Chapter 29

CHAPTER 29

D EVINE STARED UP AT THE ceiling of Betsy Odom’s old bedroom. There were shiny plastic stars glued there to form perhaps a universe of possibilities, maybe representing something that was as unlike the girl’s life as it was conceivable to be?

While he didn’t routinely wax philosophical, this mission was hitting Devine in unexpected spots, like a journeyman fighter who got in lucky punches on a better foe, and managing to do damage in sensitive places.

He pulled out his phone and went over the notes he had kept on the case. Clearly, no one from Ricketts was going to get back to him, so there would be no items from the Odoms’ car for him to inspect, and no further examination possible of bodies now turned to ash. Dr. Coburn was certainly not going to contact him, and neither were the first responders to the Odoms’ deaths.

He hoped that Campbell could work a miracle with the request Devine had made of him, but that was far from guaranteed. He then called the man to report in. He was simply going to leave a voicemail. Yet despite its being very late on the West Coast and his being three hours ahead of Devine, his boss answered promptly. Devine wondered when and if Emerson Campbell actually slept, or maybe the man had just risen to begin his day. After Devine told him about being kidnapped, he asked Campbell, “It wasn’t your people who saved my butt?”

“No. You think Glass is behind them snatching you?”

“I can’t think of anyone else. They might have been planning to interrogate me in the woods before they killed me. But I screwed their plans. And whoever saved me blew up those plans even more. Any luck on my request for info?”

“Still working on it. It takes time to move mountains, even for the U.S. government.”

“Right.”

Campbell noted, “We discussed before that perhaps Glass believes Perry Rollins told you something incriminating about him.”

“But he’d have to figure I’d take whatever I knew to the cops.”

“My point is, maybe you know something valuable, only you don’t know you do. What did Rollins say to you again, right before he died?”

“It sounded like ‘cuckoo’ and then maybe ‘gas.’ I have no idea what that means, if anything. The guy was about to die, so it could be gibberish,” added Devine. “Although I suppose by ‘gas,’ he could have been trying to say ‘ glass .’”

“I think it more likely than not, but the other reference is pretty muddled. Okay, I’m going to work some angles on my end, Devine. You watch yourself.”

Campbell clicked off and Devine pondered the two words again, looking for something close that made sense. “Gas,” or more likely “glass,” meaning obviously Danny Glass. But “cuckoo”?

After ten minutes of trying, he stopped beating his head against a brick wall.

Then there was the matter of the men who had tried their best to kill him. And the person who had saved him? If it was an e-motorcycle the person had been riding, that spoke of premeditated stealth.

So a lot of preparation, for what end? Saving him for what reason? And what other guardian angel did he have?

He rested his eyes for a few moments. Then he sat up and looked around the space. It was small and cramped and cluttered, but it had represented a new home for Betsy Odom—perhaps her first real one. Now she was looking at living in mansions owned by an alleged international criminal. Pretty heady stuff for a twelve-year-old. Hell, for anyone, really.

Odom had mentioned her mother was homeschooling her, but he had seen nothing here that showed a serious effort was being made along those lines. But judging by the books she had, and the notes she’d made in the margins of Think and Grow Rich , the girl could obviously read and write, and she was clearly smart, at least street smart.

He looked down and eyed something partially sticking out from under the bed. He leaned over and snagged it. How had he missed that before?

It was a thick three-ring binder filled with pages. On the cover was written in block lettering one word.

ME

He opened it and flipped through some pages. They were a collection of photos, drawings, and text.

Going back to the beginning Devine saw that the first photos were, presumably, of Odom as a baby. He read her accounts underneath those pictures and it confirmed that what he was seeing was Betsy as an infant. He turned pages and with that saw the passage of time in the girl’s life. Funny photos, and pencil and ink drawings that became more sophisticated as the girl grew older. She was quite the artist, Devine noted. The next pages revealed photos of the Odom family glued into the journal.

With a start, Devine realized that he had never before seen what Dwayne and Alice Odom looked like. There were no pictures of them displayed around their home.

In one photo Dwayne presented as pencil-thin, goofy, and laid-back with a lopsided grin and long, shaggy brown hair. The auburn-haired Alice Odom had indeed been tall. Indeed, she was at least two inches taller than her husband and it was not because of any high heels—in the photo he could see both were barefoot. And she had beautiful features and a warm and kind smile. Devine did not see a lot of her father in Betsy; daughter definitely favored Mom.

He noted some of the things Betsy had written. Dreams she had. Things she wanted to do. A drawing of a dog that she called Barney, and how much she wanted a dog for real.

Then he found it. Pages of schoolwork memorialized here: spelling lessons, multiplication tables, a short essay on making pancakes that held a few stains on the paper. When Devine lifted the paper to his nose and took a whiff, he thought he smelled maple syrup.

Three pages were devoted to the exciting purchases of the new house and car, although they revealed no source of the funds, not that Betsy would have been necessarily privy to that. There were photos of the family standing outside the mobile home. Maybe Nate or Korey had taken the pictures, he speculated.

They all looked happy, although when Devine gazed more closely at Betsy, she actually looked… what was it? Yes, relieved .

There was another photo of her pretending to drive the Genesis, her smile ear to ear. It made Devine grin.

Most of the last pages of content were Betsy deciding what she wanted to be when she grew up.

There were the obvious choices in the list she had drawn up: doctor, lawyer, nurse, teacher. But when he got down near the bottom, he saw one occupation that had been underlined twice.

FBI agent?

Without meaning to stereotype, Devine still thought, What young girl listed that as her dream job?

When he turned to the final page, Devine jolted up from the bed.

There were only seven words:

Danny Glass, my uncle. Good or bad?

Why the hell had she written that? Danny Glass had only come into the picture as her potential guardian after Odom’s parents had died. She couldn’t have written this after that had happened. She hadn’t been back here. Odom had told him so herself.

Then she had been thinking about her uncle. Maybe her mother had told her more about Danny Glass than she had let on to Devine, or anyone else.

Now the questions became clearer: What did she know, who had told her, and why had she withheld it? Devine thought back to that moment in the Four Seasons when Odom had looked ready to give him the high sign. What had Glass said to make her reconsider ending the meeting?

Devine closed the journal, lay back on the bed, but didn’t really get a wink of sleep the whole night.