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Back 3 a.m.
Chapters (67)
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  67. 3:46 a.m.

“I’m sure they would have if Wingleberry didn’t cop to the murder so early on. He’d confessed and taken a bullet through the head within two weeks of Jennifer’s murder.”

She’s right. They would have no reason to stir up a political conspiracy after Wingleberry confessed.

After a long moment, I say, “We need to find the pictures.”

Both my dad and Ingrid turn and glare at me.

“The pictures?” my dad asks.

“They interrogated her for two days and then they ended up killing her, which means that most likely, she didn’t give them the pictures.”

My dad nods.

“But why?” Ingrid asks. “I mean, she openly gave the pictures to the men she was blackmailing, even the ones who didn’t pay.”

“She got greedy. Maybe she wanted to buy a car. Maybe, this time she was trying to get a lot more money”

“Yes, but the second they grabbed her, began interrogating her, she would have quickly forgotten about the money and told them where to find the pictures.”

True.

If they’d done to her what they’d done to me — given her a twenty-three-hour nightmare — there is no way she wouldn’t have cracked, no way she wouldn’t have given up the location of the pictures.

Unless.

“Unless, she didn’t have them,” I say. “Unless, she gave them to someone who she feared these people might hurt.”

The three of us look at each other in unison. There were only two people Jennifer might have given the photographs to.

Megan.

Or her brother.

:13

“No, I haven’t been ignoring you,” I tell Lassie.

Meow.

“Well, I’m sorry if you feel that way. Maybe we can play with some string later.”

Meow.

“I wasn’t patronizing you.”

I dangle fake string in front of him. His little head sways back and forth. He swats at the invisible string with his paw.

Meow.

“I know, you can’t help it.”

Meow.

“It is a sickness.”

I stand up and move to my dresser.

It is 3:02 a.m.

“I was gonna wait to give this to you for your birthday next month, but I suppose I can give it to you now.”

He perks up on the bed.

“Close your eyes.”

He does.

I remove the contents from the Amazon box — the package came three days earlier, but I was waiting to give it to him — and put it behind my back.

“Okay, you can open your eyes now.”

He does.

I move my hand from my back, revealing a pack of four jingle balls (four different colors), packaged in mesh netting.

Meow.

“No, this isn’t some kind of sick joke.” I toss the pack on the bed right in front of him. “Have at it.”

He looks at the four balls, his yellow eyes starting to mist over.

“Are you crying?”

Meow.

“What are you allergic to? Cats?”

He ignores me.

“Go ahead, open it.”