Loves Me Not

FIFTY FOUR

AFTER
DETECTIVE BRETT PORTER

Aside from the bag of Xanax Zoey found inside the body lotion, we also find a bag of cocaine secretly stashed inside the back of the toilet, as well as a bag of ecstasy hidden very well inside the trunk of her car where the spare tire goes.

What a turn of events – Rodriguez was right.

God how I hoped he was wrong. I hoped that he was just some lunatic coming forward for his five minutes of fame. I didn't actually think that his words held any truth. But alas, we discover yet another secret that Catalaina was harboring.

Now I'm not sure where to go from here because, as it turns out, the dead girl was selling drugs. I feel like we've just been tossed back a couple hundred feet in this investigation. Just when I thought I had it narrowed down, even the slightest, I get thrown another curve ball.

I try to think this through logically. Catalaina reached out to Rodriguez at the beginning of April and subsequently began selling narcotics. Why? Why would someone leading a successful and happy life feel the need to do such a thing? Obviously it wasn't for financial gain, given the size of this house. So why resort to drug dealing? And the most pressing question of all: Was this sudden lifestyle change responsible for what got her killed?

Rodriguez insinuated that he was worried she might have gotten herself into trouble. What I need to do now is narrow things down. I need to find out every single person that Catalaina had been dealing with in these past two months. That in itself is going to be an extremely difficult task considering we're only now discovering this behemoth secret. She had this so well hidden that not even we – the police – figured it out. It took Rodriguez coming forward and another thorough search of the place to finally discover the truth. If she was truly as cunning and intelligent as Rodriguez claims, then how will I ever find out more?

I go back into the spare room and pick up the day-planner. I flip through it, my finger sliding down the pages as I scan each word. There are different 'appointments' during the week. Monday, there's an appointment with "R" and Thursday there's an appointment with "L". How in the hell am I ever going to trace these people down when there's no other contact information?

I get another idea. I grab the remaining notebook and notepad and begin flipping through those as well, feeling hopeful. But I turn up blank.,

I suddenly remember the laptop. As well as the phone records. Surely there will be information in either of those two things.

Zoey, Hunter, and I finish up at the house and I call Ben's cell to let him know that he and Erin can return. We get back to the station just after seven o'clock and I feel the exhaustion setting in. Ideally, I'd like to grab dinner and head home for the night. But I can't rest, not after digesting the information from earlier today. No, there's work that needs to be done and I can't relax until I find something of use.

I order takeout and sit in my office, clicking through Catalaina's laptop, taking the occasional bite of Thai food.

There's nothing in here that points me in the direction of what I'm looking for. Nothing about drugs or contacts or clients. Not even anything on Rodriguez. If it wasn't for finding those drugs stashed away at the house, I'd be certain that we had this entire thing wrong. From the outside, it appears that there's no way in hell this girl was selling drugs. But I guess that's exactly what she was aiming for. Secrecy to the twelfth degree.

Lastly, I grab the phone records and scan through the numbers. There's not a whole lot that's unknown to me here. The majority of phone numbers are already matched to people in her life. Ninety percent of the calls and texts are to and from Ben. Then the rest pertain to her parents, Holden, Scarlett, Dominic, and people from work. There's the odd telemarketer here and there, but as for a multitude of numbers that could potentially belong to unacquainted strangers purchasing drugs – there is absolutely nothing.

And that's when it hits me: Tony's words ringing through my mind, "She didn't leave a trace." We didn't find anything at the house initially, until Tony told us to go back and look harder. Catalaina wasn't an idiot. The reason why I'm not finding anything in here is because there isn't anything to find.

She didn't use this phone. She had anotherone.