Lies Left Unsaid

Detective Brandon

Before I left St. Louis, I decided to make a few extra stops. Thanks to Madison, I now had a pretty big lead: the mystery man who made deliveries to Caitlyn's dorm room. While Caitlyn may have been faking a relationship with Colin, she was definitely involved with someone else. It was quite possible that Caitlyn was using the Colin relationship as a front to hide her real relationship. But why keep it hidden? Of course, there was also the possibility that the mystery man who delivered flowers and gifts to Caitlyn while she was at boarding school, was a stalker. Given Caitlyn's good looks, I'm sure she had more than a few unwanted admirers, however, my gut was telling me that this relationship must have been mutual, mainly because of something very early on in the investigation that had been nagging at me for quite some time. The red silk thong that we found at the crime scene was La Perla, a very expensive brand of women's lingerie, with one pair of underwear costing as much as $85. How would a high school girl without a job afford something like that? Someone else would have had to have bought it for her: someone with money.

I began my search by visiting the local flower shops in the area to see if they had made any deliveries to Thomas Jefferson High. Since a blue orchid is an unusual choice, I was hoping someone would remember making the deliveries. Unfortunately, each shop was a dead end. I spoke with the dean at the high school and he said all deliveries had to be cleared through the school, however, they weren't in the business of holding on to information like that, and since the deliveries were made during Caitlyn's junior year and she was no longer a student, he doubted his search would turn up much, but still, he promised to see what he could find out.

I then paid a visit to the police station closest to the school to inquire about the night Caitlyn got busted for drinking and driving. Since the cop let her go, there would be no written record of the incident, so I showed every officer in the precinct a photo of Caitlyn, to see whether any of them remembered pulling her over. Unfortunately, that proved to be another dead end, as none of the officers recognized her, other than as the girl they had seen on TV as being reported missing and possibly dead. This meant one of two things: either it had been so long ago that the cop who pulled her over didn't recognize her photo (several of the police officers did mention that it was pretty common for teens at Thomas Jefferson to be pulled over for drunk driving, but that they were often escorted back to school instead of ticketed on account of most of the students being from wealthy influential families) or Caitlyn had lied about being pulled over. But why would she do that? What purpose would it serve? Madison said that when Caitlyn returned to their dorm room, she was white as a ghost. Had something else happened? Had she seen someone or something that scared her? Was she a witness to something? There was one place where I might find the answers to those questions and more, and that was in Caitlyn's diary. God bless teenage girls for feeling the need to write down all the sordid details of their lives. That diary could be the key to cracking this whole case wide open. I had to get my hands on it, and I had a feeling I knew just where to find it.

As the mystery of Caitlyn Coates continued to unravel, I also discovered that she wasn't the only Coates woman with a secret relationship. Upon my return from St. Louis, I was treated to Martìnez's rather tantalizing summary of Vivian Coates' affair with Dr. Terry Patrick. It appeared both of them had a lot to hide and a lot to lose, which put them in the perfect vulnerable spot for interrogation. I wasn't usually one to exploit someone else's dalliances for my own gain, but Dr. Patrick's smug attitude during our last interview had really pissed me off. He was such a hypocrite with his "holier than thou" vibe. I was going to enjoy watching him squirm when I confronted him about his affair, although I figured I'd let Martìnez do the dirty work. We were getting pretty good at the whole good cop/bad cop shtick. I was hoping he would jump in with his usual inappropriate innuendoes or questions that seemed to rile up the interviewee enough to get him to admit something he hadn't intended to. But unfortunately, I would have to play the role of both good cop and bad cop for this interview. Martìnez felt it was best for him to follow some of our other leads. After all, the clock was ticking and we were rapidly running out of time. The longer Caitlyn was missing, the more likely it would be that, if and when we did find her, she'd be dead. Her chances were already slim. I knew very few cases in which dismembered body parts were found and the victim was still alive.

So while Martìnez went to try and locate Caitlyn's diary, I headed to the hospital to interview the good doctor again. I was prepared for him to lie to cover his own ass, but what I wasn't prepared for, was a rather surprising piece of information he provided about the year Caitlyn interned at the hospital. It seemed Caitlyn's secret boyfriend wasn't the only big secret she was keeping.