After She's Gone (West Coast #3)

“She said she was going back to Oregon for a while. Didn’t know exactly when she’d return, but wanted to keep the apartment,” Doug Peterson had told her. Pushing seventy, with thinning white hair and a bit of a paunch, Peterson owned the large home on the property and rented out this little apartment.

Currently, Peterson was hovering on the tiny front porch and holding a black cat while stroking its fur and keeping an eye on Nash and Hayes as they poked around. He didn’t set foot in the apartment, just hung near the open door. She sensed he wanted them to leave things be, but didn’t have the guts to take on the police. “She’s been a good tenant, Cassie has,” he said. “Quiet for the most part. Respectful of the property. Always pays on time. Even when she isn’t in town.”

Yeah, yeah, Cassie Kramer is effin’ fantastic, Nash thought sourly, but kept her opinions to herself. “Good to know.”

She’d already seen Holly Dennison’s corpse and the mask that had been left at the crime scene. She’d talked to the LA techs and cops who’d been at the scene, but had spent most of her morning with Jonas Hayes who had brought her up to date on his investigation.

Glancing around the apartment one last time, she figured her next move was to have another face-to-face with Allie Kramer’s sister.

And she hoped to do it in Oregon, if that’s where she’d flown.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Virginia Sherling insisted across the wireless connection. “I never texted you. I don’t text.” There was irritation in the doctor’s voice.

“Could someone else have?” Cassie asked. She was standing on the porch off of Trent’s back door and staring at the dreary day. The sky was gun-metal gray, the clouds low. Cattle lumbered in the fields separated from other pastures where horses plucked at the grass. A cool wind slipped through the screens, to tug at Cassie’s hair.

“My phone is always with me or in my office or my house, so I don’t see how.” Her tone changed. “How’re you doing, Cassie?” Was there an undercurrent beneath the solicitous tones, a hint that Dr. Sherling thought she was making up the story about the texts?

“I’m fine.”

“That’s good to hear.” Again, Cassie sensed a falseness to the psychiatrist’s words. “I think it might be a good idea if we had a session. I’d like to hear how you’re doing, what you’re working on, where your life is heading. Your thoughts on everything. You did leave abruptly.”

“I’ll call you,” Cassie said. “Right now, I don’t have time, but thank you. Good-bye.” She hung up before the doctor could say anything else.

“Not her?” Trent asked, as she stepped inside.

“No.”

“I have a theory,” he said slowly, his gaze careful, his eyebrows drawing together as they always did when he was thinking.

“All right . . .” she responded cautiously.

“The kid who knows all the stats? Rinko? What if he got hold of the doctor’s phone and texted you quickly, then erased the message so Doctor Sherling wouldn’t find out.”

“The message about Santa Fe?”

“He knows everything about sports and cars, right? That’s what you said and he sure as hell knew every detail about my truck. He’d spied it in the lot at the hospital and figured it belonged to me.”

“That sounds like Rinko,” she said. “He’s amazing.”

“Okay. So maybe Santa Fe isn’t about the city, but about the car, an SUV. And the 07 is the model year of the car. Maybe he’s talking about a 2007 Hyundai Santa Fe.”

“That’s kind of a stretch,” she said, but felt as if she’d stepped into a time warp. How many times, while she was in the hospital, had Rinko gone on and on about the cars he’d seen in the parking lot? He knew what type of car each member of the staff drove and remarked when one of the nurses, aides, or doctors came in something new, or a loaner or their spouse’s vehicle. With his near-photographic memory, Rinko could remember most vehicles that had ever wheeled onto the tree-lined lot of Mercy Hospital.