The Perfect Ruse, page 10
“You want to tell us what we’re looking at, Jamil?” Jessie asked.
Jamil sighed wearily, then launched into an explanation, “Out of the twenty-five people who touched the Carrigan home purchase file and the thirty-four who were involved in the Hill purchase file, there was an overlap of nine people who dealt with both purchases,” he said, his voice never changing from a flat monotone. “But after additional review, only three of those people would have ever had cause to actually be on the physical property of either home at any point, and only one person would have cause to be at both homes. That person was the loan officer for both the Carrigans and for the firm that handled the purchase for the Hills. His name is Gene Coleman. He works for WMC, or Wilshire Mortgage Corporation.”
“That’s great,” Sam said. “Any chance you checked to see if Coleman has a record?”
Jamil nodded unenthusiastically in Beth’s direction.
“Right, I did,” Beth volunteered. “Other than a DWI nineteen years ago when he was twenty-six, the guy is clean. No record of violence. No stalking. No restraining orders.”
“Good to know,” Jessie said. “Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s not him. It could just mean he’s never been caught.”
“Agreed,” Sam said. “Until we get a chance to evaluate him up close and personal, we shouldn’t jump to any conclusions.”
“Well,” Jessie said, pointing at the screen, which had all of Coleman’s contact information, “there’s no time like the present.”
They started for the door, but before they left Jessie turned around.
“Thanks guys,” she said to Jamil and Beth. “That was great work.”
Beth smiled broadly at her. Jamil didn’t even look up.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Hannah knew it was a bad idea.
As she sat on a bench in the small West Los Angeles parkette, staring at the house directly across the street, ignoring the sound of the squealing toddler who was being pushed on the swing a few feet behind her, she asked herself for the half dozenth time whether she should leave.
She looked at the time on her phone. It was 5:04, exactly one minute later than the last time she’d looked. Right now, she should be at home, relaxing on the couch, taking advantage of the fact that Kat had let her off work early and neither Jessie nor Ryan would be at the house for a few more hours. She could kick back and chill, choose whatever show she wanted to watch, and even put her bare feet on the coffee table.
When she and Kat had learned from Rhona Feller at 4 p.m. that afternoon that her husband Lyman would be taking her to the symphony that evening, it meant that he would definitively not be cheating on her, at least not that night. It also meant that they wouldn’t have to follow him once he got home. Kat generously offered to tail him to his house and let Hannah cut out early.
So, why had she, instead of going straight home, walked to a local coffeehouse, and started poring over every detail she could find about Sasha Wexler, the eighteen-year-old who had gone missing the previous night? Why had she read every news article she could locate? Why had she scoured the web for any background information she could glean. Why had she gone through every social media post from Sasha that wasn’t private?
She knew the answer, of course. It was because Sasha reminded her of herself, or at least of the version of herself she could have become if she’d continued to “lose” herself, before finding a path to survive the madness of this world.
But that was just projection. There was no evidence that Sasha had “lost” herself other than the mournful, lost look in her eyes in all her photos and the fact that she was quite literally missing.
Sasha could be perfectly happy right now. Just because her phone was found in a trash can on a residential street didn’t mean she’d met with some horrific end. At this very moment, she could be on a bender at a friend’s house or at Disneyland or at the beach or partying at a club in Cabo San Lucas. All of that was possible, but Hannah’s personal experience told her that it wasn’t the most likely scenario.
Which was why she was sitting in the parkette across the street from the house, debating what to do next. She’d taken a rideshare over here after reading Sasha’s posts. Many of them were standard teenage fare, the sort of thing any eighteen-year-old girl who hadn’t seen her parents slaughtered or gotten a troubling thrill from shooting an elderly serial killer might write.
Others were dark and disturbing, discussing experiences with drugs and sex that sounded unsatisfying at best, and sometimes closer to soul-deadening. Her relationship to her parents seemed to be largely non-existent. Her circle of friends had shrunk dramatically over the course of her senior year. If she was to be believed, she barely managed to graduate. To top it all off, just yesterday, in the hours before she went missing, her boyfriend broke up with her.
That boyfriend, whose name was Keanu Mendoza, lived in the house across the street from where Hannah currently sat. And whether or not to talk to him was the internal debate that had been consuming her for the last several minutes, as the toddler on the swing squealed even louder in the background behind her.
Sasha’s last post had come across as extremely bitter about Keanu dumping her. Worse, she sounded broken. Hannah wasn’t the only one who thought so. So had the police, who, according to news reports, had already interviewed him both at his house and at the police station. Interestingly, she couldn’t find any law enforcement representative who referred to him at any point as a “person of interest.”
That led her to believe that they had moved away from him as a suspect, which meant that he ought to be an ideal person for her to talk to. He should have information to share but theoretically, not be a threat to her safety. That was important, because if Jessie and Ryan found out about this freelance investigation idea of hers, she could at least legitimately claim that she had made sure not to put herself in harm’s way, something she had promised them she would no longer do.
So, now she just had to decide if she was going to really do this. Was she going to insert herself into a police investigation of a missing teenage girl she didn’t know, when she had no inside information, no personal stake in the outcome, and no justification to get involved other than boredom with her day job and a tangential sense of connection to the girl in question? She realized that the question had already been answered for her by the fact that, even without her mind ever officially making a choice, her feet apparently had.
She realized this because those feet were currently walking across the street, stepping up onto the curb, and walking along the path toward Keanu Mendoza’s front door. Her feet then made the decision to stop, and—even as her heart felt like it might pound right through her chest and fall out on the ground in front of her—her right hand made the choice to ball itself in a fist and knock on the front door. And when the door opened, revealing a tired-looking woman in her early forties who was clearly Keanu’s mom, her voice, despite almost giving out on her, made the decision to speak.
“Hi,” she said, surprised at how her tone was suddenly younger and sadder than usual, “my name’s Hannah Dorsey.”
“I’m sorry, Hannah,” the woman said, starting to close the door. “We’ve had a long day, and whatever it is, we’re really not interested.”
“Please,” Hannah pleaded, hearing her voice crack slightly, “Just hear me out. I was friends with Sasha, and I just finished being questioned by the cops. They were pretty intense with me. Then, when they were done, they just kind of tossed me away like I was trash they weren’t interested in anymore. Right now, I feel kind of raw and helpless and when I talked to my folks, they—no offense—but they didn’t get it at all. I don’t know Keanu, but I heard they questioned him in a really … aggressive way too. I just—I was hoping that I could talk to someone who’d been through the same thing as me, that maybe it would help calm my nerves a little bit. I took a half-hour rideshare to get here. I know I shouldn’t have just shown up but—you know what? This is stupid. Never mind. I’m sorry. I should go. I didn’t mean to bother you. Have a good night.”
She turned and started to head back down the path. She’d made it five steps when Keanu’s mom stopped her.
“Hold on,” she called out. “Give me a minute. Let me see if he’s up to talking.”
***
Three minutes later, Mrs. Mendoza (“call me Carolyn, please”) knocked on Keanu’s second-floor door. Hannah stood politely behind her.
She had already called up to tell him the situation and after chastising him in a hushed whisper, got his consent to bring Hannah up.
“It’s unlocked!” he shouted from inside.
“Go on in,” Carolyn Mendoza said with a sweet smile.
“Thank you,” Hannah said, opening the door slowly and cautiously stepping inside.
It took her eyes a second to adjust. The overhead light was off, and the room was dimly lit with the kind of string lights people usually hang in their backyards. The walls were covered with posters of 1990s Britpop bands like Oasis, Blur, Elastica, and Suede, for whom Keanu was apparently singlehandedly trying to spearhead a revival from the privacy of his bedroom.
The man of the hour was not on his bed but rather sitting at his desk chair, hunched over, with his chin in his hands. He was staring at her with well-justified suspicion. His dark eyes had shadows under them that were visible even in this low light. His hair was black, just like in the senior year photo she’d reviewed earlier, but right now it was spiky, shooting in all directions, like he’d had a run-in with a downed powerline. He wore ripped jeans and a flannel shirt that appeared to be misbuttoned.
“Who are you?” he asked, moving his hands away from his face and sitting up straight. “Sasha never mentioned anyone named Hannah to me.”
“I met her through temple,” she said, recalling how Sasha had complained in one of her posts that Keanu hadn’t been very supportive when she expressed interest in exploring the Jewish faith she’d lost touch with in the last few years. It was unlikely that he’d know anyone she’d met from that part of her life. “I don’t remember ever seeing you there.”
“Oh, I wasn’t really involved in that part of her life very much,” he admitted. “She told me a lot of stories about all the fun she had at some Jewish summer camp she went to near Durango, Colorado, as a kid, but as far as more recent stuff, she didn’t share it with me.”
“Why not?” Hannah asked, keeping the pressure on so that he’d forget that he’d been asking about how she knew Sasha.
“It just wasn’t our thing, I guess,” he said awkwardly before abruptly changing the subject, “so, the cops were rough with you, huh? What did they do?”
“They locked me in a room and cuffed one of my wrists to a metal table that was bolted to the floor,” Hannah said as she sat down on the corner of his bed, recalling what she’d seen done with some of the people questioned at Central Station, before she decided to embellish the already imaginary story a little more. “They said that they had GPS data that showed us together last week, and they demanded a detailed rundown of what we were doing and what we discussed. They said that any false statement I made could be considered a crime, and since I’m eighteen, I could be charged as an adult and sent to prison if convicted. They threatened to throw me into county lockup downtown at Twin Towers for the night if I didn’t cooperate. What about you?”
Keanu’s eyes had gotten wider as she went on, which was her goal. She hoped that by making her “interrogation” sound extra-intense, he wouldn’t be so precious about guarding his experience.
“I thought I had it bad,” he said, “but I guess it could have been worse. They pressed me pretty hard at first about her post saying I broke up with her. I told them that it wasn’t true, that she was the one who dumped me. They didn’t believe me, no matter how many times I told the story.”
“What did you tell them?” Hannah asked. This was the first she’d heard about Sasha ending the relationship.
“Just that she asked me to meet her at Industrial Coffee on Ocean Park Boulevard at 9 p.m.,” he explained. “It’s this place where we would always hang out. She was waiting for me when I got there. I had only just sat down when she started crying. I could barely understand her at first, and she had to repeat herself for me to understand that she was saying that she had to end things.”
“Did she say why?”
“No,” he said. “It was totally out of the blue. I had no idea what I did wrong or if it even had anything to do with me. She didn’t give me any explanation. Then she left, and a few hours later, she posted that I’d dumped her. I was already crushed. Add total confusion to it. I tried to reach out to her, but she didn’t answer my texts, and all my calls went straight to voicemail. Then the cops showed up the next morning to question me.”
“First here at the house and then later at the station, right?”
“Yeah,” he said. “The first time was mostly polite, but the second time, at the station, was scary. Like I said, they kept making me repeat my story, like they were hoping I’d slip up somehow. I even gave them my phone to show them my texts and calls to her. After that, they let up a little, but they still made me feel like a criminal. And now, none of my friends will return my texts. It’s like I’m some kind of pariah. The only people who want to talk to me now are those frickin’ vultures from the TV stations, and you, of course. I guess the only good thing is that those texts proved to the cops I was telling the truth.”
Hannah felt a flicker of guilt pass through her, knowing that she was not that much different than the vultures he was describing, even if her motives were more sincere. In that moment, she decided that she couldn’t continue with the lie any longer. She hadn’t planned on it until this very moment, but she was going to come (mostly) clean.
“Those texts aren’t why they let up on you, Keanu,” Hannah said.
He looked at her, confused. “What do you mean?”
“When you gave them your phone, they probably asked you something about letting them use it to verify your story more generally. Do you recall anything like that?”
“Not really,” he said. “It’s all kind of a blur right now. I guess they could have.”
“Well, whether you gave formal consent for them to search your phone or whether they got a warrant from a judge while they were holding you at the station, they likely searched the GPS data from your phone and found where you were all of last night. I’m guessing you came straight home after Sasha dumped you and stayed here until the police showed up in the morning, and that you had your phone with you the entire time?”
“Yeah,” he said, now even more confused looking than before. “Why does that matter? Did they do that to you too?”
“No, they didn’t,” she said, standing up and taking a cautious step toward him. “Listen, Keanu, the police checked your location data and found that you were home all last night, meaning you were home during the time that Sasha went missing. That’s your alibi, so they let you go. They weren’t obligated to tell you any of that or apologize to you for how they treated you, so they just sent you on your way, feeling crappy and ashamed and angry. It’s upsetting but not all that unusual.”
“How do you know all this?” he asked, standing up from his desk chair, his tone now guarded again.
Hannah hadn’t realized how tall he was until now. She was five-foot-nine, and he towered over her.
“Because I haven’t been completely honest with you,” she said, taking a small step back in case he reacted badly to what she said next. “I am eighteen, and just like you, I just graduated from high school, but I don’t really know Sasha. I’m actually an assistant private investigator looking into her disappearance. I work for a detective named Katherine Gentry. I’m sorry that I wasn’t up front with you, but I knew you wouldn’t talk to me if I told you the real reason I was here.”
“I can’t believe this,” Keanu said, slumping back down into his chair. “I can’t believe I trusted you and opened up to you, and it was all a lie.”
“That’s not true,” Hannah insisted. “I did lie, yes, but I’m not here for some slimy reason. I’m here to get information that uncovers what happened to Sasha, and you helped with that. I didn’t know that she broke up with you. Now I do. For some reason, she did that—despite seemingly being devastated about it—and then posted that you dumped her, all just before she disappeared. That has to be significant.”
“How?” Keanu asked, his curiosity outweighing his anger with her.
“I don’t know yet,” Hannah conceded. “I’m trying to piece together the puzzle of what happened to her. But it’s hard when I don’t have all the pieces. Just know that the piece you gave me is an important one.”
“I just want her to be okay,” he said forlornly.
“I know. I’m going to do everything I can to make that happen. The police do a good job, but sometimes they start with a conclusion in mind and put everything they find into that box. I start with an empty box and fill it as I go along.”
Keanu nodded. He looked spent. She decided to let him get some rest, but before she left, she couldn’t help but offer a little advice.
“Hey,” she said, “I’m sorry for being deceptive, but remember, I’m not the only one who’s going to do that. You got lucky with me. I’m one of the good guys. Don’t assume anyone else is. You said people from the news are calling you?”
He nodded heavily.
“Don’t talk to any of them,” she warned.
“Why not?”
“At some point, they might be helpful in resuscitating your public image or to assist in a search,” she told him, “but right now, with Sasha’s situation unknown, their natural inclination is going to be to look for someone to blame. You’re an obvious target. Don’t do any interviews. It’s too easy to say the wrong thing and end up getting demonized. Lie low.”
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