by Lisa Jackson
There was more speculation by the anchor as the reporter signed off; then the image of the Public Information Officer for Neahkahnie County making a statement on the steps of the sheriff’s department filled the screen. Finally, short footage of a thin woman with a reddened face and curly brown hair streaked with silver appeared.
Meredith O’Neal. Monica’s mother. Dabbing at her eyes, which were covered with dark glasses, though there wasn’t much sunlight, and holding her chin up as she tried not to fall apart, she answered a reporter’s questions.
“. . . Closure?” she whispered, sniffing loudly. “No, I don’t feel any closure. What has just happened is that all hope that my daughter was still alive is gone and . . . and . . . there are still so many questions that need to be answered about what happened to my dear, sweet Monica. . . .” Her voice cracked and she turned into the waiting arms of a barrel-chested man, her live-in boyfriend, Ray Smith. Beefy arms folded around her and through his own photo-gray lenses, Smith said, “We’re done here,” then rotated Meredith in his arms and led her into a double-wide modular home, his thin gray ponytail visible against the back of his camouflage jacket.
“Damn,” Maggie said, feeling for the woman. Somehow she, now that she was the detective in charge, had to solve this crime, whatever it came down to. She thought so hard her head began to pound, so she scooted back her chair, went into the kitchen, and downed a glass of water.
Once seated at the table again, she called the lab. She’d delivered Lucas’s scrap of fabric to a tech there less than three hours earlier, but he’d said he’d get right on it. Yet he hadn’t called. On the third ring, he answered. “It’s Dobbs,” she said.
“Oh, I was just about to call you.”
“And?”
“First off, let’s start with the skeleton.”
“The body? Okay. You found something?”
“The nicks on the bones we found, the ones we’re still trying to connect with Monica O’Neal? We can say with some certainty that they did not come from the knife that was embedded in Tyler Quade, the butcher knife that was missing from the kitchen. That knife was sharp as a fillet knife. The cuts on the bones were made by a different blade, most likely a smaller weapon.”
“Hmmm. And that’s confirmed as the blood on the butcher knife was only Quade’s? Did you check the blood on the knife that was embedded in Quade’s back? To see if it matched Monica O’Neal?” A second knife?
“That’s the thing. There was a screwup either at the hospital or in transport of the weapon to the lab. There was no blood on it when we got it twenty years ago. Of course that hasn’t changed with the passage of time.”
“But how could that have happened?”
“Someone wiped it clean. Either a mistake, an accident, or because they wanted to hide something.” As they talked Maggie was going through the old notes, flipping through reports, finding the report on the knife and the attack on Tyler Quade, and there it was in black and white—no blood on the knife. She’d never noticed that notation before. It hadn’t seemed significant.
Now, it seemed crucial.
Why would the blade be wiped clean? A mistake?
She was more than disappointed. And she was suspicious. Who had wiped the knife clean? Why? She wasn’t buying the possibility of it being a mistake. Nope, that just didn’t feel right. And yet the weapons were different. Whoever attacked Quade had left the knife in his body and then taken off after Monica O’Neal. Or killed her first, before Quade.
“What about the scrap of fabric that I sent over? The one with the stain?”
“Yeah, it’s blood. Verified. I won’t have a type until tomorrow.”
“Is it human?”
“Don’t know. Again, tomorrow. And that’s pushing it.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
She clicked off and tossed the phone onto the table. Something was very wrong here, something deeper than she’d first imagined. The too-clean knife was the clue. But what was it? A cover-up? By whom? She wondered what, if anything, Tyler Quade would say about it. Did he even know? He’d been in the hospital overnight, so the weapon used to attack him would be out of his control. But not so the doctors, or anyone who worked at the hospital . . . or someone in the police department. That last thought stopped her cold. Surely not. But the officer in charge was long gone, and no one currently at the department including the sheriff had been on staff during the time when Monica O’Neal went missing and Tyler Quade was attacked.
The only person now employed by the sheriff’s department who had been a part of the investigation was Lucas Dalton, her partner. The last person to see Eleanor Brady alive, a kid who had threatened to kill Dustin Peters.
“Huh.” She trusted Lucas, didn’t think him capable of anything brushing this kind of violence, but what did she know about him as a younger man? She chewed on the end of her pencil as she thought, but she couldn’t come up with any likely conclusions.
Yet.
She was banking on murder rather than an accident, and the knife certainly pointed in that direction. She thought about the other victim that night, the night Monica O’Neal had disappeared. Maggie had talked briefly to Quade on the phone and he’d agreed to an interview, at the department tomorrow, scheduled between some of the other ex-counselors. She would love to hear his version of what had happened from his mouth. She thought there were some inconsistencies in his version of what had gone down, but then she didn’t trust any of the statements made by the counselors; there was just something too pat about them. As for Quade, his statement was made after he was conscious at the hospital and he stuck to his story that he was attacked at the chapel. There had been enough of his blood there to confirm the attack, and bloodstains had been found on two cushions from an old couch that had been left in the chapel, in an old cloak room. Not a lot of blood, but enough to take notice. The blood matched Tyler’s and he said he’d cut himself shaving earlier in the day and had fallen asleep on the couch waiting for Monica.
Maybe.
But there had been scratches on his face that could have been from a human. She studied the pictures of Quade’s injuries and the couch cushions where they’d been found, where the stain was, and it seemed unlikely that his face had been in a position to get both of the upright cushions a little bloody. That couch was long gone unfortunately, only scraps of the fabric in evidence. Too bad. Because she would have liked to have looked at it.
Tyler had been an athlete, strong and muscular. Had played football and wrestled and according to the attending physician in the ER’s notes, had a high pain tolerance, hadn’t needed any medication despite the fact that he’d had a knife lodged in his back. A butcher knife that hadn’t hit a vital organ.
Lucky. So lucky.
For a second, a random, almost impossible thought flitted through her head. Could the wound have been self-inflicted, well, with the aid of an accomplice? Jo-Beth was late to the meeting she’d called. Could she have helped? Actually stabbed him with the precision to not kill him? But no one had reported seeing or finding any blood on her or her clothes. The blood had been mainly contained to the old chapel and then the trail Tyler had left on his mad, stumbling dash to the heart of the campus to get help.
Maybe.
But as far as Maggie could tell, the source of the weapon had to come from someone who had access to the kitchen, not that it was always locked. She studied photographs of Tyler Quade and his wounds, then reread his statement. The weird thing was that there had been no fingerprints at all on the weapon. None even from anyone who worked in the kitchen. So odd. Whoever had plunged the blade into his back had to have been wearing gloves or wiped the hilt clean. Also, he was stripped naked. That had never been explained. Why were his clothes left on one of the pews? When asked about it, he’d claimed that he wanted to surprise Monica, that they were planning to get together and have sex.
Maggie thought the excuse weak at best. Would he really strip in anticipation of sex? What if someone else came alo
ng? Then again, Tyler had been a teenage boy at the time. Who knew what went on in their brains when it came to sex?
She found Tyler Quade’s driver’s license picture. He was handsome and strong-jawed, and even in the poor-quality DMV photo there was an air about him, an attitude of superiority. He was smart, too, a GPA good enough in high school for the honor roll and decent grades at Colorado State. Why did the description “arrogant prick” come to mind as she stared at his picture? Because he radiated smugness. Any other photo had the same hint of arrogance about it. Like he thought he was smarter than everyone else and could pull a fast one on them. Hadn’t Lucas said the same, that he’d never much liked Quade?
And, when it all came down to the case, Tyler Quade had the motive to kill Monica O’Neal. She’d told him she was pregnant. All of his dreams would have been put at risk if he had to support a child.
Would he have really endangered his own life by murdering Monica and his unborn child? Whom could he trust with so big a secret? A friend? Jo-Beth, who was probably pissed as hell about the pregnancy? Who? Whoever it was, they’d kept their silence over the years . . . or disappeared themselves. Her mind spun scenarios involving Dustin Peters and even Waldo Grimes.
Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Slow down. It’s not even been proven that Monica was the victim of homicide.
“B-effin’-S,” she said aloud. She felt it in her bones that Monica O’Neal had been killed, her body tossed into the ocean.
Maggie tapped her fingers on the desk and stared at the computer screen. A thought came to mind and she pushed it aside as too far-fetched. Too nuts. But this was a boy who “had a high pain threshold,” a desperate kid who was a known risk taker. Who did extreme sports. Wasn’t afraid of death. Considered himself invincible.
Could he have actually done this by himself? She Googled “self-inflicted knife wounds” and found a YouTube video where a young man actually demonstrated how to plunge a knife in your own back using a very sharp blade, incredible nerve, and the cushions of a couch. The knife had to be placed just so to avoid life-threatening injuries, and it had to be propped up and held fast as the “victim” actually threw his body back against the couch with enough force that the razor-sharp blade sliced through the skin, into the muscle, and wedged against a rib.
“Holy crap,” she whispered, watching the video five times, four in slow motion, studying the idiot daredevil showing the Internet how to fake a stabbing. All you needed was a very sharp knife and a whole lot of nerve. She thought about it; didn’t like it. The idea seemed so far-fetched.
She found the pictures of the couch that had been in the chapel and eyed the cushions with the weird bloodstains, in perfect position.
Adrenaline rushed through her and she felt that singular anticipation she always experienced when she sensed she was on to something important, when she knew she was about to crack the case. Rubbing her temples, she watched the damned video one more time. “You son of a bitch,” she said as if Quade could hear her.
Yeah, she was looking forward to talking to the Adonis who had gotten one girl pregnant while nearly engaged to another.
But Quade was only one of the interviewees. There were others, and they could have been part of the hoax, if there was one. All of those counselors who left their campers, to meet and collude together? Why? Who was hiding what? She thought of them all, reading the statements Detective Hallgarth had taken, deciding Jo-Beth Chancellor Leroy was the ringleader. According to all of the statements, Jo-Beth had taken charge, had called the meeting for them all to get their stories straight. Two of the girls, Sosi Gaffney and Jayla Williams, had said as much when they’d talked to the police. The others had confirmed. And they’d lied—at least partially. Maggie could smell it. And didn’t she already know that one of them, Reva Mercado, was untrustworthy? There had been that car accident that Reva blamed on her husband, claiming he was at the wheel when the kid who lost her mother swore over and over that she’d seen the driver—a woman—just before the crash. There just hadn’t been enough evidence to nail Reva as she’d sworn up and down the husband had been driving.
And now this homicide. Okay, potential twenty-year-old homicide. Though the ME hadn’t come out and said it, Maggie felt it in her gut that Monica O’Neal had been murdered. She just had to figure out who’d done it. If the killer was Tyler—and she was definitely warming to that theory—she had to prove how reckless, unstable, manipulative, and calculating he was. Otherwise, it was all just conjecture. And if he didn’t spill his guts, then someone else who had known what he was up to might be able to confirm a theory that Sheriff Locklear would think was ridiculous.
And how in the world was the potential homicide tied to the other people who had gone missing?
Maggie needed evidence. Was it possible one or more of the counselors knew the truth and had kept it hidden all these years? But who?
“Eenie, meenie, miney, mo,” she said, flipping through the dusty pages. She could only hope that someone knew something they hadn’t admitted as scared teenagers; maybe Monica O’Neal’s confirmed death would loosen a tongue or two.
The news on the television moved to the local weather, more rain predicted, temperatures falling, and she punched the mute button.
She was determined to solve the case.
So what if others had tried and had failed?
She knew she had a reputation in the department of going with her gut, that sometimes things just didn’t seem right to her. This was one of those times.
Thankfully her headache was receding and she stretched in her chair and noticed the cat wasn’t looking at her any longer, but staring past her to the sliding door that led to her patio. He was still, his tail no longer flicking. She turned, followed his gaze to the darkness outside the panes.
And saw nothing but the reflection of the dining room and her own pale visage.
Still, she reached for her service weapon, which was in her purse lying open in the chair next to hers. Slowly, holding the pistol against her side, she walked to the door. With a flip of a switch the deck and small yard of her condominium were illuminated. She saw no one lurking in the shadows.
“Liar,” she said to the cat, but felt that little frisson of fear skitter down her spine, as if there were unseen eyes lurking just beyond the pale light cast by the porch lamp. Searching, she still saw nothing, not even the movement of shadow. She checked the door, found it locked, told herself that there was no one out there, no one staring in at her.
The case was getting to her, that was it. Now she was jumping at shadows. Nonetheless, she snapped the blinds shut.
CHAPTER 33
Averille, Oregon
Now
Lucas
“Lucas Dalton?” Jeanette Brady whispered, the screen door to her house a thin barrier between them. “What’re you doing here?” A dog stood at her side, a black and white border collie, his gaze fixed on the intruder standing on the porch. He growled low in his throat and Jeanette snapped, “No! You, Oreo, you go to your bed!” The dog gave one final look at Lucas through the screen, then, tail tucked, padded to a dog bed positioned near the fireplace.
Lucas said, “I need to talk to you.”
“Now?” she asked. “I was about ready to settle in to watch TV.”
“It’ll only take a minute.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Well, all right. But make it quick.” And she didn’t move. She’d aged over the years, her once-blond hair now graying and lank, her skin more sallow, twenty pounds or so added to her figure.
“Can I come in?”
“Well . . . I suppose.” She was flustered, her fingers fumbling as she undid the simple lock on the screen. “I assume this has something to do with Monica O’Neal. I just saw on the news that it’s her body that was found.”
Standing like a soldier, she held the door open for him. He stepped inside and was transported to a time two decades earlier. The furniture hadn’t changed, just become more dingy and scarred, an Early American motif wit
h maple tables and chairs in earth tones and floral prints, antique vases with fake roses and daisies, splashes of white in a dingy room of earth tones of rust and avocado green and gold. Darryl’s picture graced the mantel of a used brick fireplace and a family portrait, of the young family taken when Elle was around seven, was still hanging on the opposing wall, near the staircase.
He remembered coming here, waiting for Elle in this room, eating dinner at the dining room table that still stood on the far end of the living area, just steps off the kitchen. How many times had he sat at that table, next to Elle, feeling her bare toes rubbing his calf as Darryl gave the blessing and all Lucas could think about was scarfing down the meal and getting with Elle alone to have sex?
The thought was disturbing.
“Have a seat,” Jeanette offered without much enthusiasm.
Lucas shook his head. “No, thanks. This won’t take long. I just wanted to tell you that yes, the body that was found is Monica O’Neal. Also, Caleb Carter swears he saw Elle earlier today.”
She looked up sharply, her lips pinching. “Today?” She took in a long breath, glanced at her husband’s picture.
“That’s right. Carter swears he saw her at the spot where Crown Creek flows into the ocean.”
“Why on earth would she be there?” she asked, almost angrily. “And who can trust that man? He’s a drunk.”
“I know.”
“No one should ever believe him. Caleb Carter? Of course.” She let out a long, world-weary sigh. “Elle is gone. And that’s all there is to say about it. What happened, it’s a shame, but there it is. You know Darryl blamed you?”
“I figured.”
“Well, he wasn’t alone, Lucas,” Jeanette was saying. “I did, too. If you would have done right by her, married her, then . . .” She waved a hand toward the family portrait on the wall, the three of them: stern, long-faced Darryl; pretty, petite Jeanette; and Elle, with her white-blond hair in a ponytail, her teeth too big for her small face.