Verraday reasoned that since this unknown young woman had been part of Rachel’s scheme to work the webcam sex circuit doing girl-on-girl scenes, there was a better-than-even chance that she too might have a web page on Assassin Girls. He went to the site and scanned through hundreds of photos of alt girls: brunettes, blondes, redheads, girls with black hair, and girls whose hair was streaked with pink or maroon or blue. But the blonde woman from the screengrab remained elusive.
He decided to be more direct and typed in a search for “Escorts + Seattle.” There were pages and pages of links and scores of girls on each, hundreds even on some of them. He worked methodically through each site. His task of searching for the unknown blonde was made more difficult by the fact that most of the photos were cropped so that they stopped just above the chin, or the faces had been pixilated to protect the identity of the girl posting the ad. There was a mind-boggling assortment of young women offering themselves. Many claimed to be university students. He wondered if it was true, if any of the young women who sat in his lecture hall twice a week had been driven to the sex trade as the only way to finance their education, forced to pay tuition fees that were twice as high as what their parents and most of their clients had had to pay. He felt a pang of depression at that thought, then returned to scanning the photos. He went through another two hundred or so and was about to take a break, when he spotted a blonde whose face, like most of the others, had been intentionally blurred. Her listing identified her as “Destiny.” Her hair was longer than that of the blonde in the screengrab and was pulled up into a French twist, with several long strands left hanging down on either side of her obscured face. Her body was wrapped in a black latex dress that clung as tightly to her as a secret, covering the young woman from her wrists up to her neck, and all the way down to midthigh. Although there were no identifying features visible on Destiny, there was something familiar about her. Verraday pulled up Kyle Davis’s screengrab.
His pulse began to race. He realized then it wasn’t the pixilated girl he had recognized. It was the dress. In her ad on the escort site, the faceless blonde named Destiny was wearing the same dress that Rachel was wearing in Kyle’s photo of her and the blonde dancing together. If Verraday’s hunch was right, then Destiny and Rachel, like a lot of young female friends who were on tight budgets, had been sharing wardrobes to get the most fashion bang for the buck. Verraday clicked on the link to the young woman’s gallery of thumbnail photos. In all of them, her face was pixelated, but the camera explored her body voyeuristically, in ways designed to arouse desire in a potential customer. Verraday scrolled through a dozen of them. Then he spotted it: the Freya tattoo.
This woman was one of the last people to see Rachel alive, and she might provide the clues they needed to catch Rachel’s killer. And, Verraday realized, she might be in danger herself. Verraday groped around the site, looking for a contact link. He went back to Destiny’s main page and at the bottom, under her description, found a text number. He grabbed his cell and quickly typed, “Hello, Destiny. I would like to hear from you as soon as possible. Please message me anytime.” He hit send.
He debated calling Maclean again. Maybe she’d pick up this time. So he gave it a try but got her voice mail again. Frustrated, he grabbed the bottle of brandy off his bookcase, hesitated, then thought, Fuck it, and poured himself a double shot.
*
Verraday had forgotten to set his alarm. He had awakened several times during the night, his mind beset by disturbing thoughts and images. He hated that state, that limbo that provided neither the rejuvenation of sleep nor the clarity of wakefulness. He had a slight headache from the brandy, so he took some ibuprofen. As a result of oversleeping, he didn’t have time to go to the gym to blow away the cobwebs. He had to content himself with some stretches followed by push-ups, crunches, and free weights. The fog of the brandy and his troubled sleep began to fade away a bit.
What wasn’t fading away was his foul mood at being dismissed by Maclean, practically fired. Not that he could be fired. He wasn’t getting paid for this. Hadn’t even wanted to take this on. It wasn’t his job. If he’d told his lawyer he was helping out a homicide cop, he’d have gotten a warning that he was endangering his own case.
Even so, Maclean’s lack of faith irked him. Verraday felt certain about the killer still being out there. He checked his phone. Destiny still hadn’t texted him back. He tried again in case she was a morning person.
He headed for the foyer to pull on his boots and bomber jacket. Evidently Destiny was a morning person, because by the time Verraday had stepped onto his front porch, he heard the beep that alerted him to an incoming text. He took out his phone and saw that it was from her.