a minute of staring at the screen, Katie. She wasn’t dead; on the contrary, Landers thought she was his killer. But if he was right, maybe something about that link explained why.

I noted the name of the school—it wasn’t one I recognized—and clicked to image results. A newspaper article from the Pilot on a high school football game. State parochial championship, seven years ago.

“Bingo.”

I went back to the police report to check the scene of the crime. Another motel, this one out off Jeff Davis, just inside the city limits. Kind of like the Hideaway.

Clicking the button for a new browser tab, I started typing the tax office address before the screen loaded. Backspace. Try again.

When it loaded I typed in the name of the second motel.

“Holy Manolos.” Decmar Industries for the double.

I went back to Aaron’s email and opened the other report, checking the crime scene.

An apartment complex in a part of Oregon Hill even Joey didn’t go into after dark.

I was pretty sure who owned the apartments before the tax record came up.

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