Broken

CHAPTER NINE

WILL FELT LIKE A THIEF AS HE SNEAKED ACROSS THE LINTON YARD and climbed into his Porsche. At least the driving rain gave him an excuse to keep his head down and move quickly. He jammed the key in the lock and was inside the car before he realized there was something trapped under his windshield wiper. Will groaned. He pushed open the door and tried to reach around to the wiper, but his arm wasn’t long enough. His sleeve was nearly soaked through by the time he got out of the car again to retrieve the plastic sandwich bag.

Someone had left him a note. The paper was folded in two, safe inside the plastic. Will glanced around, trying to see up and down the street. No one was milling about, which was unsurprising, considering the awful weather. There were no parked cars with the engines running. Will unzipped the bag. He caught a whiff of a familiar scent.

Fancy soap.

He stared at the folded piece of paper, wondering if Sara was playing some kind of joke. He’d paced the floor of her family’s romper room half the night, replaying in his mind the last five minutes of their conversation. She hadn’t said anything, really. Or had she? There was definitely a look in her eyes. Something had changed between them, and it wasn’t a good change.

Other than Will’s wife, there were only two people in his life who knew about his dyslexia. Both of them had found their own special ways to make him miserable about it. Amanda Wagner, his boss, threw out occasional bon mots about him being professionally incompetent at best and mentally incapacitated at worst. Faith was more well-meaning, but she was too nosy for her own good. Once, she’d peppered Will with so many questions about the disorder that he’d stopped talking to her for two whole days.

His wife, Angie, was a combination of both responses. She had grown up with Will, helped him write school assignments and work on papers and fill out applications. She’d been the one who reviewed his reports and made sure he didn’t sound like a backward chimp. She was also prone to dangling her help in exchange for things she wanted. And they were never good things. At least not good for Will.

In their own way, all three women made it clear that they thought something was wrong with him. Something not quite right with his head. With the way he thought. With the way he handled things. They didn’t pity him. He was pretty sure Amanda didn’t even like him. But they treated him differently. They treated him like he had a disease.

What would Sara do? Maybe nothing. Will wasn’t even sure if she had figured it out. Or he could just be fooling himself. Sara was smart-that was part of the problem. She was a hell of a lot smarter than Will. Had he tripped up? Did she have some kind of special doctor’s tool to trap unsuspecting morons? He must have said something or done something that had given himself away. But what?

Will glanced back at the Linton home to make sure no one was watching him. Sara had developed a weird habit of lurking behind closed doors. He unfolded the notebook paper. There was a smiley face at the bottom.

Did she think he was a child? Was she out of gold stars?

He pressed his fingers to his eyes, feeling like an idiot. There was nothing sexy about a barely literate thirty-five-year-old man.

He looked back at the note.

Thankfully, Sara didn’t write in cursive. She didn’t write like a doctor, either. Will put his finger under each letter, moving his lips as he read. “Fun…” His heart did a weird double beat in his chest, but quickly he realized his mistake. “Funeral.” He knew the next word, and numbers had never been a problem for him.

He stared back at the front door. The window was clear. He checked the note again. “Funeral home 11:30.”

And a smiley face, because apparently she thought he was intellectually disabled.

Will stuck his key into the ignition. Obviously, she was talking about the time for the autopsies. But was this also some kind of test to see how well he could read? The thought of Sara Linton examining him like a lab rat made him want to pack his bags and move to Honduras. She would feel sorry for him. Worse, she might try to help him.

“Hello?”

Will jumped so hard he slammed his head into the ceiling. Cathy Linton was standing outside his car with a pleasant look on her face. She had a large umbrella over her head. She motioned for him to roll down the window.

“Good morning, Mr. Trent.” She was all smiles again, but he had fallen for her sweet-southern-lady crap once before.

“Good morning, Mrs. Linton.”

Her breath was visible in the cold. “I hope you slept well.”

He looked back at the house, wondering why this was the only time Sara wasn’t lurking behind the door. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

“I just went for my walk. Exercise is the best way to start the morning.” She smiled again. “Won’t you come in and have some breakfast with us?”

His stomach rumbled so loudly he was sure the car was shaking. The energy bar he’d found at the bottom of his suitcase this morning hadn’t exactly hit the spot. A woman like Cathy Linton would know how to make a good biscuit. There would be butter and ham. Probably grits. Eggs. Sausage patties. It was like she was inviting him into the woods to visit her cottage made of candy.

“Mr. Trent?”

“No, ma’am. I need to get to work, but I appreciate it.”

“Dinner, then.” She had a way of saying things that sounded like a suggestion at first but ended up being a strict order. “I hope the apartment wasn’t too horrible last night.”

“No, ma’am. It was fine.”

“I’ll just slip up there later and do some dusting. Eddie and I haven’t used the place since the girls were here. I cringe to think of the state it must be in.”

Will thought about the dirty clothes he’d left piled on the couch. He’d packed in Atlanta thinking he’d wash everything at the hotel. “That’s all right. I-”

“Nonsense.” She tapped her hand on the car door like a judge passing down an edict. “I can’t have you breathing in all that dust.”

He knew there was no way to stop her. “Just… uh… Just ignore my mess. Please. I’m sorry.”

Her smile changed to something much kinder than he’d seen before. He could see now where Sara got her beauty. Cathy reached into the car and gently rested her hand on his arm. Sara had touched him on the arm a lot last night. They were obviously a touchy-feely kind of family, which was just as foreign to Will as if they were from Mars.

She squeezed his arm. “Dinner’s at seven-thirty sharp.”

He nodded. “Thank you.”

“Don’t be late.” Her smile changed back to the one he was more familiar with. She winked at him before turning on her heel and walking back toward the house.

Will rolled up his window. He put the car in gear and headed up the road, too late remembering that he was going in the wrong direction. Or maybe not. Sara had told him that Lakeshore was just a big circle. Will had lately gone around in enough circles to last a lifetime, but he wasn’t going to risk driving past the Linton home again.

The road was empty, he assumed because of the early hour. Will was timing his arrival at the police station so that he’d get there before most of the cops came on shift. He wanted to look eager and alert. He wanted them to feel like he was stepping on their toes.

He slowed his car as he rounded a curve. The road was more like a stream, rainwater flooding across the asphalt. He maneuvered the Porsche into the opposite side of the street to keep his floorboards from flooding. Will had spent ten years of his life and a chunk of his savings restoring the 9-11 by hand. Most of that time, he was bent over manuals and schematics, trying to figure out how the car was supposed to work. He’d learned to weld. He’d learned to do body work. He’d learned that he wasn’t particularly fond of either.

The engine was solid, but the gears were temperamental. He felt the clutch slip as he downshifted. Once he was out of the floodwaters, he idled the car, thinking he’d let the undercarriage drain, wondering if such a thing was even possible. Up ahead, a blue mailbox with an Auburn University logo painted on it rocked in the strong wind. He recalled the first house number Sara had written on the outside of the folder when she was giving him directions to her parents’ house. Will had always been good at remembering numbers.

In Atlanta, Sara lived in the old dairy factory, one of those industrial complexes that had been turned into luxurious lofts back during the real estate boom. He’d remarked then that the place didn’t really seem like her type of home. The lines were too hard. The furniture too sleek. He had imagined she lived somewhere warm and welcoming, more like a cottage.

He had been right.

The Auburn mailbox belonged to a shotgun-style, one-story home with plants overflowing in the front yard. Sara had lived on the lake, and the sky was just light enough so that Will could see the glorious aspect of her backyard. He wondered what Sara’s life had been like when she lived here. She didn’t strike him as the kind of wife who would have dinner and a dry martini waiting when her husband got home, but maybe occasionally she had filled the role out of kindness. There was something about her that indicated a tremendous capacity for love.

The porch light came on. Will put the car in gear and continued around the lake. He missed the turnoff for Main Street and had to back up. He felt his wedding ring on his hand, making a mental note that the turn would be on that side. Over the years, he had trained his mind to recognize his watch, not the ring. Probably because the watch was more permanent.

Will had met Angie Polaski when he was eight years old. Angie was three years older, thrown into the system because her mother had overdosed on a nasty combination of heroin and speed. While Diedre Polaski lay comatose in the bathroom, Angie was being looked after by her mother’s pimp in the bedroom. Finally, someone had called the police. Diedre was put on life support at the state hospital, where she remained to this day, and Angie was sent to the Atlanta Children’s Home for the remaining seven years of a childhood that had already been lost. Will had fallen in love with her on sight. At eleven, she’d had a chip on her shoulder and hell in her eyes. When she wasn’t giving boys handjobs in the coat closet, she was beating the snot out of them with her unsurprisingly quick fists.

Will had loved her for her fierceness, and when her fierceness had worn him down, he had clung to her for her familiarity. Last year, she had married him on a dare after years of empty promises. She cheated on him. She pushed him to the breaking point, then sank her claws into his flesh and yanked him back. His relationship with Angie was more akin to a twisted hokey pokey. She was in Will’s life. She was out. She was in. She was shaking him all about.

Will found Main Street after a couple of wrong turns. The rain wasn’t coming down in sheets anymore, so he could make out the small shops lining the road. One place was obviously a hardware store. The other looked like a shop to buy ladies’ clothing. Directly across from the station was a dry cleaners. Will thought about his dirty laundry piled on the couch. Maybe he could find time to sneak back and get it. He usually wore a suit and tie to work, but he hadn’t had a lot of options this morning. There was just one T-shirt and a pair of boxers left. His jeans were clean enough to last another day. The sweater was the one he wore last night. The cashmere blend hadn’t responded well to the rain. He felt the material tighten every time he flexed his shoulders.

Will pulled into the farthest space from the front door, backing in so that the Porsche was facing the street. Catty-corner to the station, he saw a low office building with glass brick on the front. The faded sign out front had a teddy bear holding some balloons. Probably a daycare center. A squad car rolled down the street but didn’t stop, going ahead through the gates of what must have been the college. Will’s was the only car in the lot. He supposed Larry Knox was inside the station, or maybe they’d given him a relief when Will left last night. Either way, he wasn’t going to spend the next twenty minutes standing in the rain outside the locked door.

He dialed Amanda Wagner’s number, holding out slim hope that she wasn’t in the office yet.

His luck took a nasty turn. Amanda answered the phone herself.

“It’s Will,” he said. “I’m outside the station house.”

Amanda never gave anyone the benefit of the doubt, not least of all Will. “Did you just get there?”

“I got in last night.” He felt a slight bit of relief. In the back of his mind, he’d been worried that Sara would call Amanda and ask that Will be taken off the case. She would want the best the GBI had to offer, not a functional illiterate with a suitcase full of dirty laundry.

Amanda’s tone was clipped. “Run it down for me, Will. I haven’t got all day.”

He told her Sara’s story: that she had gotten a call from Julie Smith, then Frank Wallace. That she had gone to the jail and found Tommy Braham dead. He didn’t tell her about Sara’s beef with Lena Adams, instead skipping ahead to the Cross pens that Jeffrey Tolliver had given his staff. “I’m pretty sure the ink cartridge Braham used came from one of those pens.”

“Good luck finding out whose.” Amanda picked at the same thread Will had spotted. “There’s no way of knowing exactly when Tommy Braham died-before or after Frank Wallace called Sara.”

“We’ll see what the autopsy brings. Dr. Linton is going to do it.”

“There’s a bright spot in a bleak day.”

“It’s good to have someone down here who knows what they’re doing.”

“Shouldn’t that be you, Will?”

He let the remark go unanswered.

She asked, “What’s your impression on the Allison Spooner homicide?”

“I’m fifty-fifty. Maybe Tommy Braham did it. Or maybe her killer’s assuming he got away with murder.”

“Well, figure it out and get back here fast, because they’re not going to like you very much if you prove he’s innocent.”

She was right. One thing cops hated more than bad guys was being proven wrong about the bad guys. Will had seen an Atlanta detective nearly go into convulsions as he argued that the DNA exonerating his suspect had to be wrong.

Amanda told him, “I called Macon General this morning. Brad Stephens had to be taken back into surgery. They missed a bleeder the first time.”

“Is he all right?”

“Prognosis is guarded. They’re keeping him sedated for the time being, so he’s not going to talk to anyone anytime soon.”

“I’m pretty sure he’s not going to remember anything useful except that his fellow officers saved his life.”

“Be that as it may, he’s still a cop. You need to go over there at some point and share in the camaraderie. Donate some blood. Buy him a magazine.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What’s your game plan?”

“I’m going to rattle some cages this morning and see if anything falls out. Faith is working on the paper trail for Julie Smith and Carl Phillips. Talking to them is my priority, but we’ve got to find them first. I want to check out the lake where Spooner was found, then go see the garage where she lived. It feels like her murder is at the center of this. Whatever they’re hiding from me goes back to her death.”

“You don’t think they’re tap-dancing because of the suicide?”

“They might be, but my gut is telling me something else is going on.”

“Ah, your famous women’s intuition.” Amanda never missed an opportunity to insult him. “What about Adams?”

“I’ll keep her close by.”

“I met her once. She’ll be a hard nut to crack.”

“So I hear.”

“Loop me in at the end of the day.”

She hung up the phone before Will could respond. He rubbed his fingers through his hair, wondering if the damp was from the rain or his own sweat.

For the second time that morning, Will jumped when someone knocked on the window of his car. This time the knocker was an older black man, and he stood at the passenger door, grinning at Will’s reaction. He made a rolling motion with his arm. Will leaned over and opened the door.

“Come in out of the rain,” Will offered, thinking the man was the first nonwhite face he’d seen since he’d arrived in Grant County. He didn’t want to make assumptions, but he would’ve bet half his paycheck that the African Americans in town didn’t make a habit of approaching investigators outside the police station.

The man groaned as he climbed into the bucket seat. Will saw that he walked with a cane. His leg was stiff, and bent awkwardly at the knee. Rain dripped from his heavy coat. A slight mist clung to his salt-and-pepper beard. He wasn’t as old as Will had first thought-maybe early sixties. When he spoke, his voice was like sandpaper scratching through gravel.

“Lionel Harris.”

“Will Trent.”

Lionel took off his glove and they shook hands. “My father was named Will. Short for William.”

“Me too,” Will told him, though his birth certificate said no such thing.

Lionel pointed up the street. “Daddy worked at the diner for forty-three years. Old Pete closed it down back in oh-one.” He rubbed his hand along the leather dashboard. “What year is this?”

Will assumed he meant the car. “Seventy-nine.”

“You do all the work yourself?”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Nah,” he said, though he’d found the kink in the leather under the handle of the glove box. “You did a good job, son. Real good job.”

“I take it you’re interested in cars?”

“My wife would tell you I’m too interested for my own good.” He glanced pointedly at Will’s wedding ring. “You known Sara long?”

“Not too long.”

“She took care of my grandson. He had asthma real bad. She’d rush over in the middle of the night to help him. Sometimes she’d still be in her pajamas.”

Will tried not to think of Sara in her pajamas, though he imagined from Lionel’s story that they were probably not the ones his mind had conjured.

“Sara’s from good people.” He ran his finger along the trim on the door, which, thankfully, Will had done a better job covering. Lionel seemed to agree. “You learned from your mistakes. Got a good fold on this corner here.”

“It took me half the day.”

“Worth every minute,” he approved.

Will felt foolish even as he asked, “Your son isn’t Carl Phillips, is he?”

Lionel gave a deep, satisfied laugh. “’Cause he’s black and I’m black-”

“No,” Will interrupted, then, “Well, yes.” He felt uncomfortable even as he explained, “There doesn’t seem to be much of a minority population around here.”

“I guess coming from Atlanta, you’ve had a bit of a culture shock.”

He was right. In Atlanta, Will’s white skin made him a minority. Grant County stood as a stark contrast. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right. You aren’t the first person to do that. Carl goes to my church, but I don’t know him other than that.”

Will tried to steer the conversation away from his own stupidity. “How do you know I’m from Atlanta?”

“License plate says Fulton County.”

Will smiled patiently.

“All right, you got me,” Lionel relented. “You’re here to look into that stuff with Tommy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He was a good kid.”

“You knew him?”

“I saw him in town a lot. He’s the kind of kid got thirty different jobs-mowing lawns, walking dogs, hauling trash, helping people move house. Just about everybody in town knew him.”

“How do people feel about him stabbing Brad Stephens?”

“About how you’d expect. Confused. Angry. Torn between thinking there was some mistake and thinking…” His voice trailed off. “He was a bit tetched in the head.”

“He’d never been violent before?”

“No, but you never know. Maybe something set him off, turned on the crazy.”

In Will’s experience, people were either prone to violence or not. He didn’t think Tommy Braham was an exception. “Do you think that’s what happened-he just snapped?”

“I don’t know what to think about nothin’ anymore, and that’s the God’s honest truth.” He gave a weary sigh. “Lord, I feel old today.”

“The weather gets into your bones,” Will agreed. He’d broken his hand many years ago, and every time it got cold like this, his fingers ached. “Have you lived here all your life?”

Lionel smiled again, showing his teeth. “When I was a boy, people called where we lived Colored Town.” He turned to Will. “Can you believe that? Colored Town, and now I live on a street with a bunch of professors.” He gave a deep laugh. “A lot’s changed in fifty years.”

“Has the police force?”

Lionel stared openly at Will, as if he was trying to decide how much to say. Finally, he seemed to make up his mind. “Ben Carver was chief when I left town. I wasn’t the only young black man who thought it was a good idea to leave while the gettin’ was good. Joined the army and got this for my trouble.” He knocked on his leg. There was a hollow sound, and Will realized the man wore a prosthetic. “Laos. Nineteen and sixty-four.” Lionel paused for a minute as if to reflect on the loss. “There was two kinds of living for people back then, just like there was two kinds of law under Chief Carver: one for black and one for white.”

“I heard Carver retired.”

Lionel nodded approvingly. “Tolliver.”

“Was he a good cop?”

“I never met the man, but I can tell you this: A long while back, my father was working at the diner when a lady professor from the college got killed. Everybody saw a black face and made their assumptions. Chief Tolliver spent the night at Daddy’s house just to make sure he woke up the next morning.”

“It was that bad?”

“Chief Tolliver was that good.” Lionel added, “Allison was a good girl, too.”

Will got the feeling that they had finally reached the point of Lionel’s impromptu visit. “You knew her?”

“I own the diner now. You believe that?” He shook his head as if he still could not believe it himself. “I came back a few years ago and took it off Pete’s hands.”

“Is business good?”

“It was slow at first, but most days now we’re full up. My wife works the books. Sometimes my sister pitches in but it’s better if she doesn’t.”

“When was the last time you saw Allison?”

“Saturday night. We’re closed on Sundays. I guess except for Tommy, I was one of the last people to see her alive.”

“How was she?”

“Same as usual. Tired. Glad to be getting off work.”

“What sort of person was she?”

His throat worked, and he took a few moments to collect himself before he could continue. “I never hire kids from the college. They don’t know how to talk to people. They just know how to type into their computers or their phones. No work ethic and nothing’s ever their fault no matter how red-handed you catch ’em. Except for Allison. She was different.”

“How so?”

“She knew how to work for a living.” He pointed to the open gates at the end of Main Street. “Not a kid in that school knows how to do an honest day’s work. This economy is their wake-up call. They’re gonna have to learn the hard way that a job is something you earn, not something you’re given.”

Will asked, “Did you know much about Allison’s family?”

“Her mama was dead. She had an aunt she didn’t talk about much.”

“Boyfriend?”

“She had one, but he never bothered her at work.”

“Do you know his name?”

“She never mentioned him except in passing, like I’d ask what she was going to do over the weekend and she’d say she was going to study with her boyfriend.”

“He never called her or dropped by? Not even once?”

“Not even once,” he confirmed. “She was mindful that I was paying for her time, you see. I never saw her on her cell phone. She never had her friends come in and take up her time. It was work for her, and she knew that she had to take care of business.”

“Did she make a good living?”

“Hell no.” He laughed at what must have been a surprised look on Will’s face. “I don’t pay much and my customers are cheap-mostly old men and cops, sometimes students from the school who think it’s funny to run out on the bill. Or, try to run out. Pretty stupid thinking you’re gonna stiff the check in a room full of cops.”

“Did she carry a purse or book bag with her?”

“She had this pink book bag with a tassel on the zipper. Left it in her car when she was at work. Except her wallet. She wasn’t one’a them primpin’ girls, can’t stay away from a mirror.”

“Was there anyone suspicious hanging around her? Customers who were too attentive?”

“I would’ve taken care of that myself. Not that I’d need to. That girl was street-smart. She knew how to take care of herself.”

“Did she carry a weapon? Maybe pepper spray or a pocket knife?”

“Not that I ever saw.” He held up his hands. “Now, don’t get the impression she was hard. She was a real sweet girl, one’a them who just wanted to go along to get along. She didn’t take to confrontation, but she stood up for herself when it mattered.”

“Had her attitude changed lately?”

“She seemed a little more stressed than usual. She asked me a couple of times could she study when we were slow. Don’t get me wrong-I’m an easy man to work for so long as you do your job. I let her crack open her books when we weren’t busy. I made sure she had a hot meal before she went home.”

“Do you know what kind of car she drove?”

“Old Dodge Daytona with Alabama plates. You remember those? Based on the Chrysler G platform. Front-wheel drive, kind of low to the ground.”

“Four door?”

“Hatchback. The pistons were blown. She kept the trunk tied down with a bungee cord. I think it’s a ’92, ’93.” He tapped his head. “Mind ain’t as good as it used to be.”

“What color?”

“Red, you could say. Mostly it’s primer and rust. Spits out smoke from the tailpipe every time she cranks it.”

“Where did she park?”

“Behind the diner. I checked this morning. It’s not there.”

“Did she ever walk home from work?”

“Sometimes when the weather was good, but it ain’t been good in a long while, and she wasn’t making her way home.” He pointed behind them. “The lake’s back there. Behind the station. Behind the diner.” He pointed across the street. “When she walked home, she always went that way, out the front door.”

“Do you know Gordon Braham?”

“I believe he works for the power company. He also dates the woman who works at the five and dime across from the diner. They come in for lunch every couple’a three days.”

“You seem to know a lot about people.”

“This is a small town, Mr. Trent. Everybody knows a lot about everybody else. That’s why we live here. Cheaper than cable TV.”

“Who do you think killed Allison?”

Lionel didn’t seem surprised by the question, but he gave the expected answer. “Police say it was Tommy Braham.”

“What do you say?”

He looked at his watch. “I say I’d better go fire up the grill before the breakfast crowd comes in.” He put his hand on the door, but Will stopped him.

“Mr. Harris, if you think somebody-”

“I don’t know what to think,” he admitted. “If Tommy didn’t do it, then why’d he stab Brad? And why’d he kill himself?”

“You don’t think he did it.” Will wasn’t asking a question.

Lionel gave another weary sigh. “I guess I’m a bit like old Chief Carver. There’s good people and there’s bad people. Allison was good. Tommy was good. Good people can do bad things, but not that bad.”

He started to leave again.

“Can I ask you-” Will waited for him to turn back around. “Why did you come to talk to me?”

“Because I knew Frank wouldn’t be knocking on my door. Not that I’ve been able to tell you much, but I wanted to say something on the girl’s behalf. She ain’t got nobody speaking up for her right now. It’s all about Tommy and why’d he do it, not about Allison and what a good girl she was.”

“Why do you think Chief Wallace wouldn’t want to talk to you?”

“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

Will knew he didn’t mean Jeffrey Tolliver. “Ben Carver?”

“Frank and Ben-they were cut from the same cloth. White cloth, if you catch my drift.”

“I think I do.”

Lionel still had his hand on the door handle. “When I got back to town after Daddy died, I saw a lot of people had changed. On the outside, I’m talking-not on the inside. You gotta go through a special kind of hell or a special kind of love to change who you are inside. Outside’s a whole different story.” He rubbed his beard, probably thinking about the gray in it. “Now, Miss Sara, she got prettier. Her daddy Mr. Eddie got more hair sprouting out of his eyebrows. My sister got older and fatter, which ain’t never a good combination for a woman.”

“And Frank?”

“He got careful,” Lionel said. “I may not be living in Colored Town anymore, but I still remember what it feels like to have that man’s foot on my neck.” He pulled the handle on the door. “You get you a heat gun and work it just the tiniest little bit around that leather on your glove box and you’ll be able to get that kink out.” He picked up his leg so he could get out of the car. “Just a tiny bit, though. Too much heat, and you’ll burn a hole right through.” He stared his meaning into Will. “Not too much heat, son.”

“I appreciate your advice.”

Lionel struggled to get out of the Porsche, finally gripping the roof and pulling himself up. He steadied himself on the cane and held out his hand, giving Will a gymnast’s finish and a “tah-dah,” before gently closing the door.

Will watched Lionel lean heavily on the cane as he made his way up the street. He stopped in front of the hardware store to talk to a man who was sweeping debris from the sidewalk. The rain had died down, and they seemed to be taking their time. Will imagined they were talking about Allison Spooner and Tommy Braham. In a place as small as Grant County, there wouldn’t be anything else to occupy people’s minds.

An old Cadillac pulled into the parking lot. Even from a distance, the gospel music hummed in Will’s ears. Marla Simms parked her car as far from Will’s as she could. She checked her makeup in the mirror, arranged her glasses-did all of the things that made it obvious she was ignoring him-before getting out of the car.

He walked across the lot to meet her, putting as much cheer into his voice as he could manage. “Good morning, Mrs. Simms.”

She tossed him a wary look. “No one’s here yet.”

“I see that.” He held up his briefcase. “I thought I’d go ahead and get set up. If you wouldn’t mind bringing me the evidence from the lake and anything collected from Tommy Braham’s person?”

Marla didn’t bother to acknowledge him as she threw back the bolt on the door. She turned on the lights and walked into the lobby. Again, she leaned over the gate and buzzed herself through. Will caught the door before it latched closed.

“Cold in here,” Will said. “Something wrong with the furnace?”

“The furnace is fine,” she said defensively.

“Is it new?”

“Do I look like I work for the furnace company?”

“Mrs. Simms, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that you look like you know everything that goes on in this station, if not the entire town.”

She made a grumbling noise as she took the carafe from the coffeemaker.

“Did you know Tommy Braham?”

“Yes.”

“What was he like?”

“Slow.”

“What about Allison Spooner?”

“Not slow.”

Will smiled. “I should thank you, Mrs. Simms, for those incident reports you sent to my partner last night. It shows an interesting pattern with Tommy. He’d had some trouble with his temper lately. Is that what you wanted me to know?”

She gave him a look over her glasses, but her mouth stayed closed as she walked to the back of the room. Will watched her push open the heavy steel door. She’d left him alone in the dark.

He went to the fax machine and checked under the table, giving Marla Simms the benefit of the doubt. There were no loose pages underneath, no 911 transcript that had fallen through the cracks. He opened the copier and saw the glass staring back at him. Something sticky was in the center. Will used his thumbnail to pry off the substance, which would transfer to every copy made on the machine. He held it up to the light. Glue, maybe? Gum?

He flicked it into the trashcan. None of the copies Sara had made for him yesterday showed a mark. Maybe someone else had used the machine after her and unwittingly transferred the gum onto the glass.

The office on the side of the squad room was empty, just as he’d thought. Will tried the knob. The door was unlocked. He went in and opened the blinds, giving him a nice view of the desks where the detectives sat. There were nail holes in the walls. In the slim ray of light coming through the outside window, he could see the shadows where photographs had once been. The desk was empty but for a telephone. All the drawers were cleaned out. The chair squeaked when he sat down.

If he was the betting type, Will would have put ten bucks on this being Jeffrey Tolliver’s old office.

He opened his briefcase and set out his files. Finally, the overhead lights flickered on. Will saw Marla through the glass in the wall. She stared at him, mouth open. With her tight bun and dirty glasses, she looked like one of those beady old ladies from a Gary Larson comic strip. Will plastered a smile on his face, tossed her a wave. Marla gripped the handle of the carafe so hard he could almost feel her desire to smash the glass into his face.

Will reached into his pocket and found his digital recorder. Every cop in the world kept a spiral notebook in which to record details of their investigations. Will did not have that luxury, but he’d learned to compensate.

He checked the window for Marla before putting the recorder to his ear and pressing play. The volume was low, and he heard Faith’s voice reading Tommy Braham’s confession. Will had not wasted the entire night worrying about his schoolgirl crush on Sara Linton. He’d prepared himself for the day by reading every single word in the reports and listening to Tommy Braham’s confession over and over again until he had memorized almost every word. He listened to the whole thing again in the office, the cadence of Faith’s voice so familiar that he could have spoken along with her.

Her tone was dispassionate, offering no inflection. “‘I was in Allison’s apartment. This was last night. I don’t know what time. Pippy, my dog, was sick. It was after I took her to the doctor. Allison said she would have sex with me. We started to have sex. She changed her mind. I got mad. I had a knife on me. I stabbed her once in the neck. I took the extra chain and lock and drove her to the lake. I wrote the note so people would think she had killed herself. Allison was sad. I thought that would be reason enough.’”

There were murmurs in the squad room. Will glanced up to find a couple of uniformed cops staring at him in disbelief. One of them started toward the office, probably to confront him, but his partner stopped him.

Will leaned back in the chair, hearing the squeak again. He took out his cell phone and called Faith. She picked up on the fourth ring. Her hello was more like a grunt.

“Did I wake you up?”

“It’s seven-thirty in the morning. Of course you woke me up.”

“I can call back.”

“Just gimme a minute.” He heard her moving around. She yawned so loudly that Will felt his own jaw twitching to open. “I pulled up some info on Lena Adams.”

“And?”

She yawned again. “Let me get to my laptop.”

Will couldn’t stop his own yawn. “I’m sorry I got you out of bed.”

“You’ve got me until four this afternoon. That’s when I meet my doctor at the hospital.”

Will started talking so she wouldn’t explain the procedure again. “That’s great, Faith. I guess your mom is driving you. She must be excited. What about your brother? Have you called him?”

“You can shut up now. I’m at my computer.” He heard keys being tapped. “Salena Marie Adams,” Faith said, probably reading from the woman’s personnel file. “Detective first grade. Thirty-five years old. Five-four and a hundred and twenty pounds.” Faith mumbled a curse. “God, that’s enough to make me hate her right there.”

“What about her history?”

“She was raped.”

Will was taken aback by her abruptness. He’d been expecting date of birth, maybe some commendations. Sara had said that she suspected Lena had been raped by her ex-boyfriend, but he’d been under the impression no formal charges had been filed. He asked Faith, “How do you know that?”

“The case came up when I cross-referenced her file. You really should Google more.”

“When did it happen?”

“Ten years ago.” He heard her fingers pecking the keyboard. “Her file is pretty clean. She’s worked some interesting cases. You remember that south Georgia pedophile ring awhile back? She and Tolliver broke it open.”

“Does she have any black marks?”

“Small-town forces don’t air their dirty laundry on paper,” Faith reminded him. “She took some time off the job six years ago. She worked security at the college less than a year, then went back on the job. That’s all I’ve got on her. Have you found anything else?”

“I had an interesting conversation with the man who runs the diner this morning.”

“What did he say?”

“Not a whole lot. Allison was a good kid. Hard worker. He didn’t know much about her personal life.”

“Do you think he killed her?”

“He’s sixty-something years old with a fake leg.”

“A real fake leg?”

Will thought about Lionel knocking on the prosthesis, the hollow sound. “I’ll see if I can confirm it, but he was putting on quite an act if the leg is real.”

“You never know with those small towns. Ed Gein was a babysitter.”

Faith was never one to miss an opportunity to compare a kindly old man to one of the twentieth century’s most notorious serial killers.

She said, “Spooner’s background check didn’t offer much, either. She’s got a bank account with eighteen dollars and change. She must be a cash-and-carry gal. The only checks she’s written in the last six months are to the college and the campus bookstore. The statements are delivered to the Taylor Drive address. Other than that, she’s got no credit cards. No utilities in her name. No credit history. No cell phone on record. No car.”

“The old guy at the diner says she drove a Dodge Daytona with Alabama plates.”

“It must be registered in someone else’s name. Do you think the locals know about it?”

“I don’t know. My source also says that Allison had a pink book bag she kept in the car when she was working.”

“Hold on a second.” Faith was obviously doing something on her computer. “All right, I’m not finding any BOLOs for the car coming out of Grant County or any towns in the vicinity.” If Frank Wallace knew about Allison’s car, he would have posted a “be on the lookout” to all neighboring counties.

Will said, “Maybe they already know where the car is but they don’t want me to find it.”

“I’m posting a BOLO around the state right now. Your chief will have to tell his boys to look for it during their briefing this morning.”

“It’s an old car. Allison’s lived here a couple of years without changing the plates.”

“College town. Wouldn’t be odd to have cars with out-of-state tags. The only reason not to register a car is because it’s not insured,” Faith pointed out. “I’d buy that. This girl was living on the margins. She barely made a blip on the radar.”

Will saw that the squad room was filling up. The crowd of cops had gotten bigger. A more fearful man might call them a growing mob. They kept stealing looks at Will. Marla was pouring them coffee, glaring at him over her shoulder. And then, as if on cue, they all looked toward the front door. Will wondered if Frank Wallace had deigned to make an appearance, but quickly saw this was not the case. A woman with olive skin and curly, shoulder-length brown hair joined the group. She was the smallest in the bunch, but they parted for her like the Red Sea.

Will told Faith, “I think Detective Adams has decided to grace us with her presence.”

“How does she look?”

Lena had spotted him. Her eyes burned with hatred.

He said, “She looks like she wants to rip out my throat with her teeth.”

“Be careful. You know you have a weakness for bitchy, spiteful women.”

Will didn’t bother to argue. Lena Adams had the same color skin and hair as Angie, though she was obviously of Latin descent, whereas Angie’s origins were vaguely Mediterranean. Lena was shorter, more athletic. There was none of Angie’s womanliness about her-Lena was too cop for that-but she was an attractive woman. She also seemed to share Angie’s talent for stirring things up. Several of the cops were staring at Will with open hostility now. It wouldn’t be long before someone grabbed a pitchfork.

Faith asked, “What’s this email from you?” She answered her own question. “Julie Smith. All right, I’ll see if I can trace the number. The warrant for Tommy Braham’s phone records shouldn’t be a problem considering he’s dead, but I may need an official cause of death before we get access.”

Will kept his eyes on Lena. She was saying something to the group. Probably telling them to check their weapons. “Can you fudge that a little? Julie Smith told Sara that Tommy texted her from jail. The transcript might help find out who she is. Maybe Amanda can call in some favors.”

“Oh, great. Just who I want to talk to first thing in the morning.”

“Can you get her to rush through a search warrant for the garage, too? I want to show the locals what proper procedure looks like.”

“I’m sure she’ll fall over herself trying to accommodate your requests.” Faith gave a heavy groan. “Anything else you want me to ask her?”

“Tell her I want my testicles back.”

“They’re probably already at the bronzer.”

Lena took off her jacket and threw it on a desk. “I need to go.” Will hung up the phone just as the detective stomped toward the office.

Will stood up. He gave one of his winning smiles. “You must be Detective Adams. I’m so glad to finally meet you.”

She stared at the hand he offered. He thought for a minute she might rip it off.

“Is there something wrong, Detective?”

She was obviously so angry she could barely speak. “This office-”

“I hope you don’t mind,” Will interrupted. “It was empty, and I want to make sure I stay out of your way.” His hand was still extended between them. “We’re not to that point yet where you can’t shake my hand. Are we, Detective?”

“We passed that point the minute you sat behind that desk.”

Will dropped his hand. “I was expecting Chief Wallace.”

“Interim Chief,” she corrected, just as raw as Sara on the subject. “Frank’s at the hospital with Brad.”

“I heard Detective Stephens had a rough night, but he seems all right this morning.”

She didn’t answer him, which was just as well. Her accent was full of south Georgia twang, and anger made her words blend like cake batter.

Will indicated the chair. “Please have a seat.”

“I’ll stand.”

“Hope you don’t mind if I sit.” The chair squeaked as he settled back in it. Will steepled his fingers together. He noticed that a pen was clipped to Lena’s breast pocket. It was silver, a Cross just like the one Larry Knox had clipped to his shirt last night. Will glanced at the group of officers who were milling around the coffee machine. They all had pens clipped to their chest pockets, too.

Will smiled. “I’m sure your chief already told you why I’m here.”

He saw her eye twitch. “Tommy.”

“Right, Tommy Braham, and by extension, Allison Spooner. I hope we can wrap this up quickly. I’m sure we’d all rather have this off our plate going into Thanksgiving.”

“This good-guy bullshit isn’t really going to work with me.”

“We both have badges, Detective. Don’t you think you should try to cooperate so we can get to the truth of this matter?”

“You know what I think?” She crossed her arms high on her chest. “I think you’re down here where you don’t belong, sleeping in places you have no right, and trying to get a lot of good people into trouble for shit that’s beyond their control.”

There was a loud knock at the open door. Marla Simms stood ramrod straight, a medium-sized cardboard box gripped between her hands. She walked to the desk and dropped the box with a thud in front of Will.

“Thank you,” he told her retreating back. “Mrs. Simms?” She didn’t turn, but she stopped. “If you don’t mind, I need the audiotape of the 911 call reporting Allison Spooner’s alleged suicide.”

She left without acknowledging the request.

Will looked over the top of the box, eyeing the contents. There were several plastic evidence bags, obviously taken from the scene of Allison Spooner’s death. A pair of white sneakers was in one. Streaks of mud went up the sides and stuck into the treads.

The ring and watch mentioned in Lena’s report were in the other bag. He studied the ring, which was cheap, the sort of thing you gave a girl when you were fifteen and spending fifty dollars on a piece of jewelry from the locked display at Walgreens was a big deal.

He held up the ring. “I gave my wife one of these when we were kids.”

Lena’s nasty look resembled the same one Angie had shown Will when he’d given her the ring.

He pulled another bag out of the box. There was a closed wallet inside. Will managed to pry it open through the plastic. He found a photo of an older woman beside a young girl and another photograph of an orange cat. There were some bills in the cash compartment. Allison Spooner’s student ID and driver’s license were tucked in the back sleeves.

Will looked at the girl’s picture. Faith had guessed right. Allison was very pretty. She also looked younger than her given age. Maybe it was her size. She seemed delicate, almost fragile. He flipped back to the photograph of the older woman, realizing now that the girl beside her was Allison Spooner. The picture had obviously been taken a few years ago. Allison looked like a teenager.

He asked Lena, “Is this all you found in the wallet?” He listed it out for her. “Two photos, forty bucks, the license, and student ID?”

She was staring at the open wallet in his hands. “Frank catalogued it.”

Not exactly an answer, but Will knew that he’d need to choose his battles. He saw there was one more evidence bag in the box. He guessed it contained the contents of Tommy Braham’s pockets. “Gum, thirty-eight cents, and a metal Monopoly game piece of a car.” He looked back up at Lena. “He didn’t have a wallet on him?”

“No.”

“Cell phone?”

“Is there one in the bag?”

Her combative answers were telling him more than she realized. Will asked, “What about his clothes and shoes? Any blood on them? Any stains?”

“Per protocol for a suicide in custody, Frank sent them to the lab. Your lab.”

“The Central GBI lab in Dry Branch?”

She nodded.

“What about the sheath?”

She seemed confused.

“In Tommy’s confession, he said he had a knife on him when he killed Allison. I imagine he had a sheath on his belt? A knife sheath?”

She shook her head. “He probably got rid of it.”

“He doesn’t mention in his confession what kind of knife he used.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“Did you find any knives in the house where Tommy lived?”

“We can’t search his house without a warrant or permission from his father, who’s the owner of the property.”

Well, at least she knew the law. That she was choosing to follow it now was a bit of a mystery. “Are you assuming Tommy used the same knife to stab Detective Stephens that he used to kill Allison Spooner?”

Lena was silent for a few seconds. She had conducted enough interviews to recognize what a corner felt like when it was pressing against your back. “I’ve found in my career that it’s better not to make assumptions about what a suspect will and will not do.”

“That’s a valuable lesson for any officer,” he allowed. “Any reason why the Spooner evidence wasn’t sent to Central?”

She hesitated again. “I assume because the case is closed.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Tommy ran from the police. He stabbed a police officer. He confessed to the crime. He killed himself because he couldn’t take the guilt. I’m not sure how you do it in Atlanta, but down here we generally stop throwing money at an investigation once it’s closed.”

Will rubbed the back of his neck. “I really wish you’d sit down. This is going to take a while and I don’t think I can keep looking up at you without getting a crick.”

“What’s going to take a while?”

“Detective Adams, perhaps you don’t comprehend the import of this investigation. I’m here to interview you about the death of a prisoner who was in your custody, in your jail, in your town. In addition to that, a young woman was murdered. A police officer was badly wounded. This isn’t going to be a quick chat over coffee and doughnuts, not least of all because I’ve been advised not to take any food from y’all that isn’t sealed in a container.” He smiled. She didn’t smile back. “Would you please sit down so we can talk to each other like rational people?” She still didn’t move, and Will took it a step further. “If you’d rather go to one of the interrogation rooms instead of being in your dead chief’s office, then I’d be more than happy to accommodate you.”

Her jaw tightened. They had a long, drawn-out staring match that Will nearly lost. Lena was hard to look at. Her pain and exhaustion showed on every line of her face. Her eyes were swollen, the whites shot through with red. Her hand was resting on the chair in front of her, yet still she swayed, as if her knees wanted to give out.

Finally, she said, “Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, I think you’re the enemy.” Still, she pulled out the chair and sat down.

“I appreciate your candor.”

“Whatever.” She kept opening and closing her fist. He saw two flesh-colored Band-Aids wrapped around the palm of her hand. Her fingers looked swollen.

He asked, “That happen yesterday?”

She didn’t answer.

Will took a red folder out of his briefcase and left it unopened on the desk. Lena glanced down nervously. “Would you like a lawyer present?”

“Do I need one?”

“You should know better than to ask an investigator for legal advice, Detective. How about your union rep?”

She gave a short, sharp laugh. “We don’t have unions down here. We barely have uniforms.”

He should have remembered. “Do I need to remind you of your Miranda rights?”

“No.”

“Should I mention that lying to a state investigator during the course of an active investigation is a felony that can result in fines and imprisonment up to five years?”

“Didn’t you just do that?”

“I guess I did. Where was she stabbed?”

He’d caught her off guard. “What?”

“Allison Spooner. Where was she stabbed?”

“Here.” She put her hand to the back of her neck, her fingers resting a few inches from the spine.

“Was that the only wound?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it. Finally, she answered, “As you said, Frank noticed ligature marks around her wrist.”

“Did you notice them?”

“The body was in the water for a long time. I’m not sure what I saw except for the knife wound in the neck.”

The detail bothered him, mostly because it was the first point where Frank Wallace’s story didn’t dovetail with Lena’s. “Have you found Spooner’s car?”

“She doesn’t have one.”

“That strikes me as odd.”

“It’s a college town. Kids walk everywhere or drive their scooters.” Lena shrugged. “If they need to go somewhere, they can usually bum a ride.”

“Could Allison have a car without you knowing about it?”

“Not at the school. They’ll tow you if you take up two spaces. They’re really good about policing the campus. And, there aren’t a lot of places around town to ditch a car, either. I can put out a BOLO at the morning briefing if you want, but it’s a dead end. This isn’t Atlanta. If people see abandoned cars, they call the police.”

Will studied Lena, trying to read any deceit. “What about Allison’s boss at the diner? Have you talked to him?”

“Lionel Harris. Frank said he talked to him last night. He doesn’t know anything.”

Either Frank had lied or Lena was making things up as she went along.

Will asked, “How does Mr. Harris look for the murder?”

“He’s got one leg and he’s older than Jesus.”

“I’ll take that as an unlikely.” Will opened the red folder. The photocopy of Tommy Braham’s confession was on top. He saw a flash of recognition in Lena’s eyes. “Take me through it.”

“Which part?”

He knew she was expecting him to get straight to the point-the stabbing, what went down outside the garage. He went the opposite direction, hoping to throw her off. “Let’s start with you bringing Tommy Braham into the station and work our way forward. Did he say anything in the car?”

“No.”

Will hadn’t yet seen the booking pictures or the crime scene photos Sara had taken of Tommy Braham in the cell, but he knew that a cop had been stabbed while two other able-bodied officers were at the scene. He hazarded a guess about what happened next. “What condition was Tommy in at this time?”

She stared at him blankly.

“Did he fall down a couple of times during the arrest?”

Again, she took her time. “You’ll have to ask Frank about that. I was tending to Brad.”

“You saw Tommy in the car. What kind of state was he in?”

Lena pulled a spiral-bound notebook out of her back pocket. She slowly flipped to the pages she wanted. Will saw the paper was taped back into the notebook and assumed these were the originals Sara had photocopied last night.

Lena cleared her throat. “I brought in the suspect, Thomas Adam Braham, at approximately eight-thirty yesterday morning.” Lena scrutinized him. “You’re not going to take notes?”

“Why, do you want to let me borrow your pen?”

Her composure cracked just a tiny bit, and Will saw what he had been looking for from the minute Lena walked into the room. No matter what she thought about Tommy Braham, she was upset about his death. Not upset because it might get her into trouble, but upset because he was a human being who had been in her care.

Will said, “I’ve already read your notes, Detective. Tell me the parts that aren’t on the pages.”

She started picking at the Band-Aid.

“Who did the death notifications?”

“I did.”

“On both Spooner and Braham?”

She nodded. “Elba, where Allison’s from, is a small town. The detective I talked to went to school with her. He says her mother died eight years ago. The father’s unknown. There’s an aunt, Sheila McGhee, but she’s not home much. She works for a crew that’s remodeling roach motels along the Panhandle. The detective’s going to try to track her down. I left a message on her answering machine, but she won’t hear it until she gets home or calls to check her messages.”

She was actually sounding like a detective now. Will asked, “No cell phone?”

“Not that I can find.”

“Was there an address book in Allison’s apartment?”

“We didn’t have time to do a search.” Her tone became clipped again. “A lot was going on yesterday. My partner was bleeding to death in the street.”

“I’d like to know when Ms. McGhee returns your call.”

She nodded.

“What about Tommy’s relations?”

“There’s just his dad, Gordon. I talked to him early this morning, told him what happened.”

“How did he take it?”

“No father wants to hear that his son’s confessed to murder.”

“How did he take the suicide?”

“About how you’d expect.” Lena looked down at her notes, though Will could tell she was buying time to collect herself. “Gordon’s driving up from Florida right now. I don’t know how long that’ll take. Seven, maybe eight hours.”

Will wondered where Frank Wallace was in all of this, and why the hardest parts of the case had fallen to Lena. He asked, “Did you know Allison Spooner?”

“Half the town did. She worked at the diner down the street.”

“Did you know her?”

“I never met her.”

“You don’t go to the diner?”

“Why does that matter?” She wasn’t looking for an answer. “Tommy laid it all out. You’ve got his confession right in front of you. He said that he wanted to have sex with her. She didn’t. So he killed her.”

“How long did it take for him to confess?”

“He dicked around for about an hour, then I got it out of him.”

“Did he offer an alibi? Initially, I mean.”

“He said he was at the vet. He’s got this dog, Pippy. She swallowed a sock or something. Tommy took her to the emergency vet over on Conford. The office staff can’t vouch for him being there the entire time.”

“Does he have a car?”

“A green Chevy Malibu. It’s at the shop. Tommy said the starter’s been acting up. He dropped the keys in the lockbox at Earnshaw’s yesterday morning.”

Will hadn’t been expecting that. “Earnshaw?”

“Sara’s uncle.”

“Is there security footage of the lot?”

“No, but I called the garage. The car is there.” She shrugged. “Tommy could’ve left it there after he killed Allison.”

“Have you searched the car?”

“I planned on doing that today.” Her tone indicated that Will was the major obstacle standing between her and doing her job.

Will didn’t back down. “How did Tommy know Allison?”

“She rented space from his dad-a converted garage apartment.” Lena looked at her watch.

“What was Tommy like?”

“Stupid,” she told him. “Slow in his thinking. I’m sure Sara’s already told you all about it.”

“According to Dr. Linton, Tommy’s IQ was around eighty. He wasn’t bright, but he held down a job at the bowling alley. He was a good kid. Good except for the trouble he’d been in lately.”

“I’d call murder a bit more than trouble.”

“I was referring to the incident reports.”

She hid her surprise well, but he could see the flicker of a question in her eyes.

“There are three reports detailing altercations over the last month. Mrs. Simms was kind enough to provide them.” She remained silent, so he asked, “You knew about them, right?”

Still, Lena didn’t respond. Will slid the incident reports across the desk so she could see them.

She skimmed the summaries. “Small problems. He obviously had a temper.”

“Who told you to arrest Tommy for Allison’s murder?”

“Frank-” She looked like she wanted to take back the word. “Frank and I discussed it. It was a joint decision.”

At least he knew what she looked like when she was lying. The bad news was that her lying face looked a lot like her honest one. “When did you first hear there was a body in the lake?”

“Brad called me around three yesterday morning. I woke everybody else up, started the investigation.”

“Have you talked to any of Allison’s teachers at school?”

“They’re all off for Thanksgiving break. I’ve got phone numbers for them, but I haven’t made any calls yet. Most of them are local. They’re not going anywhere. I was going to track them down this morning, but…” She held out her arms, indicating the space between them.

“What else were you going to track down?” He listed out her plans so far. “Talk to the teachers. Maybe talk to the office staff at the vet. Look at Tommy’s car. Try to track down Allison’s known associates. I guess you’d get that through the school, maybe Lionel Harris?”

She shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Were you planning on talking to Tommy again? Had he lived, I mean.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to get his confession on tape. He was a compelling witness against himself.”

“But everything else made sense to you-his motivations, stabbing her in the neck?”

“There were things I wanted to clear up. Obviously, I wanted to find the murder weapon. I assume it’s in his garage somewhere. Or his car. He must have taken Allison to the lake. There would have been trace evidence. Stop me if any of this reminds you of something you might have read in a textbook when you were in GBI school.”

“That’s a good word to use for it-‘textbook.’” He pointed out, “Seems like a lot of work for a case you considered closed. Isn’t that what you told me a few minutes ago, that it was closed?”

She stared at him again. Will knew she was waiting for him to ask about the 911 call.

He said, “You must be tired.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’ve had a pretty tough couple of days.” He indicated her field notes. “You got Brad’s call around three a.m. yesterday. Suspected suicide. You went to the lake. Found Spooner was dead, possibly murdered. Went to Spooner’s house and your boss got hurt, your partner got stabbed. You arrested Tommy. Got his confession. I’m sure you were at the hospital all night.”

“What’s your point?”

“Was Tommy a malicious person?”

She didn’t equivocate. “No.”

“Did he show any anger during your interrogation?”

She was silent again, gathering her thoughts. “I don’t think he planned to hurt Brad. But he did stab him. And he killed Allison, so…”

“So?”

She crossed her arms again. “Look, we’re just going in circles here. What happened to Tommy was bad, but he confessed to killing Allison Spooner. He stabbed my partner. Frank was hurt.”

Will carefully weighed her words. She obviously believed Tommy was guilty of killing Allison Spooner. She got sketchier when she talked about Brad Stephens being stabbed and Frank Wallace getting cut.

Lena checked her watch again. “Are we finished here?”

She was very good at this, but she couldn’t keep it up forever. “The lake is behind the station, right?”

“Right.”

“Between the college and Lover’s Point.”

“Not exactly between.”

“Do you think I can borrow a jacket?”

“What?”

“A raincoat. Jacket. Whatever you have.” Will stood up from the desk. “I’d like for us to go for a walk.”

THE RAIN HAD TURNED unrelenting, dark clouds rolling across the sky, tossing down buckets of water that all seemed to fall directly on Will’s head. He was wearing a police-issue jacket meant for a man with considerably more girth than Will carried. The sleeves hung down past his thumbs. The hood fell into his eyes. The reflective panels on the back and front slapped against him with every step.

Will had always had trouble finding clothes that fit, but usually the opposite was the problem: short cuffs, tight seams stretching against his shoulders. He had been expecting Lena to offer him one of her own coats as a sort of joke. Apparently, she had come up with a better idea. Will stared down at the stitching on the breast pocket as they made their way around the lake. The jacket belonged to Officer Carl Phillips.

He stuck his hands into the pockets as the wind picked up. He could feel some latex gloves, a measuring tape, a plastic pen, and a small flashlight. At least he hoped it was a small flashlight. Despite Lena’s worst intentions, the jacket was nice, a North Face rip-off with tons of zippered pockets and enough insulation to keep the wind out. Will had the brand-name version back at home. He hadn’t brought it because in Atlanta, cold weather never lasted more than a few days, and even then, the sun came up to burn off the chill. The thought of the jacket hanging in his closet gave him a longing to be back home that surprised him.

Lena stopped, turning back toward the police station. She raised her voice to be heard over the rain. “The college is back there, past the station.”

Will guessed they had been walking for about fifteen minutes. He could barely make out a bunch of buildings resting in the curve of the lake just beyond the police station.

Lena said, “There’s no reason for Allison to walk this way.”

“Where’s Lover’s Point?”

She pointed in the opposite direction. “That cove about a half mile away.”

Will followed the line of her finger to the indentation in the shoreline. The cove was smaller than he’d thought it would be. Or perhaps the distance made it seem that way. Large boulders were scattered along the shore. He imagined people built campfires when the weather was better. It looked like the kind of place a family might pull up a boat to for a long picnic.

“Are we just going to stand here?” Lena had her hands deep in her pockets, head down against the wind. Will didn’t need ESP to figure out she didn’t want to be out here in the pouring rain. It was so cold by the water that he had to fight to keep his teeth from chattering.

He asked, “Where are the roads again?”

She gave him a look that said she wasn’t going to play this game much longer. “There.” She pointed into the distance. “That’s the fire road. It hasn’t been used in years. We checked it when we pulled the body out of the lake. Nothing’s there.”

“That’s the only egress from here to Lover’s Point, right?”

“Like I showed you on the map back at the station.”

Will had never been good with maps. “That place over there.” He pointed to an area just past the cove. “That’s the second road that people normally use to get to the cove, right?”

“Empty, like I told you. We checked it, all right? We’re not total morons. We checked for cars. We checked for tire tracks, footprints. We checked both roads and neither one of them showed any signs of use.”

Will tried to get his bearings. The sun wasn’t doing much to help light the way. The sky was so dark that it could’ve been nighttime instead of smack in the middle of morning. “Where’s the residential area?”

She pointed across the lake. “That’s where Sara lives. Her parents. Over here”-she pointed farther along-“all of this shoreline, including where we’re standing, belongs to the State Forestry Division.”

“Do people take their boats out?”

“There’s a dock at the campus for the rowing teams. A lot of the homeowners go boating during the summer. No one would be stupid enough to be out here in this rain.”

“Except us.” Will put as much cheer into his voice as he could muster. “Let’s keep going.”

She trudged along ahead of him. Will could see her sneakers were soaked. The running shoes he had found in the back of his car weren’t faring much better. Allison’s shoes, or at least the ones found near her body, were dirty, but not caked in mud. If she had walked along the shore, the terrain had been a lot harder than the red Georgia clay that was sliding out from under his feet.

Will had checked the weekly weather report last night on his computer. Temperatures had been lower the morning Allison was found, but the same rain they were seeing now had been pounding down the night before. It was a good time to kill somebody. Trace evidence on the shore would be lost. The cold water would make guessing when the murder occurred next to impossible. Except for the 911 caller, no one would have known there was a body in the lake.

Lena slipped in the mud. Will reached out, catching her before she fell into the water. She was so light that he could almost pick her up with one hand.

“Christ.” She braced her hand against a tree. She was breathing hard. He realized she had been walking fast to keep a few paces between them.

Will asked, “Are you okay?”

She pushed away from the tree, a look of determination on her face. Will watched her feet as she picked her way across the large roots and fallen branches that riddled the shoreline. He had no way of knowing whether or not Allison had made her way to Lover’s Point along this same route. His goal was to get Lena Adams out of the station, out of her element, so that she would talk to him. Between the pounding rain and the rough going, he was thinking that it might be wise to set the bar lower. For instance, he could aim not to let them both freeze to death.

Lena was so certain that Tommy Braham had killed Allison Spooner-just as certain as Sara was that Tommy had not. Will felt caught in the middle, and was mindful that it would be wrong to let either woman influence his thinking. He supposed for Lena the question of Tommy’s innocence carried with it a lot more guilt than she wanted to shoulder. To believe otherwise would mean that the kid had killed himself for nothing. That she had given him the means-and the motivation-to take his life. For Sara’s part, admitting Tommy was a murderer would mean admitting that Lena wasn’t as ruthless as she wanted to believe.

Will didn’t feel the rain let up so much as hear it. The constant tapping of water against leaves died down to a gentle whisper. He heard a bird, a bunch of crickets. Up ahead, a large tree blocked the path. Thick roots jutted into the air, earth dripping from the tendrils. Lena lifted herself up and over. Will followed her, looking around, trying to get his bearings again. They were near the fire road. At least he thought they were.

“There,” she said, pointing to a pile of stacked logs. “That’s the end of the road.” She took off her hood. Will followed suit. Two strips of earth about the width of the front end of a car lined the road for about ten feet, then gave way to thick forest. He understood why Lena was convinced the road was untraveled. You’d need a bulldozer to get through.

She told him, “The road on the other side is the one most people use, but it’s about a hundred yards west of the cove. I told you, we had to clear out a path to get the emergency vehicles back here.”

Will guessed they hadn’t been looking for tire tracks on the way to a suicide. They had probably destroyed any evidence of another car out by the cove. He asked, “If Allison didn’t have a car, how did she get here?”

Lena stared at him. “Tommy brought her here.”

“But you just said you checked for cars.”

“He had a scooter. He could’ve used that.”

Will agreed, but he couldn’t see Tommy balancing a dead body on the handlebars while he maneuvered his way through the forest. “Where was she before Tommy killed her?”

“Home, waiting to be killed.” She stamped her feet to fight the cold. “All right. The school library closed at noon on Sunday. She could’ve been there.”

“What about work?”

“The diner’s closed on Sunday.”

“Would Allison go this way to get home?”

Lena shook her head. “She would go through the woods across from the station. She’d be home in ten minutes.”

At least she was being honest about that. Lionel Harris had told Will the same thing. He asked, “So, why was Allison here?”

Lena dug her hands into her pockets as the breeze picked up.

“Detective?”

“She was here because Tommy brought her here.” She started walking again, trudging through the mud. Her shoes made a sucking sound with every step.

Will’s stride was twice Lena’s. He caught up with her easily. “Let’s profile our killer.”

She snorted a laugh. “You believe in that shit?”

“Not really, but we’ve got some time on our hands.”

“This is stupid.” She slipped again, but caught herself. “Are you really going to make me walk all the way to the cove?”

If Will could make her do anything, it would be for her to tell the truth. That didn’t seem to be an option, so he said, “Let’s do the profile.”

“Sure,” she muttered, pushing forward. “He’s a retarded kid between the ages of nineteen and nineteen and a half who drives a green Chevy Malibu and lives with his father.”

“Let’s take Tommy out of this for just a minute.”

She gave him a wary look.

Will asked, “What took place?”

Lena picked her way around another fallen tree.

“What took place?” he repeated.

She let her reluctance hang on every word. “You mean the murder?”

“Right. What happened?”

“Allison Spooner was stabbed in the neck Sunday night or early Monday morning.”

“Was it messy?”

She shrugged, but then said, “Probably. There’s all kinds of stuff in the neck. Arteries and veins. There would’ve been a lot of blood, which explains why Tommy had a bucket and sponge at Allison’s apartment. He was trying to clean up the mess.”

“Why did it happen?”

She laughed, incredulous. “This is profiling?”

Will’s version, at least. He didn’t share Lena’s certainty. She was so sure she was right about Tommy Braham that she hadn’t considered the possibility that a savage killer might be sharpening his knife for the next victim. “Why did the killer decide to kill? Anger? Opportunity? Money?”

“He killed her because she wouldn’t have sex with him. Did you actually read his confession?”

“I thought we were going to take Tommy out of this.” She shook her head, and Will tried again, “Just humor me, Detective. Let’s say there’s some mystery killer out there who wanted Allison dead. Other than Tommy Braham.”

“That’s quite a fantasy considering he admitted to doing it.”

He took her elbow to help her over a large puddle. “Did the murderer bring the weapon to the scene?”

Lena seemed to consider the question. “Maybe. He also had the cinder blocks, the chain, and lock.”

Will assumed the blocks and chain had been planted at the scene ahead of time, but now didn’t seem like a good time to bring up the theory. “So, this was premeditated.”

“Or, these were things lying around his house.” She added, “On Taylor Drive.”

Will didn’t rise to the bait. If Allison was killed at the lake rather than the garage, then Lena’s whole theory about Tommy’s guilt started to break down. He asked, “Was the killer angry?”

“The wound in her neck is pretty violent.”

“But not furious. That’s controlled. Deliberate.”

“He probably freaked out when he got a mouthful of blood back in his face.” She jumped over a puddle. “What else?”

“Let’s look at what we know: Our killer is organized. Not opportunistic. Has good knowledge of the area. He knows Allison. He drives a car.”

She nodded. “I’d buy that.”

“Go over the sequence of events.”

Lena stopped. They were about thirty feet away from the cove. “All right. Tommy, or your mystery guy, kills Allison, brings her here.” She squinted her eyes. “Probably he lays her down on the shore. He wraps the chains around her waist, ties her to the cinder blocks, then tosses her into the water.”

“Tosses her how?”

Lena stared at the cove. Will could almost hear her mind working. “He would have to carry her. She was found about fifteen feet out in the water, where the bottom drops off. The cinder blocks were heavy. Maybe he would’ve floated her out to the water, then bolted the chain and blocks around her. That makes more sense. There’s no way she could have been thrown in the water from the shore and ended up there.”

Will kept leading her along. “So, the killer walks her into the water, then chains her down. It was cold that night.”

“He’d need waders or something. He’d have to get back into his car to drive away. What’s the point of disposing of the body in water if you’re going to take the lake with you back into the car?”

“Being in the water wouldn’t necessarily be a bad idea.”

“Right. He would’ve been covered in blood.”

“Our killer didn’t want the body found. He walked her out to the deep end so she’d stay there. He weighted her down.”

Lena was silent again, but he knew she was too smart not to be thinking the same thing he was.

Will said it for her. “Someone wanted the body found. There was the call to 911.”

“Maybe one of Tommy’s neighbors saw something.”

“And followed him to the lake, watched him dump the body, and…”

“You think he had an accomplice?”

“What do you think?”

“I think at best we’ve got a material witness. We’ll need to talk to her at some point, but why does this matter when the guy who admitted to killing Allison is dead?”

Will looked around. They were standing in mud up to their ankles. The earth was darker here, turning almost black as it dipped into the water. Allison’s shoes had black mud on them, not red clay.

Will asked, “Did Tommy mention whether or not Allison had a boyfriend?”

“Don’t you think we’d be talking to him right now if he had?”

Will saw a fat squirrel scamper up a tree, tail twitching. Several twigs had been snapped in two. The ground covering was bent down. He heard a car in the distance. “Is there a road close by?”

“About a mile out.” She pointed in the direction of the noise. “There’s a divided highway.”

“Any residences?”

Lena pressed her lips together. She wouldn’t look at him.

“Detective?”

She stared down at the ground, knocked some mud off her shoe. “Tommy lived out that way.”

“So did Allison Spooner.” Will glanced back at the lake. The water was churning. The wind coming off the water was like ice against his skin. “Have you ever heard the name Julie Smith?”

Lena shook her head. “Who is she?”

“Did Tommy mention any friends? Either his or Allison’s?”

“That wasn’t the focus of the interview.” Her tone was terse. “I was trying to get him to confess to murder, not give me his life story.”

Will kept his eyes on the lake. He was looking at this the wrong way. Their killer was smart. He knew that water would get rid of trace evidence. He knew to walk the body into the deeper part of the lake. He had probably lured Allison out here after careful deliberation. The wet terrain, the mud and underbrush, all would serve to help cover his tracks.

Will rolled up the legs of his jeans. His shoes were already soaked, so he didn’t bother to take them off before walking into the lake. The cold water sloshed into his sneakers.

“What are you doing?”

He went out a few feet and scanned the shoreline, studying the trees, the underbrush.

Lena had her hands on her hips. “Are you crazy? You’re going to get hypothermia.”

Will studied each tree, each branch, each section of weeds and moss. His feet were completely numb by the time he found what he was looking for. He walked toward a large oak that was leaning away from the shore. Its knotty roots coiled into the lake like an open fist. At first, Will had thought he was seeing a shadow on the bark, but then he remembered you had to actually have sun or some other source of light to cast a shadow.

Will stood in front of the tree, his shoes sinking into the silt at the bottom of the water. The tree was deciduous, its bony canopy reaching up at least a hundred feet overhead. The trunk was about three feet around and bowed away from the water. Will wasn’t an arborist, but there were enough oaks around Atlanta so that he knew their red-brown furrows of bark turned the color of charcoal as the tree aged. The scaly bark had absorbed the rain like a sponge, but there was something else Will had noticed from his vantage point in the water. He scraped at a small section of bark with his fingernails. The wood left a wet, rust-colored residue. He rolled the grit between his fingers, squeezing out the moisture.

Blood really was thicker than water.

“What is it?” Lena asked. She kept her hands in her pockets as she leaned out into the water.

Will remembered the flashlight in his jacket pocket. “Look.” He traced the light along a dark stain that sprayed up the trunk. He thought about what Sara had said about Allison’s injury, that there would be a high-velocity spray, like a hose turned on full blast. Four to five pints of blood. That was over half a gallon.

Will said, “She must have been facedown on the ground, just shy of the water. Her blood spattered up and back in an arc. You can see the dispersement is thicker here at the base of the tree, closer to her neck. Then it starts to dissipate at the top.”

“That’s not-” Lena stopped. She saw it now. He could see from her shocked expression.

Will glanced up at the sky. The clouds were letting loose a few drops at a time. They hadn’t been given much of a reprieve. It didn’t matter. Short of scrubbing the bark, there was no way to completely clean the tree. The wood had absorbed the mark of death the same way it would absorb smoke from a fire.

Will asked, “You still think our murderer is a nineteen-year-old boy who lives with his father?”

The wind whipped off the lake as Lena stared at the tree. Tears came into her eyes. Her voice shook. “He confessed.”

Will quoted Tommy’s words back to her. “‘I got mad. I had a knife on me. I stabbed her once in the neck.’” He asked, “Did you find blood in the garage?”

“Yes.” She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. “He was cleaning it up when we got there. I saw a bucket, and there was…” Her voice trailed off. “There was blood on the floor. I saw it.”

Will rolled down the legs of his jeans. His shoes were sinking into the mud at the base of the tree. He saw there was a new color mixed in with the soil, a deep rust that soaked into the mesh on the toe of his sneaker.

Lena saw it, too. She fell to her knees. She stuck her fingers deep into the ground and grabbed a fistful of earth. The soil was soaked, but not just with rainwater. She let the dirt fall back to the ground. Her hand was dark red, streaked with Allison Spooner’s blood.

CHAPTER TEN

LENA PRESSED A WET PAPER TOWEL TO HER NECK. SHE WAS sitting with her back against the stall of the locker room toilet. A patrolman had tried to come in while she was dry-heaving. He’d left without saying a word.

She’d never had a strong stomach. Her uncle Hank used to say that Lena didn’t have the guts for the kind of life she was living. He wouldn’t have taken any pleasure in seeing that he was right.

“Oh, God,” she whispered, as close to a prayer as she’d come in a long while. What had that stupid kid gotten himself into? What else had she missed?

She closed her eyes. Nothing made sense right now. Nothing was fitting together the same way it had yesterday morning.

He did it. Lena knew Tommy had killed Allison. People didn’t confess to murder unless they were guilty. Even without that, less than fifteen minutes after they pulled the girl out of the lake, they had found Tommy in Allison’s apartment going through her things. Wearing a black ski mask. He ran when they confronted him. He stabbed Brad, even if it was with a letter opener. Lena had seen him stab Brad with her own eyes. She had listened to Tommy’s confession. She had watched him write down everything in his own stupid words. And he had killed himself. The guilt had gotten to him and he had sliced open his wrists because he knew what he had done to Allison was wrong.

So why was Lena doubting herself?

Suspects lied all the time. They never wanted to confess to all the horrors they’d committed. They split hairs. They admitted to rape but not murder. They admitted to punching but not beating, stabbing but not killing. Was it as simple as that? Had Tommy lied about killing Allison in the garage because he’d wanted to make the crime seem more understandable, more spur of the moment?

Lena pressed her head against the wall.

That stupid profile Will Trent came up with kept coming back to her. Cold. Calculated. Deliberate. That wasn’t Tommy. He wasn’t smart enough to think of all the variables. He would’ve had to plan ahead, get the cinder blocks and chains ready, carry them out to the lake ahead of time. Even if Tommy got the blocks after the fact, he would’ve had to anticipate the blood, and plan on the rain covering his tracks.

All that blood. The ground was soaked in it.

Lena scrambled to her knees and held her head over the toilet. Her stomach clenched, but nothing was left to come up. She sat back on her heels, staring at the back of the tank. The cool white porcelain stared back. This was her stall, and only her stall. This toilet was the one piece of ground she had managed to stake out solely for herself in the unisex locker room. The urinals were stained like old-lady teeth. The other two stalls were disgusting. They reeked of excrement no matter how many times they were cleaned. This morning, it didn’t seem to stop there. The whole place reeked of shit. And it was all coming from the top down.

Lena wiped her mouth with the paper towel. Her hand was throbbing where she’d been shot. She was probably getting an infection. The skin felt hot down to her wrist. She squeezed her eyes shut. She wanted to be away from here. She wanted to be back in bed with Jared. She wanted to go back to yesterday and shake Tommy Braham until he told her the truth about what really happened. Why was he in Allison’s apartment? Why was he going through her things? Why was he wearing the ski mask? Why did he run? And why, in God’s name, did he kill himself?

“Lena?” Marla Simms’s creaky voice was just above a whisper. “Can I have a minute?”

Lena pressed herself up to standing. It was not lost on her that the only spot she could call her own in this entire godforsaken place was the toilet.

Marla stood with a folded sheet of paper in her hands. “You all right?”

“No,” she said, because there was no use lying. She need only glance in the mirror to see the truth. Her hair was disheveled. Her face was red and blotchy. She was punch-drunk with lack of sleep and her nerves were so raw that she felt like she was vibrating even standing dead still.

“Agent Trent wanted this.” Marla held out the sheet of paper between her fingers, giving Lena a meaningful look, as if they were two spies passing a briefcase in front of the Kremlin. “He didn’t see it last night.”

Lena had to tug the sheet before Marla would release it. She recognized her own handwriting. The copied page was from her notebook. The transcript she had made of the 911 call. She tried to pick out the words but her eyes blurred. “I thought he asked for the tape?”

“If he wants more than this, then he’s going to have to drive down to Eaton to get it.” She tucked her hands into her wide hips. “And you can tell him from me that I’m not his personal secretary. I don’t know who he thinks he is, ordering people around.”

He was the man who was going to shut down this force if they didn’t do everything he said. “Have you talked to Frank this morning?”

“I’m guessing he came by last night. My files were a mess when I got here.”

Lena already knew Frank had stolen Tommy’s phone and taken the photograph from Allison’s wallet, but this new information sent a chill straight to her chest. “Which files?”

“All of them. I don’t know what he was looking for, but I hope he found it.”

“You gave Trent those incident reports.”

“What of it?”

“Why?”

“No one wants to speak ill of the dead, but I’ll come on out and say it to whoever asks. Tommy wasn’t acting right lately. He was getting into trouble, yelling at people, threatening them. Don’t get me wrong. He was a good boy when he was little. Had those precious little blond curls and pretty blue eyes. That’s what Sara’s remembering. But she doesn’t know what he was like lately. I think something just clicked in his head. Maybe it was there all along and we just didn’t notice. Didn’t want to notice.” Marla shook her head in a tight half-circle. “This is just a mess. A grade-A, certified pile of doo.”

Lena focused on Marla for the first time. The old woman wasn’t one of her biggest fans. At best, she managed a nod for Lena when she walked through the door in the morning. Most times, she never bothered to look up from her desk. “Why are you talking to me? You never talk to me.”

Marla bristled. “Excuse me for trying to help.” She turned on her heel and stomped out.

Lena watched the door slowly close on its hinges. The room felt small, claustrophobic. She couldn’t stay here all day, but her instinct to hide from Will Trent was hard to overcome. Larry Knox had told Frank that Will was a suit, not a cop. Lena’s first impression had been the same. With his cashmere sweater and metrosexual haircut, Will looked like he’d be more at home behind a desk, clocking out at five and going home to the wife and kids. The old Lena would have dismissed him as a fraud, not on her level and not deserving of the badge.

That old Lena had been burned so many times by her snap judgments that she’d practically self-immolated. Now, she could look past her knee-jerk reaction and see the truth. Will had been sent down by a deputy director who was a heartbeat away from the top job. Lena had met Amanda Wagner many years ago. She was a tough old bitch. There was no way Amanda would’ve sent her second string down here, especially at the request of Sara Linton. Will was probably one of the best investigators on her team. He had to be. In less than two hours, he had shattered Lena’s case against Tommy Braham into tiny pieces.

And now she had to go back out there and face him again.

Lena’s feet still ached from the long trek through the forest. Her shoes were soaking wet. She went to her locker. The combination left her mind as soon as she turned the dial. She pressed her forehead against the cool metal. Why was she still here? She couldn’t keep this up with Will Trent. There were so many lies and half-truths dangling out there that she couldn’t remember them all. He kept laying traps, and with each one, she felt herself getting closer and closer to falling in. She should go home before she said too much. If Trent wanted to stop her, he would have to do it with handcuffs.

The combination came into her head. Lena spun the dial, opening the locker. She looked at her rain jacket, her toiletries, the various crap she’d collected over the years. There was nothing here she wanted except the extra pair of sneakers she kept in the bottom. She started to close the locker but stopped at the last minute. Inside a box of tampons was a picture of Jared that had been taken three years ago. He was standing outside Sanford Stadium at the University of Georgia. The place was packed. Georgia was playing LSU. There was a crowd of students around him, but he was the only one looking back at the camera. Looking back at Lena.

This picture was the moment that she had fallen in love with him-outside that noisy stadium, surrounded by drunken strangers. Lena had actually managed to capture on film that exact moment when everything in her life had changed. Who would be around to capture it when it all changed back?

Probably the booking officer who took her mugshot.

The door popped open. Four patrolmen came in, so lost in conversation that they barely acknowledged Lena. She tucked Jared’s picture into her back pocket. Her socks were soaking wet, but she slid on her spare sneakers anyway. She just wanted to get out of here. She would walk through the squad room, right past Will Trent, get into her car and go home to Jared.

Lena would start packing tonight. She’d be one of those people who left her house key in the mailbox for the bank. Her car was in good shape. She had enough in savings to last her three months, four if Jared didn’t expect her to help out with rent. She would move in with him and try to get over this, try to find a way to live her life without being a cop.

If she wasn’t in jail for obstructing an investigation. If she wasn’t convicted of negligence. If Gordon Braham didn’t sue her into the ground. If Frank didn’t fill Jared’s ear with poison. Poison Jared would believe, because the great thing about lying was people believed it so long as the lie was close enough to the truth.

Lena slammed the locker closed, pressing her hand against the cool metal.

One of the patrolmen said, “You let that GBI asshole slip and hit his head, we’re not going to shed any tears.”

They were all suiting up, pulling on their heavy rain gear. Will had taken photographs and samples from the bark and soil by the tree, but he had ordered a full-scale search of the woods. He wanted more photographs, drawings, diagrams. He wanted to make sure the force knew that they had made a mistake. That Lena had made a mistake.

“Fucking retard,” another cop said.

Lena didn’t know if he meant Will or Tommy. Either way, she managed some false bravado. “Wish he was a little smarter so he knew how stupid he was.”

They were all laughing when she left the locker room. Lena pulled on her jacket. She walked through the squad room with more swagger than she felt. She had to get her composure back. She had to steel herself against the next barrage of questions from Will Trent. The fewer answers she gave him, the better off she would be.

The paper Marla had given her was in her hand. Lena skimmed the words as she walked so she wouldn’t have to talk to anybody. She stopped as she reached the front door. She read the transcript again. The words were in her handwriting, but the last few lines from the call were missing. The caller had mentioned that Allison had gotten into a fight with her boyfriend. Why was that part taken out?

She glanced at Marla behind the front desk. Marla stared back, one eyebrow raised above her glasses. She was either still pissed or sending Lena a message. It was hard to tell. Lena looked at the transcript again. The last part was gone, the cut clean so that you would never know it was missing. Had Marla taken a shot at tampering with police evidence? Frank had gone through her files last night. Why would he edit the transcript without telling Lena? Christ, she had her notebook in her back pocket with the original transcript. All Trent had to do was ask her to see it and Lena would be looking at an obstruction charge for tampering with evidence.

The front door opened before Lena could reach it. Will Trent had obviously grown impatient waiting outside.

“Detective,” he said by way of greeting. He’d changed back into his dress shoes and shed Carl Phillips’s jacket. He looked as eager as she was reticent.

Lena handed him the paper. “Marla told me to give you this. She said you’d have to track down the audio from Eaton yourself.”

Will called to Marla at the desk. “Thank you, Mrs. Simms.” He took the paper from Lena’s hand. His eyes scanned back and forth. “You heard the call, right?” He looked up. “You made the transcript from the audio?”

“They dictated it to me from the screen. The audiotapes are stored off-site. They’re not hard to get.” Lena held her breath, praying that he would not ask her to track them down.

“Any idea who made the call?”

She shook her head. “It was a woman’s voice. The number was blocked and she wouldn’t leave her details.”

“Did you make this copy for me?”

“No. Marla handed it to me.”

He pointed at a black dot on the page. “You’ve got some gum on the glass in your copier.”

Lena wondered why the hell he was telling her this. Will Trent was like no cop she had ever seen. He had a habit of skirting around the real questions, making random comments or observations that seemed to lead nowhere until suddenly it was too late and she felt the noose tighten around her neck. He was playing chess and she was sucking at checkers.

Lena tried her own diversion. “We should get out to the crime scene if you want to be back in time for the autopsies.”

“Weren’t we just at the crime scene?”

“We don’t know for a fact what happened. Tommy could’ve lied. That happens in Atlanta, right? Bad guys lie to the cops?”

“More often than I’d like.” He slipped the transcript into his briefcase. “What time are the procedures supposed to start?”

“Frank said eleven-thirty.”

“This was when you talked to him last night?”

Lena tried to remember the answer she had given Will the first time he’d asked this question. She had talked to Frank twice. Both times he had drilled her on Tommy’s confession. Both times he had renewed his threat to tear down her life if she didn’t cover his drunk ass.

Lena cast out a nonanswer, hoping Will would bite. “It’s like I told you before.”

He held open the front door for her. “Any idea why the press isn’t all over this?”

“The press?” She would have laughed if she hadn’t been standing up to her knees in shit. “The paper’s closed for the holiday. Thomas Ross always goes skiing this time of year.”

Will laughed good-naturedly. “You gotta love small towns.” A cold wind made him have to put his shoulder into closing the glass door. He tucked his hands into his jeans pockets. The cuffs of his pants were still wet. “Let’s take your car.”

She felt uncomfortable having him in her Celica, so she nodded toward Frank’s Town Car. Lena pulled her key chain from her pocket. The county was on a tight budget and they both were supposed to share the car.

She pressed the button to unlock the doors.

Will didn’t get in. Instead, he scowled at the smell that wafted through the morning air. “Smoker?”

“Frank,” she said. The stink was worse than usual. He must have chain-smoked the whole trip to and from Macon last night.

Will asked, “This is Chief Wallace’s car?”

She nodded.

“Where’s Chief Wallace if this is his car?”

Lena managed to swallow the bile in her throat. “He took a cruiser to the hospital.”

Will didn’t comment, though she wondered if he’d made a mark in his book. Frank had taken the cruiser so he wouldn’t get stopped along the way. Speeding during a nonemergency situation was illegal, but it was the sort of illegal cops danced around all the time.

Will asked, “Can you drive a stick?”

It was her turn to scowl. Of course she could drive a stick.

Will said, “Let’s take my car.”

“Are you kidding me?” Lena had heard about the Porsche before she’d made it to the station this morning. The whole town was talking about it-what it must’ve cost, why a state investigator would be driving it, and, more important, that it was parked in front of the Linton house all night.

Will didn’t wait to see if she followed as he walked toward the opposite end of the lot. He talked as he made his way to the car, his leather briefcase swinging gently at his side. “I’m curious about Allison Spooner. You said she’s from Alabama?”

“Yes.”

“And she’s a student at Grant Tech?”

Lena was careful with her answer. “She’s registered at the school.”

Will turned to her. “So, that means she’s a student?”

“It means she’s registered. We haven’t talked to her teachers yet. We don’t know if she was actively attending classes. We get a lot of calls from parents this time of year wondering why they’re not getting report cards.”

He asked her again, “Do you think Allison Spooner dropped out?”

She tried a new strategy. “I think that I’m not going to tell you something unless I know it’s the absolute truth.”

He gave one of his quick nods. “Fair enough.”

Lena waited for another question, another insinuation. Will just kept walking, his mouth closed. If he thought this new technique was going to break her, he was dead wrong. Lena had been dealing with silent disapproval her entire life. She had made an art out of ignoring it.

She tucked her head down against the cold. Her mind kept going back to her earlier conversation with Will. She had been so furious about him being in Jeffrey’s office that she hadn’t really paid attention to what he was saying at first. But then he had pulled out Allison’s wallet and she had seen that the third photograph was missing.

The picture showed Allison sitting beside a boy who had his arm around her waist. An older woman sat on her left, some distance between them. They were all on a bench outside the student center. Lena had stared at the photo long enough to remember the details. The boy was around Allison’s age. He had been wearing the hood of his sweatshirt pulled down low on his head but she could tell he had brown hair and eyes. A smattering of a goatee was on his weak chin. He was chubby the way most of the guys at Grant Tech tended to be, from too many days spent in classrooms and nights wasted in front of video games.

The woman in the photograph was obviously from the poor part of town. She was in her forties, maybe older. Past a certain age, it was difficult to tell with hard-looking women. The good news was that they stopped aging. The bad news was that they already looked ninety. Every line on her face said she was a smoker. Her bleached-blonde hair was so dry it looked more like straw.

Also missing from evidence was Tommy’s cell phone. Frank had handed it to Lena in the street. He’d found it in Tommy’s back pocket when he frisked him before putting him into the back of the squad car. She had sealed the phone in a plastic bag, written out the details, and logged it into evidence.

And at some point last night, both the photo from Allison’s wallet and Tommy’s phone had gone missing.

There was only one person who could’ve hidden the evidence, and that was Frank. Marla said he’d gone through her files. He had probably doctored the 911 transcript, too. But why? Both the picture and the call brought up the possibility of Allison having a boyfriend. Maybe Frank was trying to track down the kid before Will Trent found him. Frank had told Lena that they both should stick to the truth, or at least a close version of it. Why was he going behind her back and looking for another suspect?

Lena wiped her eyes with her hand. The wind was cutting, making her nose run, her eyes water. She had to carve out ten, fifteen minutes alone so she could think this through. Will’s presence made it impossible for her to do anything but worry about the next question that would come out of his mouth.

“Ready?” Will asked. They had reached the Porsche. The car was an older model than Lena thought. There was no remote to unlock the door. Will did the honors, then handed her the key.

Lena felt a new wave of nervousness wash over her. “What if I crash this thing?”

“I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t.” He reached in and tucked his briefcase behind the front seat.

Lena couldn’t move. This felt like a trap but she couldn’t see the reason.

“Is there a problem?” Will asked.

Lena gave in. She climbed into the bucket seat, which was more like a recliner. With her feet stretched toward the pedals, the back of her calves were only a few inches off the floorboard.

Will opened the passenger door. She asked, “You don’t have a car from the job?”

“My boss wanted me to get here as soon as possible.” He had to let the seat back before he got into the passenger’s side of the car. “It adjusts on the front,” he told Lena. She reached down and dragged herself closer to the steering wheel. Will’s legs were about ten feet longer than hers. Lena was practically pressed into the steering wheel by the time her feet found the clutch and gas.

For his part, Will couldn’t get his seat right. He pushed it to the end of the track, then cranked it down as low as it would go so his head wouldn’t hit the roof. Finally, he folded himself into the car like a piece of origami. She waited for him to buckle in, chancing a look at him. He was fairly average except for his height. He was lean, but his shoulders were broad, muscled, like he spent a lot of time at the gym. His nose had obviously been broken at some point in his life. Faint scars were on his face, the sort of damage you got from fighting with your fists.

No, he definitely was not Amanda Wagner’s second string.

“All right,” Will said, finally settling into the seat.

She reached toward the ignition, but there wasn’t one.

“It’s on the other side.”

She found the ignition on the left-hand side of the steering wheel.

Will explained, “It’s from Le Mans racing. So you can start the engine with one hand while you change the gears with the other.”

She was extremely right-handed and it took a few tries before she managed to get the key to turn. The engine roared to life. The seat vibrated underneath her. She could feel the clutch pushing back against the ball of her foot.

Will stopped her. “Can you give her a few minutes to warm up?”

Lena took her foot off the pedal. She stared across the street. He’d parked on the far side of the lot, the nose of the car facing out. She had a clear view to the children’s clinic across the way. Sara’s clinic. She wondered if he had parked here on purpose. He seemed to be very deliberate about everything he did. Or maybe her paranoia was such that she couldn’t watch his chest rise and fall without thinking it was part of some master plan to trip her up.

Will asked one of his random questions. “What do you think about the 911 call?”

She told him the truth. “It bothers me that it came from a blocked number.”

“She called in a fake suicide. Why?”

Lena shook her head. The caller was the last thing on her mind right now. “Tommy might have talked to her. She could be a co-worker. An accomplice. A jealous girlfriend.”

“Tommy didn’t strike me as a player.”

No, he hadn’t. During the interrogation, Lena had asked him to be explicit because she wasn’t sure he really knew what sex was.

Will asked, “Did Tommy say anything about dating anyone?”

She shook her head.

“We can ask around. At the very least, the girl who called in the fake suicide knew something wasn’t right. She was obviously laying down a foundation for Tommy’s defense.”

Lena’s head jerked around. “How so?”

“The phone call. She said Allison got into a fight with her boyfriend. That’s why she was worried she’d committed suicide. She didn’t say anything about Tommy.”

Lena felt every ounce of blood in her body freeze. Her hand gripped the steering wheel. Frank’s amended transcript didn’t mention a boyfriend. Will must have already contacted the call center in Eaton. So why had he asked Marla for the audio?

To set a trap. And Lena had just fallen right into it.

Will’s tone of voice was even. “Obviously, we’ll need to find the boyfriend. He’ll probably be able to lead us to the caller. Did Allison have any photographs in her apartment? Love letters? A computer?”

Photographs. Did he know about the missing picture? Lena’s throat felt so raw that she couldn’t swallow. She shook her head.

Will took his briefcase from behind the seat. He snapped open the locks. She could hear a high-pitched alarm in her ears. Her chest was tight. Her vision blurred. She wondered if this was what a panic attack felt like.

“Hmm,” Will mumbled, rifling through the case. “My reading glasses aren’t in here.” He held out the transcript. “Do you mind?”

Lena’s heart shook against her rib cage. Will held the paper in his hand, the edge fluttering in the air blowing out from the heater.

Her voice was barely a whisper. “Why are you doing this?”

Fear saturated her every word. Will stared at her for a long while-so long that she felt as if her soul was being peeled away from her body. Finally, he gave one of his patented nods, as if he’d made a decision. He put the transcript back in his case and snapped the locks shut.

“Let’s go to Allison’s.”

TAYLOR DRIVE WAS less than ten minutes from the station, but the trip seemed to take hours. Lena felt so panicked that she slowed down a couple of times, thinking she was going to be sick. She needed to concentrate on Frank, to figure out how many nails he could put in her coffin, but she was thinking about Tommy Braham instead.

He had died on her watch. He was her prisoner. He was her responsibility. She hadn’t patted him down when she put him in the cells. She had assumed because he was slow that he was without guile. Who was the stupid one now? Lena thought the kid was capable of murder but considered him so harmless that she’d let him walk into a cell with a sharp object hidden on his person. Frank was right-she was lucky Tommy didn’t turn the weapon on someone else.

When had Tommy taken the ink cartridge out of her pen? He must have known when he did it that he was going to use it for something bad. By the time he finished writing his confession, Tommy was in tears. The Kleenex box was empty. Lena had left him alone for no more than half a minute to get more tissues. When she came back into the room, his hands were under the table. She had wiped his nose for him like he was a child. She had soothed him, rubbed his shoulder, told him everything was going to be okay. He seemed to believe her. He’d blown his nose, dried his eyes. She had thought at the time that Tommy had resolved himself to his fate, but maybe the fate he had decided on was a lot different from the one that Lena had imagined.

Was it sympathy for Tommy or her instinctual need for self-preservation that had kept Lena from getting rid of the letter opener he had used on Brad Stephens? Last night, she had thought about tossing it over one of the thousands of concrete bridges between here and Macon. But she hadn’t. It was still wrapped in its bag, buried under the spare tire in the trunk of her car. Lena hadn’t wanted it in the house. Now, she didn’t like that it was so close to the station. Frank had doctored paperwork. He’d broken the chain of custody. He’d tampered with evidence. She wouldn’t put it past the old man to rummage through her car.

Christ. What else was he capable of?

She took a right onto Taylor Drive. The rain had come in torrents last night, washing away the blood on the street. Still, she could see it in her mind’s eye. The way Brad had blinked away the rain. The way his skin had already started to turn gray by the time the helicopter landed.

Lena steered the car onto the far side of the road and stopped. “This is where Brad was stabbed.”

Will asked, “Where’s Spooner’s apartment?”

She pointed up the road. “Four houses, left-hand side.”

He stared straight down the street. “What’s the number?”

“Sixteen and a half.” Lena put the car into gear and rolled past the scene of Brad’s stabbing. “We got the address from the college. We came here to see if there was a roommate or landlord we could talk to.”

“Did you have a warrant to search the house?”

He had asked the question before. She gave him the same answer. “No. We didn’t come to search the house.”

She waited for him to ask something else, but Will was silent. Lena wondered if what she had told him was the truth. If Tommy hadn’t been in Allison’s apartment, they still would have found a way to get into the garage. Gordon Braham was out of town. Knowing Frank, he would’ve broken the lock and gone into Allison’s apartment anyway. He would have made some comment about how it was better to ask for forgiveness than permission. No one would have minded a simple breaking and entering when a young girl from the college had been murdered.

Will asked, “Did you canvass the neighbors?”

Lena stopped the car in front of the Braham house. “Patrol did. No one saw anything different from what happened.”

“And what exactly did happen?”

“Brad was stabbed.”

“Tell me from the beginning. You pulled up here…”

She tried to take a breath. Her lungs would only fill to half capacity. “We approached the garage-”

“No,” he interrupted. “Go back to the very beginning. You drove up to the scene. Then what?”

“Brad was already here.” She didn’t tell him about the pink umbrella or Frank’s screaming fit.

“You got out of the car?” Will prodded. He really was going to make her go through this step-by-step.

She opened her door. Rain splattered her face with lazy, fat drops. Will had gotten out of the car, too. She told him, “The rain had died down. Visibility was good.” She started up the driveway. Will was beside her with his briefcase in his hand. At the top of the hill, she could see that the garage was marked with yellow crime scene tape. Frank must have come back last night. Or maybe he had sent patrol to mark the space so it looked like they were taking this seriously. There was no telling anymore what he was doing or why.

Will opened his briefcase and pulled out a sheet of paper. “The search warrant came in while you were getting your coat.”

He handed the document to Lena. She saw it had been issued by a judge out of Atlanta.

He asked, “What next? I take it the garage door was closed when you approached?”

She nodded. “We were standing about here. All three of us. The lights were out. There weren’t any cars in the driveway or on the street.” She pointed to the scooter. Mud was caked around the plastic fenders. “The lock and chain appeared to be the same.” Lena stared at the scooter, feeling good about the debris lodged in the tires. Tommy could have gone to the woods on the scooter. They wouldn’t be able to find tracks, but the mud on the wheels would match the mud around the lake.

“Detective?”

Lena turned around. She had missed his question.

“Did you knock on the front door of the house?”

She glanced back at the house. The lights were still off. There was a small bouquet of flowers propped against the door. “No.”

Will leaned down and opened the garage’s metal door. The noise as it rolled up was deafening, a loud clanging that must have been heard by half the neighborhood. Lena saw the bed, the table, the scattered papers and magazines. There was a small pool of blood where Frank had fallen by the mouth of the entrance. Ice glazed the top. The cut in his arm was deeper than she thought. There was no way the letter opener had done the damage. Had he stabbed himself?

Will asked, “Is this how you found the garage?”

“Pretty much.” Lena crossed her arms over her chest. She could feel the cold seeping in through her jacket. She should have come back to the scene after getting Tommy’s confession and searched Allison’s things for more clues to back up Tommy’s story. It was too late for that now. The best thing Lena could do for herself was to start thinking like a detective instead of acting like a suspect. The murder weapon was probably in here. The scooter was a good lead. The stain by the bed was an even better one. Tommy could’ve hit Allison in the head, then taken her into the woods to kill her. Maybe his plan was to drown her by the lake. The girl had come to, and he’d stabbed her in the back of the neck. Tommy had lived in Grant County all his life. He’d probably been to the cove hundreds of times. He would know where the bottom dropped in the lake. He would know to take the body out deep so that she wouldn’t be easily found.

Lena exhaled. She could breathe now. This was making sense. Tommy had lied to her about how he’d killed Allison, but he had killed her.

Will cleared his throat. “Let’s go back a few steps. All three of you were standing here. The garage was closed. The house looked empty. Then what?”

Lena took a minute to regain her composure. She told him about Brad seeing the masked intruder inside, the way he had circled the building before they fanned out to confront the suspect.

Will seemed to be only half listening as she laid out the events. He stood just under the garage door with his hands behind his back, scanning the contents of the room. Lena was telling him about Tommy refusing to lower the knife when she noticed that Will was focusing on the brown stain by the bed. He walked into the garage and knelt down for a better look. Beside him was the bucket of murky water she had seen yesterday. The crusty sponge was beside it.

He looked up at her. “Keep going.”

Lena had to think to find her place. “Tommy was behind that table.” She nodded to the table, which was crooked.

Will said, “That door isn’t exactly quiet when it rolls up. Did he already have the knife in his hand?”

Lena stopped, trying to remember what she’d said the first time Will asked her the question. He wanted to know if Tommy had a sheath on his belt where he kept a knife. He wanted to know if it was the same knife that had killed Allison Spooner.

She said, “When I saw him, he already had the knife in his hand. I don’t know where it came from. Maybe the table.” Of course it had come from the table. There was a partially opened envelope there, the kind of junk mail that contained coupons nobody used.

“What else did you notice?”

She indicated the bucket of brown water by the bed. “He’d been cleaning. I guess he hit her in the head or knocked her out here. He put her on the scooter and-”

“He didn’t mention cleaning up in his confession.”

No, he hadn’t. Lena hadn’t even thought to ask him about the bucket. All she had been thinking about was Brad, and how gray his skin had looked the last time she’d seen him. “Suspects lie. Tommy didn’t want to admit how he did it. He made up a story that painted him in a better light. It happens all the time.”

Will asked, “What happened next?”

Lena swallowed, fighting the image of Brad that kept popping into her head. “I approached the suspect from the right.”

Will had opened his briefcase on the bed. “Your right or his?”

“My right.” She stopped talking. Will had taken some kind of field kit out of his briefcase. She recognized the three small glass bottles he took out of the plastic pouch. He was going to do a Kastle-Meyer test on the stain.

Will didn’t prompt her to continue the story. He took a clean swab from the kit. He opened the first bottle and used the dropper to wet the cotton tip with ethanol. He touched the swab to the stain, gently rolling it so that the brown substance would transfer. He added the reagent, phenolphthalein, from the second bottle. Lena held her breath as he used the last dropper to add hydrogen peroxide to the mix. She had studied the procedure in class, performed it a hundred times herself. If the brown stain was human blood, the tip of the swab would rapidly turn bright pink.

The swab didn’t turn.

Will started to pack the kit back up. “What happened next?”

Lena had lost her place. She couldn’t take her eyes off the stain. How could it not be blood? It had the same shape, the same color, as a bloodstain. Tommy was in Allison’s apartment, going through her things. He was dressed like a burglar. He was standing two feet away from her blood with a knife in his hand.

Not a knife. A letter opener.

And not Allison’s blood.

Will prodded her to continue. “So, you flanked Tommy on your right. Interim Chief Wallace was on your right?”

“My left, your right.”

“Is this when you identified yourself as police officers?”

Lena held her breath. She would have to lie to him. There was no way she could say she didn’t remember, because that would be taken as an admission that she hadn’t followed the most basic procedure when confronting a suspect.

“Detective?”

Lena let out a slow breath. She tried to muster some sarcasm. “I know how to do my job.”

He gave a solemn nod. “I hope so.” Instead of jamming his foot down harder, he let up. “Tell me what happened next.”

Lena continued the story as Will walked around the garage. The space was small, but there wasn’t one inch that he didn’t study at some point. Every time he stopped to examine an item more closely-the bracing along the back wall, a strip of metal jutting out from the track for the garage door-her heart skipped.

Still, she told him about Tommy running into the street, Brad chasing him. The stabbing. The LifeFlight’s arrival. Lena finished, “The helicopter took off, and I went to the car. Tommy was already inside, handcuffed. I took him to the station. You know the story from there.”

Will scratched his jaw. “How much time would you say elapsed between when Tommy knocked you to the floor and when you were able to regain your footing?”

“I don’t know. Five seconds. Ten.”

“Did you hit your head?”

Lena’s head still ached from the bruise. “I don’t know.”

Will was at the back of the room. “Did you notice this?”

She had to force herself to walk into the garage. She followed his pointing finger to a hole in the wall. It was round with jagged edges, about the size of a bullet. Without thinking, Lena looked back at the front of the garage where Frank had been standing. The trajectory matched up. There were no casings on the floor. She hoped to God Frank had thought to look behind the garage. The bullet hadn’t stopped after grazing her hand and punching a hole in the metal siding. It was out there somewhere, probably buried in mud.

Will asked, “Did anyone fire their weapons?”

“Mine wasn’t fired.”

He looked at the Band-Aids on the side of her hand. “So, you were here on the floor.” He walked to the bed, standing where she had fallen.

“That’s right.”

“You stood up and saw that Frank Wallace was on the ground. Was he facedown? On his side?”

“On his side.” Lena followed Will as he slowly walked to the front of the garage. She stepped over magazines that had scattered in the struggle. She saw a flash of an older model Mustang clinging to the side of a racetrack.

Will pointed to the jagged metal sticking out from the garage door track. “This looks dangerous.”

He opened his briefcase again. With a steady hand, he used a pair of tweezers to pull a few threads of light tan material from the sharp metal. Frank’s coat was tan, a London Fog he’d been wearing for as long as Lena had known him.

Will handed her the K-M test kit. “I’m sure you know how to do this.”

Her hands trembled as she took the kit. She went through the same procedure Will had followed, using the dropper to add the reagent. When the tip of the swab turned bright pink, Lena didn’t think either of them was too surprised.

Will turned back around and looked at the garage. She could almost hear his mind working. For Lena’s part, she had the benefit of her own involvement to paint a picture of the truth. Tommy had shoved the table toward Lena. Frank had panicked, or startled, or something-for whatever reason, he’d ended up pulling the trigger on his gun. The shot had gone wild, taking a chunk out of Lena’s hand. Frank had dropped the gun. The Glock’s recoil had probably been unexpected. Or maybe he was so drunk by then that his balance was off. He’d pitched to the side, cutting open his arm on the sharp metal that jutted out from the track for the door. He’d fallen to the floor. He was clutching his arm by the time Lena had gotten up. By then, Tommy was running down the driveway with the letter opener in his hand.

Keystone Kops. They were a fucking joke.

How many drinks had Frank had yesterday morning? He was sitting in the car with his flask while Lena was watching Allison being dragged from the lake. He’d taken three or four swigs on the drive over. What about before then? How many drinks did it take him just to get out of bed these days?

Will was silent. He took back the swab, the bottles, and put everything back in its proper place. She waited for him to say something about the scene, about what had really happened. Instead, he asked, “Where’s the bathroom?”

Lena was too confused to answer anything other than “What?”

“The bathroom.” He indicated the open space, and Lena realized that he was right. The room was just one big box. There was no bathroom. There wasn’t even a closet. The furnishings were Spartan, nothing more than a bed that looked like it had been bought from a military supply store and a folding table of the sort they used at church bake sales. There was a small television in the corner with aluminum foil on the antennae and a Playstation jacked into the front. Instead of a chest of drawers, there were metal shelves bolted to the walls. T-shirts spilled over. Jeans. Baseball hats.

Will said, “What did Tommy say about why he was wearing a ski mask?”

Lena felt like she had swallowed a handful of gravel. “He said he had it on because it was cold.”

“It’s pretty cold in here,” Will agreed. He put the kit in his briefcase. Lena flinched when he snapped the locks shut. The sound echoed like a gunshot. Or a cell door closing.

The car magazines. The dirty sheets on the bed. The lack of even the most basic facilities. There was no way Allison Spooner had lived in this desolate garage.

Tommy Braham had.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

BROCK’S FUNERAL HOME WAS HOUSED IN ONE OF THE OLDEST buildings in Grant County. The Victorian castle, complete with turrets, had been built in the early 1900s by the man in charge of maintenance at the railroad yard. That he had used funds embezzled from the railroad company was a matter later settled by the state prosecutor. The castle had eventually been auctioned on the courthouse steps to John Brock, the local mortician.

Sara had heard from her grandpa Earnshaw that everyone in town had breathed a sigh of relief when the Brocks left Main Street-especially the butcher who’d had the unfortunate luck of being their next-door tenant. The basement and first floor of the Victorian had been turned into a funeral parlor, while the top floor was reserved for the family.

Sara had grown up with Dan Brock. He’d been an awkward, serious boy, the sort of child who was more comfortable around adults than children his own age. She witnessed firsthand the relentless teasing Dan had experienced in grade school. Bullies had latched onto him like piranha and had not stopped until junior high, when Dan shot past six feet tall. As the tallest girl in her class, then the tallest person in school but for Dan, Sara had always appreciated having him around.

And yet, she still couldn’t look at him without seeing the gangly ten-year-old boy girls had screeched at on the bus for having dead people’s cooties.

A funeral was just letting out as Sara pulled into the parking lot. Death was a brisk business, even in the worst economies. The old Victorian was well cared for. The paint was fresh and there was a new tile roof. Sara watched the mourners leaving the house, preparing to make the short trek to the burial.

There was a marble headstone at the cemetery with Jeffrey’s name on it. Sara had his ashes back in Atlanta, but his mother had suddenly found her religion and insisted on a proper funeral. The church was so full during the service that the back doors were opened so the people lining the steps could hear the preacher’s voice. People walked to the cemetery rather than drive behind the hearse.

Those closest to Jeffrey had each put something in the coffin that reminded them of their friend, their boss, their mentor. There was an Auburn football program with Jeffrey on the cover supplied by his boyhood friends. Eddie had added a hammer Jeffrey used to help him build a shed in the backyard. Her mother had put in her old frying pan because she’d taught Jeffrey how to fry chicken with it. Tessa provided a postcard he had sent her from Florida. He had always loved teasing her. The postcard read, Glad you’re not here!

A few weeks before Jeffrey had been killed, Sara had given him a signed first edition of MacKinlay Kantor’s Andersonville. Sara had a hard time letting the book go, even though she knew she had to. She couldn’t let the ground cover Jeffrey’s coffin of memories without her own contribution. Dan Brock had sat with her in the living room of her house for hours until she was ready to relinquish the book. She had looked at each page, touched her fingers to the spots where Jeffrey’s hands had rested. Dan had been patient, quiet, but when the time came for him to go, he was crying as hard as Sara.

She took a tissue out of the glove compartment and wiped her eyes. She was going to end up bawling like a baby if she let her mind continue along this track. Her jacket was on the seat beside her but Sara didn’t bother to put it on. She found a clip in the pocket and pulled back her hair. She checked the frizzy mess in the mirror. She should’ve put on some makeup this morning. The freckles across her nose were more pronounced. Her skin looked pale. Sara pushed away the mirror. It was too late to do anything about it now.

The last car pulled into the funeral procession. Sara jumped out of her SUV, barely missing a deep puddle. The rain was beating down and she covered her head with her hands in futility. Brock stood in the doorway, waving to her. His hair looked a bit thinner on the top, but with his three-piece suit and lanky frame, Dan Brock looked much as he had in high school.

“Hey there.” He gave her a quick smile. “You’re the first one here. I told Frank we’d start around eleven-thirty.”

“I thought I could get a head start laying everything out.”

“I think I may have beat you to that.” He gave her a smile that seemed reserved for mourners. “How you holding up, Sara?”

She tried to return the smile, but was unable to answer the question. She’d skipped the pleasantries at the jail yesterday when Brock showed up to claim Tommy Braham’s body, and she felt a little awkward around him now. As usual, Brock smoothed over the moment.

“Aw, come here.” He grabbed her in a bear hug. “You’re looking great, Sara. Really good. I’m so glad you came back for the holiday. Your mama must be happy.”

“My father is, at least.”

He kept his arm around her and led her into the house. “Let’s get out of this inclement weather.”

“Wow.” She stopped at the door, glancing around the wide central hallway. Her parents weren’t the only ones who’d been remodeling lately. The staid décor of the house had been considerably updated. The heavy velvet drapes and dark green carpeting had been replaced with Roman shades and a muted Oriental rug that covered beautiful hardwood floors. Even the viewing rooms had been updated so they no longer resembled formal Victorian parlors.

Brock said, “Mama hates it, so I must’ve done something right.”

“You’ve done a lovely job,” she told him, knowing Brock probably hadn’t gotten many compliments.

“Business has been good.” Brock kept his hand on her back as he led her down the hall. “I’ll have to admit, I’m real torn up about Tommy. He was a good kid. He cut my grass for me.” Brock stopped walking. He looked down at Sara, his attitude changed. “I know people think I’m naïve, give folks too much of the benefit of the doubt, but I can’t see him doing any of this.”

“Killing himself or killing the girl?”

“Both.” Brock chewed his bottom lip for a moment. “Tommy was a happy kid. You know what he was like. Never had a cross word for anybody.”

Sara was circumspect. “People can surprise you.”

“Maybe with their ignorance, thinking just because the kid was slow that his brain just snapped one day and he went on a rampage.”

“You’re right.” Tommy was disabled. He wasn’t psychotic. One had nothing to do with the other.

“The thing that gets me is, she wasn’t killed bad. Not like in a fury.”

“What do you mean?”

He tucked his hand between the buttons of his vest. “You’d just expect more, is all.”

“More?”

His demeanor changed back just as quickly. “Listen to me. You’re the doctor here. You’ll see for yourself, and probably find a lot more than I ever could.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “It’s really good to have you back, Sara. And I want you to know that I’m real happy for you. Don’t listen to what anybody else says.”

Sara didn’t like the sound of that. “Happy about what?”

“Your new fella.”

“My new-”

“Whole town’s buzzing about it. Mama was on the phone all last night.”

Sara felt her face turning red. “Brock-Dan. He’s not really-”

“Shh,” Brock warned. She heard shuffling on the stairs above them. He raised his voice. “Mama, I’m gonna go to the cemetery now to help Mr. Billingham’s people. Sara’ll be downstairs working, so don’t you go and bother her. You hear?”

Audra Brock’s voice was frail, though the old biddy would probably outlive them all. “What’d you say?”

He raised his voice again, cutting to the chase. “I said leave Sara alone.”

There was something like a “humph,” then more shuffling as she made her way back to her room.

Brock rolled his eyes, but his good-natured smile was still on his face. “Everything downstairs is the same as when you left it. I should be back in an hour or so to lend you a hand. Should I put a sign on the door for your fella?”

“He-” Sara stopped herself. “I’ll do it.”

“My office is still in the kitchen. I spiffed it up a bit. Lemme know what you think about it.” He gave her a wave before leaving through the front door.

Sara walked to the back of the house. She had left her purse in the car so she didn’t have a paper or pen to leave Will a note. The Victorian’s kitchen had always served as the office. Brock had finally taken out the old sink and washboard, making the space more conducive to the business of managing death. The coffin display was built into the breakfast nook. Catalogues of flower arrangements were artfully spread out on a mahogany table. Brock’s desk was glass and steel, a very modern design considering he was the oldest soul she had ever met.

She took a Post-it off his blotter and started to write Will a note, then stopped herself. Frank was planning to make an appearance. What could she put on this small square of paper that would tell Will where to go without making Frank suspicious?

Sara tapped the pen to her teeth as she walked to the front door. She finally settled on “down stairs,” writing it as two words, each on its own line. To make it as clear as possible, she drew a large, downward-pointing arrow. That might not do any good, though. Every dyslexic was different, but there were certain characteristics that the majority of them shared. Primary among these was a lack of any sense of direction. It was no wonder Will had gotten lost driving down from Atlanta. Making a phone call wouldn’t have helped matters. Telling a dyslexic to turn right was about as useful as telling a cat to tap-dance.

Sara pressed the note to the glass on the front door. She had agonized over the message this morning, writing it six different times, signing it, not signing it. The smiley face had been a last-minute addition, her way of trying to let Will know that everything was okay between them. A blind man could’ve seen how upset he was last night. Sara felt horrible for embarrassing him. She had never been a smiley face person, but she’d drawn two eyes and a mouth at the corner of the note before sticking it in a baggie under his windshield, hoping that he would take it the right way.

It seemed wildly inappropriate to leave a smiley face on the front door of a funeral home, but she drew a small figure-two eyes and a curved mouth-thinking at least she’d get points for consistency.

The floorboards overhead creaked, and Sara trotted quickly back toward the kitchen. She left the basement door wide open and took the stairs two at a time to avoid Brock’s mother. There was a burglar door at the bottom of the landing. Black metal bars and a mesh screen kept anyone from breaking into the embalming area. You wouldn’t think that a person would want to come down here unless they had to, but many years ago, a couple of kids from the college had busted open the old door in their quest to steal some formaldehyde, a popular choice for cutting powder cocaine. Sara assumed the combination on the keypad hadn’t changed. She entered 1-5-9 and the door clicked open.

Brock kept the area immediately across from the door empty so that no one would accidentally glance through the mesh screen and see something they should never have to see. The buffer zone continued down the long, well-lit hallway. Storage shelves contained various chemicals and supplies with the labels all turned toward the wall so the viewer would not know what he was looking at. Small shoe boxes filled the last metal cabinet; cremains no one had ever bothered to pick up.

At the end of the hall, Brock had posted a sign that Sara recognized from the hospital morgue: Hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae. Roughly translated, “This is the place where death delights to teach the living.”

The swinging doors to the embalming suite were propped open with old bricks from the house. Artificial light bounced off the white tile walls. While the upstairs had been drastically changed, the downstairs looked exactly the same as Sara remembered. There were two stainless steel gurneys in the middle of the room with large industrial lights spring-mounted above them. A workstation stood at the foot of each gurney, plumbing connected at the ends to help evacuate the bodies. Brock had already laid out the autopsy tools-the saws, the scalpels, the forceps, and scissors. He was still using the pruning shears Sara had bought at the hardware store to cut through the breastbone.

The back of the room was wholly devoted to the funeral business. Beside the walk-in freezer was a rolling tray containing the metal trocar that was used to pierce and clean out organs during the embalming process. Neatly tucked into the corner was the embalming machine, which looked like a cross between a buffet-style coffee warmer and a blender. The arterial tube hung limply in the sink. Heavy rubber gloves were laid out on the basin. A butcher’s apron. A pair of construction goggles. A splatter mask. An industrial-sized box of roll cotton for stopping leaks.

Incongruously, there was a hair dryer and a pink makeup kit opened on top of the cotton box. Pots of foundation and various shades of eyeshadows and lip glosses were inside. The logo for “Peason’s Mortuary makeup” was embossed on the inside of the lid.

Sara took a pair of disposable surgical gloves from the box mounted on the wall. She opened the freezer door. A gust of cold air met her. There were three bodies inside, all zipped into black bags. She checked the tags for Allison Spooner.

The bag unzipped with the usual hassle, catching on the bulky black plastic. Allison’s skin had taken on the waxy, iridescent tone of death. Her lips were blackish blue. Pieces of grass and twigs were stuck to her skin and clothing. Small contusions pebbled her mouth and cheeks. Sara slipped on the surgical gloves and gently folded back the girl’s bottom lip. Teeth marks cut into the soft flesh where Allison’s face had been pressed into the ground. The wound had bled before she died. The killer had held her down in order to kill her.

Carefully, Sara turned Allison’s head to the side. The rigor had already dissipated. She could easily see the gaping stab wound at the back of the girl’s neck.

Brock was right. She wasn’t killed bad. There was no fury written on the body, just a deadly, precise incision.

Sara pressed her fingers to the top and bottom of the wound, stretching the skin to reconstruct its probable position at the time of injury. The knife would have been thin, approximately half an inch wide, probably no more than three and a half inches long. The blade had gone in at an angle. The bottom of the incision appeared curved, which meant that the knife had been twisted to ensure maximum damage.

Sara pulled up the girl’s jacket, matching the slice in the material to the wound in the neck. Lena was right about this, at least. The girl had been stabbed from behind. Sara guessed the killer had been right-handed, and very sure of himself. The blow would have been as swift as it was deadly. The hilt of the knife had bruised the skin around the injury. Whoever had killed Allison had not hesitated in driving home the blade, then twisting it for effect.

This was not the work of Tommy Braham.

Sara zipped back the bag with the same difficulty. Before she left the freezer, she put her hand on Tommy’s leg. Obviously, he couldn’t feel the pressure-it was too late for Sara to give him comfort-but it made her feel better knowing that she was going to be the one to take care of him.

She slipped off the gloves and tossed them into the trash as she made her way to the back of the basement. There was a small windowless room that, in the Victorian’s early days, was meant to store wine. Red bricks lined the walls and wrapped around the floor and ceiling. Brock used the space as an office, despite the fact that the temperature was much cooler inside. Sara grabbed the jacket hanging by the door, then quickly changed her mind when she smelled Brock’s aftershave.

The desk was empty but for the autopsy forms and an ink pen. Brock had put together two packets for the procedures. He’d stuck Post-it notes on each with the name, date of birth, and last known address for each victim.

Georgia law required a medical autopsy to be performed only under certain circumstances. Violent death, death in the workplace, suspicious death, sudden death, unattended death, and surgical death all required further investigation. For the most part, the information gathered was always the same: legal name, aliases, age, height, weight, cause of death. X rays were taken. The stomach contents would be examined. Organs were weighed. Arteries, valves, and veins were explored. Contusions were noted. Traumas. Bite marks. Stretch marks. Lacerations. Scars. Tattoos. Birthmarks. Every detail, remarkable or not, that was found on or in the body had to be noted on the corresponding form.

Sara had hooked her reading glasses on her shirt before getting out of the car. She slipped them on and started on the forms. Most of the paperwork would have to be filled out after the procedures, but every label attached to a specimen or sample had to have her name, the location, and the proper date and time. In addition to that, every form had to have the same information at the bottom along with her signature and license number. She was halfway through the second packet when she heard someone knocking at the metal door.

“Hello?” Will’s voice echoed through the basement.

Sara rubbed her eyes, feeling as if she’d just woken from a nap. “I’ll be right there.” She pushed herself back from the desk and walked toward the stairs. Will was standing on the other side of the security door.

She pushed open the latch. “I guess my notes worked.”

He gave her a careful look, almost like a warning.

Sara waved him back to the autopsy suite.

“Quite a spread,” Will told her, taking in the room. His hands were in his pockets. She saw that his jeans were wet and muddy at the hem.

She asked, “How did it go this morning?”

“The good news is that I found out where Allison was killed.” He told her about his walk in the forest. “We were lucky the rain didn’t wash it all out.”

“Blood is five times more dense than water. It would take weeks for the soil to filter it out, and I’d bet that water oak will hold on to it for years.” Sara explained, “The plasma would break down, but the proteins and globulin would remain in an indefinite colloidal stage.”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

She smiled. “What’s the bad news?”

He leaned his hand on the gurney, then thought better of it. “I executed a search warrant on the wrong property and tainted some evidence.”

Sara didn’t speak, but her expression must have conveyed her surprise.

“Tommy lived in the garage, not Allison. The search warrant Faith got listed the garage address. Anything I found is tainted. I doubt a judge would let it through in court.”

She suppressed a rueful laugh. At least he was seeing firsthand how Lena managed to screw up everything and everyone around her. “What did you find?”

“Not a lot of blood, if that’s what you mean. Frank Wallace was cut while he was standing at the front of the garage. The stain on the floor by the bed was probably from Tommy’s dog, Pippy, trying to hork up a sock.”

Sara winced. “Do you still think Tommy did this? His confession doesn’t line up with the facts.”

“Lena’s been working on the theory that Tommy took Allison out to the woods on his scooter and murdered her there. I suppose he was sitting on the cinder blocks the way you’d put a kid on some phone books at the kitchen table.”

“That sounds completely believable.”

“Doesn’t it just?” He scratched his jaw. “Have you examined Allison’s body yet?”

“I took a preliminary look at the wound. The attacker was behind her. Most knife injuries to the throat are from behind, but usually the blade is drawn across the front of the throat, oftentimes resulting in a partial decapitation. Allison was stabbed from behind with the blade going into the neck from the rear, the trajectory going toward the front of the throat. It was one thrust, very calculated, almost like an execution, then the killer twisted the blade just to make sure.”

“So, she died from the stab wound?”

“I can’t say for sure until I have her on the table.”

“But you have an idea.”

Sara had never liked giving her opinion unless she had strong medical fact to support it. “I don’t want to make assumptions.”

“It’s just us down here. I promise I won’t tell anybody.”

She was only vaguely aware that she was relenting much more easily than she should have. “The angle of the wound was designed to deliver a quick death. I haven’t cut her open yet, so I’m not sure-”

“But?”

“It looks like the carotid sheath was cut, so we’re talking an instant interruption of the common carotid and more than likely the internal jugular. They’re branched together like this.” She lined up the index fingers of both her hands. “The carotid’s job is to carry oxygenated blood at a rapid speed from the heart into the head and neck. The jugular is a vein. It’s gravity fed. It collects the deoxygenated blood from the head and neck and sends it back to the heart via the superior vena cava, where it’s oxygenated again and the whole process starts all over. You follow?”

Will nodded. “Arteries are the water supply, veins are the drain. It’s a closed system.”

“Right,” she agreed, giving him points for the plumbing analogy. “All arteries have a little muscle spiraling around them that relaxes and contracts to control blood flow. If you cut an artery in two, sever it, the muscle contracts, curling up like a broken rubber band. That helps stanch the blood flow. But, if you slice open the artery without cutting it in two, the victim dies from exsanguination, usually very quickly. We’re talking seconds, not minutes. The blood shoots out, they panic, their heart beats faster, blood shoots out faster, and they’re dead.”

“Where is the carotid?”

She put her fingers alongside her trachea. “You’ve got one carotid on each side, mirror images. I’ll have to excise the wound, but it appears that the knife followed this route, entering near the sixth cervical vertebra and traveling along the angle of the jaw.”

He stared at her neck. “How hard is that to hit from behind?”

“Allison is very small framed. Her neck is the width of my palm. There’s so much going on in the back of the neck-muscles, blood vessels, vertebrae. You would have to pause, to take a second, to aim so that you hit the exact spot. You couldn’t go straight in from the back. You’d have to go from the back toward the side. With the right knife, at the right angle, the odds are pretty good that you’ll end up opening both the carotid and the jugular.”

“The right knife?”

“I’m guessing it had a three-and-a-half- to four-inch blade.”

“So, we’re talking about a kitchen knife?”

He obviously wasn’t good with measurements. She showed him the distance using her finger and thumb. “Three and a half inches. Think about the size of her neck. Or my neck, for that matter.” Sara kept the measurement between her fingers and held her hand to her neck. “If the blade had been any longer, it would’ve exited the front of the neck.”

He crossed his arms. She couldn’t tell if he was pleased or annoyed with the visual aids. He asked, “How wide do you think the blade was?”

She narrowed the space between her thumb and finger. “Five-eighths? Three-quarters? The skin is elastic. She must have struggled. The incision is wider at the bottom, so the killer jammed in the knife to the hilt, then twisted the blade to make sure he was doing maximum damage. I’m sure it wasn’t over an inch wide.”

“That sounds like a large folding knife.”

Sara thought he was right based on the bruise from the hilt, but she told him, “I really need to look at the wound in a better setting than inside the freezer.”

“Was it serrated?”

“I don’t think so, but really, let me get into the wound and I can tell you everything you need to know.”

He chewed his lip, obviously thinking about what she had told him. “It takes less than two pounds of pressure to penetrate skin.”

“As long as the knife is pointed and sharp and the blade is forcefully thrust.”

“Sounds like something a hunter would know how to do.”

“Hunter, doctor, mortician, butcher.” She felt the need to add, “Or anyone with a good search engine. I’m sure you can find all kinds of anatomical diagrams on the Internet. Whether they’re accurate is up for debate, but whoever did this was showing off his skills. I hate to keep banging the same drum, but Tommy had an IQ of eighty. It took him two months to learn how to tie his shoes. Do you really think that he committed this crime?”

“I don’t like to speculate.”

She gave him his own words. “It’s just us down here. I won’t tell anyone.”

Will didn’t give in as easily as Sara had. “Was Tommy a hunter?”

“I doubt Gordon would’ve let him have a gun.”

Will took a moment before asking his next question. “Why not drown her? She was standing by a lake.”

“The water must have been close to freezing. There was the chance of a struggle. She could’ve yelled. My house is-was-across the lake from Lover’s Point, but sometimes when the wind was right, I could hear music playing, kids laughing. Certainly, any number of people would have heard a young girl screaming for her life.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to cut the front of the throat instead of going in through the back?”

She nodded, saying, “If you cut the trachea, the victim wouldn’t be able to speak, let alone yell for help.”

Will pointed out, “Women tend to use knives.”

Sara hadn’t considered the possibility, but she was grateful his mind was moving off Tommy. “Allison was small. A woman could have overwhelmed her, then carried her to the water.”

“Was the killer left-handed? Right-handed?”

“Well-” Sara was going to ask if it mattered to someone who could not tell the difference, but answered him instead. “I’m assuming right-handed.” Sara held up her right hand. “The attacker would have been at a superior position, standing above her, possibly straddling her, when the blade went in.” She paused. “This is why I don’t like to make assumptions. I need to check her stomach and lungs. If we find lake water, then that means she was probably facedown in the water when he stabbed her.”

“Knowing whether she was in the water or in the mud when she was stabbed will be instrumental to my investigation.”

She furrowed her brow. “Are you being a smart-ass, Agent Trent?”

“Based on how you asked that question, I think my answer should be no.”

Sara laughed. “Good call.”

“Thank you, Dr. Linton.” He looked around the embalming suite and gave a shiver. “It’s cold down here. Aren’t you cold?”

She realized he was wearing the same clothes from yesterday but for the black T-shirt, which he’d changed for a white one. “Didn’t you bring a coat?”

He shook his head. “I’m in an awful situation with my clothes. I need to borrow your mom’s washer and dryer tonight. Do you think she’ll mind?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Have you heard from Frank Wallace today?”

She shook her head.

“It’s starting to annoy me that he hasn’t bothered to show up. Does he normally let Lena do all the heavy lifting?”

“I don’t know how they work together now. She used to go back and forth between Frank and my husband, whoever needed her at the time.”

“I’m just wondering if she’s reporting back to Frank or if they’re both doing their own thing.” Will gestured toward the gurneys. “Can I help you with anything?”

“What’s your squeamish level?”

“I don’t like rats and I’m bad around vomit.”

“I think we’re safe on both points.” Sara wanted to get started so she wasn’t here past midnight. “Can you help me get Allison onto the table?”

The joking camaraderie from before quickly turned into a more serious collaboration. They worked in silence, rolling the gurney into the freezer, lifting the body in unison. There was a scale in the floor. The digital readout already took the gurney into account. Sara rolled the bed onto the plate. Allison Spooner had weighed 102 pounds.

When Sara put on a pair of surgical gloves, Will followed suit. She let him help unzip the body bag and roll the girl left, then right, to slide the black plastic out from under her. He held one end of the measuring tape so she could get the girl’s height.

Will said, “Sixty-three inches. Five foot three.”

“I need to write this down.” Sara knew there was no way she could remember all these numbers. There was a whiteboard mounted to the back wall over the counter. Sara used the marker hanging on a string to record Allison’s height and weight. To be thorough, she then added age, sex, race, and hair color. The girl’s eyes were open, so she noted that her eye color was brown.

When Sara turned around, she found Will looking at the numbers. Sara had used abbreviations that even a reading person would have trouble understanding. She pointed to the letters. “Date of birth, height, weight-”

“I got it,” he said. His tone was as close to curt as she’d ever heard.

Sara resisted the urge to talk about the elephant in the room, to tell him that it was foolish for him to be ashamed. He had spent a lifetime hiding his dyslexia, and she wasn’t going to fix that by confronting him about it in the basement of the funeral home. Not to mention that it was none of her business.

She walked to the tall locker beside the office, assuming Brock still kept his supplies in the same place. “Crap,” she mumbled. The camera and all its pieces were laid out on velvet cloths covering two shelves. She picked up a lens. “I’m not sure I know how this thing goes together.”

“Mind if I try?” Will didn’t wait for her response. He picked up the lens and twisted it onto the camera, then bolted on the lights, the flash, and the metal guide that recorded depth. He pressed several buttons until the LCD display blinked on, then scrolled through all the icons until he found the one he was looking for.

Sara had two degrees and a board certification under her belt, but hell would have frozen over before she would’ve been able to figure out anything to do with the camera. Curiosity broke her earlier resolve. “Have you ever been tested?”

“No.” He stood behind Sara, holding the camera in front so she could see. “Zoom here,” he said, flicking the toggle.

“You could probably-”

“This is macro.”

“Will-”

“Super macro.” He kept talking over her until she gave up. “Here’s where you adjust for color. This is light. Anti-shake. Red-eye.” He clicked through the features like a photography instructor.

Sara finally relented. “Why don’t I point and you shoot?”

“All right.” His back was stiff, and she could tell that he was irritated.

“I’m sorry I-”

“Please don’t apologize.”

Sara held his gaze for a few moments longer, wishing she could fix this. There was nothing to say if he wouldn’t even let her apologize.

She told him, “Let’s start.”

Sara directed him around the table as he photographed Allison Spooner head to toe. The warm-up jacket. The stab wound that went through to her neck. The sliced material where the knife had cut through. The teeth marks on the inside of her lip.

She folded back the torn jeans, exposing the knee. There was a half-moon-shaped tear, the skin hanging on by a flap. A dark bruise outlined the area of impact. “This kind of laceration comes from blunt trauma. She fell very hard on her knee, probably with her full weight, definitely on something hard, like a rock. The impact busted open the skin.”

“Can we look at the wrists?”

The jacket had bunched up around the girl’s hands. Sara pushed up the material.

He took a few photographs. “Ligature marks?”

Sara leaned down for a closer look. She checked the other wrist. The veins were an iridescent blue. Lines of red shot through the skin where clots held the blood in place.

She explained, “Bodies start to float anywhere from two hours to two days after they’re in the water. Decomposition starts quickly-as soon as the heart and lungs stop, the body turns on itself. Bacteria leaks out of the intestines. Gases build up, causing buoyancy. The cinder blocks would have kept her from floating to the surface. The cold water would’ve retarded decomposition. I don’t know what the temperature of the lake was, but we can assume it was close to freezing. She was probably facedown, her hands hanging in front of her. Livor mortis settled into her fingertips, pooled up into her wrists. I suppose you could mistake the discoloration for ligature marks. It would’ve been dark that time of morning.” Sara couldn’t make any more excuses for Frank. “Honestly, I thought Frank was lying to me when he said it the first time.”

“Why lie about that?” Will asked. “The stab wound is evidence enough that something was seriously wrong.”

“You’ll have to ask Frank.”

“I’ve got a lot of questions for him if he ever shows up.”

“He’s probably with Brad. Frank has known him since he was a kid. We all have.”

Will only nodded.

Sara put the ruler by Allison’s wrist so he could take a photograph. When he was finished, she turned the hand over. There was a faint scar along the crease of the wrist. She checked the other hand. “She tried to kill herself before. A razor, maybe a sharp knife. I’d say within the last ten years.”

Will studied the raised white lines. “What was Tommy like?”

She was surprised by the question because her focus was on Allison. Sara hadn’t slept much last night. She’d had a lot of time to think about Tommy. “He was cheerful,” she told Will. “I don’t think there was ever a time I didn’t see him smile. Even when he felt bad.”

“Did you ever see him angry?”

“No.”

“Did he have many broken bones or bruises?”

She shook her head, knowing where this was going. “Gordon was very gentle with him. The only time I saw him angry was when Tommy ate a whole jar of paste.”

Will smiled fondly. “I used to eat paste.” He held the camera at his side. “I wonder if it tastes as good as it used to.”

Sara laughed. “I wouldn’t recommend finding out. Tommy was sick for days.”

“You didn’t tell me Lena was raped.”

The observation came out of nowhere. Sara was taken off guard, which was probably what he had intended. “It was a long time ago.”

“Faith found it on the Internet.”

She busied herself over by the back counter, finding a roll of brown paper under the cabinet so she could lay out the clothes. “Does it matter?”

“I don’t know. It bothers me that you left it out.”

Sara spread out the paper. “A lot of women have been raped.” She looked up when he didn’t respond. “Don’t feel sorry for her, Will. She’s so good at making people feel sorry for her.”

“I think she regrets what happened to Tommy.”

Sara shook her head. “You can’t expect good from her. She’s not a normal person. There’s no kindness in her.”

He spoke carefully, staring his meaning into Sara. “I’ve met a lot of people in my life who were truly unkind.”

“Still-”

“I don’t think Lena’s completely devoid of a soul. I think she’s angry, and self-destructive, and feeling trapped.”

“I used to think that, too. And I felt sorry for her. Right before she got my husband killed.”

There wasn’t much more Sara could say after that. She unbuttoned Allison’s shirt and continued to undress the girl. Will changed out the memory card and took photographs when she asked him to. She didn’t ask for his help when she draped a clean white sheet over Allison’s body. Their companionable silence was a distant memory. The tension was so great that Sara felt herself getting a headache. She was angry with herself that it mattered. Will Trent was not her friend. His dyslexia, his quirky sense of humor, his dirty clothes-none of this was her concern. All she needed for him to do was get his job done and then go back to his wife.

Out in the hall, the metal door slammed shut. Moments later, Frank Wallace came into the room carrying a cardboard box. He was wearing a long trench coat and a pair of leather gloves. His hair was wet from the rain.

Will said, “Chief Wallace. It’s nice to finally meet you. I was beginning to think you were avoiding me.”

“You wanna tell me why you’ve got half my guys out chasing their tails in the pouring rain?”

“I assume you’ve heard that we found the crime scene where Allison Spooner was stabbed.”

“You test that blood yet? Could be an animal for all I know.”

Will told him, “Yes, I tested it on scene. It’s human blood.”

“All right, so he killed her in the woods.”

“It appears so.”

“I called off the search. You can bring in your own team if you wanna comb through six inches of mud.”

“That’s a very good idea, Chief Wallace. I think I will call in a team.”

Frank was obviously finished with Will. He dropped the box at Sara’s feet. “Here’s all the evidence we’ve got.” She held her breath until he backed away. He smelled rancid, a combination of mouthwash, sweat, and tobacco.

Will said, “I hope you don’t mind, Chief Wallace. I’ve got Detective Adams re-canvassing the neighborhood and checking with Allison’s teachers from school.”

“Do whatever you want,” Frank grunted. “I’m finished with her.”

“Is there a problem?”

“You wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t.” Frank coughed into his gloved hand. Sara winced at the sound. “Lena screwed this whole thing up top to bottom. I’m not covering for her anymore. She’s a bad cop. Her work’s sloppy. She managed to get somebody killed.” He gave Sara a meaningful look. “Somebody else.”

She felt hot and cold at the same time. Frank was saying all the things that she wanted to hear-all the things she knew in her heart-but the words sounded dirty coming from his mouth. He was exploiting Jeffrey’s death, while Sara was trying to avenge it.

Will said, “Lena told me you spoke with Lionel Harris last night?”

Suddenly, Frank seemed nervous. “Lionel doesn’t know anything.”

“Still, he might have some personal information about Allison.”

“Lionel’s daddy raised him right. He knows better than to be sniffing around a little white girl from the college.”

Sara felt her mouth open in surprise.

Frank shrugged off her shock. “You know what I’m saying, Sweetpea. There’s not a lot that a sixty-three-year-old black man has in common with a twenty-one-year-old white girl. At least not if he knows what’s good for him.” He nodded toward Allison. “What did you find?”

Sara couldn’t find her voice to answer him.

Will provided, “Knife wound to the neck. There’s no definitive cause of death yet.”

Will caught Sara’s eye. She nodded her complicity, though she still felt shocked by what Frank had said. He had never talked this way around her parents. Eddie would have shown Frank the door if Cathy hadn’t beaten him to it. Sara wanted to chalk it up to his exhaustion. He certainly looked worse than he had the day before. Every item of clothing he wore, from his cheap suit to his trench coat, was wrinkled as if he had slept in it. His skin sagged off his face. His eyes glistened in the light. And he still hadn’t taken off his leather gloves.

Will broke the moment. “Chief Wallace, have you completed your report yet on the incident in the garage?”

Frank’s jaw clenched tighter. “I’m working on it.”

“Can you run it through for me now? Just the highlights. I’ll get the details when you turn in your report.”

Frank’s voice was gruff, making it clear he didn’t like being questioned. “Tommy was in the garage with a knife in his hand. We told him to put it down. He didn’t.”

Sara waited for more, but it was Will who prompted, “And then?”

Frank gave another sloppy shrug. “The kid panicked. He pushed Lena out of the way. I went to help her. He came toward me with the knife, cut my arm. Next thing I know, Tommy’s tearing down the driveway. Brad went after him. I told Lena to go, too.” He stopped. “She sure took her time.”

“She hesitated?”

“Lena usually runs the other way when there’s a fire.” He glanced at Sara, as if he expected her to agree. In Sara’s experience, the opposite was true. Lena stood as close to the fire as she could. It was the best vantage point from which to watch people burn.

Frank continued. “She trotted after them. Brad ended up being the one to pay for it.”

Will leaned against the counter, one hand resting on the edge. His interview style was certainly unusual. Put a beer in his hand and he could be talking football around a barbecue. “Did anyone discharge their weapon?”

“No.”

Will nodded slowly, drawing out his next question. “When you opened the garage door, did Tommy already have the knife in his hand?”

Frank leaned down and pulled an evidence bag out of the cardboard box. “This knife.”

Will didn’t take the bag, so Sara did. The hunting knife was serrated on one side and sharp on the other. The hilt was large. The blade was at least five inches long and an inch and a half wide. It was a miracle Brad was still alive. Without thinking, she blurted out, “This isn’t the knife that was used on Allison.”

Will took the weapon from Sara. He gave her a look that Tommy Braham had probably gotten every day of his life. He told Frank, “This looks new.”

Frank gave the knife a cursory glance. “So?”

“Was Tommy a knife enthusiast?”

Frank crossed his arms again. There was a bead of sweat on his forehead. Even with the colder temperature in the basement, he seemed to be burning up in the coat and gloves. “Obviously, he had at least two. Like the doc said. This isn’t the same one that was used on the girl.”

Sara would have melted into the floor if she had the power.

Will asked, “What made you suspect Tommy was involved in Allison’s murder? Other than the knife in his hand?”

“He was in her apartment.”

Will didn’t offer any information to the contrary, but Sara saw that he’d managed to get a question answered. If Lena had talked to Frank, then she hadn’t mentioned that Tommy lived in the garage, not Allison.

Frank’s patience had obviously run out. “Listen, son, I’ve been doing this a long time. There’s two reasons a man does this to a woman: sex and sex. Tommy already confessed. What’s the point of all this?”

Will smiled. “Dr. Linton, I know you haven’t done a full exam on Allison Spooner, but are there any signs of sexual assault?”

Sara was surprised to find herself back in the conversation. “Not that I can see.”

“Were her clothes torn?”

“There was a tear in the knee of her jeans where she fell. Her jacket was cut by the knife.”

“Are there any other significant wounds except for the one in her neck?”

“Not that I’ve found.”

“So, Tommy wanted to have sex with Allison. She told him no. He didn’t tear her clothes. He didn’t try to force her anyway. He puts her on his scooter and takes her out to the lake. He stabs her once in the neck. And then he dumps her in the lake with the chains and cinder blocks, writes a fake suicide note, and goes back to clean up her apartment. Is that about right, Chief Wallace?”

Frank lifted his chin. Hostility radiated off him like heat from a fire.

Will said, “The note is what’s bothering me. Why not just dump her in the lake and leave it at that? It’s doubtful anyone would have found her. The lake is pretty deep, right?” He looked at Sara when Frank did not answer. “Right?”

She nodded. “Right.”

Will seemed to be waiting for an answer from Frank that wasn’t going to come. Sara waited for him to ask about the 911 call, the boyfriend. Will didn’t. He just kept leaning against the counter, waiting for Frank to say something. For his part, Frank seemed to be scrambling for an explanation.

He finally came up with “The kid was retarded. Right, Doc?”

Sara told him, “I wish you wouldn’t use that word. He-”

“It is what it is,” Frank interrupted. “Tommy was stupid. You can’t reason with stupid. He stabbed her once? So what. He left a note? So what. He was retarded.”

Will let Frank’s words hang for a few seconds. “You knew Allison, right? From the diner?”

“I seen her around.”

“Have you found her car yet?”

“No.”

Will smiled. “Did you process Tommy’s car?”

“I hate to break the news to you, Einstein, but the retard confessed. End of story.” He looked at his watch. “I can’t stick around jerking you off for the rest of the day. I just wanted to make sure you had all the evidence.” He nodded to Sara. “You can reach me on my cell if you need me. I gotta get back to Brad.”

Will didn’t protest the abrupt departure. “Thank you, Chief. I appreciate your cooperation.”

Frank couldn’t figure out if he was being sarcastic or not. He ignored the comment, telling Sara, “I’ll let you know about Brad,” before stomping out of the room.

Sara wasn’t sure what to say. Will had let all the important questions go unanswered. Jeffrey’s style of interviewing had been much more aggressive. Once he had Frank on the ropes, he would’ve never let the man walk out of the room. She turned to Will. He was still leaning against the counter.

She wasn’t going to ignore the hundredth elephant that had just walked into the room. “Why didn’t you ask Frank about the boyfriend?”

He shrugged. “An answer doesn’t really matter if it’s a lie.”

“I admit he was being an ass, but he was also being forthcoming.” She snapped off her gloves and tossed them into the trashcan. “Did it occur to you that he has no idea Lena’s been doctoring all this evidence?”

Will scratched his jaw. “I’ve found that people tend to hide things for different reasons. They don’t want someone else to look bad. They think they’re doing the right thing, but they’re really not. They’re actually hindering an investigation.”

Sara had no idea where this was going. “I’ve known Frank for a long time. Despite that stupid, ignorant thing he said about Lionel, he’s not a bad man.”

“Sweetpea.”

She rolled her eyes. “I know it seems like I’m too close-”

“Those were nice gloves he was wearing.”

Sara found herself holding her breath. “I walked right into that, didn’t I?”

“Tommy took a beating.”

She sighed. Sara’s instinct had been to protect Frank. She’d never considered that Will would see this for what it was-hiding evidence. “Frank’s hand was cut up pretty badly. They must’ve sutured him at the hospital.”

“I don’t imagine they asked very many questions.”

“Probably not.” Even at Grady, cops were given a free pass on suspicious injuries.

“How dangerous is a gunshot wound if it grazes your hand?”

“Who was shot?”

Will didn’t answer. “Let’s say your hand was grazed. You didn’t get medical attention. You had a first aid kit to clean it out yourself, then you slapped some Band-Aids on it. What are the chances of getting an infection?”

“Extremely high.”

“What are the symptoms?”

“It depends on the type of infection, whether or not it gets into the bloodstream. You could be looking at anything from fever and chills to organ failure and brain damage.” She repeated her question. “Who was shot?”

“Lena.” Will held up his hand and pointed to the palm. “Here on the side.”

Sara felt her heart sink, though not for Lena. She was more than capable of taking care of herself. “Frank shot her?”

He shrugged. “It’s likely. Did you see the cut on his arm?”

She shook her head again.

“I think he ripped it open on some metal that was sticking out of the garage door.”

Sara put her hand on the counter, needing the support. Frank had stood right in front of her and said that Tommy had cut him with the knife. “Why would he lie about that?”

“He’s an alcoholic, right?”

She shook her head, but this time it was more from her own confusion. “He never drank on the job before. At least not that I ever saw.”

“And now?”

“He was drinking yesterday. I don’t know how much, but I smelled it on him when I got to the station. I just assumed that he was shaken up because of Brad. That generation…” She let her voice trail off. “I guess I glossed it over because Frank’s from a time when it was all right to take a couple of drinks during the middle of the day. My husband would’ve never tolerated it. Not while Frank was on duty.”

“A lot has changed since he died, Sara.” Will’s voice was gentle. “This isn’t Jeffrey’s police force anymore. He’s not here to keep them in line.”

She felt tears come to her eyes. Sara wiped them away, laughing at herself. “God, Will. Why am I always crying around you?”

“I’m hoping it’s not my aftershave.”

She laughed halfheartedly. “What now?”

Will knelt down and started rummaging through the box of evidence. “Frank knows Allison has a car. Lena didn’t. Lena knows Allison didn’t live in the garage. Frank doesn’t.” He found a woman’s wallet and opened the clasp. “It’s odd that they’re not working together on this.”

“Frank made it clear he’s finished with her. My personal vendetta aside, he has ample reason to cut her loose.”

“I gather they’ve been through a lot. Why cut her off now?”

Sara couldn’t think of an answer. Will was right. Lena had done a lot of things in her career that Frank had covered for. “Maybe this is just the last straw. Tommy is dead. Brad was badly injured.”

“I talked to Faith on the ride over. There’s no Julie Smith that she can find. The cell phone number you gave me was for a throwaway purchased at a Radio Shack in Cooperstown.”

“That’s about forty-five minutes away.”

“Tommy and Allison must’ve had throwaways, too. Neither one has a record of a phone. We’ll need their numbers before we can track back where the phones were purchased, but that’s not going to make much of a difference, I think.” He held up the knife Frank had given them. “This doesn’t appear to have blood on it. Would they clean it during surgery?”

“They’d throw iodine on it, but they wouldn’t clean it like this.” She studied the weapon. “You’d expect blood around the hilt.”

“You would,” he agreed. “I’m going to have the local field agent do a lab run for me. Can I leave some samples here so he can take everything when you’re done?”

“Nick Shelton?”

“You know him?”

“He worked with my husband all the time.” She offered, “I’ll call him when I’m finished.”

Will held up the suicide note and stared at the words. “I don’t understand this.”

“It says ‘I want it over.’”

He gave her a sharp look. “Thank you, Sara. I know what it says. What I don’t understand is who wrote it.”

“The killer?” she tried.

“Possibly.” Will sat back on his heel, staring at the line of text that ran along the top section of the paper. “I’m thinking there’s two people out there-the killer and the 911 caller. The killer did his thing with Allison, and the caller is trying to get him in trouble for it. And then Julie Smith was trying to get Tommy off the hook by enlisting your help.”

“It sounds a lot like you’ve taken him off your list of suspects.”

“I thought you didn’t like to make assumptions.”

“I’m fine when other people do it.”

Will chuckled, but he kept his gaze on the note. “If the killer wrote this, who’s he telling he wants it over?”

She knelt down to look over his shoulder. “The handwriting doesn’t look like Tommy’s.” She pointed to the “I” at the beginning of the sentence. “See this? In Tommy’s confession, he used a formal capital with-” Sara realized how useless her words were to him. “Okay, think about it this way: if the first stroke of the ‘I’ is like a stem, and there are branches… Well, not branches, more like bars…” She let her voice trail off. Trouble visualizing the shape of letters was at the core of his language problem.

“It’s frustrating,” Will agreed. “If only he had written something easier. Like a smiley face.”

Sara was saved a response by Will’s phone ringing.

“Will Trent.” He listened for at least a solid minute before saying, “No. Keep canvassing. Tell him I’ll be there in a few minutes.” He closed the phone. “This day just keeps getting worse.”

“What’s wrong?”

“That was Lena. We’ve got another dead body.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

WILL FOLLOWED SARA IN HIS CAR AS SHE DROVE TO THE campus. He was starting to recognize landmarks, houses with fences and play sets that were familiar enough for him to remember the turns. The campus was new territory, and like most schools, it seemed to follow no particular design. Buildings had been added on when the money was there to construct them. Consequently, the campus sprawled over several acres like a hand with too many fingers.

He had spent all morning with Lena Adams, and he thought he could read her mood by now. Her tone on the telephone had been strained. She was getting to the breaking point. Will wanted to press her a little harder but there was no way he could have Lena meet him at the crime scene right now. Sara had made it obvious that she wasn’t going to be in the same room with the woman she believed killed her husband. Right now, Will needed Sara’s forensic eye more than he needed Lena’s confession.

He dialed Faith’s number as he steered his car around the curve of the lake. Will saw the boathouse Lena had pointed out to him earlier. Canoes and kayaks were stacked up against the building.

“You’ve got me for three more hours,” Faith said by way of greeting.

“We’ve got a second victim. They think his name is Jason Howell.”

“That’s good news.” Faith was hardly the optimistic type, but she was right. A new victim meant a new crime scene, a new set of clues to follow. They had absolutely no useful information on Allison Spooner. The aunt was nowhere to be found. Allison hadn’t made any connections at home or school. The only person who seemed to mourn her loss was Lionel Harris from the diner, and he was hardly a close friend. But Jason Howell’s death would surely open up new leads. A second body meant a second course of investigation. Find one detail, one person or friend or enemy, that tied together both Allison Spooner and Jason Howell, and usually that detail could lead to the murderer. Even the most careful killer made mistakes. Two crime scenes meant twice as many mistakes.

Faith told him, “You’re going to have a hard time getting a warrant for all the names of the students in that dorm building.”

“I hope the college will be compliant.”

“I hope this baby comes out clutching a bag full of gold.”

She had a point. Colleges were notorious for their desire for privacy. “Where are we on the warrant for Allison’s room?”

“You mean the real one?” She seemed to be enjoying this. “I faxed it to the station about ten minutes ago. There’s no landline to the Braham house, so that’s a dead end. Did you get anything from the autopsy?”

He told her about Allison’s injury. “It’s unusual that the killer stabbed her through the back of the neck instead of slicing through the front.”

“I’ll run it through ViCAP right now.” She meant the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, a database designed to detect similarities in criminal behavior. If Allison’s killer had used this method before, ViCAP would have a record of the case.

Will asked, “Can you give Nick Shelton a call, too? He’s the local field agent here. Sara knows him. I want him to run some stuff to the Central lab for me. Sara’s going to let him know when she’s got everything ready.”

“What else?”

“I still need that audiotape of the 911 call. I want Sara to listen to the voice and see if it belongs to our Julie Smith.”

“Can you say a sentence that doesn’t have ‘Sara’ in it?”

Will scratched his jaw, his fingers finding the scar that ran down his face. He felt jittery again, much as he’d felt when he’d been talking to Sara in the basement of the funeral home.

She said, “You know that Charlie is at Central this week?”

“No.” Charlie Reed was on Amanda’s team. He was the best forensics guy Will had ever worked with. “Central’s an hour away from here.”

“You want me to give him a call and see if he can come out?”

Will thought about the garage, the crime scene in the woods. He was working two cases now-one against Lena Adams and Frank Wallace and another against the man who had killed Allison Spooner and possibly their new victim. “I told the local chief I was bringing out a team. Might as well follow through on it.”

“I’ll give him a call,” Faith offered. “ViCAP shows no similar hits on a killer using a knife to cut from the rear through the carotid sheath, the carotid, the jugular, or the carotid and jugular. I cross-referenced the twist, too. No MO matches.”

“I guess that’s good news.”

“Or really bad news,” she countered. “That’s a clean kill, Will. You don’t do that your first time out. I have to agree with Sara on this one. I don’t see your retarded kid doing this.”

“Intellectually disabled.” Now that Sara had pointed it out, the word was starting to grate. Will supposed he should feel some solidarity with Tommy Braham since they both had a problem. “Call me when you hear from Charlie.”

“Will do.”

Will closed his phone to end the call. Ahead, Sara’s SUV took a turn up a circular drive that led to a three-story brick building. She parked behind a campus patrol car at the front entrance. The rain was still unrelenting. She pulled up the hood of her jacket before running up the steps to the entrance.

Will got out of his car and ran up after her, his shoes kicking up puddles. His socks hadn’t dried since he’d stepped into the lake this morning. They were in the process of rubbing a large blister on his heel.

Sara waited for him in a small alcove between two sets of glass doors. The sleeves of her jacket were dripping wet. She knocked on the doors. “No one is in the patrol car out front.” She cupped her hands to the glass. “Is someone supposed to be here?”

“The security guard was told to remain in the building until we got here.” Will punched a few buttons on the keypad by the door. The LCD screen remained blank. He turned around, trying to find a camera.

“Back door’s open.”

Will looked through the glass. The building was wider than it was deep. A set of stairs faced the front door. A long hallway shot off to the side. At the back of the building, an exit sign glowed softly over the open fire door.

Sara asked, “Where are the police?”

“I told Lena not to call anyone.”

Sara turned to look at him.

“She got the call on her cell phone. Apparently, the campus police have her as an after-hours contact.”

“She didn’t call Frank?”

“No. Funny, right?”

“‘Funny’ isn’t the word I’d use.”

Will didn’t respond. Sara’s personal ties were clouding her view. She wasn’t looking at this as a criminal investigation. With two suspects, you always worked one against the other to see who would flip first to get the better deal. Self-preservation generally won out over loyalty. The garage where Tommy lived painted a grim story for Frank and Lena. At this point, it was just a matter of who would talk first.

Sara looked back through the glass door. “Here he is.”

Will saw a small black man making his way up the hall. He was young and skinny, the shirt of his uniform puffing out like a woman’s blouse. He gripped his cell phone close to his chest as he approached them. With the other hand, he waved his key card over a pad by the door. The lock clicked open.

Sara rushed in. “Marty, are you all right?”

Will could see why she was worried. The man’s face was ashen.

“Dr. Linton,” the man said. “I’m sorry. I was just outside trying to catch my breath.”

“Let’s sit down.” Sara helped him to a bench by the door. She kept her arm around his shoulders. “Where’s your inhaler?”

“I just used it.” He reached his hand out to Will. “Sorry for my state. I’m Marty Harris. I think you met my grandfather this morning.”

“Will Trent.” Will shook his hand. The man’s grip was weak.

Marty waved his phone in the air. “I was talking to Lena about what happened.” He coughed. The color was slowly returning to his face. “I’m sorry, it just got me worked up again.”

Will leaned his back against the wall. He tucked his hands into his pockets. He had figured out a long time ago that showing his irritation tended to get the exact opposite result he was looking for. “Can you tell me what you told Detective Adams?”

He coughed a few more times. Sara rubbed his back. “I’m all right now,” he told her. “It’s just hard to recollect is all. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.”

Will fought to keep his patience. He looked up and down the hallway. The lights were still off, but his eyes were adjusting. There wasn’t a camera on the front door. He guessed the entrance keypad was meant to catch students and visitors going into the building. There was a camera over the fire exit in the back, though, and he could see it was tilted up toward the ceiling.

“It was like that when I got here,” Marty told him. He put his phone in his shirt pocket and pushed his glasses up his nose.

“When was that?”

“About thirty minutes ago, I guess.” Marty looked at his watch. “It seems like it’s been a lot longer than that.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

He patted his hand to his chest. “I was making my rounds. I do that every three hours. With the students gone for the holiday, I wasn’t checking the dorms. We do drive-bys to make sure the front and back doors are okay, but we don’t go in.” He coughed into his hand before continuing. “I was at the library when I noticed one of the windows on the second floor was open. The second floor to this building.” He paused for breath. “I figured the wind must’ve pulled it open. Those old windows never shut tight. With the rain, there’d be a lot of water damage if I didn’t do something about it.” He paused again. Will could see he was sweating despite the fact that the building was cold. “I went up there and saw him, and…” He shook his head. “I called the emergency number.”

“Not 911?”

“We got a direct number we’re supposed to call if something happens on campus.”

Sara explained, “The dean doesn’t like bad publicity.”

“Can’t get more bad than this.” Marty gave a harsh laugh. “Lord, what was done to that boy. The smell is the worst part. I don’t think I’ll ever get it out of my breath.”

Will asked, “Did you come in through the front door or the back door?”

“Front.” He indicated the fire exit. “I know I shouldn’t’a gone out the back, but I needed air.”

“Was the back door locked?”

He shook his head.

Will saw the red warning signs plastered all around the door. “Does the alarm go off when it’s opened?”

“Students usually bypass the alarm the first week they’re here. We can’t keep up with them. The minute we hook it up, they disconnect it again. Lots of engineers and computer folks in this place. They look at it as a challenge.”

“They bypass the alarm for fun?”

“It’s easier to get to the library that way. The back entrance for the cafeteria is there, too. They’re not supposed to go through the loading docks because of safety concerns, but they sneak back through anyway.”

Will pointed to the camera mounted over the door. “Is that the only camera in the building?”

“No, sir, and like I said, it was tilted up like that when I got here. There’s another one on the second floor that’s been tilted up, too.”

Will saw how easy it would be to get into the building undetected. As long as you knew where the camera was, you could stand underneath it and use a broom handle or something similar to push it up, then go on your merry way. Still, he asked, “Do you have footage from the cameras?”

“Yes, sir. It’s all sent to a central building on campus. I don’t have the key, but my boss, Demetrius, is on the way. Should be here in an hour or two.” He told Sara, “He’s in Griffin with his daddy’s people.”

Will asked, “What about exterior cameras?”

“The cold got to ’em. They’re all out. Half are frozen solid, the rest cracked like walnuts. We had one fall on a student’s car the other day. Broke the back windshield.”

Will rubbed his jaw. “Does anyone else know the cameras are out?”

He thought about it. “Demetrius, the dean, maybe some other people if they happened to look up. Some of the damage is pretty obvious even from the ground.”

“I saw the keypad by the door. Is that the only way to get in through the front?”

“Yeah, and I already checked the logs. I can run a system diagnostic on the keypad. No one’s been in or out the front door since Saturday afternoon. The only key card not scanned out belongs to Jason Howell. The room he’s in is registered to that name, too.” He told Sara, “I don’t know why he’d stay here. Heat’s off. Campus is shut down. Library closed at noon on Sunday. I thought this place was deserted.”

“It’s not your fault,” Sara told him, though Will had some issues about the man opening the exit door. She redeemed herself by asking, “Do you think you could get a list of all the students in this dorm? It might be good if Agent Trent had them.”

“That’s not a problem at all. I can print them up for you right now.”

Will asked, “Do you remember what you touched upstairs?”

“Nothing. The door was open a little. I got this feeling, like this really bad feeling. I pushed open the door with my foot and saw him and…” He looked down at the ground. “I wish I could take a pill to forget all this.”

Will said, “I’m sorry to push you, Mr. Harris, but do you remember if the lights were on or off?”

“All the switches are downstairs.” He pointed to a set of light switches by the stairs. They were high up, probably to discourage students from flicking them on and off at will. “I turned on the lights before I went up, but then I turned them all back off like I found them.”

“Thank you for your time, Mr. Harris.” Will nodded toward the stairs, indicating he was ready to go.

Sara stood up, but she didn’t leave. “Did you know Jason?”

“No, ma’am. I’d seen that girl at the diner-Allison. You know how Grandaddy is, had her running around every second she was on the clock. I’d smile at her but we never talked. Something like this happens, and you realize you need to be paying more attention to the people around you. I’d hate to think there was something I could’ve done to stop all this.”

Will could tell the man was genuinely distressed. He put his hand on Marty’s shoulder. “I’m sure you did everything you could do.”

They walked back to the stairs. Sara reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out two pairs of paper booties to cover their feet. Will slipped them on, watching her do the same. She pulled on a latex glove and reached up, flipping the light switch. Light came down the stairwell.

Will went first. The right way to do this would be to send in a team to clear the building, but Will knew that the killer was long gone. Bodies didn’t smell when they were fresh.

The building was old, but solid, with an institutional feel that wasn’t exactly welcoming. The stairs went straight up to the third floor, creating a wind chamber for cold air. Will looked down at the black rubber treads. They would need to be checked for traces of blood. He hoped Faith had managed to get in touch with Charlie Reed. Their killer was smart, and he knew how to cover his tracks. But he didn’t have the benefit of a giant lake to wash away his presence this time. If anyone could find trace evidence, it was Charlie.

The view at the top of the second-floor landing was familiar: a long hallway lined with closed doors, but for one. At the end of the hall was a cased opening, the inside obscured by shadows.

“Bathrooms,” Sara guessed.

Will turned around and found the security camera mounted high in the corner by the stairs. The lens pointed up toward the ceiling. Jason’s killer had probably pressed himself along the stair railing, stood on the bottom step leading to the third floor, and used something to push up the camera.

“You smell that?”

Will took a shallow breath. “He’s been here a while.”

Sara had come prepared. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a paper mask. “This should help.”

Will was torn between his need to be a gentleman and his need to not throw up. “Do you only have one?”

“I’ll be okay.”

She continued down the hall. Will slipped on the mask. The air got marginally more breathable. Jason Howell’s room was closer to the bathroom than the stairs. Their footsteps echoed around them, bouncing off the walls. The closer they got, the stronger the smell became. Will saw that the students all had bulletin boards on their doors. Papers were pinned on top of photographs and messages. The board on Jason’s door was empty.

Sara put the back of her hand to her nose. “God, that’s bad.”

She took a breath through her mouth before going into the room. Will stood in the doorway. He held his breath as the smell of death washed over him.

The kid was lying on his back, bloodshot eyes staring at the ceiling. His face was swollen, almost crimson. His nose was broken. Dried blood circled his nostrils and mouth. One hand dangled to the floor. The thumb was cut. The tip of the pinky finger hung by a few threads.

“Looks like a match.” Sara had found Jason’s student ID hanging from the closet door. She showed the picture to Will. Even with all the damage, there was no mistaking the resemblance.

Oddly, Jason was clothed in layers-a pair of sweatpants over pajama bottoms; several shirts, a terry cloth housecoat, and a zippered jacket. His body was swollen from the early signs of decomposition. Gases filled his stomach. The skin on his hands was turning green. His shoes were loosely tied but his feet were so swollen that the laces cut into his socks.

Knife wounds punctured his chest. The blood had dried in thick chunks around the material of his jacket. More blood was on the floor, smeared in a streak to the desk opposite the bed. The computer, the notebooks and papers scattered around, were all covered in blood and pieces of brain matter.

Sara put her hand to the boy’s wrist. The check for a pulse was routine, though hardly necessary. “I count eight stab wounds to the chest, three more to the neck. The bacteria from the gut is what’s causing the smell. His bowel was pierced. He’s filled with toxins.”

Will asked, “How long do you think he’s been dead?”

“Judging by the rigor mortis, at least twelve hours.”

“You think we’re looking at the same killer?”

“I think whoever killed Jason knew him. This is hatred.” She pressed her fingers to one of the wounds in Jason’s neck, stretching the skin back into place. “Look at this. There’s the same twist at the bottom that I saw on Allison.” She checked the other wounds on the neck. “All of them are the same. The killer plunged in the blade, then twisted it to make sure he hit the mark. You can see bruising from the hilt. I’d guess the same type of knife was used. I’ll have to get them both on the table, but it’s an educated guess that this is the work of the same killer.”

“Jason was a lot bigger than Allison. He wouldn’t be as easy to overpower.”

Gently, she slid her hand under the back of the head. “The skull is fractured.” When she pulled her hand back, it was sticky with blood.

“Window’s closed,” he pointed out. A sizable puddle covered the floor under the sash. Marty had been in the room after all.

Sara had noticed, too. “He did you a favor. The rain could’ve flooded the floor and washed away the trace.”

“Charlie’s not going to be happy.” Will realized he hadn’t told her that a team was coming. “He’s our forensics guy. He’ll probably want to keep the body here until he’s processed the scene.”

“I’ll let Brock know. Do you want me to do the autopsy?”

He thought he might be stepping on her toes. “If it’s not too much of an imposition.”

“I’ll do whatever you want.”

Will didn’t know what to say. He was used to the women in his life making things more difficult, not easier. “Thank you.”

She asked, “Do you think Jason was Allison’s boyfriend?”

“They’re close in age. They go to the same school. They both ended up dead by the same killer’s hand. I think it’s not a big leap.” Will asked, “Assuming you hate to hypothesize, what do you think happened here?”

Sara changed into fresh gloves, telling him, “I assume Jason was at the computer when he was hit with something. Statistically, we can guess a baseball bat. I’ll know pretty quickly. There will be splinters in his scalp.” She pointed to spatter on the wall that Will hadn’t noticed before. Unlike the oak tree by the lake, the white walls of the dorm showed clear signs of the violence that was done. “Medium velocity. I don’t think the blow was meant to kill him. The killer wanted to stun him.” She pointed to the red streaks on the floor. “He was dragged over to the bed and stabbed, but it doesn’t make sense.”

“Why?”

She looked under the bed. “There should be a lot more blood than this.” She indicated a fleshy chunk on the desk. “Obviously, he bit off his tongue-”

Will gagged. “Sorry. Keep going.”

“Are you sure?”

His voice sounded unnaturally high even to him. “Yes. Please keep going.”

She gave him a careful look before continuing. “It’s not uncommon with blows to the back of the head for the victim to bite their tongue. Usually it doesn’t come clean off, but it explains the volume of blood on the keyboard. His mouth would’ve been engorged with blood.” She indicated the wall above the desk. “The spatter here is what you’d expect from the baseball bat making contact with the head, but over by the bed is a different story.”

“Why?”

“From the position of the wounds, I can tell that major arteries were hit in the chest and neck.” Sara explained, “Think about it this way-Jason’s on the bed. We assume he’s conscious because of the defensive wounds on his hand. He almost lost his finger. He must’ve grabbed the knife by the blade. His heart would’ve been pounding like crazy.” She patted her fist to her chest, mimicking the quick beat. “Spray, spray, spray. All over the wall.”

Will looked at the wall. She was right. Except for two splotchy-looking stains close to the body, the white paint was hardly marked at all.

Sara suggested, “Maybe the killer was wearing something like a clean suit. He could’ve put down plastic. He’d have to cover the room, tape the walls. This was really planned.”

“I think that’s a little complicated.” Will had yet to meet a killer who was that fastidious. “Most killers keep it simple. They’re opportunistic.”

“I wouldn’t call taking a couple of cinder blocks, a padlock, and a chain to the middle of the woods opportunistic.”

“I just think you’re making this too complicated. Couldn’t the killer cover Jason’s body with something and stab him underneath?”

Sara looked at the body. “The stab wounds are closely patterned. I don’t know. What are you talking about? Plastic?” She nodded to herself. “The killer could’ve covered him in plastic. Look at the floor. There’s a drip line here.”

Will saw the line. It was irregular, following the shape of the bed.

She said, “Plastic doesn’t absorb. The line wouldn’t be thin like that. It would come off in sheets.”

“Sheets.”

Sara leaned down and checked the bed. “Fitted sheet, top sheet.”

“Blanket?” Will asked. The kid had been freezing cold. It didn’t make sense that he’d go to bed without a blanket.

Sara opened the closet door. “Nothing.” She started on the drawers. “I think you’re right. It must have been something absorbent that-”

Will walked down the hallway to the bathroom. The lights were off, but he found the switch by the door. The fluorescents flickered overhead. Green light bounced off the blue tiles. Will had never lived in a dorm, but he’d shared a communal bathroom with fifteen other boys until he was eighteen years old. They were all the same: sinks in the front, showers in the back, toilets on the side.

He found a wadded-up blanket in the first stall. Blood coated the blue cotton, making it stiff as cardboard.

Sara came up behind him.

He told her, “Simple.”

WILL LOOKED FOR the house with the swing set that marked the turn on Taylor Drive. Though the route was familiar, he was loath to take it. Searching Allison Spooner’s room was a necessary chore, but Will’s instincts told him that Jason Howell’s dorm room held more promising leads. Unfortunately, Will wasn’t a crime scene technician. He didn’t have the credentials or equipment to process such a complicated scene. He would have to wait for Charlie Reed and his team to drive over from the Central GBI lab. Two students were already dead and Will had no idea what was motivating the killer. Time was definitely not on his side.

Still, there were procedures to be followed. He had dropped by the station to pick up the warrant to search the Braham house. While he was there, he’d sent Faith the list Marty Harris had printed out of all the students in the dorm. She didn’t have time to do all the background checks, but she was going to get started on them now and send the rest of the list to Amanda’s secretary before she went to the hospital.

The police station had been oddly quiet. Will guessed they were all either on the street or at the hospital with Brad Stephens, who was still in a medically induced coma. Still, something was going on. The patrolmen milling around the desks hadn’t glared at Will with the expected hatred. Marla Simms had handed him the fax without having to be asked. Even Larry Knox had stared at the floor as he walked to the coffee machine to refill his cup.

There were two cars parked in front of the Braham house. One was a police cruiser. The other was a four-door Ford pickup. Will parked behind the truck. Exhaust drifted up from the tailpipe. He could see two figures in the cab. Lena Adams was in the passenger seat. A man was behind the wheel. His window was down, even though the rain hadn’t let up. He held a cigarette in his hand.

Will went to the driver’s side. His hair was plastered to his head. He was freezing. His socks were still soaking wet.

Lena made the introductions. “Gordon, this is the agent from Atlanta I told you about. Will Trent.”

Will shot her a glance that he hoped conveyed his intense level of irritation. Lena was being investigated for her part in Tommy’s death. She had no business talking to his father. “Mr. Braham, I’m so sorry to be meeting you under these circumstances.”

Gordon held the cigarette to his mouth. He was crying openly, tears streaming down his face. “Get in.”

Will climbed into the back seat. There were a couple of fast-food bags on the floor. Work orders with the Georgia Power logo were stacked in an open briefcase on the seat opposite. Even with the open window, smoke hung in the air like a shroud.

Gordon stared ahead at the road. Raindrops popped against the hood of the truck. “I can’t believe my boy would do any of this. It’s not in his nature to be hurtful.”

Will knew there was no use wasting time with kindness. “Can you tell me what you know about Allison?”

He took another hit off the cigarette. “Paid her rent on time. Kept the house clean. I gave her a discount for doing the laundry, looking after Tommy.”

“Did he need looking out for?”

Gordon glanced at Lena. “He knows, right?”

Will answered, “I know that he was slow, Mr. Braham. I also know that he held down several jobs and was well respected in town.”

The man looked down at his hands. His shoulders shook. “He did, sir. He worked real hard.”

“Tell me about Allison.”

Gordon’s composure came back slowly, but his shoulders were still slumped. When he moved the cigarette to his mouth, it looked as if his hands were weighted down. “Was she raped?”

“No, sir. There were no signs of that.”

He let out a ragged, relieved breath. “Tommy had a crush on her.”

“Did she feel the same way?”

He shook his head. “No. And he knew it. I taught him early on to be careful around girls. Look but don’t touch. He never had any trouble. Girls saw him like a puppy dog. They didn’t see that he was a man.” He repeated himself, “He was a man.”

Will gave him some time before asking, “Allison was living in the house?”

He lit a new cigarette off the old one. Will could feel the smoke clinging to his wet hair and clothes. He made an effort not to cough.

Gordon said, “She rented the garage at first. I didn’t want to let her. That’s no place for a girl to be living. She started talking about discrimination, said she had lived in worse, so I told her fine. I figured she’d move out in a month.”

“How long had she been renting from you?”

“Almost a year. She didn’t want to live in the dorm. Said all the girls there were boy crazy, staying up too late. She knew how to flirt to get what she wanted, though. Had Tommy wrapped around her little finger.”

Will didn’t address the tone of blame in the father’s voice. “She wasn’t living in the garage, though.”

He didn’t answer immediately. “That was Tommy. He said it wasn’t right for her to be out there when it was so cold, having to run back and forth to get to the bathroom in the middle of the night. He changed rooms with her. I didn’t know until after the fact.” He blew out a dark plume of smoke that wreathed around his head. “I told you, she had him wrapped around her finger. I should’ve put my foot down, paid more attention to what was going on.” He inhaled sharply, fighting his emotions. “I knew he had a crush on her, but he’d had crushes before. He liked the attention she was giving him. He didn’t have a lot of friends.”

Will knew he couldn’t tell the man details about an active case, especially one that could result in a nasty lawsuit. But he felt for the father, wished he could give him some words of comfort about his son. Instead, he asked, “Did you spend much time at home?”

“Not much. Mostly, I’m at my girlfriend’s house. Tommy didn’t know, but we were planning on getting married in the spring.” He exhaled sharply. “I was gonna ask him to be my best man once I got back from Florida.”

Will gave the man a few minutes to collect himself. “Did you know Allison’s boyfriend?”

“Jay. James.”

Will guessed, “Jason?”

“That’s right.” He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “He wasn’t around much. I didn’t let her have anybody sleep over. Wasn’t right for a girl that age to be fooling around.”

“Did Tommy know Jason?”

He shook his head, but said, “I guess. I don’t know. I wasn’t involved in his life as much as when he was little. He was grown. He had to figure out how to be on his own.” His breath caught as he tried to inhale some smoke. “I know my son. He would never hurt anybody. I know what he did to Brad, but that’s not my boy. I didn’t raise him that way.”

Lena cleared her throat. “I saw what happened, Gordon. Tommy was running, but then he turned around. Brad didn’t have time to slow down. I don’t think your son meant to stab him. I think it was an accident.”

Will chewed the inside of his cheek, wondering if she was lying to help the man feel better or telling the truth.

Gordon seemed to have the same question. He wiped his eyes again. “Thank you. Thank you for telling me that.”

Will asked, “Was Tommy acting differently lately?”

He swallowed hard. “Frank called me a week ago about some mess he’d gotten into. One of the neighbors got mad at him. He never yelled at people before. Never had a temper. I sat him down and talked to him. He said they were giving him grief about Pippy barking too much.” Gordon blew out some smoke. “He loved that stupid dog.”

“Did he drink?”

“Never. He hated the taste of beer. I tried to get him used to it, thought we could sit around on Saturdays, have some brews and watch the game together, but it never took. He got bored. Basketball was his sport. He couldn’t keep up with all the rules for football.”

“Did he have any friends? Was anyone giving him trouble lately?”

“He never met a stranger,” Gordon answered. “But I don’t think there was anybody specific he was close to. Like I said, he was into Allison, and she was sweet to him, but more like you’d be with a little brother.”

“Did they hang out much?”

“I wasn’t here to see it. He talked about her a lot. I won’t deny that.”

“When is the last time you spoke with your son?”

“I guess the night he…” Gordon didn’t finish the sentence. He took a hit off his cigarette. “He called because he needed permission to use the credit card. He thought Pippy swallowed one of his socks. I told him to take her to the vet.”

“We haven’t found his cell phone.”

“I made him get one of those pay-as-you-go deals. He had a good job. He was a hard worker. He didn’t mind paying his own way.” Gordon flicked his cigarette out into the street. “I can’t be here anymore. I can’t go into that house. I can’t see his things.” He told Lena, “You can go on in there. Take whatever you like. Burn the place down. I don’t care.”

Will opened the door, but he didn’t leave. “Did Tommy collect knives?”

“I never let him near knives. I don’t know where he got one. Do you?”

Will answered, “No, sir.”

Gordon shook out another cigarette from the pack. “He liked to take things apart,” the man said. “I’d get to work and try to write my service orders and the pen wouldn’t work. Tommy would take the springs out. I’d find a bunch of them in his pockets when I was doing laundry. Tore up the motor in the dryer once. I thought it was something to do with his problem, but Sara told me he was playing me. He liked practical jokes. Liked trying to make people laugh.” Gordon wasn’t finished. He glanced into the rearview mirror, looking Will in the eye. “I knew early on he was different. I knew I wasn’t gonna have that kind of life with him, the kind of life fathers have with sons. But I loved him, and I raised him right. My boy is not a murderer.”

Lena put her hand on Gordon’s arm. “He was a good man,” she told him. “He was a very good man.”

Gordon put the car in gear, making it clear he didn’t want to continue the conversation. Will and Lena got out. They watched the Ford drive up the street.

The rain had slacked off, but Lena still pulled the hood of her jacket up to cover her head. She took a deep breath and let it go slowly. “Tommy didn’t kill Allison.”

Will had figured that out a while back, but he was surprised to hear the admission. “What brought about this epiphany?”

“I’ve spent most of the day talking to people who knew him. The same as I would have done if Tommy was still alive.” She crossed her arms. “He was a good kid. He ended up in trouble the same way a lot of good kids do-he was at the wrong place at the wrong time. And he had a knife in his hands.”

“I think you mean that he was in the right place at the wrong time. Tommy was in his apartment. His garage apartment.”

She didn’t contradict him. “He stabbed a police officer.”

“Accidentally, from what I’ve heard.”

“Accidentally,” she agreed. “And we had no legal right to go into that garage. Brad got the address, but it’s not on the building. I led us here. I was the one who said that the garage was Allison’s apartment. That’s why Brad looked in the window. That’s what started everything.” She took a shallow breath. He could tell she was scared, but determined. “How does this work? Do I make a statement? Do I write out a confession?”

Will tried to figure out her grand scheme. It couldn’t be this easy. “Let’s back up a second. What are you confessing to?”

“The false search of the apartment. I guess that’s breaking and entering. My negligence led to a police officer being injured. Two officers. I elicited a false confession. I’m the one who walked Tommy back to the cells. I’m the one who didn’t frisk him. The ink cartridge was from my pen. I had some extra ones, so I changed it out, but Tommy got the cartridge from me. And we both know I’ve been dicking you around all day.” She gave a forced laugh. “So, that’s obstruction of justice, right?”

“Right,” he agreed. “Are you willing to put all that on paper?”

“I’ll let you tape it.” She pulled the hood off her head and looked up at Will. “What am I looking at? Jail time?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted, but the truth was she had skated a thin line. Her negligence wasn’t willful. The false confession had been taken in good faith. She was cooperating now, even if she’d been recalcitrant before. She wasn’t shifting blame. “In the immediate term, I imagine you’ll be suspended pending a review of my investigation. You’ll have to go in front of the board. They might come down on you hard or they might not. Your pension is probably gone. If it’s not, you could take a hit on years of service, get a period of unpaid leave. If they don’t pull your badge, this is going to be on your record until you die. Finding someone to hire you might prove difficult. And Gordon Braham might bring a civil suit against you.”

None of this seemed to surprise her. She reached into her pocket. “Do I give you my badge now?”

“No,” Will told her. “I’m not in charge of that part. I just file my report. There’s bound to be some political involvement with your city council and various other civilian boards. As for whether or not you’re suspended pending the outcome, I would assume Chief Wallace is the one who gets to decide what to do with you.”

She gave a rueful laugh. “I think he’s already decided.”

Will felt oddly conflicted. He knew that Lena had screwed up, but she wasn’t alone in this debacle. The evidence in the garage told a story that she could use to get herself out of this mess, or at least lessen some of the pain. He felt compelled to ask, “Are you sure about this?”

“Tommy was my prisoner. He was my responsibility.”

Will couldn’t argue the point. “Why did you call Marty Harris after you talked to me?”

She hesitated, and he saw some of her old slyness come back. “I wanted to know the details.”

“Which were?”

She gave him a halfhearted account of the same story Will had heard from Marty Harris an hour ago. She told Will, “I got Jason’s contact information and called his mother. She lives in West Virginia. She didn’t seem too concerned that the police were calling about her son.”

“How were you sure about the victim’s identity?” Will realized the answer before he finished the sentence. “You went to the school.” She must have called Will from the building, a detail Lena had seen fit to leave out. “Well?” he asked.

“I was already there checking Allison’s school records when Marty called me.” She shrugged. “I needed to see if it was the same killer.”

“And?”

“I don’t know. It makes sense. Jason was Allison’s boyfriend. They both turn up murdered within a day of each other. Tommy doesn’t fit into the puzzle anymore.”

That at least explained part of her sudden turnaround. Tommy was dead before Jason was killed. Lena would know that he was innocent of the first crime because he couldn’t have committed the second one. “Did you close the window in Jason’s dorm?”

“I used a glove. I didn’t want the rain to wash away any trace. I also covered my shoes and hair. I was careful, but you can get my rule-out samples at the station. They should be on file with the GBI.”

Will wasn’t going to waste time berating her. “What did you find out at the school? You said you were going through Allison’s records.”

She took out her spiral-bound notebook and thumbed to the right page. “Allison was taking four courses this semester. I won’t bore you with the details-chemistry stuff. I managed to talk to three of her professors. One on the phone and two in person. They say Allison was a good student, kept her head down, did her work. They never noticed her hanging out with a particular group. She was a bit of a loner. Her attendance was perfect. No missed days. Her grades were A’s and high B’s. Campus security didn’t know her name. She’s never filed a report with them or been the subject of a report.”

“What about the fourth teacher?”

“Alexandra Coulter. She’s out of town for the holiday. I left a message on her cell and home.”

“Any other known associates?”

“None of them knew about Jason, but it makes sense. He was a couple of years ahead of her, taking graduate classes. She was undergrad. They wouldn’t mix except outside of class. She didn’t have friends. I tossed around the name Julie Smith because you brought it up earlier. She’s not a student.”

“Did you get a warrant for searching Allison’s records?”

“No one asked for one, so I didn’t volunteer.” She added, “I also talked to Tommy’s boss at the bowling alley. I showed him Allison’s picture. He says he’s seen her around with another kid-male, dark hair, chubby, obviously Jason Howell. Tommy was giving them free games, but the manager put a stop to it when he found out.”

“At least we know they’ve all met each other,” Will said. “What else?”

“There aren’t any Julie Smiths in town. I checked the phone directory. There are four Smiths-three in Heartsdale, one in Avondale. I called all four numbers. None of them know a Julie or are related to a Julie. Are you going to tell me who she is?”

“No,” Will said, but only because he didn’t know the answer himself. “Have you heard from Allison’s aunt yet?”

“Nothing. I called the Elba detective a few minutes ago. He seemed annoyed to hear from me again, said he’d call when he had something to say.”

“Annoyed because he thought you were pushing him?”

“He doesn’t strike me as the type who likes a woman telling him what to do.”

He should try Will’s job. “What else?”

“I’ve talked to the neighbors, everybody but Mrs. Barnes, who lives there.” She pointed at the yellow ranch house across the street. There was an old Honda Accord parked by the mailbox. “There’s no mail in the box, her newspaper’s been taken in, and her car isn’t in the carport, so I assume she’s out doing chores.”

“What about the Accord?”

“I looked in the windows. It’s spotless. I can run the tag through the computer.”

“Do that,” he told her. “What did the other neighbors say?”

“Exactly what our guys found when they canvassed the street yesterday. Tommy was great. Allison was quiet. None of them socialized; this is a pretty old street. Not a lot of kids.”

“Any criminal activity?”

“Not a lot. There are two foreclosures. The kid at the end of the block was caught joyriding in his mama’s Cadillac two weeks ago. Two houses over, there’s an ex-crack addict living with his grandparents. He’s been clean as far as we know. Three doors the other way is a Peeping Tom who’s in a wheelchair. He doesn’t get out as much as he used to since his father took the ramp off the front porch.”

“And this seemed like such a nice neighborhood.”

“Only two people were home when Brad got stabbed.” She pointed to a house two doors down from the Barnes residence. “Vanessa Livingston. She was late for work because her basement flooded. She was waiting on her contractor and looking out the window right when Brad was stabbed.”

“And she saw…?”

“Exactly what I saw. Brad was chasing after Tommy. Tommy turned. He had the knife here.” She held her hand at her waist. “Brad was stabbed.”

“And the second neighbor?”

“Scott Shepherd. Professional gambler, so he’s on the computer all day. He didn’t see anything until after the fact. Brad on the ground. Me beside him.”

“Frank apprehending Tommy?”

She pursed her lips. “You want to talk to Shepherd?”

“Is he going to tell me that Frank was beating Tommy or is he going to tell me that he can’t remember?”

“He told me that he didn’t see Frank. He went into the house and called the station.”

“Not 911?”

“Scott’s a volunteer fireman. He knows the direct number for the station.”

“Lucky for you.”

“Yeah, I feel really lucky right now.” Lena flipped her notebook closed. “That’s all I’ve got. Gordon says there’s a spare key under the mat. I guess I should go home and call around for a lawyer.”

“Why don’t you help me instead?”

She held his gaze. “You just told me I’m going to lose my badge.”

“You’ve still got it in your pocket, right?”

“Don’t bullshit me, man. There’s only two other days in my life I can think of that were worse than this one-the day my sister died and the day I lost Jeffrey.”

“You’re a good detective when you want to be.”

“I don’t think that’s going to matter anymore.”

“Then what’ve you got to lose?”

Will walked up the driveway, listening for Lena’s steps behind him. He didn’t really need her help, but Will hated to be lied to. Frank Wallace was knee-deep in this crap, and seemed content to let one of his officers take the fall for his own bad leadership. Will didn’t feel any loyalty to Lena, but the thought of a drunk, crooked cop running this town’s police force did not sit well with him.

Will found the key under the front doormat. He was opening the door when Lena joined him on the porch steps.

He asked, “Have you heard anything about Detective Stephens?”

“No change. I guess that’s good.”

“Why didn’t you call Chief Wallace about the body in the dorm?”

She shrugged. “Like you said, I’m only a good cop when I choose to be.”

Will pushed open the front door. Lena went in first. Her hand was high on her side, a motion she probably didn’t realize she’d made. Will had seen Faith take this same stance many times. She’d been a beat cop for ten years. There were some things your muscles couldn’t unlearn.

The living room was right off the entrance. The furniture was old and sad, duct tape keeping the stuffing in the cushions. The carpet was an orange shag that went into the hallway. Will could feel it clinging to his shoes as he walked back to the kitchen. The carpet gave way to yellow linoleum. Gordon hadn’t bothered to update anything except the stainless steel microwave that rested on top of an old Formica table.

“Dishes,” Lena said. Two plates, two forks, and two glasses were in the drainer in the sink. Allison had shared a meal with someone before she died, then cleaned up after herself.

Lena pulled a paper towel from the roll and covered her hand so she could open the refrigerator. There was a line of blue painter’s tape down the middle. Store-brand sodas filled each shelf. There was no food except for a dried-up orange and a Jell-O pudding cup. Lena opened the freezer. The same taped line split the compartment, but the moisture had weakened the adhesive. One side was stacked full of frozen dinners. The other had a box of Popsicles and some ice cream sandwiches.

Will used the edge of his palm to raise the lid on the kitchen trashcan. He saw two empty boxes of Stouffer’s French bread pizza. “I’ll ask Sara about stomach contents.”

“Tommy would’ve had more time to digest.”

“True.” He used the toe of his shoe to push open a pair of louvered doors, expecting to find a pantry but finding a toilet, small shower, and even smaller sink. The bathroom was by the back door. He assumed this was the toilet tenants used when they rented the garage. It certainly looked like a young man had used the facilities. The sink was filthy. Hair clogged the shower drain. Towels were strewn on the floor. A pair of dingy-looking briefs was wadded up in the corner. There was one sock on the floor, a footie that went up to the ankle. Will imagined the other sock was slowly making its way through Pippy’s digestive track.

Will realized Lena wasn’t behind him anymore. He walked through the dining room, which had a glass table and two chairs, and found her in a small study off the family room. The room looked hastily abandoned. Stacks of papers lined the floor-magazines, old bills, newspapers. Gordon must have been using this as a dumping ground for all the paperwork associated with his life. Lena checked the desk drawers. From what Will could see, they were piled with more invoices and receipts. The lone bookshelf in the room was bare and dusty except for a plate that contained a moldy, unrecognizable piece of food. A glass was beside it, the liquid dark and murky.

The carpet showed tracks from a vacuum cleaner but it still had the same grungy feel as the rest of the house. There was an ancient-looking computer monitor on the top of the desk. Lena pressed the power button, but nothing happened. Will leaned down and saw that the thing was not connected to a power supply. Or a computer.

Lena noticed this, too. “He probably took the computer to Jill June’s. That’s his girlfriend.”

“Did you see a laptop in the garage?”

She shook her head. “Could Tommy even use one?”

“He probably ran the machines at the bowling alley. That’s all computer controlled.” Will shrugged because he didn’t know for certain. “Gordon disconnected the landline. I doubt he was springing for Internet service.”

“Probably.” Lena opened the last drawer in the desk. She held up a sheet of paper that looked like a bill. “Fifty-two dollars. This place must be better insulated than it looks.”

Will guessed she had found a power or gas bill. “Or Allison kept the heat turned down. She grew up poor. She was willing to live in the garage. She probably wasn’t big on wasting money.”

“Gordon’s pretty cheap himself. This place is a dump.” She dropped the bill on the desk. “Moldy food on the shelf. Dirty clothes on the floor. I wouldn’t walk through this carpet with my shoes off.”

Will silently agreed. “The bedrooms are probably upstairs.”

The design of the house was a typical split-level, with the stairs running off the back of the family room. The railing was coming loose from the wall. The carpet was worn to the backing. At the top of the stairs, he saw a narrow hallway. Two open doors were on one side. A closed door was on the other. At the mouth of the hall was a bathroom with pink tile.

Will glanced into the first room, which was empty but for some papers and other debris stuck into the orange shag carpet. The next room was sparsely furnished, slightly larger than the first. A basket of folded clothes was on the bare mattress. Lena pointed to the empty closet, the opened drawers in the chest. “Someone moved out.”

“Gordon Braham,” Will supplied. He looked at the basket of neatly folded clothes. For some reason it made him sad that Allison had done the man’s laundry before she died.

Lena slipped on a latex glove before trying the last room. Her hand went up to her gun again as she pushed open the door. Again, there were no surprises. “This must be Allison’s.”

The room was cleaner than the rest of the house, which wasn’t saying much. Allison Spooner hadn’t been the neatest woman on the planet, but at least she managed to keep her clothes off the floor. And there were a lot of them. Shirts, blouses, pants, and dresses were packed so tightly into the closet that the rod bowed in the middle. Clothes hangers were hooked on the curtain rod and the trim over the closet door. More clothes were draped over an old rocking chair.

“I guess she liked clothes,” Will said.

Lena picked up a pair of jeans in a pile by the door. “Seven brand. These aren’t cheap. I wonder where she got the money.”

Will could hazard a guess. The clothes he’d worn as a kid generally came from a communal pile. There was no guarantee you’d find a good fit, let alone a style you liked. “She probably had hand-me-downs all her life. First time away from home, making her own money. Maybe it was important to her to have nice things.”

“Or maybe she was shoplifting.” Lena tossed the jeans back onto the pile. She continued the search, lifting the mattress, sliding her hand between clothes, picking up shoes and putting them back in place. Will stood in the doorway, watching Lena move around the room. She seemed more sure of herself. He wanted to know what had changed. Confession was good for the soul, but her newfound attitude couldn’t be solely traced back to her revelation about Tommy. The Lena he’d left this morning was ready to burst into tears at any moment. The one thing she was sure about was Tommy’s guilt. Something else had been weighing her down, but now it was gone.

Her certainty was making him suspicious.

“What about that?” Will pointed to the bedside table. The drawer was cracked open. Lena used her gloved hand to open it the rest of the way. There was a pad of paper, a pencil, and a flashlight inside.

“You ever read Nancy Drew?” he asked, but she was ahead of him. Lena used the pencil to shade the paper on the pad.

She showed it to Will. “No secret note.”

“It was worth a try.”

“We can toss this place, but nothing’s jumping out at me.”

“No pink book bag.”

She stared at him. “Someone told you Allison had a pink book bag?”

“Someone told me she had a car, too.”

“A rusted red Dodge Daytona?” she guessed. She must have heard about the BOLO Faith put on the car this morning.

“Let’s try the bathroom,” he suggested.

He followed her up the hallway. Again, Will let her conduct the search. Lena opened the medicine cabinet. There was the usual array of lady things: feminine aids, a bottle of perfume, some Tylenol and other pain relievers as well as a brush. Lena opened the packet of birth control pills. Less than a third of the pills remained. “She was current.”

He looked at the prescription label on the birth control. The logo at the top was unfamiliar. “Is this a local pharmacy?”

“School dispensary.”

“How about the prescribing doctor?”

She checked the name and shook her head. “No idea. Probably from her hometown.” Lena opened the cabinet under the sink. “Toilet paper. Tampons. Pads.” She checked inside the boxes. “Nothing that shouldn’t be here.”

Will stared at the open medicine cabinet. Something was off. There were two shelves and space at the bottom of the cabinet that served as a third. The middle shelf seemed devoted to medication. The birth control packet had been wedged in between the Motrin and Advil bottles, which were shoved to the far end of the shelf close to the hinge. The Tylenol was on the opposite side, also shoved to the end. He studied the gap, wondering if there was another bottle that was missing.

“What is it?” Lena asked.

“You should get your hand looked at.”

She flexed her fingers. The Band-Aids were looking ragged. “I’m fine.”

“It looks infected. You don’t want it getting into your bloodstream.”

She stood up from the cabinet. “The only doctor in town rents space at the children’s clinic. Hare Earnshaw.”

“Sara’s cousin.”

“He wouldn’t exactly welcome me as a patient.”

“Who do you normally see?”

“That’s not really any of your business.” She pulled back the cheap mini-blind on the window. “There’s a car parked in Mrs. Barnes’s driveway.”

“Wait for me outside.”

“Why do you-” She stopped herself. “All right.”

Will walked behind her down the hall. When he stopped outside Allison’s room, Lena turned. She didn’t say anything, but continued down the stairs. Will didn’t think there was anything of note in the girl’s room. Lena had done a thorough search. What struck Will the most was what was missing: There was no laptop. No schoolbooks. No notebooks. No pink backpack. No sign that a college student was living here except for the enormous amount of clothing. Had someone taken Allison’s school things? More than likely, they were in her Dodge Daytona, whereabouts unknown.

Will heard the front door open and close. He looked out the window and saw Lena heading down the driveway toward the cruiser. She was on her cell phone. He knew she wasn’t calling Frank. Maybe she was looking for a lawyer.

He had more pressing things to think about right now. Will went to the bathroom and used the camera on his cell phone to take a picture of the medicine cabinet. Next, he went downstairs to Tommy Braham’s bathroom. Will stepped over the towels and underwear to get to the medicine cabinet. He opened the mirrored door. An orange plastic pill bottle was the only thing inside. Will leaned in. The words on the label were small. The light was bad. And he was dyslexic.

He used his phone to take another picture. This time, he sent the image to Faith with three question marks in the message.

Sara had kept his handkerchief again. Will looked around for something to use so his fingerprints wouldn’t get on the bottle. Tommy’s underwear and dirty sock were not an option. Will rolled off some toilet paper from the roll stuck on the back of the toilet and used it to pick up the bottle. The cap wasn’t securely screwed down. He opened the top and saw a handful of clear capsules with white powder inside. Will shook one into his hand. There was no writing on the side, no pharmaceutical logo or maker’s mark.

In movies, cops always tasted the white powders they found. Will wondered why drug dealers didn’t leave piles of rat poison lying around just for this particular reason. He put the bottle on the edge of the sink so he could photograph the capsule in his hand. Then he took a closer shot of the prescription label and sent both images to Faith.

As a rule, Will stayed away from doctors. He couldn’t read them his insurance information when he called to make an appointment. He couldn’t fill out their forms while he was sitting in the waiting room. One time, Angie had been kind enough to give him syphilis and he’d had to take a regimen of pills four times a day for two weeks. Consequently, Will knew what a prescription label looked like. There was always an official logo from the pharmacy at the top. The doctor’s name and date were listed, the Rx number, the patient’s name, the dosage information, the warning stickers.

This label seemed to have none of those things. It wasn’t even the proper size-he’d guess it was half the usual height and shorter in length. There were plenty of numbers typed across the top, but the rest of the information was written in by hand. A cursive hand, which meant Will didn’t know if he was staring at heroin or acetaminophen.

His phone rang. Faith asked, “What the hell is that?”

“I found it in Tommy’s medicine cabinet.”

“‘Seven-nine-nine-three-two-six-five-three,’” she read. “‘Tommy, do not take any of these’ is written across the middle in cursive. Exclamation point at the end. The ‘do not’ is underlined.”

Will said a silent prayer of thanks that he hadn’t tasted the white powder. “Is the handwriting feminine?”

“Looks like it. Big and loopy. Slanted to the right, so she’s right-handed.”

“Why would Tommy have a bottle of pills that said don’t take them?”

“What about the three letters at the bottom? Looks like ‘H-O-C’ or ‘H-C-C’…?”

Will stared at the fine print in the corner of the label. The words were so blurry that his head started to ache. “I have no idea. The last photo is as tight as I can get. I’m going to get Nick to take it to the lab with the other stuff. Anything on Jason Howell?”

“He’s worse than Allison, if that’s possible. No phone. No street address, just a PO box at the school. He’s got four thousand dollars in a savings account out of a bank in West Virginia.”

“That’s interesting.”

“Not as much as you’d think. The amount’s been going down slowly over the last four years. I’d guess it’s some kind of college fund.” She told him, “He also has a car registered in his name. Ninety-nine Saturn SW. Green. I already put out a BOLO.”

That was at least something. “I’ll check at the school to see if it’s there. How are the background checks going on all the students who lived in Jason’s dorm?”

“Slow and boring. None of these kids even have parking tickets. My mother had gotten me out of a DUI and a shoplifting charge by the time I was that age.” She laughed. “Please promise me you won’t remind me of that when my children get into trouble.”

Will was too shocked to promise anything. “Did you track down the 911 audio?”

“They said they’d email it to me but it hasn’t shown up yet.” Her breath was short, and he guessed she was walking through the house. “Let me do a computer search for those initials on the pill bottle.”

“I’ll ask Gordon if his son was taking any medication.”

“Are you sure you should do that?”

“Meaning?”

“What if Tommy was selling illegal drugs?”

Will had a hard time imagining Tommy Braham as a drug kingpin. Still, he admitted, “Tommy knew everybody in town. He was always walking the streets. It’d be a perfect cover.”

“What does the dad do for a living?”

“I think he’s a lineman for Georgia Power.”

“How are they living?”

Will glanced around the crappy kitchen. “Not very well. Gordon’s truck is about ten years old. Tommy was living in a garage without a toilet. They were renting out a room to help make ends meet. The house must have been really nice thirty years ago, but they haven’t done much to keep it that way.”

“When I did the sweep on Tommy, I found a checking account at the local bank. His balance was thirty-one dollars and sixty-eight cents. Did you say the dad was in Florida?”

He saw where she was going with this. Florida was the beginning of a major drug corridor that went from the Keys up into Georgia and on to New England and Canada. “This doesn’t strike me as a drug thing.”

“That knife wound to the neck sounds gang to me.”

Will couldn’t deny she was right.

Faith asked, “What else do you have?”

“Detective Adams has seen fit to accept her part in Tommy Braham’s suicide.”

For once, Faith didn’t have a quick comeback.

“She said that Tommy didn’t kill Allison, and it’s her fault he managed to kill himself in custody, and that she’ll take all the blame.”

Faith made a thinking noise. “What’s she hiding?”

“What isn’t she hiding?” Will countered. “She’s lied and covered up so much that it’d be like pulling a piece of string on a ball of yarn.” He went into the kitchen, hoping to find a plastic bag. “Allison had a lot of nice clothes.”

“What was she studying in college?”

“Chemistry.”

“How do you manage to dress yourself in the morning?” Faith sounded frustrated by his slowness. “Chemistry? Synthesizing chemicals to produce more complex products, like turning pseudoephedrine into methamphetamine?”

Will found a box of Ziplocs in the last drawer he checked. “If Allison was cooking meth, or shooting it, she was being careful about it. She didn’t have any needle marks. There aren’t any pipes or drug paraphernalia around the house or in the garage. Sara will do a tox screen as part of the autopsy, but I’m not buying it.”

“And Tommy?”

“I’ll have to call Sara.” He waited for her to say something snarky about his using Sara’s name too many times.

Miraculously, Faith let the opportunity pass. “There’s no H-O-C or H-C-C in Grant County. I’ll try the number at the top of the label. Eight digits. Too long for a zip code, too short for zip-plus-four. One digit too many for a phone number. One too little for Social Security. Let me plug it in and see if I get anything.” Will sealed the pill bottle in the plastic bag as he waited for the results.

Faith groaned. “My God, does every single search have to turn up porn?”

“It’s God’s gift to us.”

“I’d rather have a live-in nanny,” she countered. “I’m not finding anything. I can make some phone calls around the state. You know how some of the yokels are slow to enter their case files into the network. I’m just waiting around for Mama to come pick me up and take me to the hospital.”

“I’d appreciate anything you feel like doing.”

“If I watch one more home-remodeling show, I’m going to come down there and hope someone puts a knife in the back of my neck. And I’ve got the worst gas. I feel like-”

“Well, I should go now. Thanks again for your help.” Will closed his phone to end the call. He locked up the house and put the pill bottle in his Porsche.

Lena was still on the phone, but she got off when she saw Will. “Honda belongs to a Darla Jackson. She’s on parole for kiting some checks two years ago. She’s already paid it off. The charge will roll off her sheet in January.”

“Did you talk to her?”

Lena glanced over his shoulder. “I think we’re about to get our chance.”

He turned around. An elderly woman was making her way down the driveway of the house across the street. She leaned heavily on a walker with a wire basket on the front. Bright yellow tennis balls were stuck on the back legs. The front door to her house opened, and a woman dressed in a pink nurse’s uniform called, “Mrs. Barnes! You forgot your coat!”

The old woman didn’t seem concerned, though she was wearing nothing more than a thin housedress and slippers. The wind was blowing so hard that the hem kicked up as she navigated the steep drive. Fortunately, the rubber soles of her terry cloth slippers kept her from sliding down the concrete.

“Mrs. Barnes!” The nurse jogged down the driveway with the coat. She was a big girl with broad shoulders and ample cleavage. She was out of breath when she finally caught up to the old woman. She wrapped the coat around her shoulders, saying, “You’ll catch your death out here.”

Lena approached the women. “Mrs. Barnes, this is Agent Trent from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.”

Mrs. Barnes did everything but wrinkle her nose. “What do you want?”

Will felt like he was back in third grade and being yelled at for various schoolboy atrocities. “I’d like to talk to you about Allison and Tommy, if you have a minute.”

“It seems like you’ve already made up your mind about that.”

Will glanced back at her mailbox, remembering the street number from one of the incident reports. “Someone from your house called the police about Tommy’s dog barking. Your name wasn’t on the report.”

“That was me,” the nurse volunteered. “I look after Mrs. Barnes in the evenings. Usually I’m not here until seven, but she needed help with some chores and I didn’t have anything better to do.”

Will hadn’t realized how late in the day it was. He checked his cell phone and saw it was almost three o’clock. Faith had a little over an hour left before she went to the hospital. He asked the nurse, “You’re here every night?”

“Every night but Thursday, and I get the last Sunday of the month off.” Will had to slow down her words in his head to understand what she was saying. The woman had more of a twang than anyone Will had yet to meet in Grant County.

Lena took out her pen and notebook. She asked the nurse, “Can you tell me your name?”

“Darla Jackson.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a business card. Her fingernails were bright red press-ons that complemented her caked-on makeup. “I work out of the E-Med Building over on Highway 5.”

Lena pointed to the ancient Accord parked in front of the house. She already knew the answer, but she asked, “Is that yours?”

“Yes, ma’am. It ain’t much, but it’s paid for. I pay all my bills on time.” She gave them a meaningful look, and Will gathered that Mrs. Barnes didn’t know about the bad checks.

Lena handed Will the card. He looked down at it for a few seconds before asking Darla, “Why did you call the police about Tommy?”

She opened her mouth to answer, but Mrs. Barnes took over, directing her words toward Will. “That boy never did anybody any harm. He had the sweetest heart and the most gentle disposition.”

Will put his hands in his pockets, feeling like the cold was going to snap his fingers in two. He needed to find out more about Tommy’s sudden mood change in case Faith was right about the drugs he’d found in the kid’s medicine cabinet. “The incident report says that Tommy was yelling at someone. I take it that was you, Ms. Jackson?” The nurse nodded, and Will wondered why Darla’s name hadn’t been listed in the report. It seemed odd that the cop hadn’t recorded it along with all the other details. “Can you tell me what happened?”

“Well, first off, I didn’t know he was retarded,” she said, almost like an apology. “As a registered nurse, I try to be more compassionate with people of special needs, but that dog was just yapping its head off and Mrs. Barnes was trying to go to sleep-”

“I have terrible insomnia,” the old woman interjected.

“I guess I let my temper get the best of me. I went over there to tell him to quiet it down, and he told me he couldn’t and I said that I’d call the pound if he didn’t find a way and they’d make that dog real quiet. As in dead quiet.” She seemed embarrassed. “Next thing I know, I hear this loud noise. I look out the front window and it’s cracked. You can see I put some tape on it.” Will looked up at the house. The glass in the window had a crooked silver line of tape along the bottom. “That wasn’t in the report.”

Mrs. Barnes took over. “Lucky for us it was Carl Phillips they sent. I taught him in the fifth grade.” She put her hand to her chest. “We all agreed it was best to handle this with Gordon when he got back from Florida.”

Will asked the nurse, “You’re here every night. Does that include Sunday night and last night?”

“Yes. I’ve been up with Mrs. Barnes for the last three days. Her new medication has been giving her an awful time with her insomnia.”

“It’s true,” the woman agreed. “I can’t even get my eyes to close.”

“Did you see anything happening over at the house? Cars coming and going? Did Tommy use his scooter for anything?”

“The bedroom’s at the back of the house,” Darla explained. “We were both back there all night on account of it’s close to the toilet.”

“Darla, please,” Mrs. Barnes warned. “There’s no need for them to hear about that.”

Lena asked, “Did either of you know Allison Spooner? She lived across the street in Tommy’s house.”

They both became more circumspect. Darla offered, “I saw her around.”

“Did you see her boyfriend?”

“Sometimes.”

“Did you know his name?”

Darla shook her head. “He was in and out a lot. I heard them screaming sometimes. Arguing. Struck me as the type of boy with a temper.”

In Will’s experience, teachers were pretty good at making accurate snap judgments of people. He asked, “What about you, Mrs. Barnes?”

“I saw him once or twice” was all she offered.

“Did you ever hear him fighting with Allison?”

She touched her fingers to her ear. “I don’t hear very well.”

Will thought she was being uncharacteristically polite, since she’d certainly heard the dog barking. Of course, not many people wanted to speak ill of the dead. He imagined Mrs. Barnes would’ve had plenty to say about Allison Spooner last week. “Have you seen her car in the driveway recently?”

“Gordon asked her to park it in the street because it was leaking oil,” Mrs. Barnes said. “I haven’t seen it there in a while. At least not this weekend.”

“Me neither,” Darla confirmed.

“What about the boyfriend’s car? Did you notice what he was driving?”

Both women shook their heads. Again, Darla spoke. “I’m not good with those things. It was a station wagon. Green or blue. I know that’s not real helpful.”

He asked, “Did Allison ever have any friends come around? Men or women?”

Darla offered, “Just that boyfriend. He was a beady-eyed little thing.”

Will felt a drop of rain hit the top of his head. “Did you ever talk to him?”

“No, but I can spot a loser a mile away.” She gave a shockingly rough laugh. “I sure have dated plenty of ’em in my life.”

“The point is,” Mrs. Barnes interjected, “Tommy did not hurt that girl.” She glared at Lena. “And you know that.”

Lena said, “I do.”

That shut her up. She glanced back at the nurse. “I think I should go now.”

Will started, “Mrs. Barnes-”

She cut him off. “My son is a lawyer. Any more questions you have for me should be directed to him. Come, Darla. It’s time for my show.”

With that, she twisted the walker and began the slow climb back up her driveway. Darla shrugged an apology before she followed.

Will said, “I don’t think I’ve ever had an elderly woman in a walker lawyer up to me before.”

There was a buzzing in the air, like a bunch of cicadas decided to start singing at the same time. The rain didn’t fall so much as turn into a light mist. Will blinked, feeling beads of water forming on his eyelashes.

Lena asked, “What now?”

“I guess that’s up to you.” Will looked at his phone again to check the time. Charlie would be here soon. “You can go back to the college with me or you can go look for a lawyer.”

She didn’t have to think about her answer. “My car or yours?”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THEY’D BARELY LEFT TAYLOR DRIVE WHEN THE SKY OPENED UP. Visibility was short. Lena kept the speedometer just below thirty as she navigated the flooded streets. The cold was making her injured hand ache. She flexed her fingers, trying to get some blood circulating. There was definitely an infection. She felt hot and cold at the same time. A slow ache was building in the back of her head.

Still, she felt better than she’d felt in a long time. Not just because she’d taken responsibility for Tommy, but because she had found a way to get herself free one last time. And it would be the last time. Lena was going to do things the right way from now on. She wasn’t going to take shortcuts. She wasn’t going to take risks.

Frank couldn’t fault her for falling on her own sword, and if he did, then he could go screw himself. Will Trent had figured out everything that happened in the garage, but he couldn’t prove it without Lena and Lena wasn’t going to talk. That was her leverage over Frank. That was her ticket to freedom. If Frank wanted to drink himself to death, if he wanted to risk his life out on the street, then that was on him. She washed her hands of it.

The death of Tommy Braham was the only thing that still weighed on her. She needed to talk to a lawyer about how to handle things with the county, but she wasn’t going to fight them. She deserved to be punished. Tommy was her prisoner. Lena had just as good as handed him the means to take his life. Working the system, finding a loophole, was out of the question. Maybe Gordon Braham would sue her or maybe not. All Lena knew was that she was finished with this town. As much as she loved being a cop, as much as she craved the adrenaline rush, the feeling that she was doing a job that hardly anybody else in the world wanted to do-or could do-she had to move on.

Will shifted in the seat beside her. He’d been standing in the rain half the day. His sweater was wet. His jeans had never really dried. You could say a lot of things about the man, but you couldn’t claim he wasn’t determined.

She asked, “When are we going to do this? My confession, I mean.”

“Why the rush?”

She shrugged. He wouldn’t understand. Lena was thirty-five years old and she was looking at having to start her life back over again from scratch in the worst job market since the Great Depression. She just wanted to get it over with. The not knowing was the hard part. She was getting out, but how much blood was she going to have to leave on the table?

He told her, “You can still work a deal.”

“You have to have something valuable to get a deal.”

“I think you do.”

She didn’t acknowledge the fact. They both knew taking down Frank would make her landing a lot softer. But Frank had leverage Will didn’t know about. For this to work, Lena had to keep her mouth closed. It was too late to back out now.

He said, “Tell me about the drug situation in town.”

The question surprised her. “There’s not much to say. Campus security handles most of the small infractions at the school-pot, a little coke, a tiny bit of meth.”

“What about in town?”

“Heartsdale is pretty upscale. Rich people are much better at hiding their addictions.” She slowed down as she came to the red light on Main Street. “Avondale is all right, about what you’d expect-mostly middle-class people, working moms smoking meth after they put the kids to bed. Madison is the sore spot. Very poor. High unemployment, one hundred percent federal lunch assistance for all the kids. We’ve got a couple of small gangs running meth. They tend to kill each other, not civilians. There’s not much money in the police budget for setting up sting operations. We catch them when we can, but they’re like cockroaches. You take out one and there are ten more waiting to take their place.”

“Do you think Tommy might have been dealing drugs?”

Her laugh was genuine. “Are you kidding me?”

“No.”

“Absolutely not.” She shook her head, vehement. “If he was, Mrs. Barnes would’ve beat Nurse Darla to the phone. There were too many people in his life who were watching him too closely.”

“What about Allison? Could she have been using?”

Lena considered the question more seriously. “We haven’t uncovered anything that says drugs with her. She was barely getting by, living in a dump of a house. Her grades were good. She hadn’t missed a day of school. If she was selling drugs, she was doing a bad job, and if she was using drugs, she was holding on pretty well.”

“All good points.” He changed the subject. “It’s really convenient that Jason Howell died before we could question him.”

She stared up at the light, wondering if she should just run it. “I guess the killer was afraid he would talk.”

“Maybe.”

“Did Sara find anything?”

“Nothing remarkable.”

Lena glanced at Will. He was good at leaving things out.

He shrugged. “We’ll see what she finds in the autopsies.”

The light finally turned. Lena wrenched the wheel to the side. The back tires slipped as she pressed on the gas. “Listen, I know you’re sleeping with her.”

Will gave a surprised laugh. “All right.”

“It’s not a bad thing,” she allowed, even though it hurt her to admit it. “I knew Jeffrey. I worked with him most of my career. He wasn’t the kind of guy who went around sharing his feelings, but with Sara, everyone knew the score. He’d want her to find somebody. She’s not the type of person who’s good at being alone.”

He didn’t speak for a few seconds. “I guess that’s a nice thing for you to say.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not holding my breath for her to say anything nice about me.” Lena turned the windshield wipers on high as rain slammed into the car. “I’m sure she’s told you a lot of stories.”

“What would she tell me?”

“Nothing good.”

“Is she right?”

It was Lena’s turn to laugh. “You’re always asking questions that you already know the answer to.” Her cell phone started ringing, filling the car with the opening lines of Heart’s “Barracuda.” She checked the caller ID. Frank. Lena sent the call to voice mail.

Will asked, “Why does the school have your direct number to call when there’s a problem?”

“I know a lot of the guys on the security staff.”

“From when you worked there before?”

She was about to ask him how he’d found out about that, but Lena didn’t think she’d get much of an answer. “No, I know them from working as the liaison. The guys who were there when I was are all gone.”

“Frank sure does let a lot of the job fall to you.”

“I can handle it,” she said, but then realized that didn’t matter anymore. From now on, the only early morning phone calls that came to her house were going to be wrong numbers.

“What’s the security setup on campus? The same as when you were there?”

“It changed a lot after Virginia Tech.”

Will was familiar with the college massacre, the deadliest in American history.

She explained, “You know how institutions are-they’re reactive, not preventative. The bulk of the murders at Virginia Tech took place in the engineering building, so all the other schools tightened down security around their classrooms and labs.”

“The first victims were killed in their dorm.”

“It’s hard to police that. Students have to have key cards to get in and out, but it’s not a foolproof system. Look at what they did at Jason’s dorm. How stupid is that to cut a fire alarm?” Her phone started ringing again. Frank. Lena sent it to voice mail.

“Someone’s trying to get in touch with you.”

“You’re right.” Lena realized she was starting to talk like Will Trent. Maybe that wasn’t a bad thing considering he was running circles around her. She slowed the car to fifteen miles per hour as the rain rocked the car. Water flooded across the road, making the asphalt look rippled. The windshield wipers couldn’t keep up. She slowed the car to a stop, saying, “I can’t see in front of me. Do you want to drive?”

“I can’t do any better than you. Let’s wait it out and talk about our murderer.”

Lena put the car in park. She stared at the whiteness ahead. “Do you think we’re looking at a serial killer?”

“You have to have at least three victims on three different occasions for it to qualify as a serial.”

Lena turned in her seat to face him. “So, we’ve got to wait for a third body?”

“I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“What about your profile?”

“What about it?”

She tried to remember his earlier questions. “What took place? Two kids murdered, both with knives, both while they were alone. Why did it happen? The killer planned it out. He brought the knife. He knew the victims, probably knew Jason better than Allison because he was obviously furious when he killed him.”

Will continued, “He has a car. He knows the town, the topography of the lake and the placement of the cameras in the dorm. So, he’s someone who went to the school or goes to the school now.”

She shook her head, laughing at herself. “This is the problem with profiles. You could be talking about me.”

“It’s possible a woman committed these crimes.”

Lena gave him a tight smile. “I was with my boyfriend Jared last night and with you all day.”

“Thanks for the alibi,” Will told her. “But I’m being serious. Allison was small. A woman could have overpowered her. A woman could have floated her out into the lake, then chained her down with the cinder blocks.”

“You’re right,” she admitted. “Women like knives. It’s more personal.” Lena had carried a knife herself a few years ago.

Will asked, “Who are the women we’ve come up against on this case?”

She listed them out. “Julie Smith, whoever she is. Vanessa Livingston, the woman whose basement was flooded. Alexandra Coulter, one of Allison’s professors. Allison’s aunt Sheila, who hasn’t returned my calls yet. Mrs. Barnes from across the street. Darla the nurse with the long red nails.”

“Mrs. Barnes gives Darla a pretty tight alibi. She says she was up with her all night both nights.”

“Yeah, well, my uncle Hank says he never sleeps, but every time I stay over I hear him snoring like a freakin’ chainsaw.” Lena took out her notebook. Heat rushed through her body, but not from the infection in her hand. She kept her notebook angled away from Will as she thumbed past the 911 transcript, then quickly went to the page where she’d recorded Darla’s details. “The cell number of the 911 caller is a 912 area code. Darla’s is a 706.”

“Did her accent sound unusual to you?”

“Kind of trashy, but she’s obviously pulled herself up.”

“She didn’t sound Appalachian to you, did she?”

Lena stared at him openly. “She sounded like everyone I grew up with in south Georgia. Where are you getting Appalachia?”

“Do you know any women in town who moved down from the mountains in the last few years?”

She guessed this was another bit of information he was going to keep to himself. Two could play at that game. “Now that you mention it, we had some hillbillies a while back but they loaded up their truck and moved to Los Angeles.”

“Beverly Hills?” He chuckled appreciatively before throwing out one of his sudden subject changes. “You should have your hand looked at.”

Lena looked down at her injured palm. Her skin was sweating so badly that the Band-Aids were peeling off. “I’ll be all right.”

He told her, “I talked to Dr. Linton about gunshot wounds today.”

“You two kids know how to have fun.”

“She says the probability of an untreated gunshot wound getting infected is very high.”

No shit, she wanted to say. Instead, she told him, “Let’s go back to the profile.”

He hesitated long enough to let her know he wasn’t happy about letting someone else change the subject. “What’s the sequence of events?”

Lena tried to wrap her brain around the question. “We already went through what happened to Allison. With Jason, I guess the killer came into the dorm, moved the cameras, stabbed him, then left.”

“He covered Jason’s body with a blanket. He knew there would be a lot of blood.”

That was new. “Where was the blanket?”

“I found it in the bathroom at the end of the hallway.”

“You should check the drains, the-” She stopped herself. Will would know to do all of these things. He didn’t need her help. “There were four questions for the profile, right?”

“The last one is, you have to ask yourself who would have done these things in this order for these reasons.”

“Allison was killed before Jason. She could’ve been a warning that Jason didn’t heed.”

“Jason was holed up in his dorm room. We don’t even know if he heard about the murder.”

“So, the killer is antsy, worried that the message hasn’t gotten through.” A thought occurred to her. “The suicide note. The killer left it as a warning. ‘I want it over.’”

“Right,” he agreed, and she assumed he’d figured this out a while ago without telling her.

Still, she said, “It would make sense that the killer would be angry with Jason for not taking Allison’s death as a warning. He was stabbed at least eight or nine times. That speaks to a lot of anger.”

Will looked up at the sky. “Rain’s let up.”

Lena sat up in the seat, sliding the gear into drive. She rolled the car slowly forward. The road was still flooding. Streams of water gushed back toward Main Street. “Both Allison and Jason were students. They could be mixed up in something to do with the school.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. A grant. There’s all kinds of government money going in and out of there. Defense spending. The engineering school works on medical devices, nanotechnology. The polymer labs are testing all kinds of adhesives. We’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars.”

“Would a grad student have access to the money?”

She thought about it. “No. The doctoral candidates might, but the grad students basically do shitwork around the labs and the undergrads can’t wipe their own asses without getting permission. I used to date a guy who was in one of the master’s programs. They’re not involved in anything remotely interesting.”

They had reached Jason Howell’s dorm. There were two black vans parked outside. They each had the GBI logo on their doors and CRIME SCENE UNIT emblazoned in white on the sides. Despite herself, Lena felt excited, like a bloodhound who’d caught a scent. The sensation quickly faded. She had spent countless hours at this school studying for a degree that she would probably never get to use. At best, her education would go toward being one of those annoying people who point out everything they get wrong on CSI.

Will looked at his cell phone. “I need to make a quick call to my partner, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure.” Lena parked the car. The rain was still pounding down, and she bolted from the car and ran up the steps, holding down the hood of her jacket with both hands.

Marty was sitting inside reading a magazine. She knocked on the door. He jerked up his head, his glasses tilting on his nose. He buzzed her in with his card.

He said, “You look bad.”

Lena was taken aback by the comment. She ran her fingers through her hair, feeling a damp that hadn’t come from the rain. “It’s been a long day.”

“For you and me both.” Marty sat back on the bench. “I’ll be glad when it’s over.”

“Anything happening?”

“They got three men upstairs. Two more went over to the parking decks. The guy in charge, he’s got a handlebar mustache like he’s outta the circus. He found some car keys up in the room and drove around clicking the alarm until it went off.”

Lena nodded her approval, thinking the guy was pretty smart for a circus freak.

Marty admitted, “I never checked the parking decks. He was parked on the third level by the ramp.”

Lena gave him a pass. “I never checked the decks when all the kids were gone, either.”

“Uh-oh. Here he comes.” Marty reached over and pressed his key card against the pad.

Will pushed open the door, stamping his feet on the floor. “Sorry,” he apologized. “Mr. Harris, thank you for giving us your time today. I’m sorry we’re taking you away from your family.”

“Demetrius told me to stay here as long as you need me.”

“Can you tell me who was on shift last night?”

“Demetrius. He’s my boss. We’ve been switching back and forth so we each get some time off for the holiday.” He put down the magazine. “He doesn’t remember anything, but he’ll be happy to talk to you whenever you want.”

Lena thought there were more important things for Will to work on right now. “Marty told me that one of your people found Jason’s car over in the deck. They’re looking at it now.”

Will smiled. She could almost feel his relief. “That’s good. Thank you, Mr. Harris.”

He offered, “Demetrius is at the office pulling all the security tapes for you. I can drive you over if you want.”

Will glanced at Lena. Staring at videotaped footage for hours on end hoping to find two seconds of a clue was the kind of mind-numbing work that could make you want to put a bullet in your head. Lena wanted to be at that car combing through the carpet fibers, looking for traces of blood or fingerprints, but there was no point.

She volunteered, “I’ll go look at the tapes if you want.”

“It’s not going to be fun.”

“I think I’ve had enough fun lately.”

LENA SAT IN the interrogation room at the police station where she had talked to Tommy Braham two days before. She had rolled in the television cart with the old VCR and newer digital equipment that they sometimes used to record interviews. The film from the campus security cameras was a combination of both-digital for the outside cameras and regular VCR tape for inside. Demetrius, the chief of security, had given her everything he had.

As far as Lena knew, she was the only person in the station right now except for Marla Simms, who never left her desk, and Carl Phillips, who was back in the cells working as booking officer for the night. Carl was a big guy who didn’t take a lot of crap off anybody, which was why Frank had stuck him with booking duty. Carl was incredibly honest. Frank was doing everything he could to keep the man away from Will Trent.

Lena had already gotten the story from Larry Knox, who gossiped like a woman. She knew Carl had protested kicking out some of the more talkative prisoners in the cells after Tommy’s body was found. Frank had told Carl to leave if he didn’t approve, and Carl had taken him up on the offer. The only prisoners Frank hadn’t let go were either comatose or stupid. Top among this last designation was Ronald Porter, a twat of a man who’d beaten his wife so many times that her face had caved in. Frank had found a way to bully Ronny into keeping quiet. He was trying to push Carl around. He was lying to Will Trent. He was hiding evidence, probably postponing the delivery of the audio from the 911 tape. He thought he was blackmailing Lena.

The old man had a lot on his plate.

Lena rubbed her eyes, trying to clear her vision. The room was stuffy and hot, but that wasn’t the problem. She was pretty sure she had a fever. Her hand was already sweating through the fresh Band-Aids she’d found in the first aid kit. The flesh underneath was raw and hot. She had heard from Delia Stephens that they were going to wake Brad in the morning. Lena would go over first thing and find a nurse to take a look at her injury. She’d probably need a shot and have to answer a lot of questions.

There would be worse questions tonight. She would have to tell Jared what was going on. At least part of what was going on. Lena didn’t want to burden him with the whole truth. And she hadn’t laid herself in front of an oncoming train for nothing. Losing Jared on top of giving up her badge was the kind of sacrifice she was not willing to make.

Lena turned back to work. The videotapes she’d been watching for the last two hours ranged from tedious to boring. She should’ve just gone home but Lena felt a weird sense of duty toward Will Trent. He’d made her into a reluctant Cinderella. Lena figured it would take until midnight to watch all these tapes, around the same time her badge turned into a pumpkin.

She had found the good stuff early on. According to the time code, last night at eleven-sixteen and twenty-two seconds, the fire door at the back of Jason’s building was opened. Lena was familiar with the layout from her own days with campus security. The dorm, the cafeteria, and the back of the library formed an open U with loading docks in the middle. The school didn’t let students use the area as a shortcut because a kid had fallen off one of the docks several years ago and broken his leg in three places. The resulting lawsuit had been a hard blow, and they’d blown even more money putting in xenon lights that lit up the place like a Broadway stage.

The camera over the exit door recorded in color. The light coming through the door when it was opened showed xenon blue. Then the camera jerked and showed the ceiling with a pie-shaped wedge of blue light cutting the darkness. The door was closed, and the ceiling went dark.

At eleven-sixteen and twenty-eight seconds, a figure came into the second-floor hallway. The camera wasn’t night-vision equipped, but the light from the open dorm room picked out the form. Jason Howell’s clothes were bulky, the same as Lena had seen when the kid was lying dead in his bunk. Jason looked around nervously. His movements were panicked. He had obviously heard a noise, but he dismissed it easily enough. At eleven-sixteen and thirty-seven seconds, he went back into his room. From the sliver of light in the hall, she could tell he’d left his door slightly ajar.

The killer took his time climbing the stairs. Maybe he wanted to make sure Jason was caught truly unaware. It wasn’t until eleven-eighteen on the dot that the second-floor camera tilted up. The killer wasn’t as adept this time. Lena imagined he’d slipped on the stairs. The camera had only tilted slightly, at an angle rather than straight up, and she worked the pause until she caught sight of the tip of a wooden baseball bat. The rounded end was easily distinguishable, but the Rawlings logo gave it away. She recognized the lettering style from her softball days.

At eleven-twenty-six and two seconds, the xenon light once again flashed against the first-floor ceiling as the exit door opened. The killer had taken roughly eight minutes to end Jason’s life.

Marla knocked on the door as she walked into the room. Lena paused the tape she was staring at-the digital film of the empty parking lot in front of the library. “What is it?”

“You’ve got a visitor.” Marla turned on her heel and left.

Lena tossed down the remote, thinking Marla Simms was one person she would not miss when she left this place. Actually, now that she gave it some consideration, Lena could not name one person in town she couldn’t live without. It seemed odd to feel so detached from a group of people who had comprised her world for the last several years. Lena had always thought of Grant County as her home, the police force as her family. Now, she could only think about how good it would feel to finally be rid of them.

She pushed open the metal fire door and walked into the squad room. Lena stopped when she saw the woman waiting in the lobby, instantly recognizing Sheila McGhee from the picture Frank had taken out of Allison’s wallet. They had all been sitting on a bench in front of the student center. The boy Lena now knew was Jason Howell had his arm around Allison’s waist. Sheila sat beside her niece, close but not too close. The sky was deep blue behind them. The leaves had started to fall.

In person, Sheila McGhee looked thinner, harder. Lena had thought from the photo that she was local town trash, and now she guessed Sheila was the Elba, Alabama, version of the same. She was the sort of stick thin you got from eating too little and smoking too much. Her skin hung limply from the bones of her face. Her eyes were sunken. The woman in the photo had been smiling. Sheila McGhee looked like she would never smile again.

She nervously clutched her purse in front of her stomach as Lena approached. “Is it true?”

Marla was at her desk. Lena reached across and pressed the buzzer to open the gate. “Why don’t you come back?”

“Just tell me.” She grabbed Lena’s arm. She was strong. The veins along the back of her hand looked like braided pieces of twine.

“Yes,” Lena confirmed. “Allison is dead.”

Sheila wasn’t convinced. “She looked like a lot of girls.”

Lena covered the woman’s hand with her own. “She worked at the diner down the street, Mrs. McGhee. Most of the cops who work here knew her. She was known to be a very sweet girl.”

Sheila blinked several times, but her eyes were dry.

“Come back with me,” Lena offered. Instead of leading her to the interrogation room, she went into Jeffrey’s office. Oddly, Lena felt a sudden pang of loss. She understood that somewhere in the back of her mind, she’d thought that in ten, maybe fifteen years, she’d rightfully have this office. Lena hadn’t realized the dream was even there until she’d lost it.

Now wasn’t the time to dwell on her own broken dreams. She indicated the two chairs on the other side of the desk. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

Sheila sat on the edge of the seat, her purse in her lap. “Was she raped? Just tell me right out. She was raped, wasn’t she?”

“No, she wasn’t raped.”

The woman seemed confused. “Did that boyfriend of hers kill her?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Lena sat down beside her. She kept her hand in her lap. The skin was hotter than before. Every heartbeat shot a throb through her fingers.

Sheila said, “His name’s Jason Howell. She’s been seeing him a couple of years. They weren’t getting along lately. I don’t know what was going on. Some kind of disagreement or something. Allison was torn up about it but I told her to just let him go. Ain’t no man worth that kind of misery.”

Lena flexed her hand. “I’ve just come from the college, Mrs. McGhee. Jason Howell is dead. He was murdered last night.”

She looked as shocked as Lena had felt when she’d heard the news from Marty. “Murdered? How?”

“We think he was killed by the same man who murdered your niece.”

“Well…” She shook her head, confused. “Who would kill two college students? They didn’t have a dime between them.”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out.” Lena paused, giving the woman time to recover. “If you could think of anybody in Allison’s life, a person she mentioned, maybe something she’d gotten mixed up in that she couldn’t-”

“That don’t even make sense. What could Allison do to anybody? She never hurt nobody.”

“Did she ever tell you about her friends? Talk about anybody in her life?”

“There was that Tommy. He’s retarded, got a thing for her.” Realization dawned. “Have you talked to him?”

“Yes, ma’am. We cleared him of the crime.”

She kept clutching the purse in her lap. “What about that landlord? Seemed like he had a jealous girlfriend.”

“They were both in Florida when the crime was committed.”

Tears moistened her eyes but didn’t fall. She was obviously trying to think of someone else who could have done this. Finally, she gave up, taking a short breath and letting it out between her lips. Her shoulders slumped. “None of this makes sense. None of it.”

Lena kept her own counsel. She had been a cop for fifteen years and she had yet to work a murder case that made much sense. People always killed for the stupidest reasons. It was depressing to think that life held such little value.

Sheila opened her purse. “Can I smoke in here?”

“No, ma’am. Would you like to go outside?”

“Too damn cold.” She chewed at her thumbnail as she stared at the wall. The rest of her nails were chewed to the quick. Lena wondered if Allison had picked up the habit from her aunt. The girl’s nails had been painfully short.

Sheila said, “Allison had a professor she was mad at because he gave her a bad grade.”

“Do you remember his name?”

“Williams. She’s never made a C on a paper in her life. She was pretty upset about it.”

“We’ll look into that,” Lena told her, but she’d already talked to Rex Williams. He’d been in New York with his family since Saturday afternoon. A call to Delta confirmed his alibi. “Did Allison have a car?”

Her eyes shifted to the floor. “It was her mama’s. She kept it in Judy’s name because the insurance was cheaper that way.”

“Do you remember the make and model?”

“I don’t know. It was old, held together by spit and rust. I can look it up when I get home.” She clutched her purse as if she was ready to leave. “Do you need me to do that now?”

“No,” Lena told her. She was fairly certain Allison drove a red Dodge Daytona. “Did you talk to your niece much on the phone?”

“Once a month. We got closer after her mama passed.” A look crossed her face. “I guess it really is just me now.” She swallowed hard. “I got a son in Holman stamping out license plates. About the only thing he’s ever done right in his life.”

She meant Holman State Prison in Alabama. “What’s he in for?”

“Being stupid.” Her anger was so palpable that Lena resisted the urge to lean back in her chair. “He tried to rob a liquor store with a water pistol. That boy’s been in prison more days than he’s been out.”

“Is he affiliated with a gang?”

“Well, who the hell knows?” she demanded. “Not me, that’s for sure. I ain’t talked to him since they sent him up. Washed my hands of it all.”

“Was he close to Allison?”

“Last time they were together was when she was thirteen, fourteen. They were out swimming and he held her head under the water until she threw up. Little shit ain’t no better than his daddy.” She started rummaging around in her purse, but then seemed to remember she couldn’t smoke. She pulled out a pack of gum and shoved two pieces into her mouth.

“What about Allison’s father?”

“He’s living in California somewhere. He wouldn’t know her if she passed him on the street.”

“Was she seeing a counselor here at school?”

Sheila gave her a sharp look. “How did you know about that? Was it the counselor did it?”

“We don’t know who did it,” Lena reminded her. “We’re looking into all angles. Do you know her counselor’s name?”

“Some Jew. A woman.”

“Jill Rosenburg?” Lena knew the psychiatrist from another case.

“That sounds like it. Do you think she could’a done it?”

“It’s not likely, but we’ll talk to her. Why was Allison seeing Dr. Rosenburg?”

“She said the school made her.”

Lena knew freshmen were required to see a counselor once a semester, but after that, attendance was left to them. Most students found better ways to spend their time. “Was Allison depressed? Was she ever suicidal?”

Sheila looked down at her torn fingernails. Lena recognized the shame in her face.

“Mrs. McGhee, it’s all right to talk about it in here. All of us want to find out who did this to Allison. Even the smallest bit of information might help.”

She took a deep breath before confirming, “She cut her wrists eight years ago when her mama died.”

“Was she hospitalized?”

“They kept her for a few days, gave her some outpatient therapy. We were supposed to keep it up, but there ain’t no money for doctors when you can barely put food on the table.”

“Did Allison seem better?”

“She was good off and on. Like me. Probably like you. There are good days and bad days, and as long as there aren’t too many of either, you get along with your life fine.”

Lena thought that was one of the most depressing ways to live your life that she had ever heard. “Was she taking medication?”

“She said the doctor gave her something new to try. Far as I could see, it wasn’t helping much.”

“Did she complain about school? Work?”

“Never. Like I said, she put on a good face. Life is hard, but you can’t get down about every shitty thing that happens to you.”

“I found a picture of you in Allison’s wallet. She was with you and Jason. It looked like you were all sitting on a bench in front of the student center.”

“She kept that in her wallet?” For the first time, Sheila’s features relaxed into something close to a smile. She searched her purse again and found a photograph that was a match for the one in her niece’s wallet. She stared at the image a long while before showing it to Lena. “I didn’t know she kept a copy for herself.”

“When was it taken?”

“Two months ago.”

“September?”

She nodded, smacking her gum. “The twenty-third. I had a couple of days off and thought I’d drive over and surprise her.”

“What was Jason like?”

“Quiet. Arrogant. Too touchy. He kept holding her hand. Stroking her hair. Would’ve drove me up the wall having some boy pawing me like that, but Allison didn’t care. She was in love.” She put enough sarcasm in her voice to make the word sound obscene.

Lena asked, “How much time did you spend around Jason?”

“Ten, fifteen minutes? He said he had a class, but I think he was nervous around me.”

Lena could understand why. Sheila didn’t seem to have a high opinion of men. “What made you think Jason was arrogant?”

“He just had this look on his face like his shit don’t stink. You know what I’m saying?”

Lena had a hard time reconciling the chubby grad student she had seen on Jason’s student ID with the arrogant prick Sheila was painting. “Did he say anything specifically?”

“He’d just bought her this ring. It was cheaper than dirt, and not good for her color, but he was all puffed out like a peacock about it. Said it was a promise ring to buy her a nicer one by Thanksgiving.”

“Not by Christmas?”

She shook her head.

Lena sat back in the chair, thinking about what the woman had said. You didn’t give people Thanksgiving Day gifts. “Did either of them say anything about expecting some money to come in?”

“Ain’t no money coming in for either one of ’em. They were poor as church mice.” Sheila snapped her fingers. “What about that old colored man at the diner?”

Lena had thought Frank Wallace was the only person who still used that word. “We’ve talked to Mr. Harris. He’s not involved in this.”

“He was hard on her, but I told her it was good she was learning how to work with the colored. You look around big corporations now and they’re filled with black people.”

“That’s true,” Lena said, wondering if the woman thought her brown skin was the product of a bad home-tanning experiment. “Did Allison have other friends that she talked about?”

“No. There was just Jason all the time. Her whole world was wrapped up in him, even though I kept telling her not to put all her eggs in one basket.”

“Did Allison date anyone in high school?”

“Nobody. She was always about her grades. All she cared about was getting into college. She thought it would save her from…” She shook her head.

“Save her from what?”

A tear finally fell from her eye. “From ending up exactly the way she did.” Her lip started to tremble. “I knew I shouldn’t let myself hope for her. I knew something bad would happen.”

Lena reached over and took the woman’s bony hand. “I’m so sorry about this.”

Sheila straightened her spine, making it clear she didn’t need comforting. “Can I see her?”

“It’d be better if you waited until tomorrow. The people who are with her now are taking care of her for you.”

She nodded, her chin dipping down once, then jerking back up again. Her eyes were focused somewhere on the wall. Her chest rose and fell, a slight wheeze to her breath from years of smoking.

Lena looked around the room, giving the woman some time to pull herself together. Until yesterday, she hadn’t been in Jeffrey’s office since his death. All his stuff had been sent to the Linton house after he died, but Lena could still remember what the room had looked like-the shooting trophies and photographs on the walls, the neatly stacked papers on the desk. Jeffrey had always kept a small framed picture of Sara by the phone. It wasn’t the sort of glamour shot you’d expect a husband to have of his wife. Sara was sitting on the bleachers at the high school. Her hands were tucked into a bulky sweatshirt. Her hair was blowing in the wind. Lena supposed the scene had a deeper meaning, just like her picture of Jared at the football stadium. Jeffrey tended to stare at the picture a lot when he was in the middle of a difficult case. You could almost feel his desire to be home with Sara.

The door cracked open. Frank looked in. He was visibly angry, fists clenched, jaw so tight with fury it looked like his teeth might break. “I need to see you.”

Lena felt a chill from his tone, like the temperature in the room had dropped twenty degrees. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Now.”

Sheila scrambled to stand, taking her purse with her. “I’ll be going.”

“You don’t have to rush.”

“No.” She glanced nervously at Frank. There was fear in her voice, and Lena suddenly understood that Sheila McGhee was a woman who had been on the receiving end of a lot of anger from the men in her life. “I’ve taken up your time when I know you’ve got better things to do.” She took out a piece of paper and handed it to Lena as she rushed toward the door. “This is my cell phone number. I’m staying in the hotel over in Cooperstown.” She turned away from Frank as she left the room.

Lena asked, “Why did you do that? She was obviously scared.”

“Sit down.”

“I don’t-”

“I said sit!” Frank slammed her into the chair. Lena nearly fell back onto the floor. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

He kicked the door closed. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Lena glanced out the window into the empty squad room. Her heart was in her throat, the pounding making it hard for her to talk. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You told Gordon Braham that Tommy didn’t mean to stab Brad.”

She rubbed her elbow. It was bleeding. “So?”

“Goddamn it!” He pounded his fist on the desk. “We had a deal.”

“He’s dead, Frank. I was trying to give his father some peace.”

“What about my peace?” He raised his fists in the air. “We had a fucking deal!”

Lena held up her hands, afraid he would hit her again. She’d known Frank would be mad, but she had never seen him this furious in her life.

“Stupid.” He paced in front of her, fists still clenched. “You’re so fucking stupid.”

She told him, “Lookit, calm down. I took the blame for everything. I told Trent that it was all my fault.”

He stared, slack-jawed. “You did what?”

“It’s done, Frank. It’s over. Trent’s on to the homicides. That’s where you want him. We both know Tommy didn’t kill that girl.”

“No.” He shook his head. “That’s not true.”

“Have you been to the college? Jason Howell was murdered last night. There’s no way-”

He gripped his fist in his hand like he had to stop himself from punching her. “You said Tommy’s confession was solid.”

Lena’s voice took on a pleading tone. “Listen to what I’m saying.” She could barely catch her breath to speak. “I’ll take the fall for everything. Dereliction of duty. Negligence. Obstruction. Whatever they come up with, I’ll take it. I already told Trent you didn’t have anything to do with it.” He started shaking his head again, but Lena didn’t stop talking. “It’s just me and you, Frank. We’re the only witnesses and our stories will be exactly the same, because I’ll say whatever you want me to say. Brad didn’t see what happened in the garage. For better or worse, Tommy’s not going to come back from the grave and tell anybody different. It’s all gonna be whatever we tell them.”

“Tommy-” He put his hand to his chest. “Tommy killed-”

“Allison was killed by someone else.” Lena didn’t know why he couldn’t accept this. “Trent doesn’t care about Tommy anymore. He’s all excited about a serial killer.”

Frank’s hand dropped. All the color left his face. “He thinks-”

“You don’t get it, do you? Listen to what I’m saying. This case just went into the stratosphere. Trent’s got his lab guys down here processing Jason Howell’s dorm top to bottom. He’s going to have them in Allison’s room, the garage, out at the lake. Do you think he’s going to care about some stupid spic cop who let a kid kill himself in her custody?”

Frank sat heavy in Jeffrey’s chair. The springs squeaked. How many times had she sat in this office with Jeffrey and heard that chair groan as he sat back? Frank didn’t deserve to be here. Then again, neither did Lena.

She said, “It’s over, Frank. This is the end of the line.”

“There’s more to it, Lee. You don’t understand.”

Lena knelt down in front of him. “Trent knows the 911 transcript was changed. He knows Tommy had a phone that’s missing. He probably knows you took that picture from Allison’s wallet. He sure as hell knows Tommy went back into those cells with my pen and used it to cut his wrists.” She put her hand on his knee. “I already told him he can tape my confession. You were at the hospital. No one will blame you.”

His eyes worked back and forth as he tried to read her face.

“I’m not working a scam here. I’m telling you the truth.”

“The truth doesn’t matter.”

Lena stood up, frustrated. She was handing him everything on a platter and he was shoving it back in her face. “Tell me why not. Tell me where this blows back on anybody but me.”

“Why couldn’t you just follow my orders for once in your miserable fucking life?”

“I’m taking the fall!” she yelled. “Why can’t you get that through your head? It’s me, all right? It’s my fault. I didn’t stop Tommy from running out into the street. I didn’t stop him from stabbing Brad. I screwed up the interrogation. I badgered him into writing a false confession. I let him go back into the cells. I knew he was upset. I didn’t frisk him. I didn’t put him on suicide watch. You can fire me or I can resign or whatever you want. Take me in front of the state board. I’ll swear on a stack of Bibles that it was all my fault.”

He stared at her as if she was the stupidest human being walking the face of the earth. “That easy, huh? You do all that and then you just walk away.”

“Tell me where I’m wrong.”

“I told you to stick to the story!” He banged his hand so hard against the wall that the glass rattled in the window. “Goddamn it, Lena.” He stood up. “Where’s that boyfriend of yours, huh? You think you’re gonna squirm out of this so easy? Where’s Jared?”

“No.” She pointed her finger in his chest. “You don’t talk to him. You don’t ever say anything to him ever. You hear me? That’s the deal. That’s the only thing that keeps my mouth shut.”

He slapped away her hand. “I’ll tell him whatever I damn well please.” He started to leave. Lena grabbed him by his arm, too late remembering his injury from the garage.

“Shit!” he screamed, his knees buckling. He swung his fist around, slamming it into her ear. The inside of Lena’s head clanged like a bell. She saw stars. Her stomach clenched. She tightened her grip on his arm.

Frank was on all fours, panting. His fingers dug into the skin on the back of her hand. Lena tightened her grip so hard that the muscles screamed in her arm. She leaned down to look at his gnarled old face. “You know what I figured out this morning?” He was breathing too hard to answer. “You have something on me, but I’ve got even more on you.”

His mouth opened. Saliva sprayed the floor.

“You know what I’ve got?” He still didn’t answer. His face was so red that she could feel the heat. “I’ve got proof about what happened in that garage.”

His head jerked around.

“I got the bullet you shot me with, Frank. I found it in the mud behind the garage. It’s going to match your gun.”

He cursed again. Sweat poured down his face.

“Those classes I’ve been taking? The ones you’ve been making fun of?” She took pleasure in telling him, “There’s enough of your blood at the scene for them to get an alcohol level. What do you think they’re going to find? How many swigs did you take from that flask yesterday?”

“That don’t mean anything.”

“It means your pension, Frank. Your health insurance. Your good fucking name. You stuck around all these extra years, and it won’t mean a damn thing when they fire you for drinking on the job. You won’t even be able to get hired on at the college.”

He shook his head. “It’s not gonna work.”

Lena took some liberties with the truth. “Greta Barnes saw you give Tommy that beat-down. I bet that nurse of hers can tell some stories, too.”

He gave a strained laugh. “Call them in. Go ahead.”

“If I were you, I’d be careful.”

“You don’t see it.”

Lena stood up and wiped the grit off her pants. “All I see is a tired old drunk.”

He struggled to sit up. His breathing was labored. “You were always so sure you were right that you couldn’t see the truth if it was standing there in front of you.”

She took the badge off her belt and threw it on the floor beside him. The Glock she carried was her own, but the bullets belonged to the county. Lena ejected the magazine and thumbed out each round. The bullets gave off satisfying pings as they hit the tile floor.

He said, “It’s not over.”

She pulled back the slide and ejected the last round in the chamber. “It is for me.”

The door was stuck. She had to yank it open. Carl Phillips stood at the back of the squad room. He tipped his hat at Lena as she walked out of the office.

Marla swiveled in the chair, her arms crossed over her large chest as she tracked Lena’s progress through the room. She leaned down and pressed the buzzer for the gate. “Good riddance.”

There should have been some kind of pull, some kind of loyalty, that made Lena look back, but she walked out into the parking lot, inhaling the wet November air, feeling like she had finally freed herself from the worst kind of prison.

She took a deep breath. Her lungs shook. The weather had cleared up a little, but a strong, cold wind dried the sweat on her face. Her vision was sharp. There was a buzzing in her ears. She could feel her heart rattling in her chest, but she forced herself to keep moving.

Her Celica was parked at the far end of the lot. She looked up Main Street. The waning sun was making a brief appearance, giving everything a surreal blue cast. Lena wondered how many days of her life had been spent going up and down this same miserable strip. The college. The hardware store. The dry cleaners. The dress shop. It all seemed so small, so meaningless. This town had taken so much from her-her sister, her mentor, and now her badge. There was nothing else that she could give. Nothing left to do but start over.

Across the street, she saw the Heartsdale Children’s Clinic. Hareton Earnshaw’s billion-dollar Beemer was parked in the lot, taking up two spaces.

Lena passed her Celica and kept walking across the street. Old man Burgess waved at her from the front window of the dry cleaners. Lena waved back as she climbed the hill to the clinic. Her hand was killing her. She didn’t think she could wait to go to the hospital tomorrow morning.

During Sara’s tenure, the clinic had always been well maintained. Now, the place was starting to go downhill. The driveway hadn’t been pressure-washed in years. The paint on the trim was chipped and faded. Leaves and debris clogged the gutters so bad that water flowed down the side of the building.

Lena followed the signs to the rear entrance. There were cheap stepping-stones laid in the dead grass. At one time, there had been wildflowers back here. Now there was just a mud track leading to the creek that ran through the back of the property. The torrential rains had turned it into a fast-flowing river that looked ready to flood the clinic. Erosion had taken hold. The channel was wider now, at least fifteen feet across and half as deep.

She pressed the buzzer by the back door and waited. Hare had been renting space in the building since Sara left town. Lena had to think that Sara would’ve never let her cousin work alongside her when she owned the clinic. They were close, but everybody knew Hare was a different kind of doctor from Sara. He saw it as a job, whereas Sara saw it as a calling. Lena was hoping this was still the case, that a doctor like Hare would view her as a billable office visit instead of a blood enemy.

Lena pressed the buzzer again. She could hear the bell ringing inside along with the quiet murmur of a radio. She tried to flex her hand. There was less movement now. Her fingers were fat and swollen. She pulled back her sleeve and groaned. Red streaks traced up her forearm.

“Shit,” Lena groaned. She put her hand to her cheek. She was burning up. Her stomach was sour. She hadn’t felt right for the last two hours, but it all seemed to be catching up with her at once.

Her phone started to ring. Lena saw Jared’s number. She gave the buzzer by the door one last push before answering. “Hey.”

“Is this a bad time?”

She paced in front of the door. “I just quit my job.”

He laughed like she had told an unbelievable joke. “Really?”

She leaned her back against the wall. “I wouldn’t lie to you about that.”

“Does that mean you’d lie about other things?”

He was kidding, but Lena felt her heart drop when she thought about how all of this could’ve blown up in her face. “I want to get out of town as soon as possible.”

“All right. We’ll start packing tonight. You can move in with me and we’ll figure out later what you’re going to do.”

Lena stared at the river. She could hear the rush of the current. The sound was like boiling water in her ears. Even though the rain had stopped, the river was still rising. She conjured the image of a huge wave crashing down the hill, flooding out the street and taking away the police station.

“Lee?” Jared asked.

“I’m all right-” Her voice caught. She couldn’t start crying now or she’d never stop. “I should be home in an hour or two.” Her throat started to tighten. “I love you.”

She ended the call before he could answer. Lena looked at her watch. There was a doc-in-the-box in the drugstore over in Cooperstown. Maybe she could find a physician’s assistant who needed some cash and wouldn’t ask questions. She pushed away from the wall just as the back door opened.

Lena said, “Oh.”

“I didn’t see your car out front.”

“I’m parked across the street.” Lena held up her hand, showing the dangling Band-Aids. “I… uh… kind of have a problem I can’t take to the hospital.”

There was none of the expected reluctance. “Come on in.”

The smell of bleach hit Lena as she walked into the building. The cleaning staff had been thorough, but the stench made her stomach turn.

“Go into exam one. I’ll be right there.”

“All right,” Lena agreed.

Being in the doctor’s office seemed to give her body permission to hurt. Her hand was throbbing with every heartbeat. She couldn’t pull her fingers into a fist. There was a high-pitched noise in her ears. Then another one. She realized she was hearing sirens.

Lena bypassed the exam room and went to the front of the building to see what was going on. The pocket door to the front office took some coaxing to open. The blinds were drawn, the room dark. She turned on the lights and saw the source of the odor.

Two gallon jugs of bleach were on the desk. Leather gloves soaked in a stainless steel bowl. Cotton swabs and paper towels littered the floor. A wooden baseball bat was laid out on a sheet of brown craft paper. Blood was embedded in the letters around the Rawlings logo.

Lena put her hand to her gun, but she was too late. She felt a drop of blood trickle down her neck before her body registered the pain of the cold steel of a knife pressing into her skin.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHARLIE REED BOUNDED DOWN THE DORM STAIRS WITH a smile showing under his mustache. He was in a white clean suit, covered head to toe in Tyvek. “Glad you’re here. We were just about to start the magic.”

Will tried to return his smile, but the effort failed. Charlie was a forensics expert. He had the luxury of looking at cases through the lens of a microscope. He saw bone and blood that needed to be photographed, analyzed, and catalogued, where Will saw a human being whose life had been ended by a cold-blooded killer who seemed to be doing a very good job of evading justice.

Despite Will’s earlier hopes, none of the evidence they’d found so far had been useful. Jason Howell’s Saturn station wagon was remarkably tidy. Aside from some breath mints and a couple of CDs, there was nothing personal in the car. The blanket Will had found in the bathroom stall held more promise, but that had to be analyzed in the lab. This process could take a week or more. The hope was that the killer had injured himself or leaned against the blanket, leaving trace evidence that might link him to the crime. Even if Charlie found DNA in the material that did not belong to Jason, they could only run it through the database and hope that their killer was in the system. More often than not, DNA was a tool used to rule out suspects, not track them down.

“This next bit should go a little faster.” Charlie leaned down and rummaged through one of the open duffel bags at the bottom of the stairs. He found what he was looking for and told Will, “Suit up. We should be ready in five minutes.” He bounded back up the steps two at a time.

Will grabbed one of the folded clean suits from the pile at the bottom of the stairs. He tore the package open with his teeth. The suit was meant to limit skin and hair transfer to the crime scene. It had the added bonus of making Will look like a giant, elongated marshmallow. He was tired and hungry. He was pretty sure he smelled, and though his socks were dry now, they had dried in such a way as to feel like sandpaper rubbing across the blister on his heel.

None of this mattered. Every second that ticked by gave Jason and Allison’s killer the freedom to move about freely, planning his escape or, worse, planning his next murder.

Will glanced at Marty Harris. The man was still guarding the front door with his usual degree of thoroughness. Marty’s head was back against the wall, glasses askew. His soft snores followed Will up the stairs.

Charlie knelt in the middle of the hallway, adjusting a fixture on top of a tripod. There were three more tripods spaced evenly across the hall, going all the way to the bathroom. Similarly Tyvek-suited men all adjusted gauges as Charlie told them to go up or down. They had been here for hours. Photographing the scene, graphing the measurements of the hall, the bathroom, Jason’s room, his desk and his bed. They had documented every item from the inside out. Finally, they had given Dan Brock permission to remove the body. Once Jason was gone, they had taken more photos, diagrammed more graphs, and finally started bagging any evidence that seemed pertinent to the case.

Jason’s laptop was toast, soaked to the core. There was a Sony Cyber-shot with some provocative photos of Allison Spooner in her underwear. All of Jason’s schoolwork and notebooks seemed to be what you’d expect. His Dopp kit contained the normal toiletries and no prescription bottles. The strongest drug he had in the room was an expired bottle of Excedrin PM.

Jason’s cell phone was more interesting, if not more helpful. The contacts list contained three numbers. One belonged to Jason’s mother. She wasn’t pleased to be talking to the police twice in one day about a son she apparently didn’t care that much about. The second number dialed the main switchboard to the physical engineering building, which was closed for the holiday. The third belonged to a cell phone that rang once, then announced that the voice mailbox was full. The cell phone company had no record of who the number belonged to-it was a pay-as-you-go deal-an expected revelation considering none of these kids seemed to have good enough credit to get a phone in their own names.

Will assumed the cell phone with the full mailbox belonged to Allison Spooner. She had called Jason fifty-three times over the weekend. Nothing came in after Sunday afternoon. Jason’s only outgoing call had been made to his mother three days before he died. Of all the details that Will had discovered about the victims in this case, Jason Howell’s sad, lonely life was the most depressing.

“Almost ready,” Charlie said, the excitement building in his voice.

Will stared into the hallway, wishing he never had to see this place again. The dingy tan linoleum on the floors. The scuffed and dirtied white walls. Making it worse was the lingering smell of Jason’s body, even though the kid had been removed several hours ago. Or maybe it was all in Will’s mind. There were crime scenes he had visited years ago that felt like they’d left their mark on his nasal passages. Just thinking about them could evoke a certain odor or bring a sour taste into the back of his throat. Jason Howell would forever be trapped in the pantheon of Will’s bad memories.

“Doug, move that a little to the left,” Charlie said. He’d divided the crime scene into three areas: the hall, Jason’s room, and the bathroom. They had all agreed that their best bet was finding something in the hallway. The group of assembled men hadn’t needed to articulate the problems associated with looking for DNA in a communal boys’ bathroom, but Will could tell none of them were looking forward to crawling around on that particular floor.

Charlie tinkered with the light on the tripod. “This is the ME-RED I told you about.”

“Nice.” Will had already gotten an earful about the extremely fascinating qualities of the Mobile Electromagnetic Radiation Emitting Diode, which as far as Will could tell was fancy jargon for a gigantic black light that had a longer range than the Wood’s lamps that had to be carried around by hand. The lights would pick up visible traces of blood, urine, and semen, or anything else that contained fluorescent molecules.

For the traces that were less visible, Charlie and his team had sprayed the hallway with Luminol, a chemical that reacts to the presence of iron in blood. Crime shows had made the general public well aware of the blue glow emitted by Luminol when the lights were turned off. What they hadn’t shared was that the glow usually lasted around thirty seconds. Long-exposure cameras had to be used to record the process. Charlie had set these up on tripods in all four corners of the hallway and staggered more around the entrance to Jason’s dorm room. For good measure, he had tilted the security camera back down to capture it all in real time.

Will stood at the mouth of the stairs, watching the team make last-minute adjustments. He wondered if the murderer had paused here on the stairs to psych himself up for the kill. It was all so premeditated, so well thought out. Enter through the back door. Push up the cameras. Go up the stairs. Weapons in hand. Gloves on. Plan ready: Incapacitate Jason with the bat. Drag him to the bed. Cover him with the blanket. Stab him repeatedly. Hide the blanket in case it contained any trace evidence. Go back down the stairs. Leave by the back door.

Was it really as calculated as that? What went through a person’s mind before they went to someone’s dorm room, their home, and fractured their skull with a baseball bat? Would the killer’s pulse quicken? Would his stomach tighten the way Will’s did when he thought about the gruesome crime scene? There had been so much blood, so much brain and tissue, spattered around the room that Charlie and his team had been forced to make a grid so that they could clear a path to fully document the carnage.

What kind of person could stand over that bed and methodically stab another human being?

And what about poor Jason Howell? Lena was probably right that the killer had known Jason well enough to hate him. Despise him. What kind of trouble had the kid gotten himself into that he would become the object of such fury?

“I think we’ve got it.” Charlie grabbed a handheld video camera and pulled Will toward Jason’s room. He told Doug, “Go get the lights.” Doug took off down the stairs and Charlie explained the plan to Will. “First we’ll see what the Luminol brings out, then we’ll go to the black light.”

“Ready?” Doug called.

“Ready,” Charlie yelled back.

The hall went dark. The Luminol responded quickly. Dozens of small, elongated circles glowed blue just outside Jason’s open doorway. They were smeared where the killer had tried to wipe them up, but the pattern was easy to follow. The drops revealed his movements. After stabbing Jason to death, the killer had walked out of the room, heading toward the stairs, then changed his mind and doubled back toward the bathroom.

“The original plan was probably to take the blanket with him,” Charlie said. He held the video camera low, documenting the drips. Will could hear the steady, slow click of the long-exposure cameras capturing the evidence.

He asked, “What about this?” A larger stain, more like a puddle, was on the floor just beside the bathroom entrance. Three feet above it was a patterned mark on the wall.

Charlie twisted up the LCD screen of the camera. Will saw the images in double as he recorded the luminescent blobs. “Our killer comes out of the room, heads toward the stairs, then he realizes the blanket is dripping. He goes toward the bathroom, but first-” Charlie pointed the camera toward the glowing stain on the floor. “He leans something against here. I’d guess a bat or a club. That’s the mark on the wall.” Charlie zoomed in close to the wall where the top of the weapon had rested. “Uh-oh, fingerprint.”

Charlie got down on his knees and pointed his camera at an almost perfect circle. “Gloved, it looks like.” He zoomed in closer. The glowing dot started to fade. “We’re losing it.”

The Luminol’s reaction time varied depending on the content of iron in the blood. The dot slowly disappeared, then the puddle on the floor was gone. Charlie muttered a curse as the hall was plunged back into darkness.

Charlie rewound the camera to look at the print again. “He was definitely wearing gloves.”

“Latex?”

“Leather, I think. There’s a grain.” He showed Will the LCD, but the light was too intense for him to see anything but a blob. “Let’s see if it still shows up under the diodes.” He called, “Black light, please.”

There were a couple of popping noises, then a steady hum. The hallway lit up like a Christmas tree, illuminating every protein-based fluid ever left here.

“Impressive, right?” Charlie’s lips glowed a bright blue, probably from the Vaseline in his lip balm. He knelt down on the floor. The blood trail that had glowed so brightly minutes before was barely visible. “Our killer did a good job cleaning up after himself.” He took a few more photographs. “Good thing he didn’t use bleach or we wouldn’t be able to see any of this.”

“I don’t think he planned to leave a mess,” Will said. “Our guy is careful, but the only things he probably brought with him were the weapons-the knife and a bat or club. He used the blanket on the bed to catch the spatter. He tried to leave with it, then like you said, he changed his mind because it was dripping.” Will felt himself smile as he remembered, “There’s a supply closet beside the stall where I found the blanket.”

“You’re a genius, my friend.” They both went into the bathroom. Charlie flipped on the lights. Will clamped his hands over his face, feeling like his eyeballs were being stabbed.

“Sorry about that,” Charlie apologized. “I should’ve warned you to close your eyes and open them slowly.”

“Thanks.” Spots exploded in front of his eyes with every blink. Will put his hand on the wall so he wouldn’t trip over his own feet.

Charlie stood in front of the supply closet with his video camera. “We can check the photographs, but I’m sure this door was closed when we got here.” His hands were still gloved. He carefully turned the knob.

The closet was shallow, a metal shelving unit taking up most of the space. There was nothing unusual about the contents of the shelves: gallon jugs of cleaning products, a box of rags, sponges, two toilet plungers, a mop tucked into a rolling yellow bucket. Two spray bottles hung from a bungee cord on the back of the door. Yellow liquid for spot-cleaning stains. Blue liquid for windows and glass.

Charlie documented the contents of the shelves with the camera. “These cleaners are industrial grade. They’re probably thirty percent bleach.”

Will recognized the Windex label on one of the spray bottles. He had the same cleaner at home. It contained vinegar to help cut the grease. “You can’t mix vinegar and bleach, right?”

“Right. It forms a chlorine gas.” Charlie followed Will’s gaze to the spray bottle. He laughed as he made the connection. “I’ll be right back.”

Will let out a deep breath that he felt like he’d been holding for the last two days. Bleach glowed just as brightly as blood when sprayed with Luminol, obscuring any evidence. Vinegar, by contrast, formed a natural bond with iron, making it more visible when it was sprayed. That explained why the spots in the hall glowed with such intensity. The killer had used the Windex to clean up the floor. He might as well have drawn an arrow to the bloodstains.

Charlie was back with Doug and another assistant. They worked in tandem, taking photographs and handing Charlie the brush and powder to check the Windex bottle for fingerprints. Charlie was methodical, starting from the top down, going from one side of the bottle to the other. Will had expected him to find fingerprints immediately. The bottle was half full. The janitorial staff must have used it. The closet wasn’t locked. The students would have access.

“It was wiped down,” Will guessed. The trigger and the area around the grip were clean.

“Don’t give up on me yet,” Charlie mumbled. The brush swept back and forth across the label. All of them knelt down as Charlie dusted the bottom surface.

“Bingo,” Will whispered. He could see a partial fingerprint on the bottom of the bottle. The black practically glowed against the dark blue liquid.

“What do you see?” Charlie asked. He took a flashlight out of his pocket and shone it on the clear plastic. “Holy Christ. Good catch, eagle eye.” He traded the flashlight for a piece of clear tape. “It’s a partial, probably the pinky finger.” He sat back on his heels so he could transfer the tape to a white card.

Will said, “His gloves would’ve been bloody. He had to take them off to clean the floor.”

Charlie stood up with Doug’s help. “We’ll drive this to the lab right now. I can wake some people up. It’ll take time, but it’s a good print, Will. This is a solid lead.” He told his assistant, “The other evidence is in the van. There’s a pill bottle in my tackle kit. Grab that, too.”

Will had forgotten about the bottle in Tommy Braham’s cabinet. “Did you field-test the capsules?”

“I did.” Charlie started down the hall toward the stairs. The black lights bounced off their white Tyvek suits. “It’s not coke, meth, speed, or any of the usual suspects. Was the kid into sports?”

“I don’t think so.”

“It could be a steroid or a performance enhancer. A lot of younger guys are using those to bulk up now. The Internet makes them easy to get. I sent some photos back to Central to see if they recognize the label or capsules. A lot of these dealers are into branding. They keep their labels consistent so their product gets advertised.”

Tommy didn’t strike Will as interested in weight lifting, but he’d been a skinny kid. Maybe he wasn’t happy with that. “Did you find any fingerprints on the bottle?”

Charlie stopped at his tackle box. He pulled out the pill bottle, which had been sealed in a proper evidence bag instead of the Ziploc Will had found in the kitchen. “I lifted two sets. The first was adult, probably male. The second was a partial webbing.” He indicated the skin between his thumb and index finger. “I don’t know if it’s male or female, but I’d guess whoever wrote those words on the label held it in her hands while she did. I’m saying ‘her’ because it looks like a woman’s handwriting.”

“Can I keep the bottle? I want to show it around and see if anybody recognizes it.”

“I already have some of the capsules in the van.” Charlie gave him the bag as they walked down the stairs. “You still want a lift to the Braham house? I think I can spare one of my guys to process the garage now.”

“That’d be great.” Will had forgotten his Porsche was still at the Taylor Drive house. He checked the time on his phone. Knowing it was already past ten o’clock made Will feel even more exhausted than he had before. He thought about Cathy Linton’s dinner invitation and his stomach rumbled.

Downstairs, Marty was awake by the door. He was talking to a large man who was his exact opposite except in skin color.

“You Agent Trent?” The man slowly made his way over. He was built like a linebacker who’d gone to seed. “Demetrius Alder.”

Will was too busy unzipping his clean suit to shake the man’s hand. “Thank you for cooperating with us today, Mr. Alder. I’m sorry we’ve kept you out so late.”

“I gave Lena all the tapes. I hope she comes up with something.”

Will assumed he would have heard from her hours ago if Lena had found anything of note in the security footage. Still, he told Demetrius, “I’m sure they’ll prove useful.”

“The dean wanted me to give you his number.” He handed Will a card. “He had me check all the buildings. We didn’t find anything else. All the dorms are empty. Somebody’s coming to fix the cameras first thing after the holiday.”

Will sat down so he could pull off the rest of the suit. He remembered something Marty had said earlier. “What about the car that was hit by the security camera?”

“It was parked in the loading dock. Good thing it was empty. Camera busted straight through the hatchback window.”

“Hatchback?” Will stopped worrying about the suit. “What kind of car was it?”

“I think it was one’a them old Dodge Daytonas.”

THE RAIN HAD TURNED into a light sleet by the time Charlie’s van reached the tow yard. Gusts of wind shook the vehicle. Water pooled in the parking lot. There was no way to get to the front door without getting soaked. Will felt his socks getting wet again. The blister on his heel was so raw that he was starting to limp.

“Earnshaw’s,” Charlie said, and Will guessed he meant the sign glowing over the building. There was a whippet-thin older man standing in the doorway dressed in bib overalls and a baseball cap. He held the door open for them as they ran into the building.

“Al Earnshaw.” The man offered his hand to both of them. He told Will, “You’re Sara’s friend, right? My sister’s told me a lot about you.”

Will guessed that explained the man’s uncanny resemblance to Cathy Linton. “She’s been very kind to me.”

“Sure she has.” Al bellowed a good-natured laugh, but he slapped Will on the arm hard enough to throw off his balance. “Car’s in the back.” He motioned them toward the door behind the counter.

The shop was large, with the usual array of girlie calendars and posters of sexy, bikini-clad ladies washing cars. There were six lifts, three on each side. The tool chests were neatly lined up, their covers locked down tight. Al had turned on the propane heaters, but the cold was still biting. The roll-up doors in the back rattled from the wind. Allison’s Dodge Daytona was on the ground by the last lift. The back windshield was buckled in the center, just as Demetrius had said.

Will asked, “Did you call Allison to let her know you had her car?”

“We don’t call people when we tow them. Signs are up all over the school with our number. I figured the owner got a ride home for the holiday and we’d get a call when they got back and saw the vehicle wasn’t there.” Al offered, “Tommy’s Malibu is on the lot if you want to see it.”

Will had forgotten about the young man’s car. “Did you figure out what was wrong with it?”

“Starter was stuck again. He was crawling under there and hitting it with a hammer to get it unstuck.” Al shrugged. “I went ahead and fixed it. Gordon’s truck doesn’t have much more life left in it. He’ll need something to drive.” He took a rag out of his pocket and wiped his hands. The gesture had the hallmark of a nervous tic. His hands were as clean as Will’s.

Will asked, “Did you know Tommy well?”

“Yep.” He tucked the rag into his pocket. “I’ll leave you guys to it. Just holler if you need me.”

“Thank you.”

Charlie walked over to the car. He put his tackle box on the floor and opened the lid. “Sara?” he asked.

“She’s a doctor in town.” He corrected, “I mean, Atlanta. She works at Grady Hospital. She grew up here.”

Charlie handed him a pair of latex gloves. “How long have you known her?”

“Little while.” Will took a longer time putting on the gloves than the task warranted.

Charlie got the message. He opened the car door. The hinges squealed loudly. Lionel Harris had been right about the condition of the Daytona. It was more rust than paint. The tires were bald. The engine hadn’t been started in days but the smell of burning oil and exhaust filled the air.

“I guess the rain got to it,” Charlie said. The dash was a sturdy molded plastic, but the cloth seats were wet and moldy. A stream of water had poured in from the busted hatchback, soaking the carpets, flooding the footwells. Charlie pulled up the front seat and water sloshed onto his pants. School papers floated in the murky liquid. The ink had washed away. “This is going to be fun,” Charlie muttered. He was probably wishing he was back at the campus with his fancy lights. “I suppose we should do this right.” He took his video camera out of the tackle box. Will walked around the car while he got everything ready.

The trunk was held down with a frayed bungee cord. The glass was safety-coated with a transparent sheet that held the shattered pieces of the window together. Will had a spiderweb view inside the messy trunk. Allison was as sloppy as Jason was neat. Papers were scattered around, their ink smudged from the rain. Will saw a flash of pink. “That’s her book bag.” He reached down to loosen the bungee cord.

“Hold on, now.” Charlie backed him off. He checked the rubber gasket around the window to make sure it was doing its job. “Looks like it held,” Charlie told him. “Still, be careful. You don’t want a sheet of glass coming down on your head.”

Will figured there were worse things that could happen. He waited patiently as Charlie focused the camera on Will, narrating in an official-sounding voice for the benefit of the tape. “This is Agent Will Trent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. I’m Charles Reed, also with the bureau. We are at Earnshaw’s Garage on Highway 9 in the city of Heartsdale, which is in Grant County, Georgia. It’s Tuesday, November twenty-sixth, at approximately ten thirty-two in the evening. We are about to open the trunk of a Dodge Daytona reportedly belonging to murder victim Allison Spooner.” He nodded, indicating Will could finally proceed.

The bungee cord was stretched to its limit. Will had to put some muscle into unhooking it from the bumper. The hatchback was heavy, and he remembered Lionel saying the pistons were blown. Allison had used a broken-off broom handle to prop it open. Will did the same. Tiny pieces of glass rained down as he opened the hatch all the way.

“Hold for just a second,” Charlie said, zooming in on the book bag, the papers, and fast-food trash.

Finally, he gave the okay to remove the bag.

Will grabbed the strap. The bag had some heft to it. Despite the pink, the fabric looked waterproof. Under the camera’s watchful eye, he pulled back the thick zipper. There were two heavy books on top, perfectly dry. From the drawings of molecules on the outside, Will assumed these were Allison’s chemistry texts. There were four spiral-bound notebooks, each with different-colored covers. Will flipped through these for the camera, the pages blurring. He guessed these were Allison’s class notes.

“What’s that?” Charlie asked. A slip of paper was sticking out of the blue notebook.

Will unfolded the page. It was half a sheet of college-ruled paper. The side edge showed where it had been ripped away from the spiral. There were two lines of text on the page. All caps. Ballpoint pen. Will stared at the first word, trying to make out the shapes of the letters. His reading was always worse when he was tired. His eyes refused to focus. He held up the paper to the camera, asking, “You want to do the honors?”

Thankfully, Charlie didn’t find the request odd. He narrated in his camera voice, “This is a note found in the pink book bag reportedly belonging to the victim. It reads, ‘I need to talk to you. We’ll meet at the usual place.’”

Will looked back at the words. Now that he knew what they said, he could better make out the letters. He told Charlie, “The ‘I’ looks familiar. It’s similar to the one written on the fake suicide note.” He pointed to the torn bottom half of the page for the benefit of the video camera. “The note found at the lake was written on the bottom half of a torn sheet of paper.” Will recalled Charlie’s words, “‘I need to talk to you. We’ll meet at the usual place.’ And then you add the last part from the fake suicide note, which is ‘I want it over.’”

“Makes sense.” Charlie’s voice changed again as he announced that he was stopping the tape. Wisely, he didn’t want to record their speculation for a future defense attorney to show in court.

Will studied the letters on the page. “You think a man or a woman wrote this?”

“I have no idea, but it doesn’t match Allison’s handwriting.” Will guessed he was using the girl’s class notes as a comparison. Charlie continued, “I saw some of Jason’s homework in his room. He wrote in all caps like that.”

“Why would Allison have a note like this from Jason?”

Charlie guessed, “He could’ve been an accomplice to her murder.”

“Could be.”

“And then the killer decided he didn’t want to leave any witness.”

Will’s brain was starting to hurt. The theory didn’t add up.

Charlie offered, “I’m not a professional, but I’d say the writing in Allison’s journal matches the writing on the pill bottle.”

“Her journal?”

“The blue notebook. It’s obviously some kind of journal.”

Will thumbed through the pages. Slightly less than half the notebook was filled. The remaining pages were blank. He checked the printing on the front of the plastic cover. The number 250 was in bold type with a circle around it. He assumed that was the number of total pages. “Doesn’t this seem like a weird choice for a diary?”

“She was twenty-one. Were you expecting one of those girlie leather-bound lock-and-key deals?”

“I guess not.” Will flipped through the pages. Allison’s handwriting was awful, but her numbers were legible. There were dates at the top of each entry. Some entries were as long as two paragraphs. Sometimes, there was just a stray line or two. He flipped to the last entry. “November thirteenth. That was two weeks ago.” He checked the other dates. “She was pretty consistent up until that point.” He flipped to the front page. “The first entry was on August first. That’s a pretty short diary.”

“Maybe she starts a new one every year on her birthday.”

Will remembered Sara’s notation on the whiteboard at the funeral home. Allison Spooner’s birthday was two days before Angie’s. “She was born in April.”

“Can’t blame me for trying.” Charlie picked up his camera. “I guess we should get some of this on tape. Anything pop out at you?”

Will stared at the open journal. Allison’s handwriting looked like a series of loops and squiggles. He patted his pocket. “I think I left my glasses in my glove compartment.”

“Bummer.” Charlie turned off the camera. “I’ll run you by your car so you can get started. Between this and the Braham place, I’m going to be pulling an all-nighter, too.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

LENA FELT ANOTHER RIPPLE OF TREMORS WORKING ITS WAY through her body. It was like an earthquake, a slow rumble and then the world turned upside down. Her teeth started to chatter around the gag in her mouth. Her muscles quivered, working their way into full spasm. Her feet kicked. She saw flashes of light. There was no use fighting it. She could only lie there and wait for the sensation to pass.

With agonizing slowness, the spasms subsided. Her body began to relax. Her jaw loosened. Her heartbeat slowed, flopping in her chest like a fish caught in a net.

How had she let herself get into this situation? How had she been so easily fooled?

She was hog-tied, an entire length of rope wrapped around her body, her hands, her feet. Even without the bindings, she doubted she could do anything but lie there and sweat. Her clothes were saturated. The concrete beneath her had wicked the moisture so that she was surrounded by a pool of her own making.

And it was cold. It was so damn cold that even without the shaking, her teeth wanted to chatter. She could barely feel her hands and feet. Dread filled her body when she thought about another attack coming on. She wasn’t going to be able to hold on much longer.

Was it the infection in her hand? Was that the reason she couldn’t stop shaking? The throbbing had turned into a stabbing pain that ebbed and flowed with no discernible pattern. Her life wasn’t flashing in front of her eyes, but she couldn’t stop thinking about what had brought her here. If she managed to get out of this place, if she managed somehow to get free, then everything had to change. The fear flooding through her body had brought with it a clarity that Lena had never known. For so long, she had tricked herself into thinking that she held back the truth to protect other people-her family, her friends. Now she could see that she was only protecting herself.

If Brad managed to pull through, she would apologize to him every day for the rest of her life. She would tell Frank that she was wrong about him. He was a good man. He’d stuck by Lena all these years when a smarter man would’ve dropped her for the worthless friend she was. Her uncle had gone through hell with Lena. She had pushed him away so many times that it was a miracle he was still standing.

And she had to find a way to get Sara Linton alone. Lena would bare her soul, confessing her complicity in Jeffrey’s death. She hadn’t killed him with her own hands, but she had put him in harm’s way. Lena had been Jeffrey’s partner. She was supposed to have his back, but she had stood silently by while she watched him walk into the fire. She had practically pushed him in that direction because she was too much of a coward to face it on her own.

Maybe that was what was causing the seizures. The truth was like a shadow creeping through her soul.

Lena twisted around her good hand to reach her watch. The rope bit into her wrist. The pain barely registered as she pressed the button for the light.

Eleven fifty-four.

It was almost midnight.

Lena knew she had left the station around six. Jared would be wondering where she was. Or maybe Frank had gotten to him. Maybe Jared was on his way home to Macon right now.

Jared. The truth would lose him to her forever.

The punishment fit the crime.

Her jaw clenched. She closed her eyes, feeling another wave coming on. The tremble moved down her shoulders, through her arms and into her hands. Her feet kicked. She felt her eyes roll back. There were noises. Grunting. Screaming.

Slowly, Lena opened her eyes. She saw darkness. Her mind suddenly came back to her. She was tied up. She was gagged. Sweat covered her body. The stench of sweat and urine filled the air. She pressed the button on her watch. In the soft glow she could see the skin of her wrist. Red lines streaked up toward her shoulder, toward her heart. She looked at the display.

Eleven fifty-eight.

It was almost midnight.