“It was wiped down,” Will guessed. The trigger and the area around the grip were clean.
“Don’t give up on me yet,” Charlie mumbled. The brush swept back and forth across the label. All of them knelt down as Charlie dusted the bottom surface.
“Bingo,” Will whispered. He could see a partial fingerprint on the bottom of the bottle. The black practically glowed against the dark blue liquid.
“What do you see?” Charlie asked. He took a flashlight out of his pocket and shone it on the clear plastic. “Holy Christ. Good catch, eagle eye.” He traded the flashlight for a piece of clear tape. “It’s a partial, probably the pinky finger.” He sat back on his heels so he could transfer the tape to a white card.
Will said, “His gloves would’ve been bloody. He had to take them off to clean the floor.”
Charlie stood up with Doug’s help. “We’ll drive this to the lab right now. I can wake some people up. It’ll take time, but it’s a good print, Will. This is a solid lead.” He told his assistant, “The other evidence is in the van. There’s a pill bottle in my tackle kit. Grab that, too.”
Will had forgotten about the bottle in Tommy Braham’s cabinet. “Did you field-test the capsules?”
“I did.” Charlie started down the hall toward the stairs. The black lights bounced off their white Tyvek suits. “It’s not coke, meth, speed, or any of the usual suspects. Was the kid into sports?”
“I don’t think so.”
“It could be a steroid or a performance enhancer. A lot of younger guys are using those to bulk up now. The Internet makes them easy to get. I sent some photos back to Central to see if they recognize the label or capsules. A lot of these dealers are into branding. They keep their labels consistent so their product gets advertised.”
Tommy didn’t strike Will as interested in weight lifting, but he’d been a skinny kid. Maybe he wasn’t happy with that. “Did you find any fingerprints on the bottle?”
Charlie stopped at his tackle box. He pulled out the pill bottle, which had been sealed in a proper evidence bag instead of the Ziploc Will had found in the kitchen. “I lifted two sets. The first was adult, probably male. The second was a partial webbing.” He indicated the skin between his thumb and index finger. “I don’t know if it’s male or female, but I’d guess whoever wrote those words on the label held it in her hands while she did. I’m saying ‘her’ because it looks like a woman’s handwriting.”
“Can I keep the bottle? I want to show it around and see if anybody recognizes it.”
“I already have some of the capsules in the van.” Charlie gave him the bag as they walked down the stairs. “You still want a lift to the Braham house? I think I can spare one of my guys to process the garage now.”
“That’d be great.” Will had forgotten his Porsche was still at the Taylor Drive house. He checked the time on his phone. Knowing it was already past ten o’clock made Will feel even more exhausted than he had before. He thought about Cathy Linton’s dinner invitation and his stomach rumbled.
Downstairs, Marty was awake by the door. He was talking to a large man who was his exact opposite except in skin color.
“You Agent Trent?” The man slowly made his way over. He was built like a linebacker who’d gone to seed. “Demetrius Alder.”
Will was too busy unzipping his clean suit to shake the man’s hand. “Thank you for cooperating with us today, Mr. Alder. I’m sorry we’ve kept you out so late.”
“I gave Lena all the tapes. I hope she comes up with something.”
Will assumed he would have heard from her hours ago if Lena had found anything of note in the security footage. Still, he told Demetrius, “I’m sure they’ll prove useful.”
“The dean wanted me to give you his number.” He handed Will a card. “He had me check all the buildings. We didn’t find anything else. All the dorms are empty. Somebody’s coming to fix the cameras first thing after the holiday.”
Will sat down so he could pull off the rest of the suit. He remembered something Marty had said earlier. “What about the car that was hit by the security camera?”
“It was parked in the loading dock. Good thing it was empty. Camera busted straight through the hatchback window.”
“Hatchback?” Will stopped worrying about the suit. “What kind of car was it?”
“I think it was one’a them old Dodge Daytonas.”
The rain had turned into a light sleet by the time Charlie’s van reached the tow yard. Gusts of wind shook the vehicle. Water pooled in the parking lot. There was no way to get to the front door without getting soaked. Will felt his socks getting wet again. The blister on his heel was so raw that he was starting to limp.
“Earnshaw’s,” Charlie said, and Will guessed he meant the sign glowing over the building. There was a whippet-thin older man standing in the doorway dressed in bib overalls and a baseball cap. He held the door open for them as they ran into the building.
“Al Earnshaw.” The man offered his hand to both of them. He told Will, “You’re Sara’s friend, right? My sister’s told me a lot about you.”
Will guessed that explained the man’s uncanny resemblance to Cathy Linton. “She’s been very kind to me.”
“Sure she has.” Al bellowed a good-natured laugh, but he slapped Will on the arm hard enough to throw off his balance. “Car’s in the back.” He motioned them toward the door behind the counter.
The shop was large, with the usual array of girlie calendars and posters of sexy, bikini-clad ladies washing cars. There were six lifts, three on each side. The tool chests were neatly lined up, their covers locked down tight. Al had turned on the propane heaters, but the cold was still biting. The roll-up doors in the back rattled from the wind. Allison’s Dodge Daytona was on the ground by the last lift. The back windshield was buckled in the center, just as Demetrius had said.
Will asked, “Did you call Allison to let her know you had her car?”
“We don’t call people when we tow them. Signs are up all over the school with our number. I figured the owner got a ride home for the holiday and we’d get a call when they got back and saw the vehicle wasn’t there.” Al offered, “Tommy’s Malibu is on the lot if you want to see it.”
Will had forgotten about the young man’s car. “Did you figure out what was wrong with it?”
“Starter was stuck again. He was crawling under there and hitting it with a hammer to get it unstuck.” Al shrugged. “I went ahead and fixed it. Gordon’s truck doesn’t have much more life left in it. He’ll need something to drive.” He took a rag out of his pocket and wiped his hands. The gesture had the hallmark of a nervous tic. His hands were as clean as Will’s.
Will asked, “Did you know Tommy well?”
“Yep.” He tucked the rag into his pocket. “I’ll leave you guys to it. Just holler if you need me.”
“Thank you.”
Charlie walked over to the car. He put his tackle box on the floor and opened the lid. “Sara?” he asked.
“She’s a doctor in town.” He corrected, “I mean, Atlanta. She works at Grady Hospital. She grew up here.”
Charlie handed him a pair of latex gloves. “How long have you known her?”
“Little while.” Will took a longer time putting on the gloves than the task warranted.
Charlie got the message. He opened the car door. The hinges squealed loudly. Lionel Harris had been right about the condition of the Daytona. It was more rust than paint. The tires were bald. The engine hadn’t been started in days but the smell of burning oil and exhaust filled the air.
“I guess the rain got to it,” Charlie said. The dash was a sturdy molded plastic, but the cloth seats were wet and moldy. A stream of water had poured in from the busted hatchback, soaking the carpets, flooding the footwells. Charlie pulled up the front seat and water sloshed onto his pants. School papers floated in the murky liquid. The ink had washed away. “This is going to be fun,” Charlie muttered. He was probably wishing he was back at the cam
pus with his fancy lights. “I suppose we should do this right.” He took his video camera out of the tackle box. Will walked around the car while he got everything ready.
The trunk was held down with a frayed bungee cord. The glass was safety-coated with a transparent sheet that held the shattered pieces of the window together. Will had a spiderweb view inside the messy trunk. Allison was as sloppy as Jason was neat. Papers were scattered around, their ink smudged from the rain. Will saw a flash of pink. “That’s her book bag.” He reached down to loosen the bungee cord.
“Hold on, now.” Charlie backed him off. He checked the rubber gasket around the window to make sure it was doing its job. “Looks like it held,” Charlie told him. “Still, be careful. You don’t want a sheet of glass coming down on your head.”
Will figured there were worse things that could happen. He waited patiently as Charlie focused the camera on Will, narrating in an official-sounding voice for the benefit of the tape. “This is Agent Will Trent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. I’m Charles Reed, also with the bureau. We are at Earnshaw’s Garage on Highway 9 in the city of Heartsdale, which is in Grant County, Georgia. It’s Tuesday, November twenty-sixth, at approximately ten thirty-two in the evening. We are about to open the trunk of a Dodge Daytona reportedly belonging to murder victim Allison Spooner.” He nodded, indicating Will could finally proceed.
The bungee cord was stretched to its limit. Will had to put some muscle into unhooking it from the bumper. The hatchback was heavy, and he remembered Lionel saying the pistons were blown. Allison had used a broken-off broom handle to prop it open. Will did the same. Tiny pieces of glass rained down as he opened the hatch all the way.
“Hold for just a second,” Charlie said, zooming in on the book bag, the papers, and fast-food trash.
Finally, he gave the okay to remove the bag.
Will grabbed the strap. The bag had some heft to it. Despite the pink, the fabric looked waterproof. Under the camera’s watchful eye, he pulled back the thick zipper. There were two heavy books on top, perfectly dry. From the drawings of molecules on the outside, Will assumed these were Allison’s chemistry texts. There were four spiral-bound notebooks, each with different-colored covers. Will flipped through these for the camera, the pages blurring. He guessed these were Allison’s class notes.
“What’s that?” Charlie asked. A slip of paper was sticking out of the blue notebook.
Will unfolded the page. It was half a sheet of college-ruled paper. The side edge showed where it had been ripped away from the spiral. There were two lines of text on the page. All caps. Ballpoint pen. Will stared at the first word, trying to make out the shapes of the letters. His reading was always worse when he was tired. His eyes refused to focus. He held up the paper to the camera, asking, “You want to do the honors?”
Thankfully, Charlie didn’t find the request odd. He narrated in his camera voice, “This is a note found in the pink book bag reportedly belonging to the victim. It reads, ‘I need to talk to you. We’ll meet at the usual place.’ ”
Will looked back at the words. Now that he knew what they said, he could better make out the letters. He told Charlie, “The ‘I’ looks familiar. It’s similar to the one written on the fake suicide note.” He pointed to the torn bottom half of the page for the benefit of the video camera. “The note found at the lake was written on the bottom half of a torn sheet of paper.” Will recalled Charlie’s words, “ ‘I need to talk to you. We’ll meet at the usual place.’ And then you add the last part from the fake suicide note, which is ‘I want it over.’ ”
“Makes sense.” Charlie’s voice changed again as he announced that he was stopping the tape. Wisely, he didn’t want to record their speculation for a future defense attorney to show in court.
Will studied the letters on the page. “You think a man or a woman wrote this?”
“I have no idea, but it doesn’t match Allison’s handwriting.” Will guessed he was using the girl’s class notes as a comparison. Charlie continued, “I saw some of Jason’s homework in his room. He wrote in all caps like that.”
“Why would Allison have a note like this from Jason?”
Charlie guessed, “He could’ve been an accomplice to her murder.”
“Could be.”
“And then the killer decided he didn’t want to leave any witness.”
Will’s brain was starting to hurt. The theory didn’t add up.
Charlie offered, “I’m not a professional, but I’d say the writing in Allison’s journal matches the writing on the pill bottle.”
“Her journal?”
“The blue notebook. It’s obviously some kind of journal.”
Will thumbed through the pages. Slightly less than half the notebook was filled. The remaining pages were blank. He checked the printing on the front of the plastic cover. The number 250 was in bold type with a circle around it. He assumed that was the number of total pages. “Doesn’t this seem like a weird choice for a diary?”
“She was twenty-one. Were you expecting one of those girlie leather-bound lock-and-key deals?”
“I guess not.” Will flipped through the pages. Allison’s handwriting was awful, but her numbers were legible. There were dates at the top of each entry. Some entries were as long as two paragraphs. Sometimes, there was just a stray line or two. He flipped to the last entry. “November thirteenth. That was two weeks ago.” He checked the other dates. “She was pretty consistent up until that point.” He flipped to the front page. “The first entry was on August first. That’s a pretty short diary.”
“Maybe she starts a new one every year on her birthday.”
Will remembered Sara’s notation on the whiteboard at the funeral home. Allison Spooner’s birthday was two days before Angie’s. “She was born in April.”
“Can’t blame me for trying.” Charlie picked up his camera. “I guess we should get some of this on tape. Anything pop out at you?”
Will stared at the open journal. Allison’s handwriting looked like a series of loops and squiggles. He patted his pocket. “I think I left my glasses in my glove compartment.”
“Bummer.” Charlie turned off the camera. “I’ll run you by your car so you can get started. Between this and the Braham place, I’m going to be pulling an all-nighter, too.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Lena felt another ripple of tremors working its way through her body. It was like an earthquake, a slow rumble and then the world turned upside down. Her teeth started to chatter around the gag in her mouth. Her muscles quivered, working their way into full spasm. Her feet kicked. She saw flashes of light. There was no use fighting it. She could only lie there and wait for the sensation to pass.
With agonizing slowness, the spasms subsided. Her body began to relax. Her jaw loosened. Her heartbeat slowed, flopping in her chest like a fish caught in a net.
How had she let herself get into this situation? How had she been so easily fooled?
She was hog-tied, an entire length of rope wrapped around her body, her hands, her feet. Even without the bindings, she doubted she could do anything but lie there and sweat. Her clothes were saturated. The concrete beneath her had wicked the moisture so that she was surrounded by a pool of her own making.
And it was cold. It was so damn cold that even without the shaking, her teeth wanted to chatter. She could barely feel her hands and feet. Dread filled her body when she thought about another attack coming on. She wasn’t going to be able to hold on much longer.
Was it the infection in her hand? Was that the reason she couldn’t stop shaking? The throbbing had turned into a stabbing pain that ebbed and flowed with no discernible pattern. Her life wasn’t flashing in front of her eyes, but she couldn’t stop thinking about what had brought her here. If she managed to get out of this place, if she managed somehow to get free, then everything had to change. The fear flooding through her body had brought with it a clarity that Lena had never known. For so long, she had tricked herself into
thinking that she held back the truth to protect other people—her family, her friends. Now she could see that she was only protecting herself.
If Brad managed to pull through, she would apologize to him every day for the rest of her life. She would tell Frank that she was wrong about him. He was a good man. He’d stuck by Lena all these years when a smarter man would’ve dropped her for the worthless friend she was. Her uncle had gone through hell with Lena. She had pushed him away so many times that it was a miracle he was still standing.
And she had to find a way to get Sara Linton alone. Lena would bare her soul, confessing her complicity in Jeffrey’s death. She hadn’t killed him with her own hands, but she had put him in harm’s way. Lena had been Jeffrey’s partner. She was supposed to have his back, but she had stood silently by while she watched him walk into the fire. She had practically pushed him in that direction because she was too much of a coward to face it on her own.
Maybe that was what was causing the seizures. The truth was like a shadow creeping through her soul.
Lena twisted around her good hand to reach her watch. The rope bit into her wrist. The pain barely registered as she pressed the button for the light.
Eleven fifty-four.
It was almost midnight.
Lena knew she had left the station around six. Jared would be wondering where she was. Or maybe Frank had gotten to him. Maybe Jared was on his way home to Macon right now.
Jared. The truth would lose him to her forever.
The punishment fit the crime.
Her jaw clenched. She closed her eyes, feeling another wave coming on. The tremble moved down her shoulders, through her arms and into her hands. Her feet kicked. She felt her eyes roll back. There were noises. Grunting. Screaming.
Slowly, Lena opened her eyes. She saw darkness. Her mind suddenly came back to her. She was tied up. She was gagged. Sweat covered her body. The stench of sweat and urine filled the air. She pressed the button on her watch. In the soft glow she could see the skin of her wrist. Red lines streaked up toward her shoulder, toward her heart. She looked at the display.
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