Will had always had trouble finding clothes that fit, but usually the opposite was the problem: short cuffs, tight seams stretching against his shoulders. He had been expecting Lena to offer him one of her own coats as a sort of joke. Apparently, she had come up with a better idea. Will stared down at the stitching on the breast pocket as they made their way around the lake. The jacket belonged to Officer Carl Phillips.
He stuck his hands into the pockets as the wind picked up. He could feel some latex gloves, a measuring tape, a plastic pen, and a small flashlight. At least he hoped it was a small flashlight. Despite Lena’s worst intentions, the jacket was nice, a North Face rip-off with tons of zippered pockets and enough insulation to keep the wind out. Will had the brand-name version back at home. He hadn’t brought it because in Atlanta, cold weather never lasted more than a few days, and even then, the sun came up to burn off the chill. The thought of the jacket hanging in his closet gave him a longing to be back home that surprised him.
Lena stopped, turning back toward the police station. She raised her voice to be heard over the rain. “The college is back there, past the station.”
Will guessed they had been walking for about fifteen minutes. He could barely make out a bunch of buildings resting in the curve of the lake just beyond the police station.
Lena said, “There’s no reason for Allison to walk this way.”
“Where’s Lover’s Point?”
She pointed in the opposite direction. “That cove about a half mile away.”
Will followed the line of her finger to the indentation in the shoreline. The cove was smaller than he’d thought it would be. Or perhaps the distance made it seem that way. Large boulders were scattered along the shore. He imagined people built campfires when the weather was better. It looked like the kind of place a family might pull up a boat to for a long picnic.
“Are we just going to stand here?” Lena had her hands deep in her pockets, head down against the wind. Will didn’t need ESP to figure out she didn’t want to be out here in the pouring rain. It was so cold by the water that he had to fight to keep his teeth from chattering.
He asked, “Where are the roads again?”
She gave him a look that said she wasn’t going to play this game much longer. “There.” She pointed into the distance. “That’s the fire road. It hasn’t been used in years. We checked it when we pulled the body out of the lake. Nothing’s there.”
“That’s the only egress from here to Lover’s Point, right?”
“Like I showed you on the map back at the station.”
Will had never been good with maps. “That place over there.” He pointed to an area just past the cove. “That’s the second road that people normally use to get to the cove, right?”
“Empty, like I told you. We checked it, all right? We’re not total morons. We checked for cars. We checked for tire tracks, footprints. We checked both roads and neither one of them showed any signs of use.”
Will tried to get his bearings. The sun wasn’t doing much to help light the way. The sky was so dark that it could’ve been nighttime instead of smack in the middle of morning. “Where’s the residential area?”
She pointed across the lake. “That’s where Sara lives. Her parents. Over here”—she pointed farther along—“all of this shoreline, including where we’re standing, belongs to the State Forestry Division.”
“Do people take their boats out?”
“There’s a dock at the campus for the rowing teams. A lot of the homeowners go boating during the summer. No one would be stupid enough to be out here in this rain.”
“Except us.” Will put as much cheer into his voice as he could muster. “Let’s keep going.”
She trudged along ahead of him. Will could see her sneakers were soaked. The running shoes he had found in the back of his car weren’t faring much better. Allison’s shoes, or at least the ones found near her body, were dirty, but not caked in mud. If she had walked along the shore, the terrain had been a lot harder than the red Georgia clay that was sliding out from under his feet.
Will had checked the weekly weather report last night on his computer. Temperatures had been lower the morning Allison was found, but the same rain they were seeing now had been pounding down the night before. It was a good time to kill somebody. Trace evidence on the shore would be lost. The cold water would make guessing when the murder occurred next to impossible. Except for the 911 caller, no one would have known there was a body in the lake.
Lena slipped in the mud. Will reached out, catching her before she fell into the water. She was so light that he could almost pick her up with one hand.
“Christ.” She braced her hand against a tree. She was breathing hard. He realized she had been walking fast to keep a few paces between them.
Will asked, “Are you okay?”
She pushed away from the tree, a look of determination on her face. Will watched her feet as she picked her way across the large roots and fallen branches that riddled the shoreline. He had no way of knowing whether or not Allison had made her way to Lover’s Point along this same route. His goal was to get Lena Adams out of the station, out of her element, so that she would talk to him. Between the pounding rain and the rough going, he was thinking that it might be wise to set the bar lower. For instance, he could aim not to let them both freeze to death.
Lena was so certain that Tommy Braham had killed Allison Spooner—just as certain as Sara was that Tommy had not. Will felt caught in the middle, and was mindful that it would be wrong to let either woman influence his thinking. He supposed for Lena the question of Tommy’s innocence carried with it a lot more guilt than she wanted to shoulder. To believe otherwise would mean that the kid had killed himself for nothing. That she had given him the means—and the motivation—to take his life. For Sara’s part, admitting Tommy was a murderer would mean admitting that Lena wasn’t as ruthless as she wanted to believe.
Will didn’t feel the rain let up so much as hear it. The constant tapping of water against leaves died down to a gentle whisper. He heard a bird, a bunch of crickets. Up ahead, a large tree blocked the path. Thick roots jutted into the air, earth dripping from the tendrils. Lena lifted herself up and over. Will followed her, looking around, trying to get his bearings again. They were near the fire road. At least he thought they were.
“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 Allis
on 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 him.
“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 t
he 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.”
The Will Trent Series 5-Book Bundle Page 145