“From my internship. I thought they’d change it or whatever, but they never did.” He shrugs. “It’s interesting. Sometimes I look. We could check it out. See if there are any details.”
I have my dad’s old laptop, so it’s slow, but it works. I dig it out from under the pile of books on my desk and hand it to Brandon.
He looks at me over the screen while it’s loading. “Do you want to get your dad?”
Dad seems to be slowly crawling out of the fog that still holds me prisoner. I shake my head. “Not yet. Not until we know something for sure.”
It doesn’t take Brandon long to log on to the system. “Date?”
My mouth is suddenly dry. Could this be happening? Could we solve her murder right here? “May twenty-fifth.”
He taps at the keys, then frowns at the screen. “I see a hit-and-run report, but the victim last names are Thorne and Rahman. Who’s Rahman?”
“She was taking a taxi home from the airport. Rahman would have been the driver,” I whisper.
Until today, I’ve never given a moment’s thought to the driver. Does he have a daughter somewhere, carrying around the same sense of loss that I feel?
Rowan takes my hand.
“The accident took place on Hammonds Ferry Road? In Linthicum?”
“Yeah.”
He frowns a little. “That’s weird. Hammonds Ferry Road isn’t on the way to the airport.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, it’s sort of close to the airport. Maybe he had more than one passenger and had another stop first. Or maybe he went a long way to get a bigger fare. Maybe there was an accident on the highway so he took side streets—I don’t know, and we can’t ask him. It’s just not the most direct way between here and there.”
Weird. But like he said, not a complete anomaly.
Brandon is still talking. “It was after dark, and that’s a more remote part of town, so no witnesses, no cameras. When the paramedics arrived . . .” He hesitates, and his expression says he’s reading details I don’t want to hear read out loud.
He waves a hand. “Here. Let me see if I can find that loser’s police report, and we’ll see if anything matches up.”
He’s not a loser. I almost say the words, thinking about my conversation with Declan about how people misperceive him—but considering what we’re researching, I don’t say anything at all.
Brandon taps at a few keys, reads, then taps at a few more. We’re all so quiet that I can hear three even breathing rhythms over the music.
After a minute, Rowan says, “You’re killing us here, B.”
“I know, I know. I just want to be sure. There’s a report that might be Declan Murphy, but all the names have been obscured. That happens when the perp is a minor. This covers the whole state, so give me a second.”
The perp. I almost smile. Brandon’s life map is firmly intact, not lying in shreds like my own.
After another agonizing minute, Brandon looks up at me. His expression looks sorrowful. “I don’t know if this is good news or bad news.”
My fingers grip Rowan’s hard. It’s a match. It has to be. I’m breathing so hard I’m going to hyperventilate. “Tell me. Just tell me. It’s him. It has to be him.”
Brandon shakes his head. “It’s not him.”
What?
What?
He turns the computer around. “Look. The first call about your mother’s accident came in at seven forty-six. According to Declan Murphy’s police report, he didn’t get behind the wheel until eight-oh-one, and he didn’t crash into that building until eight sixteen.”
It’s not him.
I’m relieved. I’m devastated. I don’t know what I am.
I feel like I’m going to throw up the nachos. I clutch my hands against my stomach.
“I’m so sorry,” Brandon whispers.
Now I understand what he meant about not knowing whether this was good news or bad news. It’s not Declan—but the crime is still unsolved.
“Just—turn it off. Okay? Turn it off.”
He does, and I spend a minute talking myself off the ledge. I’m in the same place I was yesterday. I haven’t lost anything.
And even if Declan were guilty, that wouldn’t have brought my mother back.
“Is that your mother’s gear?” Brandon says, nodding at the pile in the corner. My morbid little shrine.
I have to clear my throat. “Yeah. Her editor keeps trying to buy it back from my dad, but . . .” I let that thought trail off.
Brandon’s expression shows no trace of recognizing the sentimentality. “Did the cops search her memory cards?”
The question is so unexpected that it shakes off some of my sorrow. “What? No. Why?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. But I remember reading about a murder case that was solved because they found photos a woman had taken on her cell phone. Apparently she started taking pictures as the guy was stabbing her, and they were able to find him based on that. Like . . . what if your mom was able to take pictures of the vehicle getting away?”
Rowan is making slashing motions against her neck, kind of like, Stop talking about murders while my friend is suffering, but my mind is revving up to normal speed.
“Do you think that’s possible?” I say.
He glances at the equipment again. “Maybe?”
“No,” says Rowan.
We both look at her, and her eyes are a little wide. “Do you realize how implausible that sounds? That someone would be alive enough to take pictures as someone is speeding away, but to be . . . to be . . .” Her voice trails off as she looks at me.
“To be dead by the time the ambulance gets there,” I finish.
“They wouldn’t necessarily be speeding away,” says Brandon. “It says the car would have sustained some damage. It’s possible someone stopped to check their own vehicle. Or it took them a minute to back up and keep driving. This wasn’t a simple sideswipe.” He pauses. His expression is pained.