Somehow, I ended up carrying the Chinese food. There was something transformative about ordering take-out and standing in line as we waited—something about doing ordinary things and watching ordinary people do ordinary things. It banished, for a moment, the surreal horror of our encounter with Sheriff Hatcher, and by the time we reached Becca’s house, things felt almost normal again.
Austin smirked at me as he locked the Charger and we headed up the walk. “That’s a good look on you.”
“Pack-mule?” I said, juggling one of the cartons.
“Something like that.”
“You could offer to carry something.”
“But then,” Austin said, with a wicked light dancing in his eyes, “I couldn’t do this.” He kissed me on the tip of my nose.
I growled. “Not fair.”
“I couldn’t do this either.” He kissed me again, teasing my lips with the tip of his tongue. I leaned towards him, and he laughed and shifted just out of reach.
“Tease.”
“That sounds like a challenge,” he said, his voice thick with desire. “I haven’t even started teasing you.”
At that moment, the porch light went on, and I blinked up into the doorway. Becca stood there, an unlit cigarette clutched between two fingers, and an expression of disgust on her face.
“A girl could—and would—starve to death if it were up to you two.”
“You’d find a way to survive,” I said, fighting the blush I was feeling. “You always do.”
“Neither of you are going to date me,” Becca said, flicking the cigarette with a nervousness that belied her joking tone. “And now you can’t even feed me in a timely manner. It’s a good thing you like each other because no woman in the world would put up with you.”
“That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?” I said to Austin.
“I’m pretty sure my mom still likes me,” Austin offered with a shrug.
“Maybe we should take this lo mein back to your house and see if she wants it?”
“Don’t!” Becca shrieked. “I’m starving!”
We followed her inside, but instead of heading to the dining room, Becca led us upstairs. In her bedroom, she shifted a stack of hard drives and cables from the desk, and we spread out the food. Austin and I grabbed orange chicken and Mongolian beef; he sprawled on the bed, and I cozied up next to him.
“You smell like soy sauce,” he said.
“Whose fault is that?”
“I’m not complaining, I’m just saying—”
I popped a piece of chicken in his mouth to shut him up.
Leaning back in her chair, Becca shoveled noodles into her mouth. “God, I was dying,” she moaned through her third mouthful.
“Glad we could be of service,” Austin said, swallowing the chicken I had forced on him and giving me a pretend glare. “Do we have to wait until dessert for you to explain that text?”
“Hold on,” I said, tapping his chest. “Before I forget, send those pictures of the clothes. Makayla’s and Hailey’s clothes, the ones you took at the hospital.”
Austin swiped at his phones a few times, and then Becca’s phone buzzed in response.
“Take a look at those,” I said to Becca. “When you get some time, I mean. See if we missed anything.”
“All right,” Austin said, forcing a piece of chicken on me in revenge. “Now: are you going to tell us what’s going on before we crack open the fortune cookies?”
“You won’t be happy,” Becca said, pausing to slurp more noodles into her mouth.
“There’s nothing about this that’s made me happy,” I said. “Let’s hear it.”
Wrinkling her nose at me, Becca turned on her computer and started clicking. “After what we found at Mr. Warbrath’s house, I decided to do some research. Mostly, I was trying to find information about Belshazzar’s Feast, but all I got was stuff on the Bible story. Not really a surprise; the email address led to a dummy website, and they were using a service like Proton—something that would guarantee anonymity. A total dead end.”
I’d already demolished my orange chicken and now I was staring at Austin’s Mongolian beef. He gave me that pretend glare again and shook his head. Shifting on the bed, I tried to get a glimpse of Becca’s lo mein. She claimed she was hungry, but maybe she wouldn’t eat all of it.
“This doesn’t sound like an emergency,” Austin said. Then, blowing out a breath, he proffered a piece of beef. I snatched it with my teeth from the chopsticks. “And you’d better hurry, because apparently Vie is still hungry. I’m worried about what will happen when he finishes my food.”
In the midst of retrieving another slice of beef from his paper carton, I paused. “I’m bigger. I need more food.”
Austin poked my waist experimentally and sighed. “Somehow you are still skin and bones.”
“And muscle,” I added through a mouthful of Mongolian beef.
He rolled his eyes.
“The emergency,” Becca said, “is what I found later. Do you want to hear? Or should I leave so you can tickle each other and feed each other grapes?”
I was busy fishing out the last of the Mongolian beef, so I let Austin reply. “We don’t tickle each other,” he said with a touch of indignation.
“And,” I prompted through the last mouthful of beef.
“And neither of us has any grapes,” he added, the indignation even stronger.
Becca slammed her lo mein on the desk. There was still a lot of noodles; I could tell by the way sauce splashed along the paper carton. “You’re going to drive me insane. No, don’t say anything. Just shut up and let me talk. When I couldn’t find anything on Belshazzar’s Feast, I looked into Mr. Warbrath. Same thing: dead end. Up until a few years ago, he had great credit, but he’s been taking out a lot of loans. We already knew that. His Facebook page says he has family back east, but he hasn’t posted anything about them in a long time. Anyway, nothing that really stood out. Except the bunnies.”
“What?”
Rotating the screen so we could see it, Becca said, “Bunnies.”
On the screen, Mr. Warbrath’s Facebook feed consisted of occasional short posts from friends and acquaintances interspersed with pictures. Dozens of pictures, I realized as Becca scrolled down the page. And all of them were of bunnies. Not full-grown rabbits, but bunnies. Some were memes with bold letters. A lot of the jokes were about Playboy Bunnies, which I guess made sense but felt a little on the nose. Some of the pictures, though, were just pictures of bunnies without any explanation.
“That’s . . . weird,” Austin said.
“Right?” Becca minimized the window. “That’s exactly what I thought, but I figured it fit the vibe.”
“Creepy guy who likes little kids,” I finished the thought for her, “so it makes sense he has creepy, little-kid stuff on his Facebook page.”
“Bunnies aren’t exactly little-kid stuff,” Austin said.
“But they’re . . . I don’t know what word I want.”
“Juvenile,” Becca said.
“Yeah,” Austin said after a moment of consideration. “I mean, whatever way you put it, there’s something weird about a grown man who loves rabbits that much.”
“Exactly.” Becca opened another window, and it was clear that this was an article from a newspaper. “So my next thought was sex trafficking.”
“Sure. That’s how everyone thinks. Bunnies. Sex trafficking. Point A. Point B.”
“What I meant was that I wanted to learn more about it. I figured that however Belshazzar’s Feast was getting its girls, it wasn’t doing it legally. Do you know how massive human trafficking is?”
We both shook our heads.
“Millions of people every year. Not all of it is sex trafficking, but that’s a huge part. And it happens right here in Wyoming. They caught some guys trying to sell girls in Cheyenne just a year or two ago. Experts talk about how many people are shuttled through Wyoming every year. Major highways run through the state.”
“And it’s a big, empty state,” I said. “Lots of places to hide.”
“The Highway Patrol is spread thin,” Austin added.
“That’s why it’s good for moving drugs, too. That’s what Hanshew realized. There’s all sorts of illegal stuff going back and forth across the state. God, think of how much money is at stake.”
“People would kill to keep the drugs and the girls and the money moving,” Becca said.
“People already have,” I said. “They killed Harold Hanshew because he figured this out.”
Clicking something on the screen, Becca worked at the computer for a moment. A grainy color photograph came up, and she scooted the screen to the edge of the desk. “This was a really big bust back in 2001. It happened outside of Evanston, right on the border. See anything?”
It was easy to see why a newspaper had purchased the photograph: it told a clear, strong story. In the foreground, and older policewoman was frozen in the act of wrapping a blanket around a girl who couldn’t have been older than seven. Behind them, ambulances and police cruisers lined a muddy hill that was topped by a ramshackle farmhouse. A man in a Wyoming Department of Criminal Investigations jacket was guiding another man—this one in handcuffs—through the snow. The handcuffed man had turned his head away from the cameras. He was built solid, an almost perfect cylinder from neck to ankles, and it looked like he could have rolled down that muddy hill and probably taken out a few of the smaller trees when he really got going.
“There’s no way,” Austin said.
“Mr. Warbrath,” Becca said triumphantly, zooming in on the man.
“Why are you so sure?” I asked. “You can’t see his face. Sure, it looks like him, but this was sixteen years ago. It could be anybody.”
“Anybody? In this state? With that bizarre body shape?”
“There’s no way,” Austin said.
“It might be him,” I said. “But you can’t be sure. Not without a better picture. Is that what you found?”
“There’s no way,” Austin said, slapping my stomach for emphasis. “He’s a public school teacher—or he was. They run background checks on all the applicants. They’d have found the charges on his record, and that’s assuming that somehow he got out of prison after being convicted of a long list of crimes.”
“Exactly,” Becca said, her whole face beaming, the silver eyeshadow crackling with her energy. “That’s exactly right, Austin. I thought the same thing.”
Settling his head on my shoulder, Austin had a distinctly self-satisfied look.
“So?” I said. “What else am I missing?”
“Don’t be cranky just because you didn’t think of that.”
“I’m not cranky.”
“You sound—”
“What did I miss?”
“If that had been Mr. Warbrath, he would have been arrested and convicted. He never could have been a public school teacher. Except, I was so sure it was him. I started looking at other articles, other successful busts of sex workers and trafficking rings. No more pictures of Mr. Warbrath, not anywhere.”
“So it wasn’t him.”
Becca took a deep breath. “I went back to his house because—”
“You did what?” The words exploded out of me. Austin laid a hand on my chest, and I realized I had shouted. Moderating my voice as best I could, I said, “Becca, that’s insane. They killed him. They might have been there. They could have killed you too. Or the sheriff could have caught you and arrested you, or God only knows what else.”
“Well,” Austin said, tapping a finger against my sternum. “Now you know how we feel.”
Arching an eyebrow, Becca waited. A few seconds dragged by, and Austin gave my stomach another slap.
“Fine,” I grunted. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled.” Austin landed another light slap, and I brushed his hand away irritably. “And,” I added, giving him a dark look, “I should have let you explain.”
“It’s like dating a caveman sometimes,” Austin murmured into my shoulder, and in spite of myself, I smiled. I glimpsed his echoing smile and tousled his hair.
“All right, you went back there,” I said. “And?”
“I wanted to look through his records again. The computer was gone, though. Did you know he had a safe hidden in the subfloor of his bedroom? Someone had found that too.”
“So Makayla and her friends took it. The computer and the safe.”
“Or the sheriff,” Austin said.
“There might not be much difference.”
“I don’t know who took it,” Becca said. “There wasn’t any way to tell who had been there, but it doesn’t seem likely that the sheriff took computer. At least, not for any legitimate reason. After all, they decided it was a suicide. The safe is a different story. They didn’t take it. Someone . . . ripped the door off of it. I can’t imagine how, but they did. It was empty.”
“But why would Makayla or Mr. Big Empty or anyone want his computer? And what could have been in the safe?” Austin asked.
“I think I know.” Becca turned to me. “You remember that office.”
“Very organized. That man loved paper, and he had a place for everything.”
“Right. Well, I figured that a guy like him didn’t throw things away, not unless he had to. So I searched the office, but those records only went back a few years. Then I checked the basement. It’s not even a full basement, more like a cement crawl space, but I found them: boxes and boxes of papers. He even had them all labeled by year.”
“So you found the box for 2001,” Austin said.
“And do you know what I found?”
“Lots of cash withdrawals,” I guessed.
That radiant smile lit up Becca’s face again. “All of them in October and November.”
“And when did that raid happen? December?”
“Close. Thanksgiving weekend.”
“But that doesn’t change anything,” Austin said. “I mean, it doesn’t tell us anything new. Sure, the money is a good clue that he was going to one of those places and paying for sex, and you can make a good case that he was the guy in that photograph. But we already knew he was a sicko.”
“But,” I said, trying to fit everything together, “we don’t know why the sheriff or the DCI didn’t him. What about all those recent withdrawals?”
Flipping through a series of tabs on her computer, Becca pulled up another article. “There wasn’t anything that matched the withdrawals over the last few months, so I decided to work it from the other angle. Remember that bust in Cheyenne?”
“You said it was couple years ago,” said Austin.
“That’s right. 2015. In July, actually.”
“And—” I started to say.
“Let me try,” Austin said, squirming into an upright position in excitement. “In May and June, more of those withdrawals.”
Becca’s answer was that shining smile.
“So he’s been . . . what? An undercover deputy?” I said.
“I don’t know if they ever officially deputized him,” Becca said. “At some point, they probably did because it would have made things much easier, especially when it came time to sorting out charges. Based on the picture from that first bust, though, back in 2001, he must not always have been working very closely with them. At that point, they either thought he was a criminal or didn’t like his methods. At some point, that changed, and he became part of their system.”
“He’d go in with a bunch of money, figure out how the place worked,” Austin said thoughtfully. “It took a couple of months, but once he was sure, he would get the DCI and the local sheriff involved. They’d come in, he’d get arrested, and then they’d find a way to let him go once everything settled down.”
“Without any charges,” I added. “Because he was actually helping law enforcement.”
“That’s right,” Becca said. “Mr. Warbrath wasn’t a pervert. He was a hero.”
“Which leaves us with the same question we had before: why did Makayla kill him?”