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She smiled at Antoine, charmed.
And Gabe was charmed by her. She’d been the bright spot in the last two days.
“We haven’t bothered you,” she told Antoine. “Well, Burke might have, but I’ve let you work. All day. What can you tell me?”
Antoine stretched his arms toward the ceiling, then let his hands drop to his lap. “I got something off the victim’s laptop. I also discovered a few things on the SIM card you found.” He stopped abruptly. “Where are my manners? And where are your manners, Molly?” He stuck his hand out and Gabe shook it. “I’m Antoine Holmes. I do the geek stuff for Burke.”
“Gabe Hebert. My dad is...” He blew out a breath. “Was the victim.”
Antoine’s expression softened, making him look more like André. “I’m so sorry.”
Gabe still didn’t know what to say to people expressing their condolences. “Thanks. But you found something?”
“I think so. The files were wiped, but traces of data remain. It’s like when Cookie Monster eats all the cookies and all that’s left is crumbs. You know it was a cookie. You might even know what kind of cookie, but reassembling the cookie might not be possible.”
“Shit,” Gabe murmured.
“Maybe not shit, but not a clear picture. Not yet, anyway.” He pulled a single folded sheet of paper from his shirt pocket, which also held an honest-to-God pocket protector filled with pens and mechanical pencils. He unfolded the paper and smoothed it on the table in front of him. “Your father was searching for a doctor.”
Gabe recoiled at the thought that his father had been so sick. “Because he had cancer.”
Antoine shook his head. “I found that contact on the SIM card from his phone. This was a different doctor. Not an oncologist. This was an ob-gyn.”
Gabe glanced at Molly, confused. “I don’t understand. Do you?”
She looked at the whiteboard. “I might. If we assume he was singularly focused on this case...” She uncapped the marker, and wrote something beneath the center of her diagram, which she’d labeled: MURDER VICTIM / KATRINA.
She’d added: POSSIBLY PREGNANT?
Oh.“Someone murdered a pregnant woman.”
“Possibly,” Antoine said. “He’d been searching for this doctor for a while. I found traces in his browser history from a year ago, but he seemed to have stepped up his search in the last few months.” He hesitated. “The heightened search started around the time of his first appointment with his oncologist.”
Gabe swallowed. “He was running out of time.”
Antoine’s nod was respectful. “You didn’t know he was sick?”
“He didn’t tell me.” And if he sounded angry about it, that would have to be okay. Still, he felt bad about snapping. “I’m sorry. Not your fault.”
Antoine held up his hands. “I’d be mad, too. In fact, after I get some sleep, I’m calling my parents and telling them if they ever consider keeping a secret like that, we will have words. Like, you know, please and thank you because my mother is scary when she’s in full-on mama mode and I’d be a damn fool to disrespect her. But...” He shrugged. “You take my point.”
Gabe almost laughed. He wondered what Antoine would be like on a full night’s sleep. “I do. And thank you. No, I didn’t know. I only know from the private autopsy that he had esophageal cancer that seemed to have progressed.”
Antoine visibly calmed, his voice becoming gentle. “He was stage three. They were trying to shrink the mass before they did surgery. He’d had a round of chemo, but it wasn’t working. He was considering stopping, but he planned to push through for you.”
Gabe shuddered out a breath, grateful when Molly sat beside him and took his hand. “I wish he’d have told me.”
“I think he wanted to,” Antoine said with a sad smile. “I found some notes he’d written on his phone that looked like conversations he wanted to have with you. I’ll print them out for you. I think he was... practicing.”
Gabe’s eyes burned. “That sounds like Dad. He was a ‘measure twice, cut once’ kind of guy.”
“How do you know he planned to continue the chemo?” Molly asked.
“More notes on his phone. Pro/con lists. The ‘pro’ was reasons to stop, the ‘con’ was reasons to keep going. That was mostly you, Gabe, and this murder case. Which he simply called ‘Katrina.’ ”
That was something, at least. “Thank you,” Gabe murmured.
Antoine nodded. “I’ll keep looking for more stuff.”
