Survival Clause: A Savannah Martin Novel (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 20)

by Jenna Bennett

  I blinked at her, and she added, “The I doesn’t have the little line at the top and the bottom. It’s just a single stroke with the knife. Like a tally.”

  “Oh.” It had been a while since I’d worked on my magnum opus, Bedded by the Bedouin, but I knew what she was talking about. “Arial instead of Times New Roman.”

  “Yes,” Grimaldi said. “I’ll check the crime scene photos from back then, and see if the line on Laura Lee’s arm looked like it might have been an accidental slash. Maybe he uses a knife to threaten them. Maybe she resisted and it’s a defensive wound.”

  “It’s worth checking out. And if it looks like it might be, then Frankie might be a viable suspect.” If he’d had time between his various prison sentences to kill seventeen other women. And his prison record, once Grimaldi pulled it, would tell us that.

  “Where to now?” I added.

  “I figured we’d hit the high school before they close for the day, see if we can get contact information, or any other information, for Mr. Hanson or Olson, or Ms. Stevens. Mr. Wilkins is dead, so it can’t be him.”

  No. Not if one person had committed all the murders. If one person had started and another person had picked up where that person left off, then it was possible that Wilkins was involved.

  “An apprentice situation?” Grimaldi tilted her head in thought. “That’s a possibility. Serial killers do sometimes have them.”

  “And copycats,” I said. Again, because I’ve watched Dateline and 48 Hours.

  She nodded. “The numerals are information we haven’t released. It’s known that the bodies are marked, and that’s how we know they’re part of the same series, but the specific marking is a closely guarded secret. We need that kind of information for when we catch the killer.”

  “I guess maybe it would have been better not to ask Millie Ruth about the Latin. So as not to give her any ideas.”

  “I’m not worried about Millie Ruth,” Grimaldi said and steered the SUV back toward Columbia High.

  Walking up the steps to the front doors of the school was like stepping back in time. “I don’t think I’ve been back here since I graduated. The reunion last year was somewhere else.”

  And the less said about that, the better. It had been a bloody mess, and I mean that literally.

  Grimaldi nodded. “I haven’t been back to mine since I graduated, either. For a reunion or anything else.”

  She was a few years older than me, I knew. “How long since you finished high school?”

  She shot me a look. “Fifteen years.”

  She was a year older than Rafe, then. Two older than Dix. Not that that mattered. If the two of them didn’t care, why should I?

  And since their relationship, whatever it was, was none of my business either, I didn’t say anything about it. Instead I looked around at the long hallway that ran through the middle of the building. “It smells just like I remember.” Of pencils and cafeteria food and sweaty gym socks and teenage angst.

  Grimaldi smirked. “You couldn’t pay me to go back to high school.”

  Me, either. Although it had had its moments. I dredged up the memory of a teenage Rafe, in a basketball jersey and with his hair in cornrows, swaggering down the hallway while everyone—me included—gave him a wide berth.

  He’d told me once he’d liked me back then, but beyond a flirtatious wink and a cheeky “Looking good, sugar!”—to which I had responded with an upturned nose—he hadn’t done anything about it. I was, as he’d said, jail bait, and I came with an older brother and that older brother’s best friend, who wouldn’t have thought twice about ganging up on him.

  With a sigh, I popped the memory bubble and followed Grimaldi through the door into the main office, and from there, into the lair of the principal, Mrs. Halliburton.

  She’d been around when I was here, too, but as assistant principal then, if memory served. She looked about the same: maybe a little grayer in the hair and a little bigger around the middle, but otherwise the same. “Yes?” she said briskly, eying Grimaldi’s badge, “what can I do for the Columbia PD?”

  Grimaldi explained that she was gathering information on a local cold case that had come across her desk recently. “The murder of Laura Lee Matlock. I understand she went to school here?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Halliburton said, “but she graduated at least a decade before she died. She was in her thirties then.”

  Grimaldi nodded pleasantly. “I’m aware. We’re just checking on a couple of loose threads. I don’t suppose I could have access to the yearbooks for the years she attended school here? It would only take a few minutes.”

  Mrs. Halliburton sighed, like it was putting her out considerably, but she got up from her desk and went to the door and told the dragon at the front desk to pull the yearbooks. The receptionist got to work, and Grimaldi slid out the door with a glance at me. I took it to mean that it was my task to keep Mrs. Halliburton busy for the couple of minutes this was going to take.

  I gave her a winning smile. “I don’t know whether you remember me, but I used to attend school here. Savannah Martin.”

  She looked me up and down. “Of course I remember.”

  It didn’t look like the memory brought her any pleasure whatsoever, either.

  I looked around. “I don’t think I spent any time in the principal’s office back then.”

  She smiled. Tightly. “Of course not. You were a well-behaved family, as I recall.”

  We had been, overall. Catherine had had her short phase of rebellion in high school—dating Darrell Skinner, of all things!—but she’d kept it so quiet I hadn’t known about it until last fall, when Darrell and all the other Skinners got themselves killed. And as for me, I hadn’t started acting out until a long time past high school.

  I switched Carrie’s car seat from one arm to the other—it’s heavy when you have to stand around holding it—and the baby cooed. Mrs. Halliburton zeroed in on her.

  “Yours?” she asked after a second.

  I nodded. “She takes after my husband.”

  There was a moment’s silence when we both contemplated Carrie. In case I’ve neglected to mention it, she’s a very pretty baby, with Rafe’s skin and dark curls, but my eyes, surrounded by long, curving lashes.

  “You married the Collier boy,” Mrs. Halliburton said eventually.

  I nodded. “Yes. I did.” And she clearly remembered him, too. But probably not because he’d been so well-behaved.

  “How is that working out?”

  “Just fine,” I said. What did she expect me to say?

  Oh, wait. I knew what she expected. For Rafe to be the same screw-up everyone thought he was in high school—with some cause, I’ll admit. She probably thought he’d have left us already.

  “It’s the best decision I’ve ever made,” I added, just in case she was in doubt.

  Between you and me, it might not have been. Divorcing Bradley might have been better. If I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have gotten my real estate license, and if I hadn’t gotten my real estate license, I wouldn’t have been in the office the morning Brenda Puckett died, and I wouldn’t have gotten the call to go out and meet Rafe outside Mrs. Jenkins’s house, and if I hadn’t done that, we might not have met again, and then someone else might be standing here right now, holding Rafe’s baby.

  But either way, it came to the same thing. Rafe was still the best thing that had ever happened to me.

  “How’s your family doing?” Mrs. Halliburton changed the subject. Or maybe it wasn’t so much a change of subject as a question as to whether my family approved of my husband.

  “They’re fine,” I told her. “Catherine and Jonathan are still married, with three kids. Dix is slowly getting over losing Sheila, and Mother is living in sin with Sheriff Satterfield. She adores Rafe. Like, seriously adores him. Couldn’t love him any more if she’d given birth to him.”

  Mrs. Halliburton didn’t respond. I’m not sure whether she just didn’t know what to say, or sh
e didn’t want to say whatever came to mind. Either way, we stood in silence for the minute or two until Grimaldi stuck her head back into the room. “Thank you, Principal Halliburton. I have what I came for.”

  She caught my eye and motioned with her head toward the entrance. I gave the principal a pleasant smile. “Nice to see you again, Mrs. Halliburton. I’ll tell Rafe you said hi. I’m sure he spent a lot more time in this office than I did.”

  Mrs. Halliburton nodded weakly. I turned my back on her and followed Grimaldi through the outer office, down the hallway, and outside.

  “Problem?” she asked when we’d reached the SUV and I was putting Carrie’s seat onto the base.

  I glanced over. “Just someone else who remembers all the worst things about Rafe. It gets old.”

  She nodded and opened her car door. “Her loss.”

  I guess it was. I scooted into the passenger seat next to her and put Halliburton and high school in the past, where it belonged.

  Nine

  “Did you find out anything interesting?”

  “Nineteen boys took Latin during the years Laura Lee Matlock—Drimmel, back then—went to Columbia High,” Grimaldi said, turning the key in the ignition. “Three of them matriculated after her freshman year.”

  So they were three years older. The same as Rafe is to me.

  “In addition to the three boys who graduated after her freshman year, four more graduated after her sophomore year. Three after her junior year, and two after her senior year. Those two, she went to school with all four years of high school. Then there were four the following year, four the year after that, and then a single male student whose first year of high school was Laura Lee’s last.”

  “Latin didn’t draw a big crowd, did it?” Thinking back on my own high school days, I couldn’t recall many students studying it then, either.

  “No,” Grimaldi said. “Most of the kids took living languages. In addition to the nineteen boys over that seven year period, there were also twelve girls who took Latin. But since our unsub is male, there’s no sense in focusing on them.”

  No. I couldn’t think of any reason why we should. “I assume you’ve got everyone’s names?”

  “I took pictures of the pages,” Grimaldi said, patting her pocket. “And the assistant principal looked up Ms. Stevens’s address. She didn’t know where to find Mr. Jurgensson.”

  “That was his name? The guy who only lasted a year?” Not Hanson or Olson?

  “Jurgensson,” Grimaldi confirmed, spelling it for good measure. “That, I did write down, because I wanted to make sure I had it right.”

  “I don’t suppose the receptionist told you why Jurgensson lost his job?”

  “Sexual misconduct,” Grimaldi said, “like Ms. Durbin said.”

  “He slept with a student?”

  “I’m not sure what he did. The woman in reception didn’t work there then, and doesn’t know the details. I’ll have to check the files and see whether an official complaint was filed. Statutory rape is a crime. If not, we’ll have to find someone who was around then, who’s willing to give us the details.”

  “Millie Ruth might,” I said.

  “If she didn’t tell us already, I don’t know how much she knows or is willing to say. It would be better to find someone else. Someone who knows and doesn’t mind talking.”

  “Ms. Stevens might know.” She hadn’t been around until the next year, but she might have been told the details.

  “I’ll check,” Grimaldi said. “Are you ready to go home?”

  Hard to say whether that was an attempt to get rid of me or not. “Not necessarily,” I said. “Is there somewhere else you’d like to go? To Sunnyside to see Laura Lee’s parents, maybe?”

  “I’d rather do some checking before I do that,” Grimaldi answered. “When I talk to them, I already want to know Frankie’s arrest record, and whether he could be involved or not. He’s their son-in-law, and depending on how they feel about him, then and now, it would be good to know the score.”

  “Maybe they can tell you what was going on with Laura Lee during the period when Frankie was locked up. Something they weren’t comfortable telling the police back then. Maybe she had another boyfriend or had hooked up with an old one, or something.”

  “Maybe,” Grimaldi said pessimistically, “but I’m not sure what good it’ll do if she did. This guy doesn’t stalk his victims. Not as far as we know.”

  “She was the first, though. The origin kill. You said the methodology might be different.”

  Grimaldi didn’t answer, and I added, “That’s why we’re here, looking into this, right? Because she was the first victim and the killer might have known her better than the others?”

  “Yes,” Grimaldi admitted. “But I still want to check Frankie’s periods of incarceration before I talk to Laura Lee’s parents.”

  No problem. “Back to the police station, then?”

  “Might as well,” Grimaldi said. “Do you want me to take you home first? Or do you want to come with me?”

  I checked the dashboard clock. “It’s almost quitting time, isn’t it? Rafe doesn’t have SWAT practice or anything like that tonight, does he?”

  “That was yesterday,” Grimaldi said.

  “Maybe I’ll just come with you, then, and wait around for an hour—maybe you’d let me look at the surveillance footage from this morning while I wait?—and then I can drive home with him.”

  “And stake your claim in front of Agent Yung again?” She sounded amused.

  “I’m not worried,” I said sturdily. And then, when the look she gave me was amused as well, I added, “She didn’t sound like she was interested in him that way. And I don’t think he’d cheat. But I’ll admit that women like her make me feel dumpy and like I don’t deserve what I have.”

  “I’ve seen the two of you together,” Grimaldi said. “And I’ve seen you separately. You have nothing to worry about.”

  Good to know. “I just feel like a slug, you know? Big and blobby and slow. And she’s so tiny and trim and perfect, and she can probably kick ass while mine’s twice the size it used to be, because I still can’t fit into my pre-pregnancy clothes…”

  “You’re fine,” Grimaldi said, her lips twitching. “You’re not a slug. You’re not big or blobby. You have a husband who loves you, and a beautiful baby. But you’re right: she probably can kick your ass. So can I, if it comes to that.”

  “I don’t mind you,” I said. “You’re not after my husband.”

  “She’s not, either. If she were interested on a personal level, that kiss would have told her how unlikely it is that he’d be interested in her. And I disabused her of the notion that he’s a criminal. She didn’t like it much, but she believed me.”

  “Then I guess she’s going to have to settle for arresting the killer,” I said, “when we find him.”

  Grimaldi nodded. “Although I hope to slap those handcuffs on myself. I don’t mind if she’s there, though. Just as long as she’s not getting in my way.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I told her, as we swung into the parking lot behind the police station, into the prominent slot reserved for the chief of police, and she cut the engine.

  Inside the front doors, she sat Carrie and me down behind the front desk with the young man on duty.

  “Officer Rehman.” She gave him a nod.

  “Ma’am.” He blushed, and reminded me rather forcibly of my buddy Officer Truman in Nashville, who did the same thing whenever someone female spoke to him.

  The resemblance ended there, though. They were both young, but George Truman was a peach-fuzzed blond, while Rehman was as black-haired and dark-eyed as Truman was fair.

  “This is Mrs. Collier and her little girl.” Grimaldi nodded to me and Carrie, awake and cooing in her car seat. “I want you to show her the camera footage from outside the building this morning.”

  “Ma’am?” Rehman reddened further.

  “Someone filmed my husband and me outsid
e the front door earlier,” I said, before Grimaldi could yell at Rehman and make him feel worse. “The video appeared on social media. We’re trying to figure out who it was.”

  “Oh.” Rehman turned to one of the computers and began to manipulate buttons. Grimaldi withdrew, but not without an annoyed shake of her head. I waved her off before I looked at the eight little screens that each showed a small part of the police station.

  “This one.” From the angle, it looked like it was placed in the corner above the front door. “This one and that one.” One on each side of the building, turned toward the middle, filming the street and the cars going by. “Are any of the others overlooking the front?”

  Rehman shook his head. “Just those three. What was the angle of the video?”

  “I’ll show it to you,” I said, and dug my phone out of the bag I’d dropped on the floor. It was already cued up on the video, from watching it before, and I started it playing and handed it to Rehman. And watched him blush a bright, painful red as he watched.

  He handed it back without meeting my eyes. “Looks like whoever filmed it was parked down on the other end. If he—”

  “She,” I said.

  Rehman nodded. “—if she didn’t cross in front of the police station before parking, it isn’t likely we have her on camera.”

  No, it wasn’t. It was most likely she’d come from outside downtown up to the police station, rather than going around City Hall and down the street past the police station before parking. Most people tend to avoid driving straight through the town square if they can avoid it.

  “Just see if there’s anything helpful,” I told Rehman. “Anything would help. We have no idea who this person is, other than that she keeps hanging around and filming my husband. And since he has a habit of attracting nutcases, it’s concerning.”

  “He’s the one who got shot last month,” Rehman said, eyes on the screen, “right?”

  I nodded. “It wasn’t bad. The bullet lodged in his vest and only broke a couple of ribs, so it could have been worse. But it isn’t the first time it’s happened, and it probably won’t be the last. And I don’t like psychos after my husband.”