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When Alex went missing and Ximena filed the missing persons report, they uploaded his information to the NMPD immediately. Placing him there meant that if any remains were found nationwide, they could be contacted for a possible identification. They only recently discovered the colossal failure of the local police in not submitting his DNA to the system, which would have made answering the question of whose body was in Sylen a hell of a lot easier while saving Ximena the trauma of doing it.
There seemed to be an unwillingness to push information out since it took three weeks after finding the body for anyone outside Sylen to be made aware. Local authorities in the small town didn’t want to share details and they were only allowing law enforcement personnel to identify. The NMPD report the Sylen Sheriff’s Department filed was vague, only offering the barest of details. Male, a person of color, estimated age between seventeen and twenty-five. No images had been uploaded. The one string holding it all together was Lily, Alex’s ex. A string Teddi pulled on repeatedly to no avail.
Mackey had contacted the Sylen Sheriff's Department about fingerprints. After being told they’d call her back, she received a brief email stating that the victim’s skin was too badly damaged to provide them. When she asked for an image of him, they’d refused. The absurd response earned a string of curse words from her that had Mackey’s brows raised and J agreeing.
The sinking feeling in Teddi’s gut told her their worst fears were realized when J initially found the report. She was sure it was Alex but she had yet to admit that to Ximena.
Mackey, who had opened Ophidian Investigative Agency fifteen years ago, had spent much of her life traveling and living in almost every county in Colorado. Even as a wanderlust-filled teen, she never visited Sylen. According to the town’s average censuses for the last hundred years, few people left and even fewer moved in. Teddi had a creeping suspicion there was a good reason for that, whatever it may be.
Petite shoulders curled forward from decades of admin work as Mackey tapped a pen against a stack of books. The light from the desk lamp gleamed off the gold signet ring on her thumb. Something Teddi had never seen taken off. It was as permanent as Mackey’s dower mood. White button-up tucked into high-waist trousers, she rolled a shoulder against her falling black suspenders. “I have a feeling we’re about to roll right in the middle of a briar patch.”
“That’s a bleak visual.” Watching her boss closely, she gnawed her lower lip. “But I think you’re right. Whether it’s Alex or not, the way Sylen seems so closed off to share information seems strange. And who can forget the fingerprints fiasco again.”
The soft scratch of Mackey’s pen sounded as Teddi mulled it over. She’d been sent to a handful of po-dunk towns since becoming a PI. It wasn’t so much that aspect that was making her shift in her seat. It was the fact that it was Alex, who she admittedly hadn’t known very well, but still cared for as an Aguilar and as a human. It was the destruction she saw Ximena deal with each day since he disappeared. More than that it was the unspoken divide she noticed between Vera and her sister that weighed on her. Ximena never offered an explanation for Vera’s absence. All Teddi knew was that Vera was working something undercover and was hard to pin down. But the way Ximena leaned harder on Teddi over the last few months said there was a larger story to tell.
They hadn’t told their parents yet, which meant Alex’s mom didn’t know. She understood. Their father’s health had taken a downturn since retirement and they had operated on the basis of “there’s not enough information to panic yet”. But Teddi could feel herself wanting to panic. To rub at the unease she felt raising the hairs across her arms. To go over every detail of Alex’s life that she kept in digital and printed files on her home computer. She wasn’t known to lose her shit very often but there was something strange going on and tomorrow was just another step on a so-far hapless road.
Mackey grunted in agreement but kept writing. All Teddi could see was the mop of wavy hair atop her head. “When I hired you Teddi, you had the makings for a damn good investigator. You were lost, but had all the right things needed to do this job.” Teddi let the reminder of her first case at OIA wash over her. Dealing with murder was naturally difficult. But the cold-blooded murder of a daughter by her father was never something she planned to encounter. Holding a little girl as she took her final breaths had become slightly easier to deal with since then. The images were still burned behind her eyelids, but it no longer woke her up at night. “I hired you because you’ve got a good head on your shoulders.” Teddi’s brows hiked up at the almost-compliment. Mackey pinned her with a flat look. “Use it tomorrow. You’re going to need it.”
Before she could reply, she returned to her work, pretending Teddi wasn’t taking up oxygen. She wasn’t sure which was more unsettling; the near compliment or ominous warning.
Heading back to her office, she skipped the desk chair to sprawl across the leather couch that took up most of the back wall. Readjusting around the hard edges of the karambit knife she always carried on her waist, she settled in. She wanted another look at the file they had compiled on Alex's investigation. Five years at the job had proved cases didn’t magically solve themselves. But every once in a while, like some beautiful cosmic gift, a detail that had gone unnoticed would make a break in a case. It wasn’t luck, she knew, just consistent hard work to find a resolution.
She skimmed over the timeline details again.
Alex Sánchez, twenty-one. Last seen leaving his dorm by two of his four roommates. Teddi shivered at the idea of living with four other people. It paid to be an adult sometimes. He was possibly dressed in black jeans and a blue sweatshirt. The second roommate said it was a white sweatshirt. They never could agree on which it was.
Scrolling further, her finger hovered over the phone records. Ximena made copies for her and the police since they were on the same phone plan. Three calls were made at seven thirty-four a.m., seven thirty-seven a.m. and five past eight a.m. Four text messages were sent after the final call to the same number. They confirmed it was his ex-girlfriend, Lily. She failed to answer the calls or texts. All of the activity pinged near his dorm before it ceased entirely. The phone had disappeared with him.
Passing through the rows of data, her thumb lifted when a family photo centered on the screen.
It was a scanned photo with a corner missing and wrinkles cutting across the top. Ximena had given her every photo of Alex she owned. This one was from Vera’s eighteenth birthday party. Bundled together under a bright summer sky were the faces Teddi wouldn’t come to know until a few years after it was taken. Ximena stood on the left, her braces making her smile a bit too wide. Next to her was Alex with the same goofy look in his eyes, his arm looped around her shoulders. They looked like they could be siblings. It seemed like they tried to stop laughing long enough to pose but only ended up slightly wild. Beside Alex was his mom, Camila. Teddi had the urge to crawl inside the tattered image and hug her for all that would soon befall her. Her husband, Daniel, was just a handful of years from his untimely death. He stood at her side, gripping her around the waist like he was tickling her. He was handsome in the kind of way that drew stares. Strong jaw, kind eyes, broad shoulders. Then, as they always were, side by side were Vera’s parents, Guadalupe and Javier. She knew their faces well enough to draw them by hand. They welcomed her into their home ten years ago and never let her go. She needed to call them, it had been a week since they talked.
Finally, at the far end of the string of beaming faces was Vera. Her onyx hair was longer than she wore it now, brushing against her shoulders. Half of her face was shielded from the sun beneath her baseball hat but her eyes were locked onto Teddi’s. She wasn’t frowning but she wasn’t exactly smiling either. It was a soft-mouthed look that said she was enjoying herself but she wasn’t going to tell anyone else that. The space inside Teddi’s chest burned.
She was supposed to keep her head on her shoulders tomorrow but she could already feel part of herself cutting away from reality, like an arm reaching back into the past to drag it to the here-and-now. It was a common occurrence. Like a broken bone that never set right. She’d ended the relationship with Vera without warning. It’d been swift and brutal but at least she could comfort herself with the fact that it was kind. She saved Vera from a future she would come to resent her for and that was something–no matter how much it ached–she could live with.
Looking into Vera’s eyes, she tried to reassure herself that she did the right thing.
Teddi swore she could see Vera’s mouth form the word “liar”.
Chapter 5
Vera
The tension inside the rental car was thicker than the fog that enveloped it.
They waited in the car for fifteen minutes past their agreed departure time when Teddi pulled up and jumped out of her jeep. Some things hadn’t changed over the years. Not bothering to apologize for being late, she passed Vera and Ximena coffees and small brown bags of food as she hopped in the back seat.
“I splurged and got the best in town,” Teddi explained around the wad of bread in her mouth.
She pulled onto the street as Ximena and Teddi passed the greasy paper bags back and forth silently. It was without a hitch, the fluidity of their movements like a pattern practiced a thousand times before. A sneaking suspicion told Vera why that was. It happened while she’d been across the country and her sister and ex-girlfriend were looking for her cousin. They were close and it was news to her.
She got two hours of fitful sleep, tossing and turning as her mind blended together decade-old memories over more recent ones. Giving up when she couldn’t stop replaying the last time she saw Teddi, long before yesterday’s surprise collision. That’s what it felt like; a brutal t-bone ten years in the making. A dropped match to a long-leaking stream of gasoline. It took every ounce of her training to appear at ease, to not scream or curse or ask things she already knew the answer to. Waiting until Teddi left, she escaped to the bathroom under the guise of a stress-relieving shower. Her skin bloomed as red as her mood as she sat on the floor of the tub until the water ran cold.
Daring to steal a glance in the rearview mirror, Vera noticed things she brushed over yesterday. Gentle lines by Teddi’s eyes when she chuckled at something Ximena said. The nose ring she had since she was eighteen glittered with a jewel instead of a hoop. But everything else, all the soft curves and expressive gestures were the same. Older, but the same easy-going Teddi she once knew.
Looking away, she tried to shake off the fact that she hadn’t been around for all the years that put those slight differences on her. This was a Teddi she didn’t know and she needed to remember that. They weren’t young, reckless twenty-somethings playing summer love anymore. Sipping her coffee, she spoke above the fight over a breakfast sandwich. “What do you guys know about Sylen?”
