“There,” she said, pointing to a pile of stacked logs. “That’s the end of the road.” She took off her hood. Will followed suit. Two strips of earth about the width of the front end of a car lined the road for about ten feet, then gave way to thick forest. He understood why Lena was convinced the road was untraveled. You’d need a bulldozer to get through.
She told him, “The road on the other side is the one most people use, but it’s about a hundred yards west of the cove. I told you, we had to clear out a path to get the emergency vehicles back here.”
Will guessed they hadn’t been looking for tire tracks on the way to a suicide. They had probably destroyed any evidence of another car out by the cove. He asked, “If Allison didn’t have a car, how did she get here?”
Lena stared at him. “Tommy brought her here.”
“But you just said you checked for cars.”
“He had a scooter. He could’ve used that.”
Will agreed, but he couldn’t see Tommy balancing a dead body on the handlebars while he maneuvered his way through the forest. “Where was she before Tommy killed her?”
“Home, waiting to be killed.” She stamped her feet to fight the cold. “All right. The school library closed at noon on Sunday. She could’ve been there.”
“What about work?”
“The diner’s closed on Sunday.”
“Would Allison go this way to get home?”
Lena shook her head. “She would go through the woods across from the station. She’d be home in ten minutes.”
At least she was being honest about that. Lionel Harris had told Will the same thing. He asked, “So, why was Allison here?”
Lena dug her hands into her pockets as the breeze picked up.
“Detective?”
“She was here because Tommy brought her here.” She started walking again, trudging through the mud. Her shoes made a sucking sound with every step.
Will’s stride was twice Lena’s. He caught up with her easily. “Let’s profile our killer.”
She snorted a laugh. “You believe in that shit?”
“Not really, but we’ve got some time on our hands.”
“This is stupid.” She slipped again, but caught herself. “Are you really going to make me walk all the way to the cove?”
If Will could make her do anything, it would be for her to tell the truth. That didn’t seem to be an option, so he said, “Let’s do the profile.”
“Sure,” she muttered, pushing forward. “He’s a retarded kid between the ages of nineteen and nineteen and a half who drives a green Chevy Malibu and lives with his father.”
“Let’s take Tommy out of this for just a minute.”
She gave him a wary look.
Will asked, “What took place?”
Lena picked her way around another fallen tree.
“What took place?” he repeated.
She let her reluctance hang on every word. “You mean the murder?”
“Right. What happened?”
“Allison Spooner was stabbed in the neck Sunday night or early Monday morning.”
“Was it messy?”
She shrugged, but then said, “Probably. There’s all kinds of stuff in the neck. Arteries and veins. There would’ve been a lot of blood, which explains why Tommy had a bucket and sponge at Allison’s apartment. He was trying to clean up the mess.”
“Why did it happen?”
She laughed, incredulous. “This is profiling?”
Will’s version, at least. He didn’t share Lena’s certainty. She was so sure she was right about Tommy Braham that she hadn’t considered the possibility that a savage killer might be sharpening his knife for the next victim. “Why did the killer decide to kill? Anger? Opportunity? Money?”
“He killed her because she wouldn’t have sex with him. Did you actually read his confession?”
“I thought we were going to take Tommy out of this.” She shook her head, and Will tried again, “Just humor me, Detective. Let’s say there’s some mystery killer out there who wanted Allison dead. Other than Tommy Braham.”
“That’s quite a fantasy considering he admitted to doing it.”
He took her elbow to help her over a large puddle. “Did the murderer bring the weapon to the scene?”
Lena seemed to consider the question. “Maybe. He also had the cinder blocks, the chain, and lock.”
Will assumed the blocks and chain had been planted at the scene ahead of time, but now didn’t seem like a good time to bring up the theory. “So, this was premeditated.”
“Or, these were things lying around his house.” She added, “On Taylor Drive.”
Will didn’t rise to the bait. If Allison was killed at the lake rather than the garage, then Lena’s whole theory about Tommy’s guilt started to break down. He asked, “Was the killer angry?”
“The wound in her neck is pretty violent.”
“But not furious. That’s controlled. Deliberate.”
“He probably freaked out when he got a mouthful of blood back in his face.” She jumped over a puddle. “What else?”
“Let’s look at what we know: Our killer is organized. Not opportunistic. Has good knowledge of the area. He knows Allison. He drives a car.”
She nodded. “I’d buy that.”
“Go over the sequence of events.”
Lena stopped. They were about thirty feet away from the cove. “All right. Tommy, or your mystery guy, kills Allison, brings her here.” She squinted her eyes. “Probably he lays her down on the shore. He wraps the chains around her waist, ties her to the cinder blocks, then tosses her into the water.”
“Tosses her how?”
Lena stared at the cove. Will could almost hear her mind working. “He would have to carry her. She was found about fifteen feet out in the water, where the bottom drops off. The cinder blocks were heavy. Maybe he would’ve floated her out to the water, then bolted the chain and blocks around her. That makes more sense. There’s no way she could have been thrown in the water from the shore and ended up there.”
Will kept leading her along. “So, the killer walks her into the water, then chains her down. It was cold that night.”
“He’d need waders or something. He’d have to get back into his car to drive away. What’s the point of disposing of the body in water if you’re going to take the lake with you back into the car?”
“Being in the water wouldn’t necessarily be a bad idea.”
“Right. He would’ve been covered in blood.”
“Our killer didn’t want the body found. He walked her out to the deep end so she’d stay there. He weighted her down.”
Lena was silent again, but he knew she was too smart not to be thinking the same thing he was.
Will said it for her. “Someone wanted the body found. There was the call to 911.”
“Maybe one of Tommy’s neighbors saw something.”
“And followed him to the lake, watched him dump the body, and …”
“You think he had an accomplice?”
“What do you think?”
“I think at best we’ve got a material witness. We’ll need to talk to her at some point, but why does this matter when the guy who admitted to killing Allison is dead?”
Will looked around. They were standing in mud up to their ankles. The earth was darker here, turning almost black as it dipped into the water. Allison’s shoes had black mud on them, not red clay.
Will asked, “Did Tommy mention whether or not Allison had a boyfriend?”
“Don’t you think we’d be talking to him right now if he had?”
Will saw a fat squirrel scamper up a tree, tail twitching. Several twigs had been snapped in two. The ground covering was bent down. He heard a car in the distance. “Is there a road close by?”
“About a mile out.” She pointed in the direction of the noise. “There’s a divided highway.”
“Any residences?”
Lena pressed her lips together. She wouldn’t look at h
im.
“Detective?”
She stared down at the ground, knocked some mud off her shoe. “Tommy lived out that way.”
“So did Allison Spooner.” Will glanced back at the lake. The water was churning. The wind coming off the water was like ice against his skin. “Have you ever heard the name Julie Smith?”
Lena shook her head. “Who is she?”
“Did Tommy mention any friends? Either his or Allison’s?”
“That wasn’t the focus of the interview.” Her tone was terse. “I was trying to get him to confess to murder, not give me his life story.”
Will kept his eyes on the lake. He was looking at this the wrong way. Their killer was smart. He knew that water would get rid of trace evidence. He knew to walk the body into the deeper part of the lake. He had probably lured Allison out here after careful deliberation. The wet terrain, the mud and underbrush, all would serve to help cover his tracks.
Will rolled up the legs of his jeans. His shoes were already soaked, so he didn’t bother to take them off before walking into the lake. The cold water sloshed into his sneakers.
“What are you doing?”
He went out a few feet and scanned the shoreline, studying the trees, the underbrush.
Lena had her hands on her hips. “Are you crazy? You’re going to get hypothermia.”
Will studied each tree, each branch, each section of weeds and moss. His feet were completely numb by the time he found what he was looking for. He walked toward a large oak that was leaning away from the shore. Its knotty roots coiled into the lake like an open fist. At first, Will had thought he was seeing a shadow on the bark, but then he remembered you had to actually have sun or some other source of light to cast a shadow.
Will stood in front of the tree, his shoes sinking into the silt at the bottom of the water. The tree was deciduous, its bony canopy reaching up at least a hundred feet overhead. The trunk was about three feet around and bowed away from the water. Will wasn’t an arborist, but there were enough oaks around Atlanta so that he knew their red-brown furrows of bark turned the color of charcoal as the tree aged. The scaly bark had absorbed the rain like a sponge, but there was something else Will had noticed from his vantage point in the water. He scraped at a small section of bark with his fingernails. The wood left a wet, rust-colored residue. He rolled the grit between his fingers, squeezing out the moisture.
Blood really was thicker than water.
“What is it?” Lena asked. She kept her hands in her pockets as she leaned out into the water.
Will remembered the flashlight in his jacket pocket. “Look.” He traced the light along a dark stain that sprayed up the trunk. He thought about what Sara had said about Allison’s injury, that there would be a high-velocity spray, like a hose turned on full blast. Four to five pints of blood. That was over half a gallon.
Will said, “She must have been facedown on the ground, just shy of the water. Her blood spattered up and back in an arc. You can see the dispersement is thicker here at the base of the tree, closer to her neck. Then it starts to dissipate at the top.”
“That’s not—” Lena stopped. She saw it now. He could see from her shocked expression.
Will glanced up at the sky. The clouds were letting loose a few drops at a time. They hadn’t been given much of a reprieve. It didn’t matter. Short of scrubbing the bark, there was no way to completely clean the tree. The wood had absorbed the mark of death the same way it would absorb smoke from a fire.
Will asked, “You still think our murderer is a nineteen-year-old boy who lives with his father?”
The wind whipped off the lake as Lena stared at the tree. Tears came into her eyes. Her voice shook. “He confessed.”
Will quoted Tommy’s words back to her. “‘I got mad. I had a knife on me. I stabbed her once in the neck.’” He asked, “Did you find blood in the garage?”
“Yes.” She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. “He was cleaning it up when we got there. I saw a bucket, and there was …” Her voice trailed off. “There was blood on the floor. I saw it.”
Will rolled down the legs of his jeans. His shoes were sinking into the mud at the base of the tree. He saw there was a new color mixed in with the soil, a deep rust that soaked into the mesh on the toe of his sneaker.
Lena saw it, too. She fell to her knees. She stuck her fingers deep into the ground and grabbed a fistful of earth. The soil was soaked, but not just with rainwater. She let the dirt fall back to the ground. Her hand was dark red, streaked with Allison Spooner’s blood.
CHAPTER TEN
LENA PRESSED A WET PAPER TOWEL TO HER NECK. SHE WAS sitting with her back against the stall of the locker room toilet. A patrolman had tried to come in while she was dry-heaving. He’d left without saying a word.
She’d never had a strong stomach. Her uncle Hank used to say that Lena didn’t have the guts for the kind of life she was living. He wouldn’t have taken any pleasure in seeing that he was right.
“Oh, God,” she whispered, as close to a prayer as she’d come in a long while. What had that stupid kid gotten himself into? What else had she missed?
She closed her eyes. Nothing made sense right now. Nothing was fitting together the same way it had yesterday morning.
He did it. Lena knew Tommy had killed Allison. People didn’t confess to murder unless they were guilty. Even without that, less than fifteen minutes after they pulled the girl out of the lake, they had found Tommy in Allison’s apartment going through her things. Wearing a black ski mask. He ran when they confronted him. He stabbed Brad, even if it was with a letter opener. Lena had seen him stab Brad with her own eyes. She had listened to Tommy’s confession. She had watched him write down everything in his own stupid words. And he had killed himself. The guilt had gotten to him and he had sliced open his wrists because he knew what he had done to Allison was wrong.
So why was Lena doubting herself?
Suspects lied all the time. They never wanted to confess to all the horrors they’d committed. They split hairs. They admitted to rape but not murder. They admitted to punching but not beating, stabbing but not killing. Was it as simple as that? Had Tommy lied about killing Allison in the garage because he’d wanted to make the crime seem more understandable, more spur of the moment?
Lena pressed her head against the wall.
That stupid profile Will Trent came up with kept coming back to her. Cold. Calculated. Deliberate. That wasn’t Tommy. He wasn’t smart enough to think of all the variables. He would’ve had to plan ahead, get the cinder blocks and chains ready, carry them out to the lake ahead of time. Even if Tommy got the blocks after the fact, he would’ve had to anticipate the blood, and plan on the rain covering his tracks.
All that blood. The ground was soaked in it.
Lena scrambled to her knees and held her head over the toilet. Her stomach clenched, but nothing was left to come up. She sat back on her heels, staring at the back of the tank. The cool white porcelain stared back. This was her stall, and only her stall. This toilet was the one piece of ground she had managed to stake out solely for herself in the unisex locker room. The urinals were stained like old-lady teeth. The other two stalls were disgusting. They reeked of excrement no matter how many times they were cleaned. This morning, it didn’t seem to stop there. The whole place reeked of shit. And it was all coming from the top down.
Lena wiped her mouth with the paper towel. Her hand was throbbing where she’d been shot. She was probably getting an infection. The skin felt hot down to her wrist. She squeezed her eyes shut. She wanted to be away from here. She wanted to be back in bed with Jared. She wanted to go back to yesterday and shake Tommy Braham until he told her the truth about what really happened. Why was he in Allison’s apartment? Why was he going through her things? Why was he wearing the ski mask? Why did he run? And why, in God’s name, did he kill himself?
“Lena?” Marla Simms’s creaky voice was just above a whisper. “Can I have a minute?”
>
Lena pressed herself up to standing. It was not lost on her that the only spot she could call her own in this entire godforsaken place was the toilet.
Marla stood with a folded sheet of paper in her hands. “You all right?”
“No,” she said, because there was no use lying. She need only glance in the mirror to see the truth. Her hair was disheveled. Her face was red and blotchy. She was punch-drunk with lack of sleep and her nerves were so raw that she felt like she was vibrating even standing dead still.
“Agent Trent wanted this.” Marla held out the sheet of paper between her fingers, giving Lena a meaningful look, as if they were two spies passing a briefcase in front of the Kremlin. “He didn’t see it last night.”
Lena had to tug the sheet before Marla would release it. She recognized her own handwriting. The copied page was from her notebook. The transcript she had made of the 911 call. She tried to pick out the words but her eyes blurred. “I thought he asked for the tape?”
“If he wants more than this, then he’s going to have to drive down to Eaton to get it.” She tucked her hands into her wide hips. “And you can tell him from me that I’m not his personal secretary. I don’t know who he thinks he is, ordering people around.”
He was the man who was going to shut down this force if they didn’t do everything he said. “Have you talked to Frank this morning?”
“I’m guessing he came by last night. My files were a mess when I got here.”
Lena already knew Frank had stolen Tommy’s phone and taken the photograph from Allison’s wallet, but this new information sent a chill straight to her chest. “Which files?”
“All of them. I don’t know what he was looking for, but I hope he found it.”
“You gave Trent those incident reports.”
“What of it?”
“Why?”
“No one wants to speak ill of the dead, but I’ll come on out and say it to whoever asks. Tommy wasn’t acting right lately. He was getting into trouble, yelling at people, threatening them. Don’t get me wrong. He was a good boy when he was little. Had those precious little blond curls and pretty blue eyes. That’s what Sara’s remembering. But she doesn’t know what he was like lately. I think something just clicked in his head. Maybe it was there all along and we just didn’t notice. Didn’t want to notice.” Marla shook her head in a tight half-circle. “This is just a mess. A grade-A, certified pile of doo.”
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