Adverse events, p.15
Adverse Events, page 15
“No. It was super awkward to have him there while I looked through her stuff. He teared up when we found a stack of cards he’d given her. Then he kind of lost it when I found some CDs for a foreign language software. He didn’t know she was trying to learn Spanish. Then he said something about it being just one more thing she hadn’t told him.”
Delilah nodded thoughtfully.
“What?”
“Did he seem to think that was significant?”
“The software or her not telling him?”
“Both, I guess. But mainly I meant the software. I mean, why would she need to learn Spanish?”
“Doesn’t everybody need to know Spanish? I sure wish I did.”
“Yeah, but it’s not like its something she would use in a research lab. She wasn’t going to interact with patients, right? She was going to spend her career peering into a microscope.”
Kate frowned. “Maybe it was just something to exercise the parts of her brain she didn’t normally use. I also found a nice collection of spy novels that Knowles said she liked to use for a weekend escape when she’d had enough of studying.”
“Maybe. Or maybe she needed it wherever she was headed.”
A shot of adrenaline coursed through Kate’s chest, like she was riding in a car that had just gone from zero to sixty in 5.3 seconds. Eyes wide, she stared at Delilah.
“Do you really think…” She suddenly felt too breathless to finish the sentence.
Delilah shrugged. “It’s a thread. Maybe you should try tugging on it.”
“Tugging on what?”
Kate’s mind was spinning so fast with possibilities that she hadn’t noticed Hunter Lewis amble over.
“Oh, Kate and I were just playing a little game of ‘Where’s Emily Gibson?’” Delilah winked at her.
“Yeah? You mean assuming she’s not at the bottom of the ocean?” Lewis asked.
“Well, if she drowned, or if the not-so-good doctor killed her and dumped her body in the water, she’d wash up eventually. Kate’s had plenty of experience covering those, huh?” Delila said.
Kate grimaced. “Right. And I can’t see Newhouse trying to bury a body. How else could he have disposed of it?”
“I guess he could have pulled a Robert Durst and chopped her up,” Delilah suggested.
“And done what with the pieces?” Lewis asked.
“Maybe he’s hiding them in his refrigerator.”
Kate groaned. “Gross.”
Delilah laughed. “You haven’t been doing this long enough if that makes you queasy.”
“Whatever. Back to the question at hand: If she’s not dead, where is she?”
“Kate found some Spanish learning software at Emily’s apartment,” Delilah told Lewis. “Her boyfriend didn’t know anything about it, so we were just wondering if that could be…” Delilah tapped her fingers on the desk like drumsticks. “A clue.”
Lewis arched an eyebrow. “You think she might have planned to go somewhere she would need to know Spanish?”
“Exactamente.”
“Well, there are plenty of places just a short plane ride away.”
“Yes, but she’d need to use her ID to get on a plane,” Kate pointed out. “And that would show up as soon as the police started looking for her.”
“Fake ID?” Lewis suggested.
“Maybe, but her photo’s been all over local and national news,” Kate said. “Unless she was wearing a disguise, don’t you think someone would have recognized her?”
“Mmmmm,” Lewis said, pursing his lips and scrunching his eyebrows together in concentration. “Could she have gotten on a private plane at the airport here?”
Delilah nodded. “That’s possible. Especially if someone offered to sneak her on board. It shouldn’t be hard to find out what planes took off the day after she disappeared, assuming she left right away.”
“Wait,” Kate blurted. “If she was willing to sneak on board something, isn’t a ship the most obvious option?”
Delilah’s eyebrows shot up, and she wagged her chin up and down. “A stowaway. Like the girls trafficked from Mexico.”
The familiar tourniquet of anger and despair squeezed Kate’s heart. She still agonized over the case that had exposed a human trafficking ring operating out of the Port of Galveston.
Lewis frowned. “I think the cruise ships have tightened their controls since last year. I doubt anyone could sneak on board one of them at this point.”
“But what about all the other ships at the port?” Kate asked. “Ships sail to and from Central and South America all the time.”
“That’s true,” Delilah said, sucking her teeth again. “And in that case, she probably wouldn’t have been a stowaway.”
“Why not?”
“Well, if she could pay for a cabin and give the captain a little extra, he might not have asked too many questions about official documentation.”
“How hard would it be to find out what ships left port on the Monday after she disappeared?”
Delilah shoved herself up from the chair and marched back to her desk.
“I’ll make a few calls.”
“Let me know if you find anything interesting,” Lewis said, wandering back to his desk with a wave.
For the next ten minutes, Kate listened to her colleague make an excruciating amount of small talk with her source at the port. She had to sit on her hands to keep from making impatient motions urging her to hurry along the conversation. But finally, Delilah let out a series of grunts, punctuated by the scratch of her pencil across her notepad. It took all Kate’s self-control to keep from running over to see what she had written.
“Yeah, thanks. This is very helpful. You, too. Bye now.”
Delilah hung up but continued making notes. Kate couldn’t contain the nervous energy building like a nuclear reaction in her chest.
“Well?” she finally exploded. “What did you find?”
The senior reporter grinned, her mischievous eyes peering at Kate over the top of her reading glasses.
“Patience, my young Padawan.”
Kate groaned. “Delilah, you’re killing me.”
“I think this is worth the wait.” She stood and waved at Kate to follow her into the news editor’s office. “Let’s see what Lewis thinks.”
“Got something?” he asked, when they sat down in the chairs in front of his desk.
“I think so,” Delilah said, wiggling her eyebrows at Kate infuriatingly.
Kate just shook her head. But excitement bubbled in her gut. Delilah was enjoying this too much for it not to be really good information.
“Out with it!”
Delilah grinned. “Three ships left Monday, not counting the cruise lines. One cargo ship headed to Guatemala to get its regular load of bananas. One carrying wheat sailed for Mexico. And the last one…” She paused for effect. “Was headed to Cuba.”
“Cuba?” Kate asked. “Is that legal?”
Lewis laughed. “Yes, it’s legal. The embargo doesn’t keep everything out of Cuba.”
“So you have three possibilities,” Delilah said. “And all to Spanish-speaking countries.”
Lewis slapped the top of his desk. “My money’s on Cuba.”
“Why?” Kate asked, surprised to see him suddenly so interested in what he’d suggested was a wild goose chase not 30 minutes before.
“Med school.”
“Ooooo, that’s right,” Delilah said. “I’d forgotten about that.”
“What are you guys talking about?” Kate’s head spun like she’d just stepped off a Tilt-a-Whirl.
“Cuba’s got a pretty solid medical training program,” Lewis said. “It’s probably their biggest export, come to think of it. The Castro government started it not long after the revolution. They send doctors to developing countries in South America and Africa. And they bring students from those countries to train at their schools. Some Americans even go down there to study. That’s why I remember it. We did a story a few years ago about one guy who came back and managed to get a residency at UTMB.”
The hazy possibilities in Kate’s mind began to crystalize into a credible picture.
“So, what, she goes to Cuba and just picks up where she left off?” she asked.
Lewis shrugged. “Maybe, or something close to that. It’s even possible she told them about her work on the vaccine and suggested she could continue her research there. I’m sure the Cubans would love to get their hands on that to shove up Uncle Sam’s nose.”
“And there would be an added bonus for her,” Delilah said. “If she did end up getting charged with anything here, say fraud, for her role in the vaccine deception, she wouldn’t have to worry about extradition.”
“I guess that would make Cuba appealing even if she didn’t want to continue her research,” Kate said. “Remember, Newhouse claimed she was having doubts.”
“True,” Lewis mused. “But even if that was her eventual plan, her knowledge about the vaccine was still her biggest asset. What else did she have to trade to get her out of the country?”
Kate stared at Delilah, then at Lewis. She couldn’t believe they had come up with a possible solution to the whole case. One nobody else had thought of. A slow grin spread across her face.
“I told you that thread was worth pulling,” Delilah said, winking at her again.
“So what now? This all sounds great. How do I prove any of it?”
Lewis, who’d been leaning back in his chair, staring into space, sat forward and fixed his eyes on Kate’s face. His normally easy-going expression was unusually earnest.
“The first thing you have to do is see if you can dig up any evidence that this actually happened. She would have had to make contact with the ship’s captain somehow.”
“The Broadside,” Delilah said suddenly. “A lot of the crew members hang out there when they’re in port.”
Kate knew about the bar but had never been there. Every few months, it showed up on the police logs for a disturbance call. She could imagine Emily Gibson would have attracted quite a bit of attention if she’d gone in there alone.
“Alright,” she said, drawing the word out as she thought about her options. “If I can connect her to a cargo ship, then what?”
“Then, you get to play ‘Where’s Emily Gibson?’ for real,” Delilah said.
Johnson had spent most of the day catching up on cases he’d neglected while dealing with the Gibson disappearance. But by midafternoon he could no longer ignore the question lurking at the back of his mind since the night before. He picked up his phone and dialed Officer Dylan Conner’s number.
“Yeah, boss, what’s up?” The young officer’s normally eager voice sounded tired.
“Long shift?”
“Something like that. I’m about to head in.”
“Stop by my office before you head home. I have a question for you about the Gibson case.”
“Sure thing!”
Nearly an hour later, Connor tapped on his door. When Johnson waved him in, he all but collapsed in the chair. Johnson smiled sympathetically. Some days, when he was stuck behind his desk, he wished he could be back on patrol. But then he remembered beat cops had to deal with too many people who either forgot their own humanity or refused to recognize it in anyone else.
“I won’t keep you long,” he said. “I’m sure you’ve more than earned your night off.”
Conner groaned in agreement.
“I just had a few questions about those chat messages you found on Emily Gibson’s computer. Any chance someone could have planted or faked them?”
Conner sat up straighter, sharp-eyed interest wiping away the near stupor that had covered his face moments before.
“I mean, it’s not impossible,” Conner said. “We were basically looking at a saved chat thread, so I guess someone could have faked it.”
“How would someone go about doing that, theoretically?”
Conner took a deep breath and laced his fingers behind his head. He studied the ceiling for a few moments while he thought.
“Well, I guess you could create two profiles and send messages back and forth between them until you had a thread saying what you wanted it to say. Then just save it.”
Johnson frowned. That sounded way too easy.
“So how would we go about figuring out whether all the messages came from one person?”
Conner scrunched his eyebrows together in concentration. “You’d need to track down the originals on the chat platform and see if you could get the company to give you a log of IP addresses or the unique IDs of the devices used to send the messages. If they all came from the same device, you’d know for sure.”
“But if someone knew what they were doing, they could use different devices to send the messages. Right?” Johnson didn’t like where this was headed. “It would be virtually impossible to prove who sent—or didn’t send—the messages.”
Conner nodded. “Unless that person used the same account to send other messages that could be verified or tracked.”
Johnson leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. The airtight proof he thought would disprove Kate’s theory had sprung a leak.
“Sorry, boss. I guess the DA’s gonna have a hard time proving Newhouse killed her, huh?”
“It’s not Newhouse I’m worried about at the moment. But thanks, Conner. I appreciate the explanation.”
“Sure thing. Let me know if you need anything else.”
Johnson waved as the officer ambled out the door. His niggling question was gone, but the seeds of a headache had taken its place.
If it wasn’t that hard to fake chat messages, he couldn’t dismiss the possibility that Emily Gibson might have orchestrated an elaborate plan to disappear. But without evidence, it was still just a possibility. And it didn’t seem any more plausible than it had last night, even after reading Kate’s story this morning. Newhouse came across every bit as crazy as Kate initially claimed he was.
But if there was a chance he hadn’t killed Emily Gibson? Johnson sighed heavily. He had no idea how to go about proving someone wasn’t dead. But he had to try. He knew Kate would never forgive him if she thought he’d given up on justice again.
Chapter 15
Kate dabbed dark pink lipstick across her bottom lip. She stared at herself in the mirror. A tight black tank top hugged her curves and showed just a sliver of skin over the top of her jean skirt. Not the kind of outfit she would normally wear alone to a bar. But Delilah assured her she’d get better information if she looked like someone the men wanted to talk to.
After first giving her some pointers on where to go and how to broach what could be a tricky subject, the senior reporter had announced she was coming along.
“Not because you need a chaperone,” she’d said. “I just can’t stand to miss out on all the fun.”
Kate put on a show of protest, but truthfully, she was glad to have Delilah with her. She’d never been comfortable sauntering into a bar on her own. She’d been to her share of nighttime hotspots with groups, or with dates. But never alone.
A long horn blast blared from somewhere below her window. She rolled her eyes. What was wrong with a text? She grabbed her phone, her purse, and her keys from the kitchen table and headed downstairs. Delilah’s car was idling at the curb, windows down, Jimmy Buffett blaring from scratchy speakers.
“There you are,” Delilah said when Kate opened the door. “I thought maybe you’d fallen asleep.”
Kate laughed. “Are you kidding? Girls night out with you is the highlight of my week.”
“Humph,” Delilah grunted as she whipped the car into a tight U-turn in the empty intersection. She gave Kate a sideways glance. “At least you look better than my usual date.”
“Speaking of, how did you convince Ben to stay home?”
Delilah snorted. “He’s not home. He went to Millers. He’ll probably behave himself. Mostly. I know the bartender. She’ll keep an eye on him and let me know if he gets out of hand.”
Kate shook her head. Ben Denison was the paper’s longtime cops and courts reporter. He knew almost everyone on the island. And the people he didn’t know, Delilah did. They made a formidable reporting team.
It took less than 15 minutes for Delilah to drive to the Broadside. The bar sat between a barber shop and a storefront with plywood covering the windows. It was just five blocks from the port, an easy walk for crewmen who didn’t want to pay for a cab.
“Alright, remember we need to have at least one drink before we start asking questions,” Delilah said as she put the car in park and rolled up the windows.
Kate nodded.
“And smile. You want to look approachable, friendly. It wouldn’t hurt you to flirt a little either.”
Kate rolled her eyes. “Seriously, Delilah. I have worked a source before.”
“Yeah, but this is a bit different from managing local politicians.”
“Ok, master dive bar hopper. Show me how it’s done.”
Delilah grinned. “Watch and learn.”
Smoke billowed out the door when Delilah pushed it open. Kate tried not to cough. The owners clearly weren’t concerned about the city’s no smoking ordinance. Dim lights punctuated the bar’s dingy interior with puddles of yellow. A short counter stretched to their left. Small tables filled the center of the room. Booths lined the back wall. And two pool tables sat at the far end of the room. Eighties hairband music screeched from speakers in the corner.
Kate plastered what she hoped was a friendly and flirty smile on her face and followed Delilah to the bar. The older woman squeezed between a bushy-haired man wearing tattered cargo shorts and a faded T-shirt and a clean cut man wearing the dark blue coveralls of a dockworker. The bartender nodded in her direction and leaned over to get her order. When he glanced in Kate’s direction, she smiled and flipped her hair over her shoulder. He gave her what she took for an appreciative smile before turning his attention back to Delilah.
A few minutes later, he handed over two long-necked beer bottles. When Delilah turned away, he winked at Kate.
“Let me know when you’re ready for another round,” he said.
Delilah handed her one of the bottles and motioned toward the pool tables.
