Covering a yawn, she got up to stretch her sore muscles. As tired as she was, she thought she could’ve slept anywhere, even standing, but that chair hadn’t been remotely comfortable. “I’m ready to help. What’s going on?”
“Not much. We haven’t found anything incriminating yet.”
Disappointment weighed as heavily as her fatigue. “I’d settle for suspicious.”
“These things take time.”
She switched the phone to her other ear. “So why are you calling me?”
“The interviews aren’t going much better than the search.”
“No one’s talking, even though I’m not there?” she said, taking a jab at his refusal to include her.
He didn’t rise to the bait. “Not the old folks. Not Butch’s wife. And certainly not Butch.”
“I told you to let Hunsacker do the interviews.”
Irritation sharpened his voice. “Enough with the bad blood between you and Hunsacker. If you two want to go at each other, leave me out of it.”
He had a point. Letting her dislike of Hunsacker get in the way wouldn’t help. She was just so…sleep-deprived. And worried.
Resting her forehead against the wall, she stared down at the commercial-grade carpet. “Maybe Dean’s family doesn’t know anything. He was able to stalk Sherrilyn, which means he has a great deal of freedom. This might sound a bit harsh, but Butch and the others are probably glad when he takes off on his little walkabouts, because then they don’t have to deal with him.”
“Maybe they are glad when he’s gone. But they know more than they’re saying about Julia. I can feel it.”
She toed a spot where the carpet was coming loose from the wall. “I thought you didn’t put much store in instinct.”
“I don’t put much store in your instinct. My instinct’s like a compass.” The chuckle that followed indicated he was joking.
“You can be funny?” she said dryly. “I didn’t know that about you.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
And she wasn’t really interested in learning more. “You think they’re protecting him?” she asked, getting back to what mattered most.
“Hell, no. Butch and Paris would love to make someone else responsible for Dean. Even a prison warden.”
Francesca still wasn’t sure where Finch was going with all this, why he’d reached out to her. “You haven’t told me what you want from me.”
“I need you to find Julia.”
What? She lifted her head. “The Julia Paris mentioned to Butch?”
“That’s the one. We kept Butch, Paris and the Wheelers separated so they couldn’t hear each other’s testimony. Standard procedure. But every time I asked about her—if Dean had any friends by the name of Julia or if they’ve ever known a Julia—they mumbled something vague, like, ‘Not that I remember,’ or, ‘Not in recent years,’ and that was it. I couldn’t get another damn detail out of them.”
That P.I. was here for a reason, Butch. And it wasn’t to ask about Julia. Those words had meant so much to Francesca when she’d first heard them. She’d assumed Paris knew of another woman who’d gone missing, that she suspected why and was keeping mum about it to protect her husband. But after Dean broke in and came after her with his trusty choke rope, Francesca had decided those words could have another meaning entirely. “Maybe I was wrong,” she said. “Maybe this Julia hasn’t been victimized. She could just be another woman, alive and well, with whom Butch has been romantically involved.”
“That’s what I told myself when you first reported what you’d heard. I didn’t find the comment particularly damning. Not on its own. But if this Julia is alive, and Butch and the Wheelers have nothing to hide, why won’t anyone provide me with a name and an address so I can talk to her?”
Francesca tried to reason that out, but he went on before she could arrive at an answer.
“And there’s something else that’s curious,” he said.
Stifling a groan because she still felt as if she’d been hit by a truck, she sank back into her chair. “What’s that?”
“I found a whole box of love letters in Dean’s room.”
“To Sherrilyn?”
“To Julia.”
This woke her up. “Do you know how long ago they were written?”
“The most recent is dated last week.”
“Which would suggest she’s alive,” she said, smoothing the tape on the fresh bandage she’d put over her stitches.
“Except that they were never addressed, let alone sent. There has to be a reason.”
“Maybe he doesn’t know where she is.”
“I thought of that, too. But in them he talks about how much he wishes he could’ve protected her from Butch. It seems to be a recurring theme.”
Protect her from Butch? It was Dean who was dangerous. They’d just established that, hadn’t they?
Too tense to sit still, Francesca got to her feet again. “What does Butch say when you ask him about those letters?”
“Nothing.”
“Try asking Paris.”
“I can’t. They all invoked their right to have a lawyer present. As soon as I mentioned her name.”
So the interviews were over almost before they’d begun. That wasn’t good. “You think I can track down Julia without their help?”
“You’re supposed to be a crack P.I., right?”
“Not according to you and your rotund partner,” she grumbled.
“Listen, forget all that. We’ve got work to do.”
Now he was willing to collaborate. Because he needed her.
“Hunsacker and I have our hands full here,” he went on. “I’d be tempted to believe this Julia is merely a figment of Dean’s imagination. He’s psychotic, so that has to be considered a possibility. But—”
“Paris talked about her to Butch, which proves they know her—or know of her—too.”
“Ah, the crack in the ‘he’s making up imaginary friends’ hypothesis.”
Just because Julia was real didn’t mean Dean’s perception of her situation was. He wrote about Butch being a threat. But it was possible that Dean had hurt her himself and blamed Butch for making him angry enough to do it, or used some other convoluted justification for his actions.