Weed buzzing through my veins, slowing down the activity in my brain, I pulled up the folder where I had started saving information about each of my 12 suspects. If I'm being completely honest, some of them I just had a weird feeling about. But they all went to high school in Michigan (various cities) and matched Pattie Cake's information — pretty white girl with blue eyes, graduated high school between 2009-2012, lived in the Detroit and/or Chicago area around 2013, and nothing crazy that would have prevented them from being a con artist in 2013 (like pregnant or in the hospital).
I pulled out the list where I'd scribbled down the names and had started more in depth research.
Ashley Johnson (Detroit)-⭐️looks wealthy for a teacher
-⭐️master's in theater
-⭐️criminal record (theft)
-❌financial history too spot on
-❌married rich
-❌voice in social media videos sounds differentJessica Miller (Detroit)-⭐️studied marketing and communications
-⭐️mysteriously absent from social media
-⭐️looks kinky
-❌FetLife profile is more about golden showers and femdom
-❌seems poor, not sure where the money would have goneMegan Taylor (Detroit)
-⭐️criminal record (tax evasion in 2014)
-⭐️seems to currently be married to a sugar daddy
-❌dated sugar daddy during 2013, and looks actually in love with him
-❌a little too on-the-radar if she's a criminal on the run
-❌doesn't look like she's ever dyed her hair
The first 3 names weren't convincing enough. Ashley's financial records had been squeaky clean and the unexplained wealth I'd initially seen was confirmed to be due to marriage (even though her partner was nowhere to be found on her social media). And then I saw one video posted on her sister's page where Ashley's voice sounded way too masculine for Pattie Cake. It felt okay to mark her out.
Jessica was an interesting one. Her interest in marketing and communications made it weird that she wasn't on social media much, and many of the photos I found of her family and possible friends rarely showed her face. But there was something about her yearbook photo that just made my kink radar go off. Eventually I was able to connect her to a FetLife profile of someone who was into hardcore femdom and pissing on dudes. Felt different from what I'd expect of Pattie Cake. And even if Pattie was hiding a secret fetish, when I finally found Jessica's housing records I noticed that she didn't live in the best area of town and was renting an apartment, owned an old car all of her life, and there was no extra money in her financial information to point towards the blackmail Pattie had done. It also felt okay to mark her out.
Megan has been promising at the beginning, but the deeper I dug, the more I realized that she was genuinely just attracted to her sugar-daddy-looking partner. She had too many pictures of herself online, and her blonde hair looked the same over all the years of photos I'd seen of her. Something just didn't click right for her to be Pattie Cake.
I studied the next names on the list, which I'd done a preliminary search of, but had gotten tired before finalizing.
- Amanda Thompson (Detroit)
-⭐️clear daddy issues (criminal father, theft)
-⭐️similar eyes to Pattie Cake
-⭐️had blue hair in 2013 - Kelsey Williams (Detroit)
-⭐️follows Winters Pharma on social media
-⭐️maybe involved with "anonymous" hackers? - Chloe Peterson (Lansing)
-⭐️similar eyes to Pattie Cake
-⭐️mysteriously absent from social media
-⭐️suspicious school records
Chloe was where I had left off Thursday at work, which makes sense that when Izaak said her full name, the images automatically came back to me. I hadn't even looked at her parent information yet, which seemed important to add now.
-⭐️criminal father (con artist)
Headache forming, I took another hit off Molly's vape pen, ignoring the voice that warned me not to get dependent on substances again.
Going back to my computer, I clicked on the folder about Amanda Thompson, a rebellious blonde who had dyed her hair every color of the rainbow since 2009, and her blue hair phase happened to coincide with the Pattie Cake blackmail video from 2013. I clicked on an article I had saved about her dad, Joe Thompson, who had been in an episode of Cheaters.
This could be promising.
A cheater is also a liar, and probably a lying dad would contribute to a lying daughter. My sober brain would've made me do more research, but stoned, I just wanted to watch the video, see what kind of dude we're talking about. It was easy enough to find the episode in its early-2000s quality.
After the episode, I looked more into Amanda, her financial records, her lifestyle, her personality as dictated by social media posts. She played in a band and seemed to struggle with alcoholism, but also looked too introverted and anti-social, and honestly not smart enough to pull a con like Pattie. And there was nothing in her financial records that raised any red flags.
I sighed and scribbled in the details about Amanda, then slammed my pen on the table, groaning. I rested my elbows on my thighs, then leaned over, head in hands, thinking about what I could do.
None of these other leads were going to be Pattie Cake. It has to be Chloe.
But maybe it's not.
I need a cigarette.
Slamming my laptop shut, I headed for the conference room door, ignoring everyone as I stalked to the elevators, checking my phone for any new messages as I waited during the descent. When outside, I breathed in the fresh air and took a moment to lean against the building, feeling the warm sun on my face. I dug my pack of cigarettes out of my pocket and lit one up, nicotine helping to ease the pain in my head, the tension in my shoulders.
My thoughts wanted to figure out what to do about Clo, but the nicotine and weed wouldn't allow it. I just wanted to suppress that for now. It wasn't worth getting into.
Thoughts wandered to Izaak and the weekend I'd be under his rules. It seemed like a nice distraction from everything else, but how was I supposed to stay with him and Clo while holding onto this information?
I took another drag off my cigarette, suppressing that thought.
I still had 7 more suspects to dig through, with equal chances that they were Pattie Cake. Because seriously, what are the chances that Clo just happened to end up working in the same place Winters chose his lawyer?
Unless she orchestrated the whole thing.
But no, that couldn't be it — I was pretty sure that Molly had suggested it to Izaak and Gabe, and Molly wouldn't have known about it, right?
But could she have? Is that why she told me not to talk to Gabe? Molly was decent at keeping secrets... afterall, it was her job. She kept client secrets all the time. Was she keeping Clo's secret? Or Izaak's secret?
I took another puff of my cigarette, realizing I was down to the butt, and flicked it towards the ashtray. Trying to suppress those thoughts even more (I couldn't tolerate the idea of Molly and Izaak also lying to me), I took out another cigarette, lighting it up.
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