Flashback (Kendra Michaels #11)

“Naturally you would think that’s an admirable thing for a boyfriend to do,” Kendra said.

“Not admirable as much as fortunate. Fortunate for us, and maybe for Chloe and Sloane.”

“Exactly,” Perry said. “It’s one thing to get a warrant to search someone’s phone, but another thing entirely to get one of the big tech companies to help bypass the encryption for you. It’s almost impossible. That young man saved us weeks.”

“What did you find?” Lynch asked. “Texts? Emails?”

“All that, of course, though those weren’t really of much help to us. But our computer forensics team were able to take advantage of Google location tracking history on those phones. Both women spent a lot of time at one location in the past month. Come look.”

Perry led them past a row of desks to his workspace, where a printout was resting on top of a short stack of papers. Perry picked up the printout and pointed to the thousands of tiny red dots on it. “Each of these dots represents a stop that these phones made. If you look at the clusters, you can see a concentration of visits that we’ve tracked to likely destinations: workplaces, gyms where they held memberships, favorite lunch spots.” Perry’s finger traced another cluster on the other side of the page. “But both women also made frequent visits to this area.”

Kendra leaned over the printout. “Where exactly is this?”

Perry turned the page over. “We’re checking it out now.”

She gazed at him in disbelief. “May I remind you that I’m the one who gave you Davenport? You wouldn’t even have this if it wasn’t for me.”

“Which is why I showed you what I did.”

Kendra stared at the overturned page on Perry’s desk. “A geographic map with a bunch of dots and no street or neighborhood names. Come on, Perry.”

“We’ve had a couple of officers there all morning on a canvas, waving around pictures of Chloe and Sloane. I’ll fill you in after we’re done.” Perry picked up a stack of files and dropped them on top of the overturned page.

Kendra shook her head. “It looked like the other side of the bay. Where was that? Coronado?”

“We’ll talk about it later. By the way, our lab is confident they’ll be able to get usable DNA off that blood and tooth you extracted from your attacker at Sloane’s apartment. That could be a big help.”

“Good. I fought hard for that lead.”

“I know you did. And good work getting Davenport to fess up to his affair with both sisters. It gave us something to work with.”

“All in the spirit of cooperation, Detective. Try it sometime.”

Kendra turned and walked out of the squad room.

Kendra swore as she and Lynch stepped onto the sidewalk outside police headquarters. “That son of a bitch. I was starting to think Perry was a decent guy.”

Lynch shrugged. “He is a decent guy. He was much more forthcoming than a lot of cops you’ve dealt with.”

“Not forthcoming enough.”

“He didn’t need to be. We got everything we needed from him.”

“How can you say that? He totally shut us out on that tracked location.”

Lynch smiled. “He tried.”

“Whoa whoa whoa.” Kendra stopped and turned to face him. “What are you saying?”

“We have our own copy of that printout.” Lynch raised his phone. “Right here.”

“You didn’t.”

“Of course I did. Chalk it up to my usual trust issues with local law enforcement. And our friend Perry should beware any man crossing his arms in front of him while holding a phone. It’s far too easy to squeeze off a few dozen photos or even videos without being detected.” Lynch pulled up a perfect copy of the printout Perry had quickly showed them.

Her eyes widened. “How long will it take you to zero in on that location where Chloe and Sloane went?”

“Thirty seconds, give or take.” He flashed her his best movie-star smile. “Still wish I’d stayed in Switzerland?”