“We think the phone calls had to do with this girl.” I pull out my phone. “Do you by chance remember seeing her?” I show him the shot I took of Betsy’s picture.
His murky gray eyes sit on Betsy’s face for far too long to be mistaken for simple consideration. He’s carefully weighing what to say. “Who is she?”
“Her name is Betsy. She’s my mother’s little sister,” Gracie says, watching him closely. She’s picked up on his hesitation too. “She was a runaway, and we think she got pulled into prostitution by a trafficking ring. My father must have seen her in Austin, because he was looking for her in the weeks before he died. We think that’s why he went to the Lucky Nine motel the night he was killed.”
“Jesus Christ . . .” Dunn’s gaze drifts past me, out the window, his jaw tightening.
“You remember her, don’t you? You saw her? When? What happened?”
“Gracie.” I give her a warning look. She’s going on the offensive, and with that posture, getting people to talk—especially cops—might not get us far.
“Maybe it’s best we leave this alone.”
She looks at him in disbelief. And then she erupts. “Fine!” Gracie pushes her tray forward, as if done with her meal. “We’ll tell the FBI to come and talk to you. Maybe here, in front of all your customers. Maybe I’ll call the newspapers, too,” she throws in almost as an afterthought. “Let’s help you get the kind of PR your ‘Best Barbecue in Austin’ restaurant deserves.”
“You don’t wanna be doin’ that,” Dunn warns, his jaw clenched.
“Then you’d better start talking.”
He glances around us—again. His face is a grim mask as he gestures for Gracie to sit back down. “Dispatch sent us out to a hotel one night; I can’t remember the name of it. Decent enough place. They’d gotten an anonymous call about prostitution, possibly with a minor. So we went.” He hesitates. “The man at the door said he was on a date and brought out the girl’s ID. Your father insisted that the girl come to the door to make sure the ID matched. When she finally did, Abe lost it. He was ready to arrest the guy and haul her out of there.”
I exchange a surprised glance with Gracie. “So Abe definitely recognized her?”
“He seemed to.”
“And it was this girl?”
“I believe it was.”
“And then what?” Gracie pushes.
Dunn takes a deep breath, his eyes flickering to me. “And then Jackie Marshall showed up and dismissed us. Said she’d handle it from there. My guess is the man called her as soon as we knocked on the door. It took him a good while to come to the door in the first place, using the shower as an excuse to stall having to answer. And then he kept checkin’ the hall, as if waitin’ for someone. Anyway, Wilkes wasn’t happy. But your mom, she tore my notes right out of my book and sent me to the car. Wilkes came out five minutes later, hoppin’ mad. He radioed in that all was clear, and then we left for a robbery call.”
My stomach drops in that way it does when you realize you’ve gotten caught for screwing up. Only I didn’t screw up. But it sounds like my mom did. “You guys left a fifteen-year-old human trafficking victim there?”
“No. We followed a superior officer’s orders. If that girl got left there, it’s on Jackie Marshall,” he says carefully, but I see the guilt in his eyes.
Gracie’s brow furrows. I’m sure she’s filling in the blanks with what we learned from Dina already, and Dunn’s account of that night fits well with everything, except the one thing we both know of Abe—that he wouldn’t leave Betsy in a hotel room, not even because of an order from a superior officer.
My mother must have found some way to compel Abe to leave.
But the bigger question is, why the hell would my mother interfere like that in the first place?
Holy shit. “She was protecting the guy in the room.”
“That would be my guess. But you’d have to ask her.” His words dig exactly where he means them to—deep into my chest.
“Who was he?” Gracie pushes.
Dunn wipes away at some salt on the table with his hand, his eyes downcast. “He never produced his identification. He made up some lousy story about it being lost.”
Gracie’s jaw tightens with frustration. “What did he look like?”
“White guy. That’s all I remember.” He pauses for a moment. “Red hair, I think. Sorry, that’s all I know.” Dunn eases out of the chair. “Y’all enjoy your meal.”
Gracie’s eyes narrow. “Was he a cop?”
Dunn’s shoulders tense. Whatever cooperation he was showing us has gone out the window. “You listen here, miss . . .” He leans in, his hand gripping the back of Gracie’s wooden chair, his anger poorly veiled, though he manages to keep his voice low. “I’m tired of hearin’ the kinds of accusations thrown around about the APD. I hear ’em all day long. Lazy cop this, dirty cop that. There are a lot of mighty fine police officers in this city who risk their lives day in, day out so y’all can stroll down the streets in peace. Just because Dwayne Mantis was a rotten apple in the bushel basket doesn’t give people the right to turn our integrity into the punch line of a joke.”
Our server shows up then, oblivious to the choking tension around us. “Can I get y’all a refill on your sweet teas?”
Dunn stands abruptly and, with a deep inhale, manages to slough his anger away. “Jillian, you make sure these two get whatever they want on the house. Their parents were both fine officers.” With that, Dunn marches for his office.
“What the hell, Noah!” Gracie hisses the second our server is gone.
I pick at a piece of sausage, a lump swelling in my throat. I have no answer for her.
How could my mother do that to Abe? To Dina? To Gracie? To fifteen-year-old Betsy? They were family and she chose a friend—some ‘white guy, red hair’ friend—over them.
All I can do is shake my head as I pick through my memories, trying to place this person. The only white guy with red hair I know is Jenson, and he was eleven at the time. “I guess now we know what our parents were fighting over,” I mutter.
“You realize what this means, don’t you?” Gracie’s words escape her slowly, her mind still trying to make sense of this. “My dad was out searching for Betsy when he witnessed that bust at The Lucky Nine, and because he witnessed that bust, he got himself into that mess with Mantis. And because of that, he died.”
And the reason he was out looking for Betsy in the first place is because my mother made him leave her in that hotel room.
“What I let happen . . . I may as well have pulled the trigger.”
Now I know what she meant.
Basically, Abe died because of what my mother did that night.
And the only way she could see to “do right” by it all was to put a gun to her temple.
* * *
“What do you say we order in pizza?” I holler, knowing my voice will carry through the open window to the backyard.
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“I’m not, actually . . .” I mutter, standing in front of the open fridge, patting my grumbling stomach while I eye the still-full shelves. Nothing looks appetizing.
With a sigh, I find an apple, along with a strip of beef jerky, and I wander through the French doors. Gracie propels herself through the water with ease, her normally wild hair soaked and stretching halfway down her back.
Cyclops comes trotting up to me, eyeing the beef. “Go find a squirrel or something.” I take a bite off the end, ignoring him and watching Gracie swim to the edge of the pool, to rest lean arms on the side.
“You know that’s his, right?”
“I wouldn’t necessarily call it ‘his.’?”
A whimper sounds and I look down to see him licking his lips. “Begging doesn’t suit you.” It actually does, with that one eye. He looks downright pathetic.
“I bring those home from work for him once a week. He loves them.”
“Well, I love them, too—ow!” I yelp, as Cyclops snatches the strip right out from my lowered hand. He scampers away with it between his jaws. “You little . . .”