Chapter Eight

Eight

Sky made it into Dylan's office in less than a minute. She brought a charger with her. When I asked her if it was possible that the phone I found was old or a duplicate, she turned it over and looked at the case, which was black, with a red Harvard crest at the center and DW written in tiny white letters in the lower-right corner. "That's his phone," she said. "The one he uses all the time."

"You're sure," I said.

"Dylan went through a really brief phase when he was into wearing white nail polish," she said. "Turned out to be too douchey a look, even for him, but it was during the time he bought this phone." She pointed to the DW . "That's the polish. I remember him doing that. It was Bottle Poppin' Friday—that's an office thing that he came up with. A morale-booster. He was tipsy and wanted to mark his new toy."

"How long ago?"

"About six months," she says. "It's an iPhone 15 Pro Max, and it's titanium. He spent a lot on it. He loves being able to drop it and not make a dent. He takes it everywhere."

"Until now," I said.

"Yeah," she said. "Until now."

Sky plugged the charger into the wall and attached the phone. We waited for it to wake up. It did, finally. But it took a couple minutes.

"Do you know his passcode?" I said.

"No. But I feel like he'd choose something meaningful," she said. "You know, so he can remember it when he's wasted."

"How about something to do with his mom? Her maiden name?"

"Sure. It's Baxter."

"It's the right amount of letters." I tried it. The screen shook. "But not the right word."

"Try Finley." She spelled it out. "That was his dog when he was a kid. A toy poodle. He still talks about him."

I typed it in. It didn't work, either.

Sky told me that Cortland was the name of his family's beloved summer estate in Nantucket. "It's Dylan's favorite place in the world," she said. "He even named his yacht after it." I typed in as many letters that fit. But again, no dice.

We gave it a rest for a few minutes so the screen wouldn't lock up, both of us quiet, thinking. If Dylan bought the phone six months ago, I realized, he would have had it for a month or less when he and I had experienced our unpleasant encounter. So maybe the key wasn't in choosing a name that had always been meaningful to him, but one that had been meaningful to him when he set up this phone.

"Teresa." I thought of the name, said it out loud, and typed it in, all at the same time. It worked.

Sky's eyes widened. "You know Dylan better than I do."

"It was just a hunch."

I looked at his voicemails first. They'd all been deleted.

"Can you recover them?" Sky said.

"Not me personally," I said. "But I have friends in the BPD who might be able to help."

She winced. "I'd rather not involve the police," she said. "Mrs. Welch feels the same."

"Why?"

"We're both worried about Dylan," she said. "A lot of the things he's gotten involved in…Well, they haven't been exactly legal."

"Right."

"If some of those deleted calls involve drugs or…illegal firearms or…"

"Stalking. He stalked Teresa Leone. She filed a restraining order against him."

"Yes," she said. "I know. He was going through a really rough time, personally."

"Yeah, well. So was Teresa."

"He was in bad shape. Off the wagon. Even Lydia didn't know the full extent of it because it would have broken her heart. It was like a…a terminal illness."

I stared at her for a full ten seconds. The things some women are willing to overlook in men, or, worse yet, defend…And he's just a friend. He's not even her type. She said it herself.

"Anyway," she said, "you understand the problem."

I nodded. I understood my problem, too. I'd taken the case. There were good people who desperately wanted to find this jerk. It wasn't my job to convince them otherwise.

I opened Dylan's texts, which didn't seem to have been deleted. The most recent outgoing texts from Dylan were to his father and Sky, making excuses for missing the family Thanksgiving brunch and not being able to come in to work. Apparently, he'd been back in his office at some point before the Monday after Thanksgiving in order to drop off the phone. Or maybe, after he stormed into his office the previous Wednesday, slamming the door behind him, he'd just stayed there. And outside of bathroom trips (if that) he didn't venture out of his office for the whole of Thanksgiving weekend. It made sense, now that I thought about it. At the very least, it explained the crushed cans, the half-eaten sandwich, and the giant Hershey bar, which was enough for someone with zero concerns about his own health to survive on for a long weekend.

But why? What could have spooked Dylan Welch so much that he'd hide in his office for an entire four-day holiday?

I went back to the phone. The most recent texts to Dylan were from Sky and his mother.

Are you alive? Sky had texted yesterday. Type Y to confirm .

I looked at Sky. "I was trying to be funny," she said. "Little did I know that I was texting his desk drawer."

Lydia was not trying to be funny. I don't care what you've done, my beautiful son , she had texted today. No one will be angry if you just please come home . She was in his contacts as Mommy . Despite my firsthand knowledge of Dylan's anger issues, lack of self-control, and deeply misogynistic leanings, it broke my heart a little. Even the most unlikable human beings were such vulnerable creatures.

I exited the Mommy thread and went back to the list of texts. After Sky, Lydia, and Bill, there was a sender marked Anonymous . I opened it up for the hell of it, expecting one spam message. That wasn't what I found.

Sky gasped audibly. I barely kept myself from doing the same. There were more than two dozen messages from this blocked number, and every single one of them said the same thing:

Murderer

I turned to Sky again. Her face had gone completely white. It seemed as though she'd forgotten how to blink.

"Sky," I said. "Do you have any idea who might have sent these to Dylan?"

She didn't look at me. Her gaze stayed riveted to the phone. "Yes," she said. "Yes, I do."