“Vince Whitaker?”
Ms. McKenzie nods. “We made arrangements for Katie to stay with a family, to give the baby up.”
“The pregnancy isn’t mentioned in the investigation file.”
Ms. McKenzie nods again. “A friend of ours works for Union County.” She looks sadder now, rather than the panic from before. “He helped keep it confidential.”
Detective Grosso was right. “Who’s the friend?”
“My big brother’s best friend from high school. My brother died over in Iraq and his friend kind of took over, you know? He never had kids of his own, and he doted on my Katie.”
“Who, Ms. McKenzie?”
“I don’t want to get him in trouble.”
Keller lets out a breath. “That’s probably better than the alternative.” She glances inside the woman’s car.
Ms. McKenzie remains quiet.
“It won’t take me long to find out on my own,” Keller says. That’s true. HR is pulling the records for Keller; they said they’d have them by the end of the day.
“Joe was just trying to help. To spare our family the—”
“Joe who?” Keller asks, her pulse pounding in her ears.
Ms. McKenzie looks desperately to Atticus, then back at Keller.
Then she says it: “Joe Arpeggio.”
CHAPTER 58
“I say we put Joe Arpeggio’s ass in the box and grill him,” Atticus says, staring at his crime wall back at the office. He’s still amped up from the stakeout. He writes “J.A.” on a Post-it Note and sticks it on the board next to Katie McKenzie’s photograph.
Keller smiles in spite of herself. “We can’t rush. It’s probably nothing more than what we already know: a friend trying to protect a victim’s family from more pain.” She walks up to the crime board. “And if there is something to it, we need to do the legwork. Bulls in china shops get nothing but broken dishes.” Oh god, she sounds like her father.
“What do you need me to do?” Atticus is eager, ready to roll up his sleeves.
“We know Arpeggio’s connection to Katie McKenzie.” Keller puts a finger on the Post-it Note on the crime wall, then traces a line to the photos of the ice cream store victims on the other half of the board. “We need to see if he’s connected to any of the new victims.”
Atticus nods. “On it. We just got the rest of the records from the cell phone companies. I’ll start there.”
“Look for unusual patterns, things out of the ordinary. If he has a connection to one of the vics, it’s not going to be obvious. There’s only one thing sneakier than criminals.”
“What’s that?”
“Teenage girls.”
Atticus smiles.
“What else do we know about Arpeggio? What’s he do outside the office? What’s he do for fun?”
“Fun?” Atticus says. “I can’t imagine him having fun.”
“We don’t have enough for a warrant into his phone or computer, but we have every agent’s best investigative tool.”
Atticus waits for her to reveal the secret.
Keller holds up her phone: “Google.”
Hal appears at the door of Atticus’s office. “The original Starsky and Hutch,” he says. “No wait, that’s sexist: Cagney and Lacey.”
“Not sexist,” Keller says, “just extraordinarily out of date.”
Hal shrugs. “I got a name,” he says.
They look at him, unclear what he’s talking about.
“For the little brother, Chris Whitaker,” Hal says. “He goes by Chris Ford. Get this: he works as a Union County public defender.”
Keller thinks about this. Given where Chris Whitaker came from, that’s impressive. Rusty Whitaker’s spawn seemed destined for the penitentiary.
“It gets even more interesting,” Hal continues. “I called over to the PD’s office. The head PD is an old friend. Turns out Chris Ford is in the hospital. He was attacked last night.”
* * *
By late afternoon, Keller’s at the hospital. Chris Ford is awake and seems slightly agitated.
“That was brave, what you did to save that girl,” Keller says.
“So I’ve heard.”
Chris is banged up. He has scrapes on his face, his hair’s a mess, and he looks out of it. For the first time she sees the resemblance, the angular features like his brother’s. There’s even some of his father in his eyes.
“I’m sorry about your mom,” Keller says.