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“I said I don’t know him. Why?”
“The other day when I came over?” He explained about the guy looking for his dog, a man who drove a white four-door sedan with Idaho plates, and as he spoke he noticed the panic starting to rise in his ex-wife’s eyes.
“I have no idea who he is,” she said. “You think he’s the same person?”
“Maybe.” He kicked himself for not delving deeper into Frank Quinn. “Tell Voss about the text.”
“What text?” Voss asked.
“This one.” Rachel found her phone and handed it to Voss.
“ ‘I forgive you’? From who?”
“That’s it. I have no idea.” Rachel repeated to Voss what she’d already told Cade, including explaining that she’d tried to contact the caller by phoning and texting back with no response.
Pushing her hair out of her eyes, she sighed. “It came on the anniversary of my brother’s death. Twenty years ago.”
“I read about what happened in the paper.” Voss’s eyes narrowed.
“So you think whoever called you is forgiving you for being involved in his death?”
“I don’t know.”
Voss pressed. “Who would need to forgive you? Someone who thought you were guilty, right?”
Rachel’s face tightened. “I guess.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.” Rachel looked away. “I mean, Luke’s dead so it can’t be him.” She didn’t seem convinced.
“Of course not,” Cade said.
“I know, but I had this feeling . . . I don’t know. It sounds crazy, but that someone wants me to believe it’s him.”
“It wasn’t Luke,” he said firmly. She couldn’t go down that impossible track.
“I know.” Her voice was a little sharp. Defensive.
Though it had been twenty years, she’d never really gotten over her half brother’s death;
she’d always blamed herself.
“It’s probably someone who took Luke’s death personally,” Voss thought aloud as she underlined something in her notes. “Someone close to him?”
Immediately, Cade thought of Lila. Good old Stepmommy. Mother of Luke’s son. But why? Yeah, there had been some tension between Lila and Rachel over the years, family stuff, but nothing that would lead to this. And why now? No.
“We’ll check with the cell phone company,” Voss was saying. “If it was accidental, which I doubt, or if it was some kind of a sick prank, we’ll figure it out.”
“But if it’s a burner phone?” Cade wasn’t liking the turn of his thoughts. He wasn’t buying into the “mistake” theory. Especially not with the grotesque message spray-painted on the door. Someone was trying to freak Rachel out, and he thought it might just be Frank Quinn.
“You know the drill. If it’s a burner we’ll try to track it down from the store where it was purchased. If there’s no record of who bought it, no credit or debit card receipt or check, if the guy used cash, hopefully there will be camera footage of the buyer. And we will double-check all the security cameras in the area that might have images of the man and his dog.”
“What if it’s a burner app?” Rachel asked. “You can do that, y’know. There are apps that disguise your number, make it impossible to trace.”
Cade had heard of them. “There has to be some kind of trail, digitally.”
Rachel shook her head. “I think everything can be encrypted.”
