“Now ask her about Errol!” Layna said.
what abouterrol?I typed.
Layna and I leaned in toward the phone, breath mingling in a cloud over the little pool of light until the next text came in.
Baylee:ralphie is taking errol to lake cascade. on saturday.
I let my thumbs outrun my anxious brain.Sosundayerrolthreatened to kill me?
“Ooh, that’s good,” Layna said as the gray dots appeared again.
Baylee:oh yeah he sent abt 50 texts telling me he was gonna rip yr lil connor off
“Ew!” Layna cried.
The phone buzzed again.
Baylee:He came by yesterday and smashed my phone. scary as hell. so pissed.
“Maybe after Errol murdered the dead guy, he was worried because he’d sent his girlfriend fifty incriminating texts about it,” I said.
“So he smashed her phone,” Layna said.
“This is a lead!” I yelled, my legs wobbly with newfound hope. “A real lead! We need Baylee’s phone!”
“Screenshots?” Layna said. “Ask for screenshots.”
“canu send me screenshots?”I hit send.
Baylee:can’t. I told u. errol smashed my phone.
“Dammit!” I yelled.
“SIM card,” Layna said. “We need that SIM card.”
“You’re a genius!” I cried. Connor’s address was on his driver’s license.
I wrote:can u mail me yr old phone? with the SIM?
As the gray dots appeared, I held my breath. I didn’t think Layna was breathing either. Could it be that easy? A package would arrive at Connor’s house. A smashed phone containing a SIM full of texted threats from Errol on the very day Connor was killed. I’d swing by and scoop it off his front steps.
Baylee:haha no way. i’ll give it to you at burgdorf.
I swore as I paced a big circle between the Impala and the Porsche, gnawing on my thumbnail. It felt like Layna and I had been out here in the cold darkness of the alley for ages. On the other side of the privacy fence, across the yard, my children slept in their bunk bed. Hopefully Emmylou was dozing on the living room couch. It would feel so good to plunk down next to her. But I couldn’t. Not yet.
“Clues are coming in faster than green grass through a Boise goose,” Layna said.
“We just need time,” I agreed.
“We could stash the mansicle nearby while we’re figuring this out.” Layna pulled a rubber band off one of her pigtails, wrapped her hair in a low side bun, and secured it. The fact that she saidwemade me feel slightly less panicked.
The thought of trying to move the corpse was beyond unsavory, even horrifying. But I certainly couldn’t keep zipping around town with a dead guy in my trunk. Stowing the body might be necessary to buy me a couple days.
“That’s what I was thinking,” I said. “If people start looking for him, I could text from his phone, make sure no one thinks he’s missing. Maybe there’s evidence at Connor’s house.” It made me squeamish to say the dead guy’s name out loud, but sending missives from his phone somehow made it real that he had one. “And... and... this is going to sound insane, but if there isn’t more evidence, I need that SIM card.”
Those threatening texts from Errol to Baylee would link Errol to Connor’s murder. It was the first evidence that didn’t point squarely at me. Baylee would be at Burgdorf Hot Springs with her smashed phone, and grenades, and plans for an attack on the capitol. Would it be possible to go there and convince her to give them to me? No, I told myself. Absolutely not. I couldn’t leave my kids to go off to the snowbound woods to wrest evidence from a strange woman romantically involvedwith an arms dealer and a domestic-terrorist-turned-corpse! It was too dangerous. Still, I hearted Baylee’s last text, then pulled up Ralphie’s contact and typed a thumbs-up emoji.
“What are you doing?” Layna said.
