Loves Me Not

SIXTY NINE

AFTER
DETECTIVE BRETT PORTER

I wake up Tuesday morning and come into the station for another day. There's been a lot going on this past week, from B&E's to car theft. Zoey's been filling me in during our lunch breaks, telling me that she needs my help on a few things. I've been so focused on trying to solve the Kittridge murder that I seemed to have forgotten that life is still going on around me. There are still crimes happening that need attention. And if I don't make an arrest soon, the lieutenant will have my head and exile me to cold cases.

I sit in my office and go through my notes, organizing everything. I write out a to-do list of tasks I need to complete. I glance at the clock on the wall. It's only quarter after ten. This day is going to drag on, just like every other day.

A few hours later, I'm at my desk filling out some paperwork when my phone begins vibrating. The screen says Jake. I pick it up immediately.

"Porter."
"Hey Brett. Do you have a minute?"
"For you, always. What's up?"
"Well, it's good news actually. Remember those phones you dropped off last week? I managed to recover the data from both of them."
I sit up straight in my chair. "Are you serious?"
"Yep. When do you want to swing by?"
"I'll come now. See you soon."

I shove the paperwork into my drawer and leave my office to head down to the tech-lab. Upon arrival, Jake sits me down at his desk to go over the recovered data.

"I tried to keep it organized for you," he explains to me as he points to the screen. "This folder is the data from Phone One, her personal phone. And this one is from Phone Two, the burner. Which one would you like to go over first?"
"The burner," I say immediately. This is the key in the hole, the information I've been waiting to unveil. This entire investigation potentially rests in the hands of whatever data we recover from this phone.

Jake opens the folder and begins clicking around, explaining things to me, pointing at the screen.

We go over all of the calls and texts she made off the phone since its inception in mid-April. There's a variety of different phone numbers, none of which I recognize. I begin compiling a list of the numbers that I'll need to match to the names that Tony provided me with to eventually track these people down. Every single one of them is a potential suspect.

I notice that Dominic's number isn't on here. Then I remember that that is how I initially tracked him down – because I discovered his frequently dialed number on her main phone. Odd that she didn't use the burner to contact her secret lover. Although, their affair began in February, and she didn't get the burner until April. By then, it was far too late to begin using a decoy.

As I write down the numbers from the screen, I notice a new number that begins appearing around the second week of May. There a few outgoing and incoming calls to this one number in particular. I tell Jake to go through the text messages to see if there's anything there. And to my surprise, there's even more back-and-forth with this individual. Pretty incriminating stuff, if you ask me. Things she definitely didn't want anyone else finding out about, especially Ben.

There are a few different scenarios of what could have happened here. Catalaina could have left her house in the middle of the night to meet with a plethora of different people. Narrowing down exactly who that individual was is the hard part. Was it Tony? Was it Dominic? Was it someone wanting to buy drugs? Or did she go to the pier for another reason?

We get to the very bottom of the page where we've run out of numbers. The second last call she made was to the taxi driver. That leaves only one number remaining. And I'm sure as hell willing to bet that the last person she placed that call to on the burner phone is the same person who she met at the pier. The same person who is responsible for ending her life.