CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Veronica paced up and down the office as they waited for Wallace, her limbs electric. Just a short while ago she’d felt utterly defeated. Now she couldn’t sit still. She tried not to get ahead of herself, though. Mac wasn’t wrong to be skeptical; those bags did look awfully small.
Back at her desk, Mac’s fingers flew over her keyboard. The Neptune Grand’s internal database appeared on the screen, and she entered a query for every car parked at the hotel on March sixth, the night of the attack.
“Okay, we’re in,” Mac said, rattling the pretzel bag to dump the last few fragments into her palm. “I’m sure there’ll be dozens of white compacts, but if we can figure out the exact make and model of the one in the front parking lot…”
It was at that moment they heard footsteps on the stairs. A minute later, Wallace came through the frosted-glass door. He wheeled a black duffel behind him, his expression coolly sardonic.
“Gym bag delivery for Ms. V. Mars,” he said, plunking the bag at Veronica’s feet.
“Wallace, you’re the best.” Veronica knelt next to the bag and unzipped it. It was empty, but a ripe, sour smell wafted out. She pinched her nose, and gave Wallace an appalled look.
“What do you keep in this thing?” she asked.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “What do you think I keep in there? It’s a gym bag! I sweat, woman! You were expecting what? Lily of the Valley?”
Veronica stepped into the duffel, lowered her body, and curled tightly into a ball in the bottom. Wallace stared down at her.
“Am I allowed to ask what this is all about?” he asked.
“Trust me. The less you know, the happier you’ll be.” She tried a few positions, hunching her shoulders, tucking her head. After a moment, she looked up. “Okay, zip me!”
Mac leaned over and fiddled with the pull. A moment later, there was a loud zipping sound, and Veronica’s world disappeared into darkness.
“Unbelievable!” she heard Mac say.
Veronica’s breath started coming in gasps, and this time it wasn’t just the smell of Gold Bond Powder and male body funk. Now it was all too easy to imagine Grace in a bag just like this one. Confused, gagged, dimly aware of voices outside. Or had she been too traumatized to feel anything but pain?
“Let me out,” Veronica said. Then, because it seemed to be taking forever: “Let me out of here, Wallace!”
“Okay, okay, hang on.” Wallace yanked the zipper open and helped Veronica up. She wobbled on her feet, hungrily drawing in the cool, clean air. When she felt her heart stop racing a bit, she turned to Mac, who was shaking her head in disbelief.
“So—I guess these things just look tiny when they’re next to a guy you could hitch a U-Haul to, huh?”
“Trust me, they’re not exactly roomy,” Veronica said, staring down at the cramped space she’d just occupied.
“Well,” Wallace said, grabbing the bag, “I’d love to stay, but I must be on my way. If I hurry, I still might be able to get in a little bodysurfing.”
Veronica nodded at him. “Thanks, Wallace. Fresh-baked cookies are coming your way this weekend.”
On his way to the door, he bent over to give Mac a hug, but pulled up short when he saw what was on her screen: Pacific Southwest players scuffling across the hotel lobby, duffels in tow. “Huh. The PSU Kestrels,” he said. “And those same lady-sized bags. Part of me wants to know what’s up here, but another part is terrified to ask.”
Despite her long, no-secrets relationship with Wallace, Veronica played this one close to the vest. “It’s no big deal,” she said. “They just happened to be at the Grand the night of a case we’ve been working. And like you said, those bags are everywhere now.”
“This was back in March, right? Yeah, that’s it. I saw ’em play Hearst. We got smoked.” He shook his head disgustedly at the memory and again turned toward the door.
“Hey, quick question before you go,” Mac said. She went behind her desk and leaned over the keyboard. “Can we avail ourselves of your manly automotive knowledge? We’re trying to visually ID the model of a car from a low-res TV image.”
Wallace shrugged. “I can try. But you’d do better just sticking your head out the window and hollering at the first fat white dude you see with a shaved head and foot-long beard. I’m not really into cars unless they’re cheap, basic, and the kind of thing they can fix at Sears.” He and Veronica followed Mac behind the desk to look over her shoulder. Mac still had dozens of windows open, showing different angles of the security footage.
“Well, then, I expect this will be right in your wheelhouse.” Mac said, advancing the video to the parking lot scene at the moment the white hatchback backed out of its parking space and showed itself in profile. “Look familiar?”
Wallace chuckled. “Believe it or not, it does. That’s a 2013 Mazda 3.”
Veronica and Mac exchanged triumphant glances. “You sure?”
“One hundred percent,” he replied. “It’s pretty much the official car of the Neptune High School faculty these days. We’re into those budget-friendly rides, you know. I even test drove one myself before I decided to give our local repairmen some love and buy American.”
Veronica looked at Mac. “Anything matching that description on the parking roster from that night?”
Mac opened another window and started scrolling through a list. After a moment, she let out a soft, sharp laugh. “Got him.” She highlighted a line item on the screen. Veronica leaned in to read over her shoulder. “There were three white 2013 Mazdas at the Neptune Grand that night, but just one hatchback. A rental from Lariat driven by a hotel guest named Mitchell Walter Bellamy.”
Wallace’s eyes narrowed. “Mitchell Bellamy?”
Veronica’s head snapped up. “Uh-huh. Why? You know him or something?”
“Oh yeah, from way back,” Wallace said, walking up to the screen and peering for a moment before pointing to a tall, blonde, middle-aged man in a Kestrels polo shirt. “That’s him right there. Mitch Bellamy. He’s one of the PSU assistants. He was a badass college baller in his day. Sweetest three-point stroke I ever saw. We used to call him ‘Drain Man.’ Not that long ago he came out to Neptune and looked at a couple of our players.”
Veronica grabbed Wallace’s arm hard enough to draw an indignant yelp. “Do you remember the date he came to the school?” she asked fiercely.
“Yeah, the day after they played Hearst, right before spring break in March.”
“The Kestrels had another game that weekend,” Veronica said, recalling their itinerary. “They drove straight to Stanford and arrived at three that afternoon. Mac, I need to know when Bellamy checked his car back in with Lariat.” She then turned back to Wallace. “Do coaches have to ride the bus with the players?”
Wallace rubbed his arm where she’d grabbed him. “Mostly. But assistants do have their own cars sometimes. Especially if they’ve got recruiting stops along the way.”
Mac, who’d long had access codes for every car rental company in Neptune, was already logging in to Lariat Rent-a-Car.
“Here you go, Chief,” she said two minutes later. “Bellamy returned that car on March tenth. Three days after the team bus left Neptune. So on the morning the team checks out of the Neptune Grand, Mitch rolls his bag with his victim inside right through the lobby and disappears behind the bus. We assume he gets in with the team. Instead, he gets into his rental car, unseen by the surveillance cameras, and nineteen minutes later leaves to find an empty field where he can dump her body.”
Wallace stared at her in disbelief. “Say what?”
Veronica didn’t answer him. She stared down at the information on Mac’s screen, her eyes hard. All the math worked—the timeline, the dimensions of the bag, the shape of a girl’s broken body curved to its boundaries. Yes, they’d put together a picture of Bellamy the rapist. But it wouldn’t do them any good. Not yet.
“We’ve got to figure out a way to get to Mitch Bellamy,” Veronica said to Wallace. “I need you to help me right now.”