She actually laughed at that. “Right?” she said. “Merry Christmas to me.” Then she started to tear up again.
“Hey,” Spike said. “Hey, kid.” He poured her more wine.
I thought back to my visit to Gonzo—how stressed Elspeth had seemed when I’d introduced myself. The twitching eyelid. The bizarre response (Find who?) when I’d told her I’d do my best to find Dylan. I’d assumed Rhonda Lewis’s latest visit had freaked her out. But apparently she’d been hiding something far freakier, for weeks.
“What else has Dylan Welch asked you to do?” I said.
“He gave me a list of files on his work computer and told me to go into his office after-hours and permanently delete them,” she said.
I thought of the scant number of documents I’d seen on his computer, how I’d attributed it to laziness. “Do you know what the files were?”
“I didn’t open them,” she said. “They had numbers in their titles. I didn’t care. I just wanted to get out of there before I got caught.”
I nodded.
“Now I think they must have been something really bad, right? And maybe Trevor found out about them. AndDylan…or…or one of his friends…They wanted to shut Trevor up.”
I nodded again. What could I possibly say to that? It made sense.
“Was Trevor acting different before he died?”
“Kind of.”
“How?” Spike asked.
“He used to really love going to work,” she said. “But over the past few days before the factory went on break it was like…he couldn’t get out of there soon enough. It seemed like he hated his job. Hated the lab. He talked about burning it all down and then going to med school.”
I looked at her. “He used that phrase? ‘Burning it all down’?”
“Yeah.”
“That seems a little dramatic if you’re talking about quitting a job. Did Trevor often say things like that?”
“No,” she said quietly. “No…he didn’t. He wasn’t dramatic at all.” She poured herself more wine and drank it. Spike and I drank our wine. Outside the apartment, someone rode by on a motorcycle, the roar of it echoing down my street.
“Maybe it’s my fault Trevor died,” Elspeth said.
“Stop,” Spike said.
“I got him his gun,” she said. “I enabled him.”
“Don’t think that way,” I said.
Elspeth drained the rest of her glass. Rosie chewed on her bone. For several moments, that was the only sound in the room.
Finally, I spoke. “Is there anything else that Dylan asked you to do?” I said. “I mean…besides erasing those files?”
“He left a burner phone in my car and gave me a number to call,” Elspeth said. “When the person answered, I had to tell them ‘Dylan Welch is dead’ and hang up.”
“And you did that?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. A tear slipped down her cheek. Then another. “He…He made me text him after each date I had with Trevor. Tell him everything we talked about. It was just boring stuff. But it made me feel sick. Like…Like I started making excuses not to see Trevor. Just so I wouldn’t…I wouldn’t have to…I didn’t want to do any of those things, but I felt like I didn’t have a choice.”
Spike handed her a Kleenex.
“Of course that’s the way you felt,” I said.
“He has eyes on me,” she said as she wiped her face. “He told me he has eyes on me. He called me. He left me those audio messages. Every single day he would remind me that I was being watched. The only reason why I felt safe coming here is because the cops are after him, and I figured maybe he’s laying low.”
