“Were there threats against your family?” Kyle asked.
“Not specifically,” Tonya said. “But they didn’t need to say it. They knew who my family was! I wasn’t going to risk it.”
“Did you try to go to the police before now?” Jimmy asked.
“No. I quit my jobs—the other thing in the envelope was instructions. They told me to stop working, and there was some money to cover my next tuition payment, so I did. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. They said they were watching all the time.”
“Do you still have the envelope?” Kyle asked.
She shook her head, looking up at him for the first time since she’d started telling her story. “No. They said to destroy it, and I was scared they’d know if I didn’t.”
“Okay,” Kyle said, subtly glancing at his watch and wondering where the victim specialist was. “Can you tell me who you were sleeping with in the tape? And how long ago did this happen?”
“It was—” She cut herself off, suddenly lurching forward, clutching harder at her side.
“Are you all right?” Jimmy asked. “Do you want me to get a doc—”
“No, I’m okay,” Tonya said, leaning back against the pillow. But just as fast, she jerked forward again and her heart monitor went off.
It took so long for anyone to respond that Kyle almost ran out to get them, but finally a pair of nurses came in, and pushed him and Jimmy out of the room.
As they stood in the hallway waiting, Jimmy asked, “What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Kyle admitted. “It’s pretty obvious someone tried to kill her. But as for why? Her story could be true.”
“Or she could be looking for federal protection for some other reason,” Jimmy said. “She admitted looking up information about the FBI providing resources for human trafficking victims.” Before Kyle could agree, he added, “Or she could be a prostitute who wants to get out, but doesn’t want to admit she was ever breaking the law, so she makes up a claim of being forced into it.”
“That’s possible, too,” Kyle said, but the petite college student didn’t seem like a typical prostitute. Still, if her story was true, blackmail was an unusual recruitment method. “We should get more specifics on the warehouse she mentioned,” he said just as a pair of doctors came racing down the hall and into Tonya’s room.
One of the nurses walked out a minute later and told them, “You might want to come back tomorrow. She’s got to go into surgery.”
“What for?” Jimmy asked.
“We suspect she has internal bleeding.” The nurse started to head past them, still jotting notes on her clipboard, and when they didn’t follow, she snapped, “Come on. You’re going to need to move. They’re about to take her up to the surgical floor.”
“All right.” Jimmy pressed his card into her hand. “Have someone give us a call when she’s out of surgery.”
Kyle followed him out of the hospital, Jimmy texting away on his phone. “Aliyah got caught in traffic. I told her to head back and we’d call her when we can come for another interview, but that I think it’s a no-go,” he said.
“You think she’s lying?”
“Not entirely. But it sounds way too amateurish to be a human trafficking setup. Not that it couldn’t work, but there are a lot of potential holes. Not to mention that whoever took the sex tape used to blackmail her had to be involved, meaning there’s a personal connection. If you ask me, this is some kind of revenge scenario. Definitely needs follow-up, but this is probably a case for the local police.” He tucked his phone away and picked up his pace. “Come on. Let’s see if anything else came in while we were here.”
“Sure,” Kyle replied. “But toss me your keys.”
“What for?”
“I’m driving back. And we’re not dropping this so easily. I want to talk to the two students who called 911, and get their side of the story. Whether or not we’re talking about human trafficking, someone tried to kill this girl. And I want to know why.”
“Haley’s still alive,” Sophia repeated, staring slack-jawed at the note that had appeared at the station.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Evelyn said. “We don’t know when this note was written. And we don’t know if Haley was coerced.”
“If it’s legit,” Sophia said grimly as she finally looked up from the note, “then we’ve got a whole different case to investigate.”
“Are we sure someone didn’t just copy Haley’s handwriting?” Quincy asked from over Evelyn’s shoulder.
The three of them were crowded around the note, no one touching it because they didn’t want to add prints—or smear any. Other cops stood at a distance, necks craned as they tried to get a look.
“We can have a handwriting expert at the FBI take a look,” Evelyn said. “They should be able to tell us if it’s Haley’s writing or an imitation. They might even be able to identify signs of coercion, although with a note this short, I don’t know.”
“Really? They can tell coercion from this?” Quincy sounded skeptical as he read the note aloud. “‘Stop looking for me. I’m safe, but I won’t come home for another beating from Stepdaddy. Let me go.’”
“Maybe,” Evelyn replied, then turned to face Sophia. “You know the case best. Does this sound like Haley’s voice to you? Is this how she’d talk? Is that what she called Pete?”
“It is,” Sophia said slowly. “Her friends all referred to him that way, said it’s what Haley called him, in kind of a mocking way. They didn’t get along, but none of her friends thought he was abusive, at least not that they were willing to tell me. But what about the last part? ‘Let me go’? Am I the only one creeped out by that? Shouldn’t it be just ‘leave me alone’? Why ‘let me go’? This is the kind of language people use when they’re waiting to die.”
Her phone beeped and Sophia pulled it out of her pocket, then swore. “Well, let’s push coercion right up the list,” she said, then turned her phone toward them and pushed Play on a video attached to an email that went by too quickly for Evelyn to read.
Bill Cooke’s craggy face filled the screen, pressed close to what was obviously a camera on a home computer. He looked furious, and he was wearing the same clothes he’d been in when they’d stopped by his house earlier in the day.
“My name is Bill Cooke. My daughter, Haley, ran away from home to escape abuse from her stepfather. This bullshit about a stranger stalking her is just that—bullshit. She’s out there somewhere, and I want her to know I understand, and I support her decision.” He’d been staring down during most of the talk, but he suddenly looked up and stared directly, intently, into the camera. “Haley, you do what you need to do, honey.”
The video went black and Quincy stared at Sophia. “That’s it?”
“Isn’t that enough?” Her lips curled upward with restrained fury. “Just what this case needs. The parents fighting on a public stage, distracting from the real problem.”
“Maybe it will help us,”