Kate kept looking through the phone. She opened up photos and found that it was packed. Some were of girls, all partying. A few were topless. A few were kissing one another, the expressions on their faces a clear indication that they were wasted. There were a few videos of these events, all rather brief. She slid right past these until she came to one that was just under five minutes long. In the thumbnail of the video, she saw Mercy Fullers face.

She pressed Play and it took her less than three seconds to understand what she was seeing before she shut it off. In the video, Mercy was lying on her back, being videoed from just above her. The director was apparently Jeremy, filming while having some fairly rough sex with her. It was not forced, if the sounds coming from Mercy were any indication.

Jesus, Kate said, sliding out of Photos.

What was that? DeMarco asked.

Proof that Jeremy Branch was telling the truth about at least one thing: they were definitely having sex.

Kate saw that while the phone in her hand had no access to Contactsit did not need it, as calls were impossible from itshe did see that there were a few text threads. She opened up the messages and saw only three conversations. One was with a contact that had been titled BRO and the texts made it obvious that they were to and from his brother, Randy. One of the others was to a guy named Chuck and the entire thread was about which celebrities they would like to have sex with and why.

The third message thread was from a contact Jeremy had titled BOOTY CALL. The little picture above the name was Mercy Fuller, head tilted and making a kissing face.

I might have hit the jackpot over here, Kate said.

DeMarco came over and they both started reading through the thread. It was quite long, spanning back over the last several months. The vast majority of it consisted of long drawn-out messages from Mercy with very short, often only one-word responses from Jeremy. The more they read, the clearer it became that Jeremy Branch had been lying to them. He may have been truthful about the nature of their relationship, but the picture he had painted of Mercy and her parents was totally untrue.

And that raised a very important question.

If he was lying about that, what else was he hiding?

CHAPTER EIGHT

Kate walked back into the interrogation room as calmly as she could. DeMarco was with her and while she, too, was irritated, she had agreed to let Kate run the bulk of this second interrogation. Similarly, Barnes was also hanging back, fielding a few calls about other local interests in his office.