“He could be a suspect.”
“Yes. But Ted Blankenship has never met Trevor Weiss.”
“Allegedly.”
Lee gave me flat eyes. “He seems legitimately shocked,” he said. “I don’t make him as our killer.”
I took a closer look at Ted Blankenship. He held a white handkerchief to his forehead that was roughly the same color as his skin. One of the uniforms was handing him a tarp to put around his shoulders because he was shivering, visibly—even from this distance. And from what I could see of his face,You look like you’ve just seen a ghostwould have been the obvious conversation starter. “I get what you mean.”
“Shitty way to start a vacation,” Lee said. “Of course, if it wasn’t for Ted Blankenship, he and all his coworkers would have been greeted with an even worse sight the day after New Year’s.”
I nodded.
“You ever meet Dylan Welch?” Lee asked.
“Once.”
“What did you think of him?”
“Not much.”
“But now you’re working for his parents, trying to find him.”
“His mother,” I said. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“She’s paying me a small fortune,” I said. “And it just so happens that at this point in my life, I could really use a small fortune.”
“Any reason why his mother hasn’t called the police?”
I cleared my throat. “Come on, Lee. Dylan Welch is a grown man and not what you’d call reliable. He disappears all the time—goes on benders, winds up in rehab…You guys wouldn’t want to pour your limited resources into finding somebody like that.”
He nodded. “You’ve got a point,” he said. “You have his phone?”
I started to hand it to him, then stopped. “Can you keep in touch?” I said. “Tell me anything you find out about Trevor Weiss?”
“Such as…”
“Well, he’s young. Smart. Works at Gonzo, but in the lab. And in an entry-level job—not management.”
“Yes.”
“I just can’t imagine him being somebody Dylan Welch would know, let alone arrange to meet in private with.”Unless he was dealing drugs on the down-low.Or dating a girl that Dylan was stalking.
“I called his supervisor, who’s on his way. We have his laptop. His phone. We’ll find out who Trevor Weiss really was. Who he was associating with and why. And we’ll find out why his last text was to someone whose family regards him as a missing person.”
“So that’s what I’d like to know.”
“I’ll tell you what I can.”
“Speaking of his phone,” I said. “I’m assuming there aren’t any messages from Dylan on it.”
“Just the one you sent.”
“Don’t you find that weird?”
“I find everything about this weird.”
