Broken

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

SARA LISTENED TO THE KITCHEN CLOCK TICK AS THE HANDS moved past midnight. She had been sitting at the table staring at the pile of dirty dishes stacked in and around the sink for longer than she cared to remember. It wasn’t just lethargy that kept her rooted to the chair. Her mother’s kitchen makeover included two dishwashers that were so modern it was impossible to tell whether or not they were running, yet she still insisted on hand washing her china and all the pots and pans. Or, insisted that Sara do the chore, which made Cathy’s anachronistic ways even more outrageous.

The mindless task should have been a welcome end to Sara’s day. Working at Grady Hospital was like trying to stand still on a spinning merry-go-round. The flow of patients never ebbed, and Sara generally was juggling twenty cases at any given time. Between consultations and her usual workload, she saw an average of fifty to sixty patients during any twelve-hour shift. Slowing all this down, focusing on just one patient at a time, should have been an easier task, but Sara found that her mind worked differently now.

She realized that the constant pressure of the ER was a gift in many ways. When Sara had lived in Grant County, her life had taken on a far more leisurely pace. She usually ate breakfast with Jeffrey in the morning. Two or three times a week, they had supper with her family. Sara was the team doctor for the local high school football team. She helped coach volleyball in the summer. Her free time was infinite if she managed her schedule right. Going to the grocery store could take several hours if she ran into a friend. She clipped articles from magazines to share with her sister. She’d even joined her mother’s book club, until they started reading too many serious books to make it fun anymore.

By contrast, the fast pace of her work in Atlanta kept Sara from thinking about her life too much. Usually by the time she finished dictating her charts, all she could do was drag herself home and take a bath before falling asleep on the couch. Her days off were equally wasted with what she now saw was busywork. Her chores were something to get out of the way quickly. She scheduled lunches and dinners so that she didn’t have too much time alone with herself. Alone with her thoughts.

All of her usual crutches had disappeared in the basement of Brock’s funeral home. An autopsy certainly required a great deal of attention, but after a point, the motions were rote. Measure, weigh, biopsy, record. Neither Allison Spooner nor Jason Howell had left any remarkable clues in their deaths. The only thing that bound them together was the knife that had been used to kill them. The stab wounds were nearly identical-each made by a small, sharp blade that had been twisted before it was removed to ensure maximum damage.

As for Tommy Braham, Sara had found only one item that stood out: the boy had a small metal spring in the front pocket of his jeans, the type that you usually found in a ballpoint pen.

The hall light snapped on. Cathy yelled, “Those dishes aren’t going to wash themselves.”

“Yes, Mama.” Sara glared at the kitchen sink. Hare had come for dinner, but she guessed the spread put on was really intended for Will. Cathy loved cooking for an appreciative audience and Will certainly fit that bill. Her mother had used every piece of china in the house, serving coffee in teacups with saucers, which Sara thought was very sweet until her mother informed the table that Sara was going to wash every last piece. Hare had brayed like a donkey at the expression on her face.

“Try twitching your nose while you stare at them,” Tessa offered as she came into the kitchen. She was dressed in a billowing yellow nightgown that formed a tent over her belly.

“You could always offer to help.”

“I read in People magazine that dishwater is bad for the baby.” She opened the refrigerator and stared at the mountains of food inside. “You should’ve watched the movie with us. It was funny.”

Sara sat back in her chair. She wasn’t up for a romantic comedy right now. “Who called a while ago?”

Tess pushed around the Tupperware containers lining the shelves. “Frank’s ex. You remember Maxine?” Sara nodded. “He’s still refusing to go to the hospital.”

Frank had suffered a mild heart attack at the police station this afternoon. Fortunately, Hare was down the street at the diner or things might have been a lot worse. Five years ago, Sara would have rushed to Frank’s side. Today, when she had heard the news at the funeral home, all she could muster was sadness. “What did Maxine want?”

“Same as usual. To complain about Frank. He’s a stubborn old coot.” Tessa put a tub of Cool Whip on the table and went back to the fridge. “You all right?”

“I’m just tired.”

“Me too. Being pregnant’s hard work.” She sat down across from Sara with a leg of fried chicken in her hand. She scooped it into the Cool Whip.

“Please tell me you’re not going to eat that.”

Tessa offered her the leg.

Despite her better judgment, Sara tried the ungodly mix. “Wow. It’s sort of salty and sweet at the same time.” She passed the leg back to her sister.

“I know, right?” Tessa dipped it into the tub again and took a bite. She chewed thoughtfully. “You know, I pray for you every night.”

Sara laughed before she could catch herself. She apologized as quickly as she could. “I’m sorry. I just…”

“Just what?”

She thought now was as good a time as any for the truth. “I didn’t think you really believed in all that.”

“I’m a missionary, you dumbass. What do you think I’ve been doing with my life for the last three years?”

Sara struggled to dig herself out of an ever-deepening hole. “I thought you wanted to go to Africa and help children.” She didn’t know what else to say. Her sister had always enjoyed life. Sometimes it felt like Tessa was enjoying it for both of them. Sara had always had her mind on school and then work. Meanwhile, Tessa dated whom she pleased, slept with whoever struck her fancy, and never made apologies for any of it. “You have to admit that you’re not a typical missionary.”

“Maybe not,” she allowed, “but you’ve got to believe in something.”

“It’s hard to believe in a God who would let my husband die in my arms.”

“You can’t fall off the floor, Sissy. If somebody throws you a rope, then you better start climbing.”

Cathy had told Sara as much when she’d first lost Jeffrey. “I’m glad you’ve found something that gives you peace.”

“I think you’ve found something, too.” Tessa had finished the chicken leg, but she used the bone to spoon up more Cool Whip. “You’re different from when you first got here. You’re doing the work that you want to do.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Where’s Will?”

Sara groaned. “Please don’t start that again.”

“The next time you see him, take that band out of your hair. You look prettier with it down.”

“Please, please stop.”

Tessa reached out and took her hand. “Can I tell you something?”

“As long as it’s not advice on chasing after a married man.”

She squeezed Sara’s hand. “I’m really in love with my husband.”

Sara gave a careful “Okay.”

“I know you think Lem is boring and too earnest and too self-righteous, and believe me, he can be all those things, but a thousand times a day, I hear a song, or I think of something funny, or Daddy says one of his stupid puns, and the first thing that comes into my head is ‘I want to tell Lem about this.’ And I know that halfway around the world, he’s thinking the same thing.” She paused. “That’s what love is, Sara, when there are so many things about you that you only want one person in the world to know.”

Sara remembered how that felt. It was like being wrapped in a warm blanket.

Tessa laughed. “Good Lord, I’m gonna start crying. When Lem gets home, he’s gonna think I’m some kind of basket case.”

Sara put her hand over Tessa’s. “I’m glad you’ve found someone.” Her words were genuine. She could see that her sister was happy. “You deserve to be loved.”

Tessa smiled knowingly. “So do you.”

Sara chuckled. “I walked right into that.”

“I’d better get to bed.” She groaned as she stood. “Wash your hands. You smell like chicken and Cool Whip.”

Sara smelled her hands. Her sister was right. She stared again at the full sink, thinking she might as well start on the dishes so she could go to bed. She groaned as loudly as Tessa had when she got up from the table. Her back was hurting her from leaning over all day. Her eyes were tired. She rummaged under the cabinet for the dish liquid, hoping that her mother was out so she would have a legitimate excuse to leave the dishes until morning.

“Crap,” Sara mumbled, finding the Dawn behind a full box of dishwashing powder that her mother had never opened. She heard footsteps in the hall. “Did you come back for the Cool Whip?” she asked. Tessa didn’t answer, but Sara was sure that she was there. “Don’t tell me you’re here to help.” She went into the hall and saw not Tessa, but Will Trent.

“Hey.”

He stood in the center of the hall. His leather briefcase was at his side. There was something different about him that Sara couldn’t quite put her finger on. He looked the same. He was even wearing the same clothes she’d seen him in for the last two days. There was definitely something wrong, though. He had a sadness about him that cut straight through.

She waved him into the kitchen. “Come on in.” Sara put the dish liquid on the counter. Will hovered in the kitchen doorway.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Your sister let me in. I was staring through the window in the door trying to figure out if y’all were still awake. I know it’s late.” He stopped, his throat working as he swallowed. “It’s really late.”

“Is everything okay?”

He nervously moved his briefcase from one hand to the other, then back again. “Please tell your mother I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to dinner. We had a lot to do, and I-”

“It’s all right. She understands.”

“Did the autopsies-” He stopped again, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. His hair was wet from the rain. “I was thinking while I was driving over here that maybe Jason’s murder was a copycat.”

“No,” she told him. “The wounds were identical.” Sara paused. Obviously, something awful had happened. “Let’s sit down, okay?”

“That’s all right, I-”

She sat down at the table. “Come on. What’s wrong?”

He glanced back toward the front door. She could tell he didn’t want to be here, but he seemed incapable of leaving.

Sara finally took his hand and pulled him to the chair. He sat, the briefcase in his lap. “I’m sorry about this.”

She leaned forward, resisting the urge to hold his hand. “Sorry for what?”

He swallowed again. She let him speak in his own time. His voice was low in the large room: “Faith had her baby.”

Sara put her hand to her mouth. “Is she all right?”

“Yeah, she’s fine. Both of them are fine.” He took his cell phone out of his pocket and showed her a picture of a red-faced newborn in a pink knit hat. “I guess it’s a girl.”

Faith had given the baby’s weight as well as her name in the message. Sara told him, “‘Emma Lee.’”

“Eight pounds, six ounces.”

“Will-”

“I found this.” He put the briefcase on the table and opened the locks. She saw a stack of papers, an evidence bag with a red seal. He pulled a college notebook with a blue plastic cover from one of the pockets. Black fingerprint powder spotted the cover. “I tried to clean it up,” he said, wiping the grime on the front of his sweater. “I’m sorry. It was in Allison’s car and I…” He flipped through the pages, showing her the scrawled handwriting. “I can’t,” he said. “I just can’t.”

She realized that Will hadn’t looked at her once since walking into the room. He had such an air of defeat about him, as if every word that came from his mouth caused him pain.

Sara’s purse was on the counter. She got up and found her reading glasses. She told Will, “Mama fixed a plate for you. Why don’t you eat something and I’ll start on this?”

He stared at the notebook in front of him. “I’m not really hungry.”

“You’ve already missed supper. If you don’t eat that food, my mother will never forgive you.”

“I really can’t-”

Sara opened the warming drawer. Her mother had cooked for an army again, this time roast beef, potatoes, collards, green beans, and snap peas. The cornbread was wrapped in aluminum foil. Sara put the plate in front of Will, then went back to get silverware and a napkin. She poured a glass of iced tea and found some lemon in the refrigerator. While she was up, she turned on the oven so that she could warm the cherry cobbler sitting on the counter.

She sat down across from Will and opened the notebook. She looked at him over her glasses. He hadn’t moved. “Eat,” she said.

“I really-”

“That’s the deal,” she told him. “You eat. I read.” She stared at him, making it clear that she wasn’t going to back down.

Reluctantly, Will picked up the fork. She waited until he had taken a bite of potatoes to open the spiral-bound notebook.

“Her name’s on the inside of the cover with the date, August first.” Sara went to the first page. “‘August first. Day one.’” She thumbed through the pages. “Each entry has the same format. Day two, day three…” She flipped to the back. “All the way to day one hundred four.”

Will didn’t comment. He was eating, but she could tell he was having difficulty swallowing. Sara could not imagine his frustration over having to have the journal read to him. He clearly took it as a personal failure. She wanted to tell him it wasn’t his fault, but obviously, asking for Sara’s help had taken so much out of him that she couldn’t risk pushing him any further.

She returned to the first page. “‘Day one,’” she repeated. “‘Prof. C was sarcastic today. Cried later for about twenty minutes. Just couldn’t stop. Was really annoyed in Dr. K’s class because D behind me kept passing notes to V and I couldn’t concentrate because they kept laughing.’”

She turned the page. “‘Day two. Cut myself shaving my leg pretty bad. Hurt all day. Was two minutes late for work but L didn’t say anything. Felt paranoid all day that he was going to yell at me. Can’t take him being mad.’”

Sara kept reading, page after page of Allison’s thoughts on L at the diner and J who had forgotten that they were supposed to meet for lunch. Every notation described Allison’s feelings about the situation, but never in florid detail. She was either happy or sad or depressed. She cried, usually for a period of time that seemed unusually long given the circumstances. Despite the emotional revelations, there was something clinical about the telling, as if the girl was an observer watching her life go by.

Getting through the entire journal took over an hour. Will finished his supper, then ate most of the cobbler. He folded his hands on the table and stared straight ahead at the wall. He paced until he realized the distraction slowed down her reading. When Sara’s voice started to falter, he got her a glass of ice water. Eventually, he noticed the dishes in the sink, and she read over her shame as he turned on the faucet and started cleaning. Her legs started to cramp from sitting so long. Sara ended up standing by him at the sink, so at least there was the appearance of her helping. Will had made it through all the pots and pans and was starting on the china when Sara finally reached the last entry.

“‘Day one hundred four. Work was all right. Concentration bad all day. Slept nine hours last night. Took a two-hour nap during lunch. Should have studied. Felt guilty and depressed all day. No word from J. I guess he hates me now. Can’t blame him.’” She looked up at Will. “That’s it.”

He glanced up from the bread plate in his hands. “I counted all the pages. There are two hundred fifty.”

She checked the front cover, noting the page count. The girl hadn’t torn out any pages. Sara told him, “She stopped writing two weeks before she died.”

“Something happened two weeks ago that she didn’t want to write down.”

Sara put the notebook on the table and grabbed a towel. Will was doing a much more thorough job than Sara ever had. He changed out the water often and dried everything as he went along. There wasn’t much space left on the counters, so he’d made educated guesses about where things went. Sara would have to go back through and put the pots and pans in their proper place, but she didn’t want to do that in front of Will now.

He saw the towel in her hands. “I’ve got this.”

“Let me help.”

“I think you’ve helped enough.” She thought he was going to leave it at that, but Will told her, “It’s been worse today than usual.”

“Stress is a contributing factor-when you get tired or if something emotional happens.”

He scrubbed hard at the plate in his hands. Sara saw that he hadn’t bothered to roll up his sleeves. The cuffs of his sweater were soaked. He said, “I’ve been trying to dig a new sewer line to my house. That’s why my laundry is behind.”

Sara had been expecting a non sequitur, but she’d hoped he could hold off for a few moments longer. “My father built this house with money from people who try to do their own plumbing.”

“Maybe he can give me some pointers. I’m pretty sure the trench I started is filled in by now.”

“You didn’t use a trench box?” Sara stopped drying the plate. “That’s dangerous. You shouldn’t go past four feet without shoring up the sides.”

He gave her a sideways glance.

“I’m my father’s daughter. Call me when you’re back in Atlanta. I know my way around a backhoe.”

He picked up a bread plate. “I think you’ve done me enough favors to last a good long while.”

Sara watched his reflection in the window over the sink. His head was down as he concentrated on the task at hand. She reached back and loosened her ponytail. Her hair fell to her shoulders.

She said, “Go sit down. I can finish the washing.”

Will glanced up at her, then did a double take. She thought he was going to say something, but he picked up another plate and dunked it into the soapy water instead. Sara opened the drawer to put away the silverware. Her hair hung down in her face. She was glad for the cover.

He said, “I hate leaving dishes lying around.”

She tried for levity. “Don’t let my mother hear that. She’ll never let you leave.”

“I had this foster mother named Lou once.” Will waited for her to look up in the window. “She worked all day at the supermarket, but she came home at noon to fix me lunch no matter what.” He rinsed the plate and handed it to Sara. “She always got home after I’d gone to bed, but one night I heard her come in. I went into the kitchen and there she was in her uniform-it was brown, too tight for her-and she was standing in front of the sink. It was piled with all the plates and dishes and leftover food from lunch. I hadn’t done anything while she was gone. I just watched TV all day.” He glanced up again at Sara’s reflection. “Lou was standing there looking at the mess in the sink and just bawling. Like, the kind of crying you do with your whole body.” He took the next dish off the pile. “I went into that kitchen and cleaned every single dish I could find, and for the rest of the time I was there, I never made her have to clean up after me again.”

“Did she try to adopt you?”

He laughed. “Are you kidding? She left me alone all day except for lunch. I was eight years old. They took me away when the school counselor noticed I hadn’t been to class in two months.” He pulled the drain on the sink. “She was a nice lady, though. I think they let her have an older kid.”

Sara asked the question before she could stop herself. “Why weren’t you ever adopted? You were an infant when you entered the system.”

Will kept his hand under the stream of water as he adjusted the temperature. She thought he was going to ignore her question, but he finally said, “My father had custody of me at first. The state took me away after a few months. They had good reasons.” He plugged the drain so the sink could fill. “I was in the system for a while, then an uncle showed up and tried to make a go of it. He meant well. I hope he meant well. But he wasn’t really equipped to take care of a child at that point in his life. I was in and out of his house, in and out of foster homes and the children’s home. Eventually, he gave up. By that time I was six years old and it was too late.”

Sara looked up. Will was staring at her reflection again.

He said, “You’ve heard about the six-year rule, right? You and your husband were trying to adopt. You must’ve heard it.”

“Yes.” Sara felt a lump in her throat. She couldn’t look at him. She dried the saucer again, though not a drop of water was left on the surface. The six-year rule. She’d heard the phrase in her pediatric practice, long before Jeffrey had ever suggested they adopt. A child who had been in the system more than six years was considered tainted. Too many bad things had happened to him by then. His memories were too fixed, his behaviors too ingrained.

Years ago, someone in Atlanta had heard this warning, too. Probably from a friend or maybe even a trusted family doctor. They had gone to the children’s home, seen six-year-old Will Trent, and decided he was too broken.

He asked, “Does that journal sound like a twenty-one-year-old girl’s journal to you?”

Sara had to clear her throat so she could speak. “I’m not sure. I didn’t know Allison.” She forced herself to think about his question. “It seems off to me.”

“It doesn’t sound like a ‘Dear Diary’ sort of thing.” He started on the last stack of dishes. “It’s more like a long list of complaints about people, professors, her job, lack of money, her boyfriend.”

Sara admitted, “She sounds kind of whiny.”

“The point of whining is so other people hear you and feel sorry for you.” He asked, “Does she sound depressed?”

“There’s no doubt about that. The journal makes it clear that she was having a very rough time of it. She tried to kill herself once before, which points to at least one depressive episode in her past.”

“Maybe she was in a suicide pact with Jason and a third person.”

“That’s a pretty awful way to die if you want to kill yourself. Pills would be much easier. Hanging. Jumping off a building. Also, I think if there was a pact, they’d do it together.”

“Did you find any signs of drug use on Tommy, Allison, or Jason?”

“No outward signs. They were all healthy, of average or above average weight. The blood samples and tissues are on their way to Central. We’ll get something back in a week to ten days.”

“Charlie and I were kicking around this theory that Jason could have been involved in Allison’s murder. We’re pretty sure the killer used him to lure Allison to the lake. Or at least his handwriting.” He turned off the water and wiped his hands on his jeans as he walked to his briefcase. “This was tucked inside the journal.”

Sara took the plastic evidence bag he gave her. There was a note inside. “That paper looks familiar.” She read the words. “‘I need to talk to you. We’ll meet at the usual place.’”

Will added the phrase from the suicide note. “‘I want it over.’”

Sara sat down at the table. “Jason wrote Allison’s fake suicide note.”

“Or, he wrote the entire note to somebody else, and that somebody tore off the bottom half and left it in Allison’s shoe as a warning to him.” He saw the flaw. “But then why did Allison have it in her notebook?”

“No wonder your brain is tired.” Sara’s head was starting to ache just thinking about it.

Will took another plastic bag out of his briefcase. “I found this in Tommy’s medicine cabinet. Charlie field-tested it, but he’s not sure what’s inside.”

Sara rolled the pill bottle around to read the label through the plastic. “That’s strange.”

“I was hoping you’d know what it is.”

“‘Tommy, do not take these,’” she read. “I’m not a handwriting expert, but it seems to me that Allison wrote this. Why would she tell Tommy not to take them? Why not just throw them away?”

Will didn’t offer her a quick answer. He sat back in his chair, staring at her. “They could be poison, but if you had poison, why would you stab somebody in the neck?”

“What are these letters on the bottom of the label?” Sara unclipped her reading glasses from her shirt so she could see. “H-C-C. What does that mean?”

“Faith tried to run the initials through the computer, but I’m not sure how effective the search was. The picture I took wasn’t very good and…” He indicated his head as if there was something wrong with it. “Well, you know I wasn’t much help.”

“Have you ever had your vision checked?”

He gave her a puzzled look, as if she should know better. “Needing glasses isn’t my problem. I’ve had this all my life.”

“Do you get headaches when you read? Feel nauseated?”

He gave a half-shrug and a nod. She could tell she wasn’t going to get much more time on the subject.

“You should see an ophthalmologist.”

“It’s not like I can read the chart.”

“Oh, sweetheart, I can shine a light into your eyes and tell if your lens is focused.”

Her endearment hung awkwardly between them. Will stared at her. His hands were on the table. He was nervously twisting his wedding ring.

Sara scrambled to hide her embarrassment. She grabbed the pill bottle and held it up for him. “Look at the small print for me.” Will held her gaze a moment longer before looking at the bottle in her hand. “Now, stay still.” She carefully slid her glasses onto his head, then held up the pill bottle again. “Is that better?”

Will obviously didn’t want to, but he looked at the bottle anyway. He glanced back at Sara, surprised, before he looked at the bottle again. “It’s sharper. It’s still not right, but it’s better.”

“Because you need reading glasses.” She put the bottle back on the table. “Come to the ER when you get back to Atlanta. Or we can go to my old place tomorrow. You’ve probably seen the children’s clinic across from the police station. I used to have special eye charts for-” Sara felt her mouth drop open.

“What is it?”

She took back her glasses and read the fine print on the label again. “H-C-C. Heartsdale Children’s Clinic.” Sara had been considering all the illegal reasons behind the bottle of pills and none of the legal ones. “This is part of a drug trial. Elliot must be running it out of the clinic.”

“A drug what?”

She explained, “Pharmaceutical companies have to do drug trials on medicines they want to bring to market. They pay for volunteers to participate in the studies. Tommy must have volunteered, but I can’t see him meeting the protocols. If there’s one rule that governs these studies, it’s that the participants have to give informed consent. There’s no way Tommy could do that.”

Will sounded skeptical. “Are you sure that’s what this is?”

“The number at the top of the label.” She pointed to the bottle. “It’s a double-blind study. Each enrollee gets assigned a random number by the computer that says whether they get the real drug or the placebo.”

“Have you done a trial before?”

“I’ve done a few at Grady, but they were surgical or trauma related. We used IVs and injections. We didn’t have placebos. We didn’t give out pills.”

“Did it work the same way as a regular drug trial?”

“I suppose the procedures and reporting would be the same, but we were working in trauma situations. The intake protocols were different.”

“How does it work if it’s not in a hospital?”

Sara put the bottle back down on the table. “The pharmaceutical companies pay doctors to run studies so that we can have yet another cholesterol-lowering drug that works about as well as the twenty other cholesterol-lowering drugs that are already on the market.” She realized her voice was raised. “I’m sorry I’m so angry. Elliot knows Tommy. He knows he’s disabled.”

“Who’s Elliot?”

“He’s the man I sold my practice to.” Sara kept shaking her head, disbelieving. She had sold her practice to Elliot so that the children in town would be helped, not experimented on like rats. “This doesn’t make sense. Most studies don’t even involve children. It’s too dangerous. Their hormones aren’t fully developed. They process medications differently than adults. And it’s almost impossible to get parents to consent to their children being tested with experimental drugs unless they’re deathly ill and it’s a last-ditch effort to save them.”

Will asked, “What about your cousin?”

“Hare? What does he have to do with this?”

“He’s an adult doctor, right? I mean, his patients are adults?”

“Yes, but-”

“ Lena told me he rents space at the clinic.”

Sara felt sucker-punched. Her first instinct was to defend Hare, but then she remembered that stupid car he’d forced her to look at in the pouring rain. She had seen a BMW 750 in an Atlanta showroom that retailed for over a hundred thousand dollars.

“Sara?”

She pressed her lips tightly together to keep herself from talking. Hare at her clinic pushing pills on her kids. The betrayal cut like glass.

Will asked, “How much money can a doctor make from running a drug trial?”

Sara had trouble forming words. “Hundreds of thousands? Millions if you go around and speak at conferences.”

“What do the patients get?”

“Participants. I don’t know. It depends on what stage the trial is in and how long you have to participate.”

“There are different phases?”

“It’s based on risk. The lower the phase, the higher the safety risk.” She explained, “Phase one is limited to around ten or fifteen people. Participants could make ten to fifteen thousand dollars depending on the trial, whether it’s in-patient or not. Phase two expands to around two or three hundred people who get four or five grand each. Phase three is less dangerous, so the money is lower. They enroll thousands of people for hundreds of dollars.” She shrugged. “The amount of money they make depends on how long the trial lasts, whether they need you for a few days or a few months.”

“How long do the big trials last?”

Sara put her hand on Allison’s notebook. No wonder the girl had been obsessed with recording her moods. “Three to six months. And you have to submit journals on your progress. It’s part of the supporting documentation to track side effects. They want to know your moods, your stress level, whether you’re sleeping and how much. You know all those warnings you hear at the end of the drug commercials? That’s straight out of the journals. If one person reports headaches or irritability, it has to be included.”

“So, if Allison and Tommy were both involved in a drug trial, their records would be at the clinic?”

She nodded.

Will took a moment to think it through. He picked up the bottle again. “I don’t think this is going to be enough to get a search warrant.”

“You don’t need one.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

LENA HEARD THE STEADY SOUND OF DRIPPING WATER. SHE opened her mouth around the gag as if she could catch the drops. Her tongue was so swollen that she was afraid she’d choke on it. Dehydration kept her body from sweating. The only thing she had to fight the cold were her shivers, and her muscles were so weak they were refusing to comply. When she pressed the button for the light on her watch, the blue glow captured the red streaks in her wrist like a burning brand in her flesh.

She shifted, trying to take some of the weight off her shoulder. Sitting up was not an option. The room spun too much. Either her arms ached or her legs shot through with pain every time she tried. Because her hands and feet were tied together, every movement required a coordination that she no longer possessed. She stared into the darkness, thinking about the last time she had gone for a run outside. It had been unseasonably warm. The sun had been high on the horizon, and when she jogged around the track at the college, she could feel the heat beating down on her face, then her back. Sweat dripped off her. Her skin was hot. Her muscles were primed. If she thought about it long enough, she could almost hear her shoes on the track.

Not shoes on a rubber track. Shoes on wooden steps.

Lena strained to hear the footsteps making their way down into the basement. There was a sliver of light underneath the door in front of her. Scraping sounds indicated something heavy was being moved-metal across concrete. Probably storage shelves. The sliver of light glowed brighter under the door. Lena closed her eyes as she listened to a key scraping in the deadbolt lock. The door opened, and Lena slowly opened her eyes, letting them adjust to the blinding fluorescents.

At first, there was a halo behind the woman’s head, but then Darla Jackson’s features came into view. Lena saw the streaked hair, the fake fingernails. Oddly, Lena ’s first thought was to wonder how the woman had managed to viciously murder two people without breaking her nails. She must redo them every night.

Darla walked down the stacked cinder blocks that served as stairs to the lower part of the basement. She knelt on the floor in front of Lena, checking to make sure the rope was still tightly tied. Incongruously, she put her hand to Lena ’s forehead. “Still with us?”

Lena could only stare. Even if her mouth wasn’t gagged, she doubted she could say anything to the nurse. Her throat was too dry. Her brain was having difficulty holding on to one thought at a time. She couldn’t form the words to articulate her questions. Why had Darla done this? Why had she killed Jason? Why had she killed Allison? It didn’t make any sense.

“You’re in the basement of the clinic.” Darla pressed her fingers to Lena ’s wrist, for all intents and purposes acting like a caring nurse instead of a savage murderer. Hours ago, Lena had interrupted Darla cleaning blood off the bat that had slammed into the back of Jason Howell’s head. She was bleaching the gloves she had used, trying to hide evidence. And now she was checking Lena ’s pulse and trying to see if she had a fever.

Darla told her, “This is some kind of bomb shelter or tornado shelter or something.” She looked at her watch a few seconds longer. “I doubt Sara remembers it’s even down here. I found it a while ago when I was looking for a place to stash some files.”

Lena glanced around the room. With the light on, she could see the concrete walls, the small metal door. Darla was right. They were in a bunker.

“I never liked Tolliver much,” the nurse said. “I know a lot of people blamed you for what happened, but he could be a prick, let me tell you.”

Lena kept staring, wondering why the woman was picking now to open her soul.

“And Sara’s no better. Thinks she walks on water because she got that medical degree. I used to babysit her when she was little. Nothing but a little know-it-all.”

Lena didn’t bother to try to disagree.

“I never wanted to kill you,” Darla said. Lena felt a laughing sound in her throat that came out more like a groan. “I just gotta get out of town, and I know you won’t let me do that if I let you go.”

She had that right.

“Daddy had a heart attack.” She sat back on her heels. “You know Frank’s my daddy, right?”

Lena felt her eyebrows go up. A flood of adrenaline let her brain think for the first time in hours. Frank had mentioned his daughter when they were driving away from Allison Spooner’s homicide scene. Did he know then that Darla had committed the crime? He sure as hell was covering up for her. Lena couldn’t even remember all the things he had hidden from Will. The photograph. Tommy’s phone. The 911 call. Was this what Frank meant when he said that Lena couldn’t see what was right in front of her? Christ, he was right. She didn’t know the truth when it was staring her in the face. How many other clues had she missed? How many other people were going to be hurt because Lena was so blind?

“Do you carry a purse?”

The question was so strange Lena thought she was hearing things.

“A pocketbook?” Darla asked. “Where do you keep your keys?”

Lena didn’t answer.

“I can’t take that piece-of-shit Accord out of town. The engine light’s been on for weeks. I thought I’d get a new one once the checks cleared, but…” She checked Lena ’s pockets and found her key ring. Her house key was on there, in addition to the keys for Frank’s Town Car and Lena ’s Celica. “You got any money on you?”

Lena nodded because there was no use lying.

Darla checked Lena ’s back pocket and pulled out two twenties. “Well, I guess that’ll pay for gas.” She tucked the cash into the front pocket of her uniform. “I’m gonna have to ask Daddy for some money. I really hate that.” She smoothed down the pink material of her uniform. “I guess I should feel some remorse about what’s happened, but the truth is that I just don’t want to get caught. I can’t go to prison. I can’t be trapped like that.”

Lena kept staring at her.

“If they’d’a just left me alone and kept quiet, none of this would’ve happened.”

Lena tried to swallow. She could hear her heart doing that weird, flopping beat in her chest. She must be more dehydrated than she thought. Her hands and feet were numb. Her legs tingled. Her body was shutting down blood flow to the extremities in order to keep the core functioning.

“Daddy and me don’t get along too good.” Darla tucked her hand into the front pocket of her smock. “I get the feeling most days he’d prefer you was his daughter, but we don’t get to choose our family, do we?” She pulled out a syringe. “This is Versed. It’ll take some of the anxiety off and put you to sleep. I’m sorry I don’t have enough to put you to sleep for good, but this should make it easier. You’re not gonna live much longer-maybe five or six hours. That infection in your hand’s spreading pretty quick. You’re probably already feeling your heart slowing down.”

Lena felt her throat try to swallow.

“What happens is, your body starts to shut down. Your nerves go crazy. Usually there’s a lot of pain. Sometimes you’re awake for it, sometimes you’re not. Do you want the shot?”

Lena looked at the capped syringe. What kind of choice was that?

“Nobody’s gonna come save you. The clinic’s not gonna open again until next Monday, and by then the smell’s the only thing that’s gonna let them know you’re here.” She glanced over her shoulder. “I guess I should leave the door exposed so they don’t have to look much. Some of the people here ain’t been too bad.”

Lena tried to speak, to form the only word that mattered in all of this: why?

“What’s that?”

Lena groaned the word again. Her lips couldn’t meet because of the gag, but the question was clear enough to her ears. “Why?”

Darla smiled. She understood what Lena was asking, but she wasn’t about to give an answer. Instead, she repeated her offer, waving the syringe in the air. “You want it or not?”

Lena shook her head, vehement. She couldn’t black out. She couldn’t let go. Her consciousness was the only thing she had any power over.

Darla took the cap off the syringe and jabbed the needle into Lena ’s arm anyway.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

SARA WAITED IN HER CAR FOR WILL TO COME DOWN FROM THE apartment over the garage. He had asked for a few minutes to change into clothes that were less dirty than the ones he’d worn all day. Sara had welcomed the time to regain her composure. Her anger had settled to a low simmer, but she would’ve thrown the car in gear and driven to Hare’s house right now if not for Will. Why was she surprised that her cousin was mixed up in something so seedy? Hare had never hidden the fact that he liked having money. Sara liked it, too, but she wasn’t willing to sell her soul in the process.

The car door opened. Will climbed behind the wheel. He was wearing a white button-down shirt and a fresh pair of jeans. He gave her an odd look. “Did you wash my clothes?”

Sara laughed at the suggestion. “No.”

“All my clothes are washed. And ironed.” He picked at the crease on his jeans. “And starched.”

She knew only one person who ironed jeans. “I’m sorry. My mother enjoys doing laundry. I can’t explain it.”

“It’s fine,” he said, but she could tell by his strained tone that he was slightly put out.

“Did she mess anything up?”

“No.” He adjusted the seat so his head wasn’t pressed into the ceiling. “I’ve just never had anybody wash my clothes for me before.” The gearshift had a learning curve, but he figured it out quickly, putting the engine into drive. He turned off the windshield wipers as he pulled into the street. The rain had slacked off. Sara could actually see the moon peeking out between the clouds.

He said, “I was thinking about the suicide note.”

“What about it?”

“How about if Jason wrote it, and Allison was supposed to deliver it to a drop?”

“You think they were blackmailing somebody?”

“It’s possible,” Will said. “Allison may have changed her mind about the blackmail without telling Jason.”

“So, she tears off the bottom part of the note, the bit that says, ‘I want it over,’ to leave at the drop for the killer?”

“But the killer has already made up his mind to kill her. He’s followed her into the woods. We know he’s opportunistic. He used the blanket when he killed Jason. Maybe he saw the note as another opportunity.” Will glanced at Sara. “The fake suicide note was in Jason’s handwriting at the scene of Allison’s death. Except for Tommy getting mixed up in all of this, the first person who would’ve been interviewed is the boyfriend.”

She finally put it together. “The killer wanted to frame Jason for Allison’s murder. If they were trying to blackmail him, that certainly would’ve gotten Jason off his back.”

“Tell me about these drug trials. How do they work?”

“They’re complicated, and they’re not all bad.” She felt the need to tell him, “We need drug trials. We need new medicine and new breakthroughs, but pharmaceutical companies are corporations with shareholders and CEOs who like to get paid. There’s more money in finding the next Viagra than curing cancer.” She added ruefully, “And it’s a hell of a lot more profitable to treat diseases like breast cancer rather than prevent them from happening in the first place.”

Will slowed the car. Even without the rain, the street was still flooded. “Don’t they need Viagra to fund the cancer stuff?”

“Last year, the top ten pharmaceutical companies spent seventy-three billion dollars on advertising and less than twenty-nine billion on research. Tell me where their focus is.”

“Sounds like you know a lot about this.”

“It’s a pet peeve of mine,” she admitted. “I never wanted free pens and notepads with drug logos on them. I wanted medication that worked and that my patients could afford.”

Will stopped the car. “You know, I think I’m going the wrong way.”

“It’s a circle.”

He put the car in reverse, then made a wide U-turn. Sara knew exactly where they were. If they had gone a few yards farther down the street, they would’ve passed her old address.

“So,” Will said. “How does it work? The drug company gets a new drug it wants to test, and then what?”

She couldn’t think how to acknowledge his kindness, so she answered his question instead. “There are two types: drugs of affluence, or lifestyle, and drugs of need.” He gave her a look. “I’m not making that up. It’s Big Pharma’s designation. The need drugs are what we tested at Grady. They’re for serious or life-threatening illnesses, chronic diseases. Usually, universities and research hospitals handle need drugs.”

He slowed the car again to navigate the deep water. “And affluence?”

“Generally, that’s handled by your average everyday doctor or lab. There are all kinds of announcements in medical journals. What you’d do is petition to run a study. If you’re approved, the drug company sets you up and pays for everything. TV, radio, and print ads. File clerks and office furniture. Pens and paper. And then, when it’s over, they pay the doctor to fly around the world talking about how fabulous their new drug is, all the while insisting that he’s incorruptible because he doesn’t own stock in the company.” She thought about Elliot and his Thanksgiving vacation. “That’s where the real money is. Not the stock, but the expertise. If you’re involved in an early phase of a study, you can make hundreds of thousands of dollars just by opening your mouth.”

“So, why wouldn’t a doctor want to do this if it’s so much money?”

“Because if you do it right, there’s not a lot of money in it. I mean, yes, you make money, but you’re doing paperwork, not medicine. We all know it’s a necessary evil, but it can be a really bad side of the business. Some doctors set up research mills. The drug reps call them ‘high-end rollers,’ just like in Vegas. Their clinics can have fifty different studies going on at the same time. There are a handful in downtown Atlanta, conveniently near the homeless shelter.”

“I bet there are a lot of students at the college who are looking to make some fast money.”

“Some of my indigent patients enroll in study after study. It’s the only thing that keeps them from starving. But it’s big business if you work it right. There are websites for professional guinea pigs. They fly around the country raking in sixty, eighty grand a year.”

“The doctors don’t track the patients to make sure they’re not gaming the system?”

“All you have to show is your license, sometimes not even that. They stick your name in a file. From then on, you’re a number. Everything they collect on you is self-reported. You can tell them you’re a stockbroker with insomnia and acid reflux when you’re really a homeless wino looking for pocket money. They’re not running background checks. There’s no central database of names.”

“So, Tommy answers an ad and tries to enroll in one of these trials. Then what?”

“They would screen him both medically and psychologically. There’s different criteria for each study, and each participant has to meet the guidelines, or protocols. If you’re really smart, you can fudge your way onto a study.”

“Tommy wasn’t really smart.”

“No, and he wouldn’t have passed the psych evaluation if it was properly administered.”

“Wouldn’t the doctor be in charge of that?”

“Maybe, maybe not. There are good doctors out there who do it right, but the bad doctors never see the trial participants. They’re just paperwork that has to be signed off on. They usually go in on a Sunday and ‘review’ all three hundred cases before the enforcement rep gets there Monday morning.”

“Who takes care of everything then, nurses?”

“Sometimes, but it’s not required that they have any medical training. There are CROs, Clinical Research Organizations, that offer temp staffing for doctors running studies. At least they have some training. There was a doctor in Texas who had his wife doing everything. She accidentally switched the trial drug with medication for her dog. One doctor had his mistress in charge. She told the participants to double up on missed doses and half of them ended up with permanent liver damage.”

“Okay, so Tommy makes it through the psych evaluation. Then what?”

“He goes through the medical workup. He was healthy; I’m sure he passed that. Next, he gets the pills. He has to keep his journal. He goes in to give blood and urine or just to check in, probably once a week. The person who talks to him takes his journal and her report, what’s called source notes, then enters them into the case report. The doctor only sees the case report.”

“Where would the system break down?”

“Exactly where you said. Tommy obviously had a reaction to the medication. He was getting into arguments with people, which we know from the police incident reports. His altered mood would have shown up in his journal. Whoever interviewed him during his office visits would immediately know something was wrong.”

“And if this person wanted to hide the fact that Tommy was in trouble?”

“They could lie on the case report form. It’s entered into the computer and transmitted directly to the drug company. No one would know anything was wrong unless they compared it to the source material, which gets boxed and put into storage as soon as the study ends.”

“Would it ruin the study if Tommy was wigging out?”

“Not necessarily. The doctor could classify him as a protocol violation. That means he doesn’t meet the guidelines for being enrolled in the study. Which, with his disability, he didn’t belong in anyway.”

“What about Allison?”

“Her suicide attempt should’ve exempted her, but if she didn’t self-report, they wouldn’t know.”

“Who gets in trouble for Tommy being enrolled in the study?”

“No one, really. You can always plead ignorance to the ethics committee. By law, every study has to have an internal review board that’s in charge of maintaining ethical standards. They’re comprised of people from the community. Doctors, lawyers, local businessmen. And always a priest or a minister, for some reason.”

“The ethics committee gets paid by the drug company, too?”

“Everybody gets paid by the drug company.”

“What about Tommy? When does he get his money?”

“At the end of the study. If they paid them ahead of time, most of them wouldn’t come back.”

“So, if the trial was nearing the end, then Tommy had a payday coming. And Allison, too. Maybe Jason Howell.”

Sara didn’t want to think about who had the biggest money motivation in this sordid mess. “For a three-month trial, it wouldn’t be out of the question that they would each be looking at around two to five thousand dollars for their participation.”

Will pulled into the parking lot of the clinic. He put the gear in park. “So, where’s the problem? We’ve got doctors making lots of money. Participants getting paid. Tommy shouldn’t have been in the study but it’s not like he was going to bring the whole thing down. Why would anyone kill two people over this?”

“The key is going to be finding out how many more participants were experiencing mood alterations like Tommy. Allison was depressed. You can read that in her journal. Tommy was acting out lately, getting into arguments when he never had before. He killed himself in jail. I don’t want to let Lena off the hook, but he could’ve been suicidal from the medication. In a study, if you get clusters of adverse events, it’s immediately shut down.”

“So, it would be in the doctor’s best interest not to have one of these adverse clusters. Not if he stood to make a lot of money on the trial.”

Sara pursed her lips, thinking of Hare. “Right.”

She stared out the window at the clinic. The front door was illuminated by the headlights. She could see the familiar layout of the lobby.

Will got out of the car and walked around to get the door for her. “I probably shouldn’t go inside with you. I know you’re the rightful owner and I’ve got your permission and all that, but the law is very strict about me looking through medical records. You’re going to have to play the concerned citizen and tell me what you find.”

“It’s a deal,” she agreed, though it occurred to her that he wouldn’t be much help reading the records anyway.

Sara walked to the front door with her keys in her hand. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been inside the building, but she didn’t have time to reflect. Just as she slid the key into the lock, she turned toward the police station. The movement was natural, something she had done every morning because Jeffrey usually waited across the street to make sure she got safely inside.

The streetlights were bright, the night air crisp, finally clear of rain. She saw a shadow standing by the window to Jeffrey’s office. The man turned. Sara gasped. Her knees started to give.

Will got out of the car. “Sara?”

She ran without thinking, pushing past Will, going down the hill toward the station. “Jeffrey!” she screamed, knowing it was him. His broad shoulders. His dark hair. The way he walked like a lion ready to pounce. “Jeffrey!” She stumbled as she reached the parking lot. The asphalt ripped her jeans. Her palms were scraped.

“Aunt Sara?” Jared jogged toward her with his father’s easy gait. He knelt in front of her, hands on her shoulders. “Are you okay?”

“I thought you were-” She put her hand to Jared’s face. “You look-” She threw her arms around his shoulders and pulled him as close as she could. Sara couldn’t help herself. She wept like a child. All the memories she had kept at bay for so long came flooding back. It was almost too much to bear.

Jared rubbed her back, soothing her. “It’s all right,” he whispered. “It’s just me.”

His father’s voice. Sara wanted to close her eyes and pretend. To lose herself completely. How many times had she stood in this parking lot with Jeffrey? How many mornings had they driven to work together, kissed each other goodbye in this very parking lot? And then he would stand at the door to the station, watching her make her way up the hill, checking to see that she got inside safely. Sometimes, she could feel his eyes following her, and it took everything Sara had not to run back across the street for another kiss.

Jared asked, “Are you all right?” There was a tremor in his tone. She was scaring him. “Aunt Sara?”

“I’m sorry.” She dropped her hands into her lap. She didn’t know why she was apologizing, but she kept repeating the words. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right.”

“I thought you were-” She couldn’t finish the sentence. Couldn’t say his father’s name.

Jared helped her stand up. “Mama says I look just like him.”

Sara couldn’t stop the tears streaming down her face. “When did you find out?”

“It’s kind of hard to hide.”

She laughed, the sound high-pitched and desperate in her ears. “What are you doing here?”

He glanced at Will. Sara hadn’t noticed him walk up. He stood a few feet away, obviously trying not to intrude. She told him, “This is…” She forced herself to say the name. “This is Jeffrey’s son, Jared Long. Jared, this is Will.”

Will’s hands were shoved deep in his pockets. He nodded at the boy. “Jared.”

“Why are you here?” Sara asked. “Is it because of Frank?”

Jared scratched his eyebrow with his thumb and forefinger. Sara had seen Jeffrey make the same gesture countless times. It meant he was upset, but didn’t quite know how to talk about it. Jared looked at Will again. There was something going on between them that Sara couldn’t follow.

She repeated her question. “Why are you here?”

Jared’s voice cracked. “Her car is here. I don’t know where she is.”

“Who?” Sara asked, but she already knew the answer. Lena ’s Celica was still in the lot.

“She was supposed to be home six hours ago.” He directed his words to Will. “I’ve been to the hospital. I tried to get in touch with Frank. I can’t find anybody who knows where she is.”

“No,” Sara breathed.

“Aunt Sara-” Jared reached for her but she put her hand flat to his chest, holding him back.

“You can’t be seeing her.”

“It’s not what you think.”

“I don’t care. It’s wrong.”

He reached for her again. “Aunt Sara-”

She stepped back, stumbling into Will. “You can’t do this.”

“It’s not what you think.”

“Not what I think?” she demanded, her voice rising in anger. “What am I thinking, Jared? That you’re sleeping with the woman who murdered your father?”

“It’s not like-”

Will grabbed Sara by her waist as she lunged at Jared. “She killed him!” Sara screamed, pushing Will away. “She killed your father!”

“He killed himself!”

She raised her hand to slap his face. Jared stood absolutely still, facing her, waiting for the blow. For her part, Sara felt frozen. She couldn’t strike him, but she couldn’t drop her hand, either. It divided the air between them like a knife waiting to fall.

“He was a cop,” Jared said. “He knew what the dangers were.”

She dropped her hand, because now she really wanted to hurt him. “Is that what she told you?”

“It’s what I know, Aunt Sara. My father loved being a cop. He was doing his job, and it got him killed.”

“You don’t know who she really is. You’re too young to understand what she’s capable of.”

“I’m not too young to know I love her.”

His words were like a punch to her chest. “She killed him,” Sara whispered. “You don’t know what she took from me. From you.”

“I know more than you think.”

“No, you don’t.”

Jared’s voice turned sharp. “He was doing his job, and he pissed off the wrong people, and nobody could’ve stopped him. Not you, not Lena, not me, not anybody. He made his own decisions. He was his own man. And he was stubborn as hell. Once he made up his mind, there was no talking him out of doing exactly what he wanted to do.”

Sara didn’t realize she was backing up until she felt Will behind her. She gripped his arm, forcing herself not to falter. “She’s twisted the story to fool you into feeling sorry for her.”

“That’s not how it is.”

“She’s a master at manipulating people. You can’t see that now, but it’s true.”

“Stop saying that.” Jared tried to take her hand. “I love her. And Jeffrey loved her, too.”

Sara couldn’t speak to him anymore. She couldn’t be here. She turned into Will, burying her head in his chest. “Get me out of here. Please, just take me home.”

Jared said, “You can’t leave. I need your help.”

Will kept his arm around Sara as he guided her across the street.

Jared jogged to keep up. “You’ve gotta help me find her. I don’t know where she is.”

Will’s voice was hard. “You need to move on, son.”

“Somebody sliced her tires. She’s not answering her cell phone.”

Will kept his arm around Sara, helping her up the hill. She looked down at the grass on the front lawn. The roots had been washed out. Clumps of mud slipped beneath her shoes.

Jared said, “She called me on her cell at six o’clock. She said she’d be home in an hour.” He tried to block their path, but Will swept him away with one hand. “She quit her job!” he screamed. “She told me she quit!”

They had reached the clinic parking lot. Will opened the car door and helped Sara inside.

Jared slammed his hand on the hood. “Come on! She’s missing! Something’s wrong!” He rushed around the car and got on his knees in front of the open door. His hands pressed together as if in prayer. “Please, Aunt Sara. Please. You’ve got to help me find her. Something’s wrong. I know something’s wrong.”

There was so much anguish in his face that Sara felt herself falter. She looked at Will, saw the concern in his expression.

His voice was low, steady, when he told her, “She hasn’t checked in with me.”

Jared was crying. “Please, just check the clinic for me. I know her hand was hurting her this morning. Maybe she went for help. Maybe she fell down or she’s sick or-”

Sara closed her eyes for a moment, trying to separate her emotions. She wanted so badly to leave, to never hear the name Lena Adams again as long as she lived.

Will said, “Sara.” Not a question, more like an admission of guilt.

“Go,” she told him. There was no use fighting it.

Will cupped his hand to her face so she would look at him. “I’ll be right back, okay? I’m just going to check the clinic for him.”

Sara didn’t respond. He closed the car door and she leaned back in the seat. The engine was off now, but the moon was so bright in the sky that she didn’t need the headlights to see the two men at the front door of the clinic. Lena didn’t even have to be present to control the men in her life. She was like a succubus, her siren song clouding their logic.

Will glanced at Sara as he turned the key in the lock. She studied Jared with some detachment. He was thinner than his father. His shoulders hadn’t filled out. His hair was longer than Jeffrey had kept it, more the length he’d worn in high school. An image flashed in her head: Lena ’s hand gripping Jared’s hair. She had taken everything now. Her path of destruction had ripped through every part of Jeffrey’s legacy.

Sara turned her head as the two men went inside the clinic. She couldn’t look at Jared anymore. It hurt too much. It hurt too much to even be here. She slid over the console and got behind the steering wheel. She pressed the button to start the engine. Nothing happened. Will had taken the key with him.

Sara got out of the car, leaving the door open. She looked up at the full moon. The glow was remarkably bright, illuminating the ground in front of her. She remembered a Civil War letter Jeffrey had read to her a long time ago. It was written by a lonely wife to her soldier husband. She was wondering whether or not the same moon was shining down on her lover.

Sara walked to the back of the clinic. There was a sign with Hare’s name on it, but her anger about the drug study had long dissipated. She couldn’t dredge up any sympathy for Allison Spooner or Jason Howell or even poor Tommy Braham, who had somehow gotten caught in the middle of it. All of her emotions had dwindled to a dull ache. Even her hatred for Lena was gone. Trying to stop her was tilting at windmills. There was nothing Sara could do to stop her. If the world fell down, Lena would still be standing. She would outlive them all.

The yard behind the clinic was a mud pit. Elliot hadn’t bothered to keep up anything. The picnic tables were gone, the swing set dismantled. The wildflowers Sara had planted with her mother were long dead. She stood on the bank of the stream. It was a river now, the shush of churning waters drowning out all sound. The big maple that had given so much shade over the years had fallen into the current. Its canopy barely touched the opposite side of the shore. As Sara watched, chunks of earth fell into the water and were quickly whisked away. Her father had taken her fishing on these shores. There was a field of large rocks a half mile down where catfish swam in and out of the eddies. Tessa had loved climbing on top of the granite to lie in the sun. Some of the boulders were as high as ten feet tall. Sara guessed they were underwater now. Everything in this town, no matter how strong, eventually got washed away.

Sara heard a branch snap behind her. She turned around. A woman in a pink nurse’s uniform stood a few feet away. She was out of breath. Her makeup was smeared, mascara ringing dark circles under her eyes. The plastic red nails on her fingers were chipped and broken.

“Darla,” Sara realized. She hadn’t seen Frank’s oldest daughter in years. “Are you all right?”

Darla seemed reticent. She glanced over her shoulder. “You heard about Daddy, I guess.”

“Is he still refusing to go to the hospital?”

She nodded, again looking behind her. “Maybe you could help me work on him, get him to let them run some tests.”

“I’m probably not the best person for that job right now.”

“He piss you off?”

“No, I just-” Sara felt logic start to intrude. It was almost three in the morning. There was no conceivable reason for Darla to be here. “What’s going on?”

“My car broke down.” Darla glanced over her shoulder for a third time. She wasn’t looking at the clinic. She was looking at the police station. “Can you give me a lift to Daddy’s?”

Sara felt her body reacting to a danger she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Her heart was pounding. Her mouth was spitless. This wasn’t right. None of this was right.

Darla indicated Sara should walk ahead of her to the parking lot. Her tone turned hard. “Let’s go.”

Sara put her hand to the back of her neck, thinking about Allison Spooner at the lake, the way her head had been held down while the knife sliced into her throat. “What have you done?”

“I just need to get out of here, all right?”

“Why?”

Darla’s tone turned even harsher. “Just give me the key to your car, Sara. I don’t have time for this.”

“What did you do to those kids?”

“The same thing I’m going to do to you if you don’t give me that fucking key.” There was a glint of light at Darla’s waist, then a knife was in her hand. The blade was about three and a half inches long. The tip was sharpened to a menacing point. “I don’t want to hurt you. Just give me the key.”

Sara took another step back. Her foot sank into the sandy shore. Panic gripped her throat like a hand. She had seen what Darla could do with the knife. She knew the woman had no qualms about killing.

“Give me the key.”

Sara heard the roar of the river swelling behind her. Where was Will? What was taking so long? She looked left and right, trying to decide whether to run.

“Don’t,” the woman said, guessing her thoughts. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just want the key.”

Sara could barely speak. “I don’t have it.”

“Don’t lie to me.” Darla checked the station again. She hadn’t once looked at the clinic. Either she had already taken care of Will and Jared or she didn’t know they were still inside. “Don’t be stupid, honey. You’ve seen what I can do.”

Sara’s voice shook as she asked, “What happens if I give it to you?”

Darla stepped forward, closing the space between them. The blade was steady in her hand. She was less than three feet away now. Within striking distance. “Then you can walk home to your mama and daddy and I’ll be gone.”

Sara felt a momentary sense of relief before the truth hit her. It couldn’t work that way. They both knew Sara wouldn’t go home. She’d cross the street to the police station and tell them everything that had happened. Darla wouldn’t make it to the city limits before every squad car in the county surrounded her.

The woman repeated, “Give me the key.” Without warning, she slashed the blade through the air. The metal made a whistling sound as it passed in front of Sara’s face. “Now, dammit.”

“Okay! Okay!” Sara put her trembling hand in her pocket, but her eyes were on the knife. “I’ll give you the key if you tell me why you killed them.”

Darla stared at her in cold appraisal. “They were blackmailing me.”

Sara took a small step back. “The study?”

Her arm relaxed, but the blade was still close. “Students kept dropping out, not showing up when they were supposed to. I got Jason to double up his blood work and do an extra journal. He pulled Allison into it, then they got Tommy involved. We were gonna split the money fifty-fifty. Then they got greedy and decided they wanted all of it.”

Sara could not take her eyes off the knife. “You were trying to frame Jason for killing Allison.”

“You always were smart.”

“Did Hare know?”

“Why do you think I’m leaving town? He found Tommy’s paperwork. Said he was going to report it to the ethics panel.” For the first time, she showed remorse. “I didn’t mean for Tommy to get hurt. He didn’t know anything about it. I couldn’t have them looking too hard at the case reports.”

“Tommy doubled up on his pills,” Sara guessed. “He was enrolled twice, so he took twice the dose. That’s why his moods were altered. That’s why he killed himself, isn’t it?”

“I’m done fucking around with you.” She straightened her arm. The knife was a few inches from Sara’s throat. “Give me the key.”

Sara allowed herself a glance back at the clinic. The door was still closed. “I don’t have it.”

“Don’t lie to me, bitch. I saw you in the car.”

“I don’t-”

Darla lunged. Sara stepped back, holding up her arm in defense. She felt the blade slice open her skin, but no pain followed. All she could feel was heart-stopping panic as the ground under her feet suddenly gave way, sending them both tumbling backward.

Sara’s back slammed into the ground. Darla reared up, the knife raised above her head. Sara tried to scramble, instinctively rolling onto her stomach before she realized this was exactly the position Allison Spooner had been in when the blade plunged into her neck. Sara tried to roll back over, but Darla’s weight was too much. She gripped the back of Sara’s neck. Sara pushed with her hands, kicked with her feet, did whatever she could to get out from under the woman.

Instead of feeling the blade sink into her flesh, Sara felt the earth tremble, the ground again give way beneath her. There was another feeling of free fall. The roar of the river got louder as she fell face-first into the icy water. Sara gasped as the cold enveloped her. Water poured into her mouth and lungs. She couldn’t tell which direction was up. Her feet and hands found no purchase. She flailed, trying to find air, but something was holding her down.

Darla. She could feel the woman’s hands gripping her waist, fingers digging into her skin. Sara struggled, pounding her hands into the woman’s back. Her lungs were screaming in her chest. She brought up her knee as hard as she could. Darla’s hold loosened. Sara pushed herself up to the surface, gulping air.

“Help!” she yelled. “Help!” Sara screamed the word so loud that her throat was raw from the effort.

Darla shot into the air beside her, mouth gaping open, eyes wide with panic. Her hand clamped around Sara’s arm. The riverbank was a blur as the current shot them downstream. Sara dug her nails into the back of Darla’s hand. Debris slapped against her head. Leaves. Twigs. Limbs. Darla held tight. She had never been a good swimmer. She wasn’t trying to pull Sara down. She was holding on for her life.

The water changed from a low roar to a deafening scream. The rock field. The jutting granite stones Tessa and Sara had climbed as children. She saw them up ahead, scattered like teeth waiting to rip them in two. Water split around sharp edges. The current turned violent as it hurtled them forward. Thirty feet. Twenty feet. Sara grabbed Darla under her arm and pulled as hard as she could, thrusting her forward. The crack of the woman’s skull against the granite reverberated like a ringing bell. Sara slammed into her. Her shoulder crunched. Her head exploded.

Sara fought the dizziness that wanted to take over. She tasted blood in her mouth. She wasn’t moving downstream anymore. Her back was pinned to a large crevice in the rock. White water pounded against her chest, making it impossible for her to move. Darla’s hand was trapped between Sara’s back and the granite. Her lifeless body waved like a tattered flag. Her skull was open, river water flooding into the gash. Sara could feel the woman’s hand slipping. There was a violent jerk, then the current whisked her downstream.

Sara coughed. Water poured into her open mouth, flooded up her nose. She reached above her head, feeling flat stone. She had to turn around. She had to find a way to climb on top of the rock. Sara bent her knees and braced the soles of her feet against the granite. She tried to push up. Nothing happened. She screamed, trying again and again with the same result. The water was peeling her off the rock. She was sliding, losing her grip. Her head dipped beneath the surface. She struggled to stay up. Every muscle in her body shook from the effort. It was too much. Her shoulder screamed with pain. Her thighs were aching. Her fingers were losing their grip. There was no fighting it. The water was too strong. Her body continued sliding down the rock. Sara took a deep breath, gulping in air just before her head dipped below the surface. The constant sound of the rushing water turned to complete and total silence.

Sara pressed her lips tightly together. Her hair floated out in front of her. She could see the moon above her, the bright light somehow managing to pierce the water’s edge. The rays were like fingers reaching toward her. She heard something underneath the quiet in her ears. The river had a voice, a gurgling, soothing voice that held a promise that things would be better on the other side. The current was speaking to her, telling her it was okay to let go. Sara realized with some shock that she wanted to. She wanted to just give in, to go to that place where Jeffrey was waiting for her. Not heaven. Not some earthly ideal, but a place of quiet and comfort where the thought of him, the memory of him, did not open like a fresh wound every time she breathed. Every time she walked in the places they walked. Every time she thought of his beautiful eyes, his mouth, his hands.

Sara reached through the water, touching the fingers of moonlight shining down. The cold had turned into a shroud of warmth. She opened her mouth. Air bubbles traced up her face. Her heartbeat was slow, lethargic. She let her emotions wash over her. She let herself feel the luxury of surrender just one more second before she forced herself back to the surface, twisting her body around so that she could find hold on the rock.

“No!” she screamed, raging at the river. Her arms shook as she clawed her way up the rough surface of the stone. The water gripped her like a million hands trying to drag her back in, but Sara fought with every fiber of her being to drag her way to the top of the granite.

She rolled over onto her back, staring up at the sky. The moon was still gloriously shining down, the light reflecting off the trees, the rocks, the river. Sara laughed, because she was sick of the alternative. She laughed so hard that she started coughing. She pushed herself up to sitting, and coughed until there was nothing left inside.

She breathed deeply, drawing life back into her body. Her heart pounded wildly in her chest. The cuts and bruises riddling her skin started to make themselves known. Pain woke every nerve ending, telling her she was still alive. Sara took another deep breath. The air was so crisp she could feel it touching every part of her lungs. She put her hand to her neck. The necklace was gone. Her fingers did not find the familiar shape of Jeffrey’s ring.

“Oh, Jeffrey,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

Thank you for letting me go.

But go where? Sara looked around. The moon was so bright it might as well have been daytime. She was in the middle of the river, at least ten feet from either bank. Water churned white around the smaller rocks that surrounded her. She knew some of them went at least eight feet down. She tested her shoulder. The tendon clicked, but she could still move it.

Sara stood up. There was a weeping willow on the bank, its waving tendrils beckoning her to the clearing underneath its branches. If she could get to one of the smaller rocks without being swept away, she could stand on top and jump to shore.

She heard a branch snap. Leaves rustled. Will came into the clearing. His chest heaved up and down from running. He had a rope coiled in his hands. She could read every emotion on his face. Fear. Confusion. Relief.

Sara raised her voice to be heard over the rushing water. “What took you so long?”

His mouth opened in surprise. “Errands,” he managed, still breathless. “There was a line at the bank.”

She laughed so hard she started coughing again.

“Are you all right?”

She nodded, struggling against another coughing fit. “What about Lena?”

“She was in the basement. Jared called an ambulance, but…” His voice trailed off. “She’s in bad shape.”

Sara leaned her hands on her knees. Yet again, Lena needed help. Yet again, it fell to Sara to pick up the pieces. Oddly, she didn’t feel the usual reluctance or even the anger that had been her constant companion since that awful day she had watched her husband die. Sara felt at peace for the first time in four years. Tessa was right-you couldn’t fall off the floor. Eventually, you had to get up, dust yourself off, and get back to the business of living.

“Sara?”

She held out her hand toward Will. “Throw me some rope.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

WILL SLOWED THE PORSCHE TO TURN ONTO CAPLAN ROAD, trying to follow the directions Sara had given him. She had drawn arrows by the street names, and as long as Will held the sheet of paper in the right direction, he should be able to make it to Frank Wallace’s house without losing his way. Sara had even given him her reading glasses, which were so small on his face that he looked like Poindexter’s idiot cousin. Still, she was right. The glasses worked. The words on the page in front of him still did their tricks, but at least they were sharper.

His phone rang, and Will fished around in his pocket, steering with his knees for fear of dropping the directions. He saw Faith’s number in the caller ID.

“Where have you been?” she demanded. “I’ve left two messages on your cell. I even called Amanda.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be on maternity leave?”

“Emma’s asleep and I’m sick of being in this stupid hospital.” She began a litany of complaints that started with the bad Jell-O and quickly segued into breast tenderness.

Will stopped her there. “I got my bad guy.”

“What?” Faith’s voice went up in surprise, and he realized that she’d had no great hope that he would solve the case so quickly.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Oh, shut up. You know I’m just annoyed because you did it without me.”

Faith wasn’t given to sudden fits of emotional honesty. Will knew better than to pursue the point. Instead, he told her about the drug trial and the lengths that Darla Jackson had gone to in order to take out her blackmailers and get rid of Lena Adams.

Faith asked, “How much money are we talking about?”

“We don’t know how many records she was falsifying. Maybe tens of thousands of dollars.”

“Holy crap. Where do I sign up?”

“No kidding,” Will agreed. The money would’ve come in handy. He wasn’t looking forward to going back to Atlanta and digging up his front yard again. “ Lena ’s still at the hospital. I think they’re going to keep her for a while.”

“I’m surprised Sara helped her.”

Will had been surprised as well, but he guessed being a doctor meant you couldn’t pick and choose who you saved. Still, there hadn’t been much talking while Sara hooked up the IV and ordered Jared to get Lena water, then more blankets, then more water. Will wasn’t sure how much of this was meant to help Lena and how much of it was designed to keep Jared from having a nervous breakdown. Either way, it had worked to bring a much-needed level of calm to the situation.

Jared had been frantic from the moment they entered the children’s clinic to search for Lena. His erratic behavior had cost them several valuable minutes. He’d kicked down doors that weren’t locked. He’d overturned desks and toppled filing cabinets. By the time Will had found the locked basement door, the young man was so spent that he’d barely had the strength to help Will break it down.

And then Jared’s second wind had kicked in. He’d rushed downstairs, heedless of anyone hiding in the shadows. They had found another locked door at the back of the basement. Deep ruts were cut in the concrete where metal shelving had once covered the entrance to what had to be a bomb shelter. An old but sturdy deadbolt held the door firmly in place. Jared had pounded away, popping off the steel like a pinball, nearly dislocating his shoulder, before Will came back with a crowbar from the workbench.

Will had to admit that he didn’t think of Sara until after the door was pried open. Lena was barely awake, shaking with fever. Her body was drenched in sweat. Jared cried as he untied the rope from her hands and feet, begging Will to get help. That was when Will had gone upstairs to find Sara. He was staring at her empty BMW when he heard her screams from the river. It was sheer luck that she’d managed to call for help before Darla pulled her back down into the water. It was even better luck that the rope that was used to tie up Lena was long enough to help Sara get back to safer ground.

Not that she had needed it. Will was pretty sure she was capable of taking care of herself. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see her walk on water after the hell she had survived.

On the phone, Will heard a baby gurgle and another woman talking.

Faith’s voice was muffled as she said something to the nurse. She told Will, “I need to go. They brought Emma for her feeding. Didn’t they, baby?”

Will waited through several seconds of baby talk before her voice returned to normal. “I’m glad you’re okay. I was worried about you down there on your own.” There was a strain to her voice, as if she was about to cry. Faith had been pretty emotional these last few months. Will had hoped the baby’s birth would send the crazy train back to the station, but maybe it would take a while for her hormones to get back to normal.

“I should probably go,” he told her. “I’m almost at Frank’s.”

She gave a loud sniff. “Let me know what happens.”

“I will.”

He heard the phone rattle around in the cradle and assumed that was Faith’s way of ending the call. Will tucked his cell phone back into his pocket. He checked a street sign against the directions and took a turn. There was an arrow pointing over to the other side of the paper. His lips tugged up into a smile. Sara had drawn a smiley face for him.

He slowed the Porsche again, looking for street numbers. Will checked each mailbox, comparing the addresses to the directions. Halfway down the street, he found what he was looking for. Frank’s house was a one-story cottage, but there was nothing quaint or cottagey about it. An air of sadness hung over the place like a dark cloud. The gutters sagged. The windows were dirty. The garden gnome was surprising, but the empty bottles of Dewar’s by the trashcan were not.

The screen door opened as Will got out of his car. Lionel Harris laughed at him, obviously enjoying the surprise.

“Good morning,” he said. “I heard y’all went for a swim last night.”

Will smiled, though he felt the cold sweat come back like a sudden rain. He couldn’t get the image out of his mind of Sara standing on top of that rock. “I’m a little surprised to see you here, Mr. Harris.”

“Just dropping off a casserole.”

Will’s confusion must have been obvious. The old man patted him on the back. “Never underestimate the power of a shared history.”

Will nodded, though he still didn’t understand.

“I’ll leave you to it.” Lionel gripped his cane as he walked down the porch steps. Will watched him walk into the street. A neighbor waved him over and he stopped for a chat.

“Frank’s waiting for you.”

Will turned around. There was a woman standing at the door. She was older, with stooped shoulders and unnaturally red hair. Her makeup was caked on in the same style that her daughter preferred. Will saw the finger of a bruise under the woman’s eye. The bridge of her nose was swollen. Someone had punched her recently, and very hard.

“I’m Maxine.” She pushed open the screen door for him. “He’s waiting for you.”

As depressing as Frank’s house was on the outside, the inside was far worse. The walls and ceiling had yellowed from years of cigarette smoke. The wall-to-wall carpet was clean but worn. The furniture looked like it had come from a 1950s model home.

“Back here.” Maxine gestured for him to follow her down the hall. Opposite the kitchen was a small bedroom that had been turned into a cluttered office. At the back of the house was a dingy bath with avocado green tile. Frank was lying in a hospital bed in the last room. The shades were all drawn but the sunlight glowed behind them. The room was dank and sweaty. Oxygen tubes were clipped to Frank’s nose but his breathing was still labored. His skin was yellow. His eyes were clouded.

There was a chair by the bed. Will sat down without having to be told.

“I’ll be in the kitchen,” Maxine told them. “You’uns let me know if you need anything.”

Will turned in surprise, but she’d already left the room. He turned his attention back to Frank. “Julie Smith?”

The older man’s deep baritone had been reduced to a low tremble. “I had her call Sara.”

Will had assumed something like this had happened. “You already knew Tommy had killed himself before Sara got there.”

“I thought…” Frank closed his eyes. His chest slowly rose and fell. “I thought it would be better if Sara found him. That there would be fewer questions.”

It could have easily worked out that way. Sara knew Nick Shelton. She could have unwittingly smoothed things over. “Why did you have Maxine say that Allison had a boyfriend?”

One shoulder went up. “It’s always the boyfriend.”

Will guessed that was true enough, but Frank had lied so many times over the last few days that Will didn’t know whether the man was capable of being honest. Lionel Harris had a point about change. Not many people could pull it off. There had to be something awfully bad or awfully good to compel a person to turn their lives around. It was obvious to Will that Frank was past any life-changing revelations. Even without the oxygen tank, he smelled sick, like his body was already rotting. Will knew that there came a point in every person’s life when it was too late to change anything. All you could do was wait for death to make you inconsequential.

Frank winced as he tried to get more comfortable in the bed.

“Can I get you anything?”

He shook his head, though he was obviously in pain. “How’s Lena?”

“The infection’s bad, but they think she’ll pull through.”

“Tell her I’m sorry,” Frank said. “Tell her I’m sorry about everything.”

“All right,” Will promised, though if he had his way he would never talk to the woman again. He didn’t think Lena Adams was all bad, but there was just enough of her that was tainted that left a bad taste in Will’s mouth. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

Frank stared openly at Will. His eyes watered. “You got kids?”

Will shook his head.

“Darla was always rebellious, pushing me, pushing Maxine.” He stopped to catch his breath. “She disappeared on us when she was seventeen. I didn’t even know she was back in town until I saw her outside the clinic.” He coughed. Fine specks of blood dotted the bedsheet. “She was taking a cigarette break.”

“Why did she call the police on Tommy?” The act seemed risky considering her criminal enterprises.

“I don’t know if she was trying to scare Tommy or punish me.” Frank reached for the glass of water on his bedside table. Will helped him, holding the straw so he could drink. Frank swallowed, the noise painfully loud in the tiny room. He sat back with a slow groan.

Will asked, “What did you do when you read the incident report about Tommy’s dog?”

“I went to the clinic and asked her what the hell she was doing.”

“Darla’s name wasn’t in the report.”

Frank didn’t answer.

Will was sick of pulling teeth. “You’ve done thousands of interviews, Chief Wallace. You know what questions I’m going to ask. You’ve probably already got a list in your head.” He paused, waiting for Frank to make this easy. After a full minute, Will realized nothing was ever going to be easy with this man. He asked, “What did Darla say when you confronted her?”

“She told me she was being blackmailed.”

“About the drug trial?”

“It wasn’t just the two kids she was lying about. It was a lot of them. She had a system going-getting them to double up on the rolls so it looked like more kids were in the study, then they’d split the checks when they came in.”

“Were they all blackmailing her?”

“Just Jason and Allison.”

“She told you their names?”

“No.”

Will studied him, trying again to figure out if he was lying. It was an exercise in futility. “What did Darla tell you about the blackmailers?”

“She thought she could pay them off, get them off her back. One of them was graduating soon. She thought if she gave them enough money they’d go away.”

“How much did she ask you for?”

“Ten thousand dollars. I didn’t have it. Even if I did, I wouldn’t’a given it to her. I spent so much money bailing her out so many times. I couldn’t throw away more.”

Will noticed the man had not considered a second option, which was arresting his daughter and sending her to prison for her crimes.

Frank continued, “She worked so hard to get her nursing degree. I never thought she’d…” His voice trailed off. “I didn’t know.”

“She’s been in trouble before.”

Frank would only nod.

“Bad checks,” Will supplied. Darla’s fingerprints were on file. They matched the print on the Windex bottle Will and Charlie had found in the dorm bathroom closet. Will made an educated guess. “She was in trouble before that.”

Frank gave a tight nod. “I’d get calls every now and then. Professional courtesy, one cop to another. Austin. Little Rock. West Memphis. She was taking care of old people, skimming their money. She was good. She never got caught, but they knew it was her.”

Will had found many times that there was a fine line between knowing someone was guilty and proving it. Being a cop’s daughter had probably given Darla an extra layer of protection.

“I was sure Tommy killed that girl. I just didn’t want anything to come back on Darla.”

“You did everything you could do to make sure Lena ’s case was solid.”

He stared at Will with rheumy eyes, obviously trying to guess what he knew.

The truth was that Will didn’t know anything for certain. He guessed that Frank had hidden evidence. He guessed that Frank had delayed the call center in Eaton sending the audio of Maxine’s voice on the 911 call. He guessed that the man had impeded an investigation, acted with reckless endangerment, and blindly if not willfully contributed to the deaths of three people.

As Frank had said, there was knowing and then there was proving.

“I never wanted to get Lena involved in any of this,” Frank said. “She didn’t know nothing about any of it. It was all down to me.”

Will imagined Lena would say the same thing about Frank. As long as he lived, he would never understand the bond that held them together. “When did you figure out that Darla was involved?”

“When Lena -” He started coughing again. This time, there was so much blood that he had to spit into a tissue. “Jesus,” Frank groaned, wiping his mouth. “I’m sorry.”

Will fought to keep his stomach under control. “When did you figure it out?”

“When Lena told me there was another kid got killed the same way…” His voice trailed off again. “I couldn’t see Darla doing this. You’ll understand when you have kids. She was my baby. I used to walk the floor with her at night. I watched her grow from a little girl into…” Frank didn’t finish his words, though it was obvious what Darla had grown into.

“When’s the last time you saw her?”

“Last night,” he admitted. Then, instead of making Will ask the right questions, he volunteered, “We got into a fight. She said she had to leave town. She wanted more money.”

“Did you give it to her?”

He shook his head. “Maxine had a couple hundred bucks in her purse. They got into a fight. Pretty bad.” He indicated the oxygen tank, the rails on his bed. “By the time I got up, she had Maxie on the ground, beating her.” Frank pressed his thin lips together. “I never thought I’d live to see anything like that-a child wailing off on her own mother. My child. That wasn’t who I raised her to be. That wasn’t my kid.”

“What happened?”

“She stole the money. Took some out of my wallet, too. Maybe fifty bucks.”

“We found almost three hundred dollars on the body.”

He nodded, as if that’s what he expected. “I got a call from Brock this morning. Said she was pulled out downriver from the granite field.” He looked at Will as if he didn’t quite believe the information.

“That’s right. She was near the college.”

“He said I didn’t need to see her right now. Give him time to clean her up.” Frank’s breath caught. “How many times have you said that to a parent who wants to see their kid, only you know the kid’s been beaten, cut, fucked up six ways to Sunday?”

“A lot of times,” Will admitted. “But Brock’s right. You don’t want to remember her like this.”

Frank stared at the ceiling. “I don’t know if I want to remember her at all.”

Will let his words hang between them for a few seconds. “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

Frank shook his head, and again, Will wasn’t sure whether or not to trust him. The man had been a detective for over thirty years. There was no way he hadn’t at least suspected his daughter was involved in these crimes. Even if Frank didn’t want to say it out loud, surely he knew deep down that his inaction had at the very least cost Tommy Braham and Jason Howell their lives.

Or maybe he didn’t know. Maybe Frank was so good at deceiving himself that he was certain he had done everything right.

“I should let you get some rest,” Will offered.

Frank’s eyes were closed, but he wasn’t asleep. “I used to take her hunting.” His voice was a raspy whisper. “It was the only time we got along.” He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. The only sound in the room was the quiet hiss of the oxygen tank beside his bed. “I taught her to never aim for the heart. There’s ribs and bone all around it. Bullet ricochets. You end up chasing the deer for miles waiting for him to die.” He put his hand to the side of his neck. “You go for the neck. Cut off the stuff that supplies the heart.” He rubbed the sagging skin. “That’s the clean kill. The most humane.”

Will had seen the crime scenes. There was nothing humane about the murders of Allison Spooner and Jason Howell. They had been terrified. They had been butchered.

“I’m dying,” Frank said. His words were no surprise. “I was diagnosed with cancer a few months ago.” He licked his chapped lips. “Maxine said she’d take care of me as long as I gave her my pension.” His breath caught in his chest. He gave a strained laugh. “I always thought I’d die alone.”

Will felt an overwhelming sadness at the man’s words. Frank Wallace was going to die alone. There might be people in the same room with him-his bitter ex-wife, a few blindly loyal colleagues-but men like Frank were destined to die the same way they had lived, with everyone at arm’s length.

Will knew this because he often viewed his own life and death through a similar lens. He didn’t have any childhood friends he’d kept in touch with. There were no relatives he could reach out to. Faith had the baby now. Eventually, she would find a man whose company she could tolerate. There might be another baby. She would probably find a desk job to take some of the stress out of her life. Will would recede from her life like a tide rolling back from the shore.

That left Angie, and Will had no great hope that she would be a comfort to him in his old age. She lived fast and hard, showing the same reckless disregard that had landed her mother in the coma ward at the state hospital for the last twenty-seven years. Marriage, if anything, had pushed them further apart. Will had always assumed that he would outlive Angie, that he would find himself alone at her graveside one day. This image always brought him great sadness tinged with a modicum of relief. Part of Will loved Angie more than life itself. Another part of him thought of her as a Pandora’s box that held his darkest secrets. If she were to die, she would take some of that darkness with her.

But she would also take part of his life.

Will asked Frank, “Do you need me to get you anything?”

He coughed again, a dry, hacking sound. “No,” he answered. “I’m fine on my own.”

“Take care of yourself.” Will made himself reach out and touch Frank’s shoulder before he left the room.

SARA WAS IN the front yard with her greyhounds when Will pulled into the Linton driveway. The side of her face was bruised. The cut on her arm had needed stitches. Her hair was down, brushing across her shoulders.

She looked beautiful.

The dogs ran to greet him as he got out of the car. Sara had dressed them both in black fleece jackets to fight the cold. Will petted the excited animals as much as he could without falling over backward.

Sara clicked her tongue and they stopped accosting him. She asked, “I take it Frank wasn’t much help?”

Will shook his head, feeling a lump come into his throat. He used to be good at hiding his thoughts, but somehow Sara had cracked the code. “I don’t think he has long.”

“I heard.” She was obviously conflicted about the impending death of her longtime family friend. “I’m sorry that he’s sick, but I don’t know how I feel about him as a person after all of this.”

“Maybe he could’ve stopped it-for Jason, at least.” Will added, “Then again, people don’t see what they don’t want to see.”

“Denial doesn’t hold up as a good excuse. Darla could’ve killed me. She would’ve killed me if the bank hadn’t given out.”

Will didn’t look up because he didn’t want Sara to know what he was thinking. Instead, he leaned down to scratch Bob’s ear. “Frank’s ex-wife is with him. At least he’s not going to die alone.”

“Small comfort.”

“I think it is,” he countered. “Some people don’t get that. Some people just-” Will stopped himself before he started to sound like a blubbering child. “Anyway, I don’t think I’m ever going to find out what really happened this week.”

“Do you need to?”

“I don’t guess so. Nothing will bring Tommy back, but at least his name is clear. Darla’s not going to hurt anyone else. Frank’s in his own prison.”

“And Lena gets away clean yet again.”

She didn’t sound as bitter as she had before. “We’ll see.”

Sara laughed. “You want to make a bet?”

Will tried to think of a clever wager, something that involved him taking her to dinner when they got back to Atlanta, but he was too slow.

She said, “Brock called this morning. He found Lena’s Toyota key in Darla’s front pocket. I guess she was planning on taking Lena ’s car and leaving town.”

He remembered the Celica’s sliced tires. Someone at the station had given Lena a parting gift. “Darla must’ve seen you get out of your car and decided to upgrade her ride.” Will had always known that the killer was good at improvising. “Did Hare say what made him check the files for Tommy’s name?”

“He’d seen Tommy in the clinic a couple of times. It’s not unusual for kids that age to still go to their pediatrician, but Tommy was there a lot, at least once a week. Hare got curious after the suicide and checked the paperwork for Tommy’s name.” Sara pulled the leash as Billy tried to pee on the side of Will’s car. “He confirmed what Darla said. He was going to the ethics committee to report the protocol breach.”

“That’s good, right? He was doing the right thing.”

“I suppose, but he’s not going to stop running trials.” She gave a rueful laugh. “Let me correct that: he’s going to stop running trials out of my building, but he’s still going to keep running them.”

“Did you find out what he was testing?”

“An antidepressant. They’re going to try again next spring with a different dosage.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“It’s a billion-dollar business. One in every ten Americans is on antidepressants, even though placebo studies show a lot of them get absolutely no benefits whatsoever.” She nodded back at the house. “Hare’s inside, which is why I took the dogs for a two-hour walk in the freezing cold.”

“Your folks aren’t mad at him?”

She sighed heavily. “Oh, my mother will forgive him anything.”

“I guess that’s what families do.”

She seemed to think about what he said. “Yeah, they do.”

“I talked to Faith this morning.” She’d sent so many baby pictures to Will’s phone that the memory was almost full. “I’ve never heard her happy before. It’s weird.”

“Having a baby changes you,” Sara told him. “Obviously, that’s not something I’ve learned from personal experience, but I can see it with my sister.”

Bob leaned against his leg. Will reached down and scratched him. “I guess I-”

“I was raped.”

Will kept his mouth closed because he didn’t know what to say.

“In college,” she continued. “That’s why I can’t have children.” He’d never noticed how green her eyes were, almost emerald. “It took years for me to tell my husband. I was ashamed. I wanted to think it was behind me. That I was strong enough to get past it.”

“I don’t think anyone could ever say you’re not strong.”

“Well. I’ve had my bad days.” She let out Billy’s leash as he sniffed around the mailbox. They both stared at the dog as if he was far more fascinating than reality dictated.

Will cleared his throat. The moment was too awkward. It was also cold outside, and he guessed Sara didn’t want to stand in front of her parents’ house all day watching him struggle to come up with something meaningful to say. “I should start packing my stuff.”

“Why?”

“Well…” Will was tongue-tied, and painfully stupid. “The holiday. Your family. I’m sure you want to be with them.”

“My mother’s cooked enough for fifty. She’d be crushed if you didn’t stay.”

He couldn’t tell if the offer was genuine or if she was just being polite. “My front yard’s kind of a mess.”

“I’ll help you when we get back to Atlanta.” She smiled mischievously. “I’ll even show you how to use a backhoe.”

“I don’t want to impose.”

“Will, it’s not imposing.” She took his hand. He looked down, tracing his thumb along her fingers. Her skin was soft. He caught the scent of her soap. Just being close to her like this made him feel warm, like that empty place in his soul might have the chance of being filled one day. He opened his mouth to tell her that he wanted to stay, that he wanted nothing more than to get two thousand more questions from her mother and watch her sister’s sly smile as she glanced back and forth between them.

And then his cell phone chirped in his pocket.

She wrinkled her nose. “What’s that?”

“Probably another baby picture from Faith.”

She gave him that same flirty smile. “Let me see.”

Will felt incapable of denying Sara any request. He used his free hand to find his phone. He’d seen Emma Lee Mitchell from every conceivable angle, and he was sure she was a sweet baby, but at the moment she looked like an angry red raisin in a pink knit hat.

Sara flipped open the phone. Her smile quickly faded. “It’s a text.” She showed him the phone, then seemed to realize herself. She turned it back and read aloud, “‘Diedre finally died. Come home.’”

Will felt a sudden pang of grief. “Angie’s mother.” He looked down at her hand. She was still holding his hand.

“I’m sorry.”

Will hadn’t cried since he was sixteen, but he felt tears threatening to come. He struggled to speak. “She’s been on life support since I was a kid. I guess she finally…” His throat was so tight he could barely swallow. Angie claimed to hate her mother, but she had visited her at least once a month for the last twenty years. Will had gone with her many times. The experience was awful, heart wrenching. He had held Angie so many times while she sobbed. It was the only time she let her guard down. The only time she surrendered herself to Will.

He suddenly understood Lionel Harris’s words about the power of a shared history.

“Sara-”

She squeezed his hand. “You should go home.”

Will struggled to find the right words. He was torn between wanting to be with Sara and needing to be with Angie.

Sara leaned in close, pressing her lips to his cheek. The wind draped her hair across his face. She put her mouth to his ear and told him, “Go home to your wife.”

So he did.