Lee Farrell. One of the best cops I knew. The best-dressed by far, even if that wasn’t saying much. Happy as I usually was to talk to Lee, though, I wasn’t thrilled at the moment. “You’re calling me from Trevor’s phone because you found it,” I said, the situation dawning on me.
“Yes.”
“Where?” I asked. Though from the tone of his voice, combined with the background noises, I already knew what he was going to say.
“Trevor’s dead,” he said. “We found the phone on his body. This was the last number he texted.”
“Great,” I said. “Just great.”
“Did you know him?”
“Trevor? No,” I said. “But I really wanted to talk to him. He was my strongest lead.”
“Who are you looking for?”
“Dylan Welch,” I said.
“CEO of Gonzo?”
I was surprised Lee knew who he was. “One and the same,” I said. “His mother hired me today. He’s been incommunicado for two weeks and she’s worried.”
“He obviously didn’t take his phone with him.”
“Nope,” I said. “Strange, right?”
“Not if he didn’t want to be tracked.”
“True.”
“Why do you have the phone?”
“He left it in his desk before he went missing,” I said. “I took it into my possession. To aid in the investigation.”
“You stole it?”
“You obviously aren’t familiar with the principle of finders keepers.”
He laughed. Typically Lee was a serious, by-the-books, Eliot Ness kind of guy—as though being a gay male cop precluded him from cracking a smile. But I’d always prided myself on my ability to make Lee Farrell break character. “I don’t know, though,” I said. “I don’t think I’m getting paid enough to look at some of thesesaved photos, if you know what I mean…I should have probably disinfected this thing before I borrowed it.”
Lee laughed again.
“Straight men, am I right?” I said. And he laughed more. As ever, it felt like a triumph.
“Can you meet me here at the crime scene?” he said.
“Yeah of course,” I said. “I just have to grab my coat.”
He gave me an address that he explained was in Southie’s industrial area, on the waterfront. Then we hung up. I pushed the town house door open again, found my coat, and apologized to Susan. “It’s the police,” I said. “I need to go. It has to do with my job.”
“I understand,” she said. “And I’m willing to wager that if Richie were here, he’d understand, too.”
I wasn’t sure about that. In fact, if I’d been low on cash, I’d have taken her up on that wager and doubled it. But Susan meant well. And I had a crime scene to get to. So I just thanked her and left.
Sixteen
Before getting into my car, I surveilled the area around it. No sign of the RAV4. I got behind the wheel and took a quick, aimless drive through Cambridge just to make sure no one was following me before giving Siri the address of the crime scene.
Once I was officially on my way, I called Blake. “Go ahead and lock up,” I told him. “I won’t be back in the office until tomorrow morning.”
