A sigh trickled through the phone and Naomi was instantly aware that Eli was about to try to talk her out of this. Not that she found that surprising. Eli didn't know about the threat Lyla's father posed to her. To Eli, this was just Naomi calling out of the blue to ask for help in tracking down Lyla's absent father. She knew what he must be thinking. She knew he assumed it would be in her best interest to drop this.
"Naomi, listen to me," Eli began. "I don't know what you want with Kurt Murphy--"
"I just need to talk to him," Naomi interrupted. She didn't have time for a speech right now. She just needed Eli to track the man down so she could figure out a way to stop him from murdering his family. It was definitely not something Naomi thought she'd be doing a week ago.
Eli groaned at her, clearly not on board just yet. "What could you possibly want to talk to him about?" he questioned.
"Uh, his daughter," Naomi replied, stressing the last word like it was obvious. Which she kind of felt like it was.
"Didn't Lyla mention something about him calling last year from Ohio?" Eli reminded her. "How do you think you're going to get him face to face?"
Naomi paused, wondering how much she should tell him. After Lyla, Eli was her closest friend. She usually told him everything. But this was different. This was Lyla's stuff to tell. She didn't know how much Lyla would be comfortable with Eli knowing.
"He happens to be in town right now," Naomi told him after a moment's hesitation.
The line went silent and Naomi could almost see Eli rubbing his head in mounting frustration despite him being in a separate place. Then he said, "Does Lyla know about this?"
Naomi paused again. She knew this sounded like she was meddling in the deepest, most personal of family affairs. She wished again that she could just tell someone about her predicament. If she had Eli on her team, they'd probably have saved the Murphys on the first go around. The only issue was that blabbing about DJ and the time travel thing would likely only result in her admission to a mental hospital. Aside from DJ, she was on her own.
The demon in question placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. Naomi looked up at her, confusion creasing her brow as she tried to guess what DJ might want now. The fallen angel, however, merely looked back at her and mouthed, 'I've got this,' before taking the phone out of her hands. Naomi immediately opened her mouth to protest, but she didn't even get a chance to speak when DJ waved her off and took the phone off speaker.
"Of course Lyla doesn't know," DJ said into the phone, her voice coming out sounding exactly like Naomi's. "She doesn't need to know right now. It would only stress her out."
The teenage girl stared at the demon in shock. She'd known already that DJ could mimic her voice. After all, the demon had done as much back in the car when Lyla almost ran it into that big white truck. But this felt like something else entirely. This felt eerie. Naomi couldn't help but wonder how many times the demon had done this already without her knowledge.
DJ covered the bottom of the phone as she peeked over her shoulder to glare at the girl. "I'm doing this to help you," DJ reminded her. "You don't have to be so distrusting."
A pang of guilt shot through her at the demon's words. DJ was right. She was only trying to help, and so far she hadn't done anything worthy of distrust from Naomi. "I'm sorry," Naomi apologized sincerely.
DJ sniffed haughtily. "That's better."
"It's just that I'm worried--"
"Shh!" DJ interrupted, holding up a hand to her. Naomi stopped talking, allowing the demon to listen as Eli apparently spoke to her through the phone. "Mhmm. No, I promise. I promise! Please just help? Okay. Okay. Okay. Eli! Yes, but don't… Ugh, of course I do! Alright then. Give me just a sec."
Naomi stood to the side listening intently to DJ's end of the conversation. She tried to keep up, but DJ's responses were too vague to follow anything. Finally her curiosity won out. She stepped forward and tapped DJ lightly on the shoulder. "What's happening?" she whispered.
DJ shrugged and handed the phone back to her. "Your friend is going to tell you what to type," she replied.
Naomi nodded her thanks as she put the phone back up to her ear. Eli was already mid-sentence, and she wasn't sure what he was talking about. "Wait, wait, slow down please."
"I thought you needed me to hurry," Eli huffed. He sounded slightly frustrated, making Naomi that much more curious about what his end of the conversation had sounded like.
DJ leaned forward. "I also told you to give me a sec," she said into the phone, looking at Naomi to give her a wink. She gave her a quick pat on the back as she walked to the chair next to the one in front of Naomi's laptop.
"Ugh, you're the worst," Eli spat. There was clacking on his end, like he was furiously typing something on his own laptop while he was talking to her. "I'll start again. Just open the search bar and pull up the old person's social media site."
"MySpace?" Naomi asked. She remembered her dad talking about his account once. From what she could recall the whole site had been inactive for a long time.
"Too old," Eli told her. "I meant Facebook."
"Right," Naomi said, pulling it up on her laptop. "Now what?"
"Search for Kurt Murphy. There might be a few."
"On it," Naomi agreed, doing as instructed. "Wow. There are more than a few."
"Just keep scrolling until you find the right profile," Eli directed.
"How will I know which one it is?" Naomi asked. She'd heard a lot of stories, but she'd never actually seen Lyla's father before. He'd been absent her whole childhood. She wasn't sure how she was supposed to recognize him.
"You've been to Lyla's house a thousand times," Eli pointed out. Naomi could practically hear his eyes roll. "Doesn't Mrs. Murphy have any pictures of him anywhere?"
Naomi tried to think back. There were lots of pictures around the Murphys' house, particularly of Lyla. There were only a few photographs hung up of Mrs. Murphy. She always said she didn't like the way she looked in pictures. One of the few she had hung up did show her with an arm around a man, but Lyla had explained that that was just her Uncle Aaron. Not even a wedding photo decorated the Murphys' home anywhere.
It wouldn't be so much of an issue if the Facebook search hadn't brought up fifty-three results. Who knew there were so many Kurt Murphys on the same social media site? It was going to take forever if she had to sift through all of them until she found the right one. She had less than ten hours to not only find him but also to figure out how to keep him from having a total psychotic break and killing his ex-wife and daughter.
"I haven't seen any pictures of him," Naomi said into the phone. "Eli, what do I do?"
"Calm down," Eli answered, his tone softer now. Naomi hadn't realized how shaky her breathing was. She took a couple more breaths, forcing herself to breathe deeply and evenly. "Good. Now the first thing you can do is look at the ages. If any of the men are too old or too young--"
"I don't know the man's age!" Naomi blurted, worried all over again.
"You've told me before that Lyla mentioned her parents getting together in high school," Eli reminded her. "That means they're not more than four years apart. You know Mrs. Murphy's age, so you know Lyla's dad can't be too much older than that."
Naomi relaxed a bit. "You're right," she said. She started scrolling through the accounts. Most of the ones she saw were fifties or older. Thankfully that meant they were too old. She even managed to cross one off the list who was a teenager, which kind of caught her off guard. She didn't think she'd ever met a teenager who still used Facebook. Finally she managed to arrow it down to seven different men who were around the right age. "Now what?"
"Well we know Kurt is currently in town," Eli explained. "Do any of the men have recent posts talking about an upcoming trip to California?"
Naomi quickly glanced through the seven profiles. "No, I don't see anything like that."
"Do you know what Kurt was doing here? Maybe he didn't specify California. He might have just posted about a 'business trip' or something like that," Eli amended.
"Uh, let me check," Naomi mumbled as she clicked back through the seven profiles. "Nothing like that yet. Just…"
She trailed off as she clicked on one of the men's recent pictures. She couldn't believe she'd missed it before. One of the Kurts had posted a picture just yesterday about getting a tattoo. That in itself was unusual, except that the tattoo parlor he was standing in front of was one that Naomi had seen several times. It was only a five minute drive from her house and it stood across the street from her favorite gas station. Kings Pit Stop was the only gas station in the area that always kept in stock of the Cheddar Jalapeno flavor of Hot Cheetos. The tattoo parlor across the street had a perfectly visible graffiti-style mural on the wall of a shirtless man riding a giant pelican. The picture on Kurt Murphy's account showed him standing in front of that same mural shaking hands with one of the tattoo artists.
It had slipped her mind before, but now that she was looking at this picture Naomi remembered looking at another internet photo. It had been the same day she'd learned about Heather and Lyla's murders. She'd walked out of her bedroom to see her dad reading an article about the arrested killer, which had included a photo. She was bad at memorizing faces-- and besides, a lot had happened to her since that moment-- but one thing she did remember was the top of a neck tattoo peeking out from the bottom of the online photograph. And this man in front of the tattoo parlor had a bandage covering his neck.
"No way!" DJ murmured from beside her. The demon was staring at Lyla's father, eyes wide with wonder and disbelief.
If there had been any doubt before, it was all gone now. Naomi's hands were trembling as she tightened her grip on the phone. "Thanks Eli," she told him, her voice dangerously low from her barely-contained rage. "I found him."
"You found his account?" Eli asked, his excitement letting her know that he was still totally clueless as to what Naomi was planning.
"I found more than that," Naomi admitted, clicking on the picture above the one of him standing in front of the tattoo shop. The one she had opened now showed him standing outside of a nice hotel, the name of the place perfectly visible in the shot. "Thanks for your help."
"Of course, I--"
Eli's voice cut off as Naomi ended the call. She pulled up the hotel on her phone before shutting down the computer and sliding out of her chair. Her vision seemed to narrow as she made her way to the front door. Hopefully he'd be at the hotel when she got there. If not though, it wasn't a big issue. Naomi didn't mind waiting.
"Hey," DJ called, placing a hand firmly on Naomi's shoulder. "Where are you going?"
Naomi glared at the demon. "Don't play dumb," she spat, and she turned to continue on her way out the door.
"I don't think you should do this," DJ confessed, trying to grab her wrist. "If you do, you might--"
"I don't care what happens to me!" Naomi snapped, shoving the demon off of her. "As long as I save Lyla."
"Naomi--"
"Goodbye, DJ!" Naomi yelled in a sarcastically cheery voice as she slammed the door closed behind her. She was done playing around. She'd already failed once-- twice if you counted the first time Lyla had died. She was not going to let it happen again. She was going to have a chat with Lyla's father, and if that didn't appear to work then she would have to try more than just talking.
Anything to ensure Lyla's safety.