“Huh?”
I told her about the cans.
“It’s a really good drink.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” I said. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
“Any idea why he’d want to save the cans? Or, for that matter, any of this stuff?”
“No,” she said. “I wish I did.”
“It’s almost like he’s got something buried in here.”
It went on like this—me methodically removing items from the drawer and placing them on top of the desk like exhibits from a trial. I was quiet for most of it, but I did tell Sky about the particularly strange finds—the broken David Ortiz bobblehead, the vintagePlayboy, the uneaten tube of Necco Wafers. When the drawer was close to empty, I reached all the way back and felt something hard and thin and rectangular.
“Hello,” I said.
“That sounds like a good hello,” Sky said. “Did you find anything that might lead us to him?”
“I did find something.” I yanked it out of the drawer and stared at it. “But it’s not going to lead us to him.”
“What? Why?” Sky said.
“Because it’s his phone,” I said quietly. “I just found his phone.”
Eight
Sky made it into Dylan’s office in less than a minute. She brought a charger with her. When I asked her if it was possible that the phone I found was old or a duplicate, she turned it over and looked at the case, which was black, with a red Harvard crest at the center andDWwritten in tiny white letters in the lower-right corner. “That’s his phone,” she said. “The one he uses all the time.”
“You’re sure,” I said.
“Dylan went through a really brief phase when he was into wearing white nail polish,” she said. “Turned out to be too douchey a look, even for him, but it was during the time he bought this phone.” She pointed to theDW. “That’s the polish. I remember him doing that. It was Bottle Poppin’ Friday—that’s an office thing that he came up with. A morale-booster. He was tipsy and wanted to mark his new toy.”
“How long ago?”
“About six months,” she says. “It’s an iPhone 15 Pro Max, and it’s titanium. He spent a lot on it. He loves being able to drop it and not make a dent. He takes it everywhere.”
“Until now,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “Until now.”
Sky plugged the charger into the wall and attached the phone. We waited for it to wake up. It did, finally. But it took a couple minutes.
“Do you know his passcode?” I said.
“No. But I feel like he’d choose something meaningful,” she said. “You know, so he can remember it when he’s wasted.”
“How about something to do with his mom? Her maiden name?”
“Sure. It’s Baxter.”
“It’s the right amount of letters.” I tried it. The screen shook. “But not the right word.”
“Try Finley.” She spelled it out. “That was his dog when he was a kid. A toy poodle. He still talks about him.”
I typed it in. It didn’t work, either.
