“Could be,” Cab said.
Maggie rocked back in the chair, lifting the front legs off the carpet. “Where did she find it?”
Cab kept scrolling. He saw a shift in the character of the thumbnails on the screen. Night changed to day. The location was different, too. Peach had staked out a location across a rural highway from a small complex of rental cottages.
“That’s where John Doe was staying,” Maggie said. “What day were these pictures taken?”
“Monday.”
“So that’s the day after Rochelle’s death hit the evening news and one day before Peach disappeared.”
“Except how did she know where to find John Doe?” Cab asked. “I can’t believe he was hanging around the movie set. Casperson would have wanted to keep him under wraps.”
He opened more photographs. It was obvious that Peach had staked out the apartment complex for hours, taking photographs of every vehicle coming and going from the highway. The pictures stretched through the afternoon hours and into the evening. The darkness made the details harder to distinguish, but Peach stayed there as if waiting for someone.
“Look at that,” Maggie said, pointing at one of the pictures, which showed a familiar face outside the cottages. “She wasn’t staking out John Doe; she was staking out Jungle Jack. She saw Jack arrive with Rochelle and saw her getting helped out to the car. And the next day, Rochelle’s death was all over the news. Peach knew that girl didn’t freeze to death in her PJs. She was at Casperson’s party.”
Cab clicked a few more pictures forward. “Look who’s talking to Jack,” he said.
“John Doe. They’re together. We’ve got Rochelle at the party with Jack, John Doe driving her away, and then Jack and John Doe together at the apartment complex two days later. And in between, Rochelle’s death was staged to look like an accident instead of murder.”
“Is that enough to bring Jack in?”
Maggie reached over and put her hand over Cab’s and moved the touch pad down to reach the last file on the flash drive. It was a video, time-stamped the same evening.
She played it.
Peach was on the move, obviously wearing a video camera clipped to her coat. She was in the parking lot of the complex, outside John Doe’s car. In the audio background, Maggie could hear Peach breathing. The interior of the car was too dark to make out any details, but as they watched, Peach used a slim jim to dig into the driver’s side window and unlock the vehicle.
She opened the door. The dome light went on. They could see Peach turn nervously back to watch John Doe’s rental cottage, which was only a few feet away. The lights in the cottage were off.
“Aw, hell, Peach, what were you doing?” Cab murmured.
Peach opened the car’s back door, and the video followed her as she began searching the interior of the car, where Rochelle Wahl had been stretched out unconscious after the party. She dug her fingers into the seats, and they could hear her frustration at finding nothing. Then she began peering under the seats, and she pulled out a penlight and shone it along the car’s floor.
They heard a tiny squeal of excitement, and Peach’s hand disappeared under the seat. When it came out, there was a rhinestone button pinched between her fingertips. They could hear her voice on the video, just a whisper.
Maggie realized it was the only time she’d ever have a chance to hear Peach Piper speak.
“Gotcha,” Peach said.
33
“I suppose you can’t smoke in here,” Jungle Jack said as he sat across from Stride in the police interview room. He pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of his burgundy shirt.
“No,” Stride replied.
“Oh, well.” Jack shoved the cigarettes back in his pocket. “I bet you used to be a smoker. Am I right?”
“In fact, you are.”
Jack grinned. “I can always tell. Doesn’t matter how long since somebody’s quit, I can see it in their face when they look at a pack. There’s still that longing, you know? It never goes away.”
Stride ignored the comment, although Jack was right. “Before I ask you any questions, I’m going to read you your rights.”
He rattled off the Miranda warning, and Jack listened with amused disinterest. The man didn’t seem intimidated or concerned. “Are you willing to talk to me without a lawyer present?” Stride asked.
“I can’t imagine why I’d need one.”
“Okay, good.” Then he added, “I like your shirt, Jack.”
A little furrow of confusion crossed the man’s brow. “Thanks.”
Stride took a photograph out of a folder and put it in front of Jack. It was the photograph Peach Piper had taken of the front door of Casperson’s house, with Rochelle Wahl standing next to a man who looked a lot like Jack Jensen. “Same shirt, right?” he asked, pointing at the picture.
“Could be.”
“That’s you, isn’t it?”
“It looks like me,” Jack allowed. “From the back, it’s hard to tell.”
“This was taken last Saturday night.”
“Right. The party.”
“Who’s the girl with you?” Stride asked.
“I have no idea.”
“You didn’t bring her to the party?”
“No.”
“She’s standing right there with you,” Stride pointed out.
“She must have arrived at the same time.”
“You’ve never seen her before?”
“No, not that I recall.”
“She’s not connected to the movie. How would she have gotten into a party at Dean’s house?”
“Pretty girls hang around the set all the time,” Jack said. “They hear about a party. They show up. Nobody says no.”
“Did you sleep with her?” Stride asked.
“No.”
“Did you sleep with anyone at the party?”
“The night’s a bit of a blur, but I usually do.”
“Who?”
“They all blend together, Lieutenant.”
“Did Dean sleep with this girl?” Stride asked.
Jack’s eyes narrowed in suspicion at the shift in questions. “Dean? Absolutely not.”
“How do you know? It sounds like you were pretty busy that evening.”
“I know Dean.”
“So you don’t actually know whether he did or didn’t?”
“I guess you’ll have to ask him,” Jack replied.
Stride took another photograph out of the folder. “Here’s a picture of the same girl leaving the party.”
Jack leaned forward. “Looks like she had a little too much to drink.”
“In the morning, she was found dead. Her name was Rochelle Wahl.” Stride waited a beat. “She was fifteen.”
Jack took a long time before he said anything. “Really. I’m sorry to hear it.”
“What was a fifteen-year-old doing at Dean Casperson’s party?”
“Lying about her age, I imagine,” Jack replied. “It happens.”
“If it came out that an underage girl had sex at one of Dean’s parties, there would be serious consequences. For the movie. For him and his reputation.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“It makes me think Dean would be willing to do just about anything to get that girl out of the house and make sure no one knew she was there,” Stride said.
“It sounds to me like you’ve been watching too many of Dean’s thrillers.”
Stride tapped the photograph. “We think this other man took Rochelle back to her house and changed her clothes and then knocked her unconscious and left her out in the snow to freeze to death.”
“Or maybe she went home and had an accident. If you’re a kid and you drink too much, bad things can happen.”
“Except when a girl leaves a party with a hired killer, it’s usually murder, not an accident.”
“Hired killer?” Jack asked. He made a show of looking at the photograph again. “Oh, this guy. You asked me about him before. He was staying at the same apartments as me. Hey, I wish I could tell you more about him, but like I said, I only bumped into him a couple times. That’s all.”
Stride showed him one of Peach’s photographs that showed John Doe and Jack Jensen talking outside John Doe’s rental cottage. “Was this one of the times you bumped into him?”
Jack smiled. “You have a lot of pictures, Lieutenant.”