“Tessa,” Sara practically yelled into the phone. “Tessie, would you just—”
Her little sister wasn’t going to listen. She kept rambling, her voice taking on the cadence of the adults in Peanuts cartoons.
Wah-wah-wah-wah, wah-wah-wah-wah.
Sara tapped the phone on speaker and rested it on the shelf above the sink. She washed her face with the pink soap from the dispenser. The cheap paper towels disintegrated in her hands. If Sara did not get out of this prison soon, they were going to have to put her in a cell.
Tessa picked up on the noise. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m taking a whore’s bath in the visitor’s restroom at Phillips State Prison.” Sara peeled a piece of wet paper towel off her cheek. “I’ve been up to my eyeballs in blood, piss and shit for the last five hours.”
“It’s like college all over again.”
Sara laughed, but not so Tessa could hear. “Tessie, do what you want to do. If you want to train to be a midwife, train to be a midwife. You don’t need my approval.”
“Bull. Shit.”
Sara couldn’t say it again because, in truth, they always needed each other’s approval. Sara couldn’t sleep if Tessa was mad at her. Tessa couldn’t function if Sara was displeased. Fortunately, the older they got, the less it happened, but this time was different.
Tessa was spinning out of control. She was supposed to fly home a month ago, but she’d delayed the trip. She had texted her husband for a divorce. She had FaceTimed her five-year-old daughter to tell her that she would be home by Thanksgiving. She had apparently moved back into their parents’ garage apartment. One day, she wanted to go to graduate school. The next day, she wanted to be a midwife. What she really needed to do was find a good therapist who could help her understand that all of this change wasn’t going to change a damn thing.
As the old saying went, wherever you go, there you are.
“Sissy, you should know this,” Tessa said. “Georgia has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country. It’s even worse for black women. They’re six times more likely to die from giving birth than white women.”
Sara did not point out that she did know this, because as one of the state’s medical examiners, she was in charge of compiling all of the depressing statistics her sister was tossing back at her. “You’re making an argument for more doctors, not more midwives.”
“Don’t try to change the subject. It’s a proven fact that home births are just as safe as hospital births.”
“Tess.” Shut up, Sara. Just shut up. “The study you’re taking that from was done in the UK. Pregnant women in rural areas have to drive more than an hour for—”
“In South Africa—”
Wah-wah-wah-wah, wah-wah-wah-wah.
Sara could not bear to hear another heart-warming story about how being a missionary in South Africa had Made Tessa a Better Human Being. As if everyone was supposed to forget about the six years Tessa had spent partying her way to a four-year degree in modern English poetry, then the next five years she’d spent working in their father’s plumbing business while managing to fuck every good-looking man in the tri-county area.
Not that Sara was against fucking good-looking men—she had fucked one several times over the weekend—but there was an actual point to her intransigence that she could never, ever say out loud.
Sara did not think that midwives were an inherently bad idea. She thought Tessa, her sister, working as a midwife was a recipe for disaster. She loved her baby sister, but Tessa had once thrown her shoe through a window when the lace broke. She couldn’t solve a Rubik’s Cube if you put the math in front of her face. Tessa’s idea of a balanced diet was using a piece of celery to scoop out macaroni and cheese. This was the woman who was supposed to remain calm and composed, to keep her training at the forefront during a tense, potentially risky, delivery?
Tessa said, “If you’re not going to listen to me, I’m going to go.”
“I am lis—”
Tessa hung up.
Sara gripped the phone the way she wanted to grip her sister’s neck.
She checked the time. Charlie was probably wondering if she’d fallen down the toilet. She re-clipped her hair. She straightened her long-sleeved T-shirt. Will’s shirt, actually. The material gapped around her shoulders. The sleeves were too long. Sara ran her fingers along the material. She had changed into a fresh pair of scrub pants, but the stench of the cafeteria lingered like the worst perfume ever.
Charlie was patiently sitting at one of the visitor’s tables when she opened the door. He grabbed her duffle bag without being asked. The smile underneath his handlebar mustache was genuine. Charlie was a sweetheart, but he could’ve made things difficult for Sara when she’d first joined the team. He had nursed a crush on Will for years. Will had been clueless, just as he’d been when Sara was nursing a crush on him. The man couldn’t take a hint if it sat on his face.
Charlie asked, “Everything good?”
“Yes, thanks. I just needed a minute.”
He smiled the smile of a man who had heard everything through the thin wooden door.
“Sorry,” Sara apologized. Charlie’s job description didn’t usually include waiting outside women’s restrooms. He was being more vigilant than usual because they were working in a men’s prison. “Is Gary finished logging the evidence?”
“If he’s not, he will be soon.” Charlie held open the door. The sunlight instantly dried the water on Sara’s skin. They were outside the prison walls, walking through the parking lot, but the building still bore down ominously. She could hear screaming because there was always screaming when people were locked in cages.
“So.” Charlie slid on a pair of sunglasses. “Did you see the new guy in latent prints?”
“The one who looks like outdoorsy Rob Lowe?”
“He invited me for a drink. I almost packed a suitcase.” Charlie shook his head. “I’m such a Charlotte.”
“Charlotte always knew what she wanted.” Sara tried to maintain their casual tone. “Have you talked to Will lately?”
Charlie took off his sunglasses. “About what?”
The question had given away too much. And it was pointless anyway. Will was not one to volunteer his feelings. Normally, Sara found a way to pull him out of his shell, but she had hit her limit on shell-pulling. She loved Will with every fiber of her being. She wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of her life with him. She wasn’t expecting fireworks or a parade, but she wanted him to at least ask the damn question. I want your mother to be happy was a life goal, not a marriage proposal. The fact that forty-three days had passed without Will bringing it up again was maddening. Sara did not want a silent husband. She sure as hell was not going to be a silent wife.
“Sara?” Charlie asked. “What’s up?”
Fortunately, her phone started to buzz. She had a text from Will, an icon of a telephone receiver with a question mark. Most of their written communications were pictorial. Will was dyslexic. He could read, but not quickly. Sara knew that the rest of the world texted with emojis, but she liked to think that she and Will had developed their own special language.
She told Charlie, “I need to make a call.”
“I’ll help Gary finish up.” He walked ahead. “We should be ready to roll in five.”
“I’ll be there in two.” Sara was certain Will was calling to discuss what to order for dinner. He was terrified he would starve to death if he went more than an hour without food.
Besides, it wasn’t like Will had avoided talking about something else that was very important for the last forty-three days.
He answered on the first ring. Instead of a hello, he asked, “Can you talk?”
Something was wrong. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” He sounded unsure. “We have to talk. I don’t want you to be mad. I was wrong to let it go on for this long. I’m sorry.”
Sara put her hand to her eyes. Forty-three mo
therfucking days. He could not be calling to have that conversation right now. “Babe, I’m standing in a parking lot outside of a prison.”
He seemed taken aback, which was the point of her tone. “Sara, I—”
“Will.” She was already primed to be annoyed by Tessa, but this was enough to send her over the edge. “You’ve had six damn weeks to—”
“Daryl Nesbitt.”
The name was gibberish.
Until it wasn’t.
Sara’s brain flashed through a set of images like the disk on a Viewfinder. She was back in Grant County. Walking through the field. Feeling Jeffrey’s eyes on her. Kneeling in the woods. Waiting for the ambulance. Blood on her hands. Air whistling through the barrel of Jeffrey’s plastic pen. Lena running uselessly into the clearing with the defibrillator that they weren’t going to need.
Sara pressed her fingers into her eyelids. Tears squeezed out.
“Sara?”
“What about Nesbitt?”
“He’s here. He’s made some charges against Lena Adams.” Will stopped, as if he expected her to say something. “And, uh, he’s also said some things, some bad things, about …”
Sara’s lungs tightened as she pushed out the word. “Jeffrey.”
“Yeah.” He paused again. “Really bad things.”
Her hand went to her throat. Unbidden, she thought about the way Jeffrey used to stroke her neck when they were lying in bed. She banished the memory. “Nesbitt is saying that he was framed? That the department acted illegally?”
“Yes.”
Sara nodded, because this wasn’t a new charge. “He tried to sue Jeffrey’s estate in civil court.” In effect, he had tried to sue Sara. At the time, she was still struggling to come to terms with Jeffrey’s death. Sleeping too much, crying too much, taking too many sleeping pills and not caring whether or not she woke up. “The case was dismissed. What does he want now?”
“He’s offering to trade some information if we re-open the investigation.”
Sara could not stop nodding. It was her body’s way of trying to make sense of this, as if she could anticipate everything that was coming and had no problem accepting it. “What information?”
Will laid out the details, but everything he said turned nonsensical. Sara had nearly drowned in her own grief after losing Jeffrey. She had moved to Atlanta to get away from his ghost on every street corner. She had met Will. She had fallen in love with him. She was on the precipice of starting a new life and now—
“Sara?” Will said.
She tried to strip away her emotions and take this to its logical conclusion. It wasn’t easy. Her heart was punching like a fist against her ribcage. She said, “You’re going to have to talk to Lena about Nesbitt’s case.”
He hesitated before saying, “Yes.”
“And Lena will tell you Nesbitt is full of shit, because he’s always been full of shit. Or maybe he’s not, because Lena is a liar, and she’s a bad cop. But Nesbitt’s a pedophile and he’s in prison, so who are people going to believe?”
“Yes.” His tone was still off, but everything felt off. “There’s something else.”
“Of course there is.”
“Nesbitt claims there are other victims. The first one—”
“Rebecca Caterino.” The girl’s name was seared into her memory. “She went by Beckey.”
“Nesbitt says there were more victims after his arrest.” Will paused again. “He says that a serial killer is working all over the state.”
Sara still could not parse the information. Her hand covered her mouth. Every part of her body wanted to end this conversation. “Do you believe him?”
“I don’t know. Faith and Amanda told me not to tell you anything until we have more information, but I felt like you would want to know. Immediately. And this is the first chance I had to talk. I’m in the bathroom. Faith is waiting for me in the car.” He stopped, obviously expecting a response, but Sara was without words. “You wanted me to tell you about this, right?”
Sara couldn’t honestly say. “What else?”
“I got Amanda to agree to let you examine the latest victim. Alleged victim. We’re still not sure.” He stopped to swallow. “She wanted you to go in without any preconceptions, I guess. Like if you saw something, a detail or a signature, that reminded you of the Grant County case, but I—”
“Was Faith on board with lying to me, too?”
He didn’t answer.
Sara scanned the parking lot. She spotted Faith’s red Mini down by the employee entrance. Her friend was sitting in the passenger’s seat, head bent toward her lap. She was probably reading Daryl Nesbitt’s case file because she had already told Will to lie to Sara so that part of her job was done.
“Will?”
Sara could hear him breathing, but he still didn’t answer.
She bit her lip to keep it from trembling. She looked down at her hand.
Carpals. Metacarpals. Proximal, intermediate and distal phalanges.
There were twenty-seven bones in the hand. If she got through them all without Will speaking, she was going to hang up and leave.
He cleared his throat.
Scaphoid. Lunate. Triquetral. Pisiform. Trapezium. Trapezoid.
“Sara?” he finally said. “Did I do the wrong thing?”
“No.”
She ended the call. She slipped the phone back into her pocket. She continued across the parking lot. Sara felt blurred, like she was two inches outside of her body. One part of her was in the present, living her life with Will. The other part was being pulled back into Grant County. Jeffrey. Frank. Lena. The woods. The victim. The grim circumstances of the case.
Sara struggled against the competing images. She searched for solid, verifiable things.
Gary and Charlie were standing at the back of the crime scene van.
Faith was still in her Mini.
Amanda was in her white Audi A8. Her phone was to her ear. Her salt-and-pepper helmet of hair had tilted forward like a bell as she leaned against the headrest. She saw Sara and motioned her over.
The passenger-side window slid down. Amanda said, “You’re with me. There’s an interesting case in Sautee.”
She wanted you to go in without any preconceptions.
Sara lifted the door handle. She was on autopilot. Her brain was too overloaded to process anything but muscle commands. She opened the door. She started to get in.
“Sara?” Will was jogging toward the car. He looked exactly how she felt—blindsided. He was out of breath when he reached her. His eyes took in Amanda, Charlie, Gary, Faith. They all probably knew about Nesbitt and they had all somehow agreed to keep Sara in the dark.
She told Will, “I want a salad for dinner.”
He hesitated before nodding.
She pressed her hand to his chest. His heart thumped wildly beneath her palm. “I’ll call you when I’m on the way home.”
She kissed him on the mouth the same way she normally would. She sat in Amanda’s car. Will closed the door. Sara put on her seatbelt. Will waved. Sara waved back.
Amanda pulled out of the parking space. She took a left onto the main road. She didn’t speak until they were turning onto the interstate. “Sautee Nacoochee is in White County, approximately fifty miles from here. A twenty-nine-year-old female named Alexandra McAllister was found in the Unicoi State Park at approximately six yesterday morning. She was reported missing by her mother eight days ago. There was a large-scale search that yielded nada. Two hikers were out with their dog. The dog found the body in a heavily wooded area between two trails. The county coroner has officially ruled it as an accidental death. My gut tells me otherwise.”
There’s something else.
“I’ve called in some favors to get us a look-see at the body,” Amanda said. “We’ve got our big toe in, but they can pull us back at any time, so let’s tread softly.”
More victims. Other women. Serial killer.
Sara had seen Daryl Nesbitt in p
erson only once. He was sitting beside his lawyer in the courtroom. Sara was standing with Buddy Conford, the man she had hired to represent her in the civil case against Jeffrey’s estate. She was swaying so badly that Buddy had to hold her up. The loss of Jeffrey had stopped her world from spinning. Sara had always thought of herself as strong. She was smart, driven, capable of pushing herself to the extreme. Jeffrey’s murder had changed her at a molecular level. The woman who’d never let anyone outside of family see her cry couldn’t make it through one aisle of the grocery store without breaking down. She had become vulnerable in a way that she’d never thought was possible.
She had become vulnerable in a way that made it possible for her to be with Will.
Did I do the wrong thing?
Sara let her head fall into her hand. What had she done to Will? She had been stunned into silence, then angered by his non-response, then told him she wanted a salad for dinner. He must be panicking right now. Sara reached into her pocket for her phone. She pulled up the keyboard to text him, but what could she say? There wasn’t an emoji to express what she wanted to do, which was go home, crawl into bed and sleep until all of this was over.
Amanda asked, “Everything okay?”
Sara dialed Will’s number. She listened to the rings.
This time, he answered, “Hello?”
She could hear the rush of road noise. Faith had been in the passenger’s seat of the Mini, which meant that Will was driving, which meant that the call was on speaker.
Sara tried to sound casual. “Hey, babe. I changed my mind about the salad.”
He cleared his throat. She could picture him rubbing his jaw with his fingers, one of his few nervous habits. “Okay.”
Sara could tell that Amanda was hanging on her every word. Faith was probably doing the same with Will, because this was what happened when people kept secrets.
She told Will, “I’ll pick up McDonald’s.”
Will cleared his throat. Sara never offered to pick up McDonald’s because it wasn’t really food. “Okay.”
She said, “I’m—”
Freaked out. Worried. Angry. Hurt. Torn because of Jeffrey but still so deeply, irrevocably in love with you and I’m sorry I don’t know what else to say.
The Silent Wife: From the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author comes a gripping new crime thriller (Will Trent Series, Book 10) Page 9
