“Right.”
“And you guys figure she met up with this Kirby kid?”
“Right.”
“Did Kirby confirm it?”
“Not fully, no. Look, there’s evidence they were an item. Some texts, e-mails, stuff like that. Seems like Haley liked the idea of keeping it a secret, probably because the kid was a punk. No big deal. The kid lawyered up. Not unusual, even if you’re innocent. Rich parents, spoiled brat of a kid, you know the deal.”
“And this was Haley’s boyfriend?”
“Seems so, yeah. But Kirby told us that he and Haley broke up about a week before she vanished. That matches when she last sneaked out.”
“And you obviously looked at Kirby?”
“Sure, but the kid is a small-time asshat. Don’t get me wrong. We looked at Kirby hard and long. But he was in Kentucky when she disappeared. His alibi is completely solid. We checked him out six ways to Sunday. There’s no way he had anything to do with it, if that’s where you’re going with this.”
“That’s not where I’m going at all,” Wendy said.
Tremont hoisted his pants by the buckle. “You want to share with the class then?”
“Dan Mercer dates younger girls. Haley McWaid leaves her house—no signs of violence, a break-in, nothing. What I’m saying is that maybe the mysterious boyfriend wasn’t Kirby Sennett. Maybe it was Dan Mercer.”
Tremont took his time with that one. He chewed at something in his mouth, something that apparently tasted bad. “So you think, what, Haley ran away with this perv on her own accord?”
“I’m not willing to go that far yet.”
“Good,” Tremont said, and there was steel in his voice. “Because this is a good kid. A really good kid. I don’t want her parents hearing crap like this. They don’t deserve that.”
“I’m not casting any aspersions here.”
“Okay. Just so we’re clear.”
“But for the sake of argument,” Wendy said, “let’s say Haley did run away with Mercer. It would explain why there was no evidence of foul play. And maybe it also explains the iPhone in the motel room.”
“How?”
“Haley runs away with Dan Mercer. He ends up getting killed. So she hurries out of the motel room—never looks back. I mean, think about it. If Dan Mercer had grabbed and killed her, why would he hold on to her iPhone?”
“As a trophy?”
Wendy frowned. “Do you really buy that?”
Tremont said nothing.
“You found this state park on her Google Earth, right?”
“Right.”
“Pretend you’re Haley. You wouldn’t look up the place a kidnapper was going to hold you or bury you or whatever.”
“But,” Tremont finished for her, “you might look up a place where you were going to meet up with your boyfriend to run away.”
Wendy nodded.
Tremont sighed. “She’s a good kid.”
“We’re not making a moral judgment here.”
“No?”
Wendy let that go.
“So let’s say you’re right,” Tremont said. “Where would Haley be now?”
“I don’t know.”
“And why would she leave her phone in the motel?”
“Maybe she had to rush out. Maybe she couldn’t go back to the room for some reason. Maybe she’s scared because Dan was killed and she’s hiding.”
“So she had to rush out,” Tremont repeated, cocking his head. “And so she, what, left her iPhone under the bed?”
Wendy thought about that. No answer came to her.
“Let’s take it step by step,” Tremont said. “First, I’ll send some guys down to the motel—to all the crap holes where Dan stayed—and see if anyone remembers him being with a teenage girl.”
“Good,” Wendy said. Then: “One other thing.”
“What?”
“When I saw Dan before he was shot, someone had beaten him pretty good.”
Tremont saw where she was going with this. “So you figure that maybe Haley McWaid, if she was with him, might have seen that beating.” He nodded. “Maybe that’s why she ran.”
But now that he said it out loud, that didn’t sound right to Wendy. There was a false note here. She tried to think it through. There was still more—like how did the scandals involving Stearns 109 fit in? She was about to present that angle to Tremont, but right now it still seemed too far out there. She needed to look into it more. That meant going back to Phil and Sherry Turnball, maybe calling Farley Parks and Steven Miciano, trying to find Kelvin Tilfer.
“So maybe you should look into who assaulted Dan Mercer,” she said.
A half-smile crossed Tremont’s face. “Hester Crimstein had an interesting theory on that.”
“Hester Crimstein, the TV judge?”
“Right. She’s also Ed Grayson’s attorney. According to her hypothetical, her client gave Dan Mercer that beating.”
“How does she figure?”
“See, we found Dan Mercer’s blood in Grayson’s car. We said that, along with your testimony, was clear evidence Grayson murdered Mercer.”
“Okay.”
“But Crimstein—God, she’s good—she says, well, your witness, you, said Mercer had been beaten. So, she says, maybe Grayson and Mercer got into a fight a day or two earlier. And maybe that’s how the blood ended up in the car.”
“You buy that?”
Tremont shrugged. “Not really, no, but that’s not the point.”
“It’s pretty brilliant on her part,” Wendy said.
“Yep. Crimstein and Grayson pretty much figured a way to negate all the evidence. We have blood DNA—but a fight gives that a plausible explanation. Yes, Grayson had gun residue on his hand, but the owner of the Gun-O-Rama shooting range confirmed that he was there an hour after you saw him shoot Mercer. The owner says Grayson is one of the best shots he’s ever seen, so he remembers him well. You witnessed him killing Dan Mercer—but there’s no body, no gun, and he wore a mask.”
Something was niggling the back of Wendy’s brain. It was there, just out of sight, but she couldn’t quite get to it.
Tremont said, “You know what I’m going to ask of you now, right?”
“I think so.”
“The McWaids have been through hell. I don’t want to put them through more. You can’t report this yet.”