"Wait, what?" Kelsea's eyes go wide as she turns to me.
"That truck." I say again. "It's the same truck I saw parked on my road and it's the same one I saw downtown." I tell her.
"Are you sure?" She asks, her mouth hanging open.
"I'm fucking positive." I nod. "Look," I pull up YouTube and search for the video, hitting play. "Ok, watch." The video starts again, Amie waving to her coworker and walking out. "Right here." I point to the top of the screen where you can just see the front bumper of the truck where it is parked across the road.
Amie pulls away, and seconds later, the full truck enters the frame, going the same way as she had.
"Oh shit." Kelsea curses.
"You saw it right?" I ask even though I know she had. "It went the same way as her. It had been here, and there it is."
I jump up from the bed, the phone clutched tightly in my fist as I run down the stairs.
"Mayfield!" I call, rushing into the living room. "Look!"
I crouch beside the recliner and shove the phone into his face. "Why am I watching this?" He asks, pushing my hands back some so that he can actually see.
"Just watch." I say, pressing play on the video again.
"I've seen this."
"Shut up, just watch." He turns to give me a look but I point back at the phone. "Did you see that?"
"As I just told you," he sighs. "I've seen this video about a thousand times."
"The truck." I emphasize, sliding the bar at the bottom of the screen to play it back from where Amie pulls out of her spot.
"Ok." Mayfield turns to look at me. "What about the truck?"
I bounce on the balls of my feet. "There was a white truck just like that one parked on my road a few days ago and when I pulled out it sped off. White truck, no tag, back....right taillight, I think, was out." I explain quickly. "Then later that same day I saw it downtown again like it was following me."
Mayfield sits up straighter, taking the phone from me again. "You think this is the same truck you saw here?"
"It's the same truck." I nod with enthusiasm. "I'm telling you. That's the one."
Mayfield turns to look at Davenport sitting on the couch. "You got the surveillance footage from the 13th?" He asks him and Davenport reaches out to pull out his own laptop out of the bag on the ground.
I skip over to his side, watching him sign into the computer and scanning through different files on his desktop before clicking on videos with the corresponding dates we need.
Mayfield gets up lazily to come and stand behind the couch to watch over Davenport's shoulder.
First he pulls up the video from the diner we just watched, looking at the truck himself and then he goes into another file to pull longer footage from their cameras.
"Right there!" I shout, pointing at the screen and looking between the men. He'd backed up the reel to Amie arriving at work that morning. We watch her park at the curb, pull down the visor to check her makeup in the mirror and then send a text on her phone before getting out and walking inside of the diner and starting her shift.
We had to watch for a few minutes but finally, three minutes after Amie walked inside, the truck pulls up the road, slowly coasting passed the diner and the back of Amie's car.
A couple minutes more, it comes back up the road, driving by slowly again before turning and parking in the lot across the road. Front bumper facing the diner.
It's just barely in the frame, but you can clearly see that the truck remains in that lot for the entirety of Amie's five hour shift at the diner. Not once does a door open in the time it's parked there.
Then at the end of the video, the truck leaves when Amie does.
"Whoever was driving that truck was stalking her." I say quickly. "There is no other reason for them to be there that way."
"Does Aries have a white truck?" Detective Mayfield asks me.
"Not that I know of." I shake my head. "He's been driving the same older Honda for as long as I've known him and that's what he's been driving here when he's come." I tell the detectives. "But I don't know if he has one."
The detectives share a glance. "No other vehicles were found on his property, correct?" Davenport asks Mayfield.
"No." He replies to him, pushing his glasses up on his nose, leaning in to study the video again. "Windows are too dark." He says. "Impossible to tell who is driving, but look," he points to the back of the truck as it does one of the drive bys. "She's right about the taillight. It's out." He clicks his index finger over the screen. "Call it in."
Davenport pulls out his phone and places it to his ear within seconds. "Yeah I need a APB on a white Toyota Tacoma, between the years 1998-2002 model. No tag. Right taillight out." He's saying into the receiver. "Let's also pull any street surveillance or business front cameras to look for the truck in connection with the disappearance dates." He pauses for a second, listening. "Yeah we got a lead, just push it through and put anyone you can on this. We need to see the driver."
The driver.
Is it Aries?
It has to be, right? He's the one doing the killings, and that truck is definitely connected to this. It was at my house, it was there with Amie. That truck is even more evidence that will put Aries away if they can prove it's him behind that wheel.
But what if it's not?
I try to shake that thought loose.
I've got no room for doubts and the fact that you can't see through the tinted windows doesn't change the fact that we all suspect it is Aries driving that truck.
"What about the 12th?" I ask.
Davenport side eyes me, still holding the phone. "Yeah we will send everything we have here right now through." He says to the person on the other end of the line. "Let me know what you find." He drops the phone onto the couch and clicks through some more files. "The 12th." He says under his breath.
I see the video of me inside of the diner, but this time instead of looking at me, I watch the windows.
I watch it with intensity.
"Oh my god." I whisper. "Look." The room goes on tilt again.
"Pull the outside camera up right now." Mayfield presses in closer.
Davenport minimizes the video from that night to look for more but I can't stop seeing it in my head.
Over and over.
I walk across that room and sit at the booth by the window and I look outside. I remember wondering if the killer was out there looking back at me.
Through the fog clinging to the glass that turned the diner into a fishbowl, you can just see the glow of two headlights creeping up the street. There is nothing remotely concerning about them until the vehicle makes a slow turn, and there it is.
Glowing in the foggy window, one red light.
The single taillight.
I take a small step back.
I let the two of them pour over video after video.
"That it!" Mayfield slaps Davenport on the shoulder. They both watch the video from outside that night and pin the white truck pulling up the road and back out of town. "Same fucking truck!"
They keep going, finding another video of the truck on a traffic camera from as far back as the day before the first girl was abducted.
I walk through the house, everything compiling inside of my head. My heart being tugged in two directions.
I walk out of the back door and stare at the back of Dallas's head where he sits facing away from me on the stairs.
Thick layers of snow cling to his shoulders, but he doesn't seem to notice. It's like he's immune to the weather after all of his time living in that cabin in the mountains for so long.
"It's gonna get nasty." He tells me without turning around. "Everything is gonna be shut down for a couple of days at least. No one is going to be able to get out in this."
The cold eats through my layers of clothing and seeps into the center of my bones. I shiver and shake against the gusts of wind, the fat slaps of snow stinging my cheek as I watch my brother.
"Dallas." I whisper, and slowly he turns. He looks otherworldly. This super human who can sit in the middle of a blizzard like nothing is happening. All around him the trees are swaying in the background, large cracks of their limbs breaking beneath the weight echo around us with the howl of the wind whipping around the corners of the house. The snow falls so furiously and at an angle now that I can just barely make out his features through it all.
"What's happened?" He has to raise his voice over a wind gust.
I stand wavering in the wind. "I'm not sure he did it." I say back, just as loudly and I watch his features twist.
"What?"
"It's the truck." I tell him. "I told you about the truck I saw following me. It's in the videos at the diner where Amie Farmer worked." I explain. "Other places too." I say quickly. "On video, Dallas."
He stands, walking over, closing the distance with one long stride. "And you can see it's not him in the videos?" He asks me, staring down. "You're sure he's not the driver?"
"You can't see who it is." I admit.
"Then you don't know, Missy!" He grips the side of his head. "Don't you get it? Don't you see now why I blocked him for you? You will never let it just go, will you? You're always gonna believe whatever he tells you because it's more comfortable than facing the truth."
"It's not like that." I wrap my arms around myself, my body going numb.
"Like hell it isn't, Miss!" He snaps. "You could watch him stab someone right in front of you and you'd find an excuse."
"It isn't him driving!" I snap at my brother, wanting to shove him. "It's not!"
"You don't know that!" he shouts right back. "You just said you can't see who it is, so you're just trying to make it fit in your head."
"No!" I shout over him. "The video from the 12th." I glare at him. "The one from me at the diner with Amie Farmer. The truck is outside that night. While I'm there."
"So what?"
"So," I say. "I'd just watched them drag Aries into the police station in handcuffs less than an hour before that and he wasn't released until the next morning. He isn't the driver! He was in police custody at the time of that video!"
Dallas goes still. "What?"
"Yeah." I nod. "It's the same truck in all of the videos and Aries can't be the driver. It's not possible."
"Who the fuck is driving the truck then?" He grabs my arm and pulls me inside the house.
"I don't know." I remind him. "We can't see the driver. They're trying to pull any footage where they may be able to see where the truck goes or an image of the driver but we don't know yet."
"He had to be working with someone then." Dallas says.
Mayfield walks into the kitchen and levels me with a hard glance. "Missy, I know what you're thinking." He tells me, edging closer as he walks like I might spook. "This doesn't change anything as far as we are concerned on Aries. He was still at those crime scenes and come on," he tilts his head. "He had the girl's necklace, Missy."
They're right.
Both right.
They still have evidence against him.
This shouldn't change anything in my mind, but annoyingly, it does a little. I know this truck is connected to the disappearances. I'm positive of it. And if the driver of the truck is guilty, and Aries isn't the driver of the truck...
Dallas could be right.
He could be working with someone else. He may not be in this alone and we just haven't pieced together everything yet.
But just the smallest piece of doubt is creeping in. Despite what I've been shown, what I've seen, it never had felt right. What I know about the truck does.
So maybe everyone is right and I'm making excuses and grasping at straws to make it work where Aries isn't a murderer, but maybe I'm the one who is right. Maybe it doesn't feel right, because it isn't.
My gut screams at me to dig deeper.
Don't accept what I'm told.
Don't just believe it.
"No, you're both right." I say. "Aries is guilty, this just means there is someone else involved we haven't found yet." I rub my hands up and down my arms trying to rid my body of the chills. "This doesn't change anything."
At least it doesn't for them.
No one will trust me if they think my convictions on Aries have shifted. They'll think I'm crazy. They'll start locking me out of everything. Like Dallas had. They will assume I'm blinded by Aries.
Sadly, they still might be right.
But there is just enough doubt available to give me pause.
Aries could still be the monster, but he could be something else too.
One thing I know for sure now, I need to talk to him.
And I need to do it soon.