During the autopsy they found evidence of cyanosis and petechial hemorrhaging in the eyes, and blood staining around the mouth and nose—all signs of asphyxia. They also found water in the lungs, which suggested Amy Jones probably died sometime after entering the water.
While he waited for the lab reports, he checked the ViCAP database, cross-referenced asphyxiation, strangulation, manual, non-manual, blue dye, nudity—nothing. Although not all law enforcement agencies contributed to the FBI’s violent crimes database, most did, and it seemed that despite the growing, gnawing feeling in Jack’s gut there was no sign of the killer on anyone’s radar. Yet the crime felt too methodical for it to be an isolated incident. If there was a clue here somewhere, Jack was bound to find it.
Caroline had forgotten Josh was coming to dinner.
In the few short weeks since the girls had returned home, they had already fallen into a routine of sorts. Wednesdays were Sadie’s “kitchen visitation day.” She’d decided she should get at least one day per week to reacquaint herself with her stainless-steel babies, sort of like children lost in a custody battle. With the money Sadie had inherited, Caroline was pretty sure she could afford to pimp out her own kitchen, but she realized it was Sadie’s way of trying to keep them all together—at least for one night every week.
Tonight, she’d made red beans and okra, a distinctive Gullah dish that hailed back to Sadie’s roots—along with the blue bottle tree that sat outside her house and her blue porch, which she claimed kept evil spirits out of her home. Caroline thought maybe she should have painted her face blue, because Josh was giving her the evil eye. She guessed maybe he was still concerned that he would be accused as her source.
Caroline refused to react. Pushing her red rice around her plate, she thought about her mother’s shoe, wondering how the hell it ended up in the woods near Sadie’s house.
Of course, Augusta was right; it was ridiculous to assume anyone would break in to steal a stupid shoe and then lie in wait just to give it back . . . but Caroline couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to the shoe. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only tough thing she had to chew on tonight. There was Kelly . . . and Jack . . . and Frank . . . and, oh, she couldn’t forget Pam. Caroline had dragged the poor girl in way over her head. Really, at this point, it was easier to list the folks who weren’t mad at her.
Everyone laughed at something Josh said, but Caroline didn’t hear it, though they were all suddenly staring at her. Her fork froze before her mouth. “Huh?”
With a smile, Savannah explained, “Josh swears Mom must have thrown that shoe at Sadie.”
Although she was smiling too, Sadie shook her head and waved the notion away. “Your mama wouldn’t throw no damned shoe at me, eah!”
“Not even to shoo you away from a certain somebody on Saturday mornings while they were trying to work?” Josh immediately sidled away from his mother, anticipating the playful slap she threw in his direction.
“That’s not even funny!” Sadie contended.
“We know you like him, Mama,” Josh persisted. “No use denying it.”
Sadie got up from her seat at the head of the table, shoving her chair back in feigned annoyance. She gave Josh a pointed stare. “Who I like or don’t like is none of y’all’s concern, eah!” She scooped up her plate and whisked Josh’s plate out from in front of him, too. “You are all a bunch of ungrateful brats!” she declared, waving her hand over the entire table. “I don’t know why I put up with any of you.”
Augusta smirked and handed her plate over. “Because you love us.”
Savannah handed her plate over too, her smile as wide as Josh’s and Augusta’s.
Caroline got up to help.
“Chicken shit,” Josh said under his breath as Caroline hurried after Sadie. It was the first thing he had said to her all night, and though he’d said it jokingly, she knew there was an edge to his teasing.
Sadie slapped him lightly upside the head as she passed by. “She’s doing the best she can. You do your job and leave her be!”
Josh winced. “Yes, ma’am,” he replied, but once Sadie and Caroline were in the kitchen, the dining room exploded with peals of laughter.
At the sink, Sadie grabbed Caroline’s plate out of her hand. “Baby girl, don’t you let anyone tell you how to do your job, eah!” she advised. “Your mama put you in charge of that paper for a reason.”
Sadie couldn’t possibly understand the mess she’d made of everything, but until that instant, she hadn’t realized how much she needed to hear those words. For the second time today, tears threatened.
Sadie reached out, grabbing Caroline by the hand. “Listen to me, child. Your mama loved you! Maybe she didn’t know how to show it while she was alive and breathing, but this is how she’s showing you now.”
Sadie’s big black eyes were full of love and her smile was the same smile she had given them as children whenever they took a spill in the oyster gravel, skinning their knees.
Words caught in Caroline’s throat. “But Josh . . .”
“Don’t you worry a minute about my son! Right now, he’s concerned about nothing but himself and that’s not how I raised him! Truth is he’s probably already over it, but he’s not going to let you off the hook so easily, eah.”
Caroline mustered a smile, realizing Sadie was probably right. Josh liked to see people squirm.
Sadie patted her hand. “Listen, I can’t pretend to know why you did what you did, Caroline, but I’m sure you had your reasons, and I know in my heart you’ll always do what’s right. It’s in your blood!”
Caroline nodded, choking on her emotion.
Sadie let go of her hand and gave her a much-needed hug.
Caroline wiped her tears on her shoulder as she hugged Sadie back, and deep down she felt a twinge of guilt for being relieved it was her mother who was resting eternally in Magnolia Cemetery and not Sadie.
Sadie peeled away from her abruptly and went to the fridge, chortling softly to herself as she pulled out a key lime pie, unveiling it to Caroline. “Let’s see how long that boy keeps his mouth shut when he’s got to ask you for a piece of this!” She handed the pie over to Caroline and grabbed a serving knife from the counter, winking conspiratorially.
Caroline laughed. “You’re so devious!”
Sadie grabbed a stack of dessert plates. “Child, how the hell do you think I survived in this house so long?”
She and Caroline shared a crooked smile and then returned to the dining room together, where Josh held out approximately thirty seconds before he was all smiles and sweet-talking Caroline into giving him the first fat piece of key lime pie.
Sadie gave Caroline a smile that said simply I-told-you-so.
Chapter Fourteen
Caroline walked into her office the next morning to find two things on her desk: a copy of the morning edition of the Post and Frank’s resignation letter.
Today’s front-page headline in the Post read:
S ECESSIONVILLE CREEK KILLER: EX-PRIEST QUESTIONED
Caroline focused on the photo of the man the police had taken in for questioning and her heart somersaulted into her throat.
She read the headline a second time with a sense of dawning horror. And then she grabbed her purse, snagged Frank’s letter and the newspaper and ran out of her office, stopping by the front desk long enough to give Pam instructions: call Amy Jones’s roommate, call CPD, verify the Post’s facts—even though she knew the Post’s reporting would be solid.
She had been so preoccupied with her own agenda, with telling a particular story, that she had completely missed the real news. The Post had scooped them, but that wasn’t the worst of it. She had been so preoccupied with hurt feelings and doling out key lime pie that she had endangered the people she most loved.
Obviously, Frank had already checked out and she would deal with him later, but right now, she had to talk to Jack, because the ex-priest—the one they were holding for questioning—was the same man
who had tossed Augusta their mother’s shoe last night.
Why he should have had her mother’s shoe, she didn’t know. The particulars weren’t exactly working themselves out in her head, and none of it made a lick of sense, but she should have called the police. The one saving grace was that they had him in custody—no thanks to her or the Tribune! But she knew Jack would figure it out. He was good at his job. Unlike her, it seemed.
On her way out to the parking garage, Caroline called Jack first, but he wasn’t available, so she called Augusta and read the paper aloud to her sister from the car.
“Jesus, I was completely out to lunch!” she said, her head still reeling after reading it for the second time. “It says the victim called her roommate from Patterson’s cell phone! How could I have missed that? All it would have taken was for me to ask the right questions. Why didn’t I, Augie?”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Augusta countered. “I don’t believe that gorgeous man is a killer!”
“Lucifer was the most beautiful of God’s creations! Focus with me here, Augie—I’m having a serious self-pity moment! I missed everything—my God, that girl’s murderer was standing right there, not fifty feet from us last night!”
“Alleged murderer,” Augusta corrected. “Use your investigative reporter head, Caroline. He’s not guilty until he’s proven guilty in a court of law.”
“My God—what if I don’t have a reporter head? What if I’m a fraud?”
“Caroline,” Augusta admonished, “you’re being ridiculous. You’ve got a more solid education than Mother ever had and you come from a newspaper family that goes back generations. You’re listening with your heart, not your head.”
Augusta had a point.
Her mother had been an expert at detaching herself from her emotions. Call it high-functioning multiple personality disorder if you will, but she had been able to step outside of her crippling depression to look at hard, cold facts—at least for the sake of her work. She had, in fact, been able to look beyond her own traumatic losses to be of service to her community. Caroline couldn’t even look beyond Karen Hutto’s tragedy!
She was letting her emotions color every decision she made, and she wasn’t looking at the big picture. “What if I can’t think with my head?”
“When did you stop?” Augusta countered, as though it were a perfectly ridiculous notion.
Caroline thought about that a moment and found a new headache spawning. In the corner of the garage, behind a column, she noticed movement, and looked more closely.
Was someone there?
It was just her imagination.
Patterson was in jail, she reminded herself.
She locked the door anyway, and leaned on the window, putting a hand to her forehead, staring at the paper so closely that her myopic view of it settled on two words: EX-PRIEST QUESTIONED. “That man did not look like any priest to me,” Caroline said plaintively.
“He doesn’t look like a killer either,” Augie said with conviction.
“Well, I have to go,” Caroline said. “Let me call you in a while. Lock the doors!” she added fervently.
“Stop worrying,” Augusta countered. “The doors are already locked, Caroline.”
“And please make sure Savannah is home!”
“Really? We’re supposed to put our lives on hold and lock ourselves away because there’s a freak out there?”
Even here in the shadowy parking garage, people were coming and going, completely oblivious to any danger.
“Take a chill pill, Caroline. We’re big girls. We’ll be fine.”
“You’re right,” Caroline conceded, and hung up, intending to drive straight to the police department. Instead she found herself detouring and headed to the one place she never thought she’d return.
Tucked away near the banks of the Cooper River, Magnolia Cemetery was all but forgotten amid the ancient, drooping oaks. The remaining empty patches of earth belonged to those whose families could trace their heritage back to when news of Sherman’s March sent women to bed with the vapors. The cemetery now held some thirty-five thousand bodies, including two thousand Confederate soldiers, five governors and four U.S. senators—one being Senator Robert Samuel Aldridge II.
Caroline’s father.
Reunited in death, her parents lay beside one another beneath the shade of an old live oak . . . peaceful . . . as they had never been in life.
The tree, which had certainly seen better days, was humpbacked now, with tired limbs that sank toward the ground as though yearning to rest alongside Magnolia’s inhabitants. On the south side, its branches were a little sparser. No doubt before there were laws in place to protect these deciduous mammoths, some of the vast network of roots had been mangled during the digging of nearby graves. Now, like scars that refused to heal, there were ligneous scabs where immense limbs had lived, withered and died. On the north side, Spanish moss clung to the thicker mass of boughs like hoary curtains, weighing the tree down much like a bent old woman straining under the weight of her striplings. It was on this side her mother had been laid to rest.
Caroline’s gaze dropped to the grave on the other side of her mother’s plot . . . an empty piece of land reserved for their baby brother.
It would never be filled.
Even after the authorities stopped searching for Sammy . . . long after there was even a remote chance he might be found alive . . . her mother had paid to have the shoreline dredged for miles.
His body was never found.
Caroline noticed there were flowers on his grave—baby’s breath and sun-bleached peach roses—recent enough that she could still tell what color the petals had been in life. Flo had never once mentioned her visits to Magnolia. Apparently, she had grieved here all alone until her dying day, sharing secrets with no one. Knowing that didn’t make Caroline feel any better.
Bright morning sun penetrated the thick mass of limbs above, shedding dappled light over the graves at her feet.
Already, the soil over her mother’s plot was beginning to settle, the rich color of freshly turned dirt fading into the surrounding earth. She looked around, inspecting the rows of graves. Her brother’s and her mother’s were the only ones in plain sight that had fresh flowers. Other urns held washed-out plastic roses, but most had none at all. Even the next of kin of those buried here were likely dead, buried and forgotten. And once the flowers in her mother’s urn were gone, reduced to dust . . . along with those on Sammy’s grave, they would lie as bare and forgotten as her father’s plot.
She and her sisters weren’t the type to stroll in cemeteries.
Caroline didn’t believe in making appointments to visit regret and despair. She believed in moving forward, forging a better tomorrow . . . but here she was.
Why?
Did she think somehow she might forge a connection with her dead mother simply by standing at her grave? Find answers that eluded her by staring at a plot of earth? Why the hell would she hope for that when she and Flo had never even had a minuscule connection while Flo was still alive?
And yet, she admitted, she had never needed her mother more than she did at this moment . . . when it seemed she was most lost to her.
Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Caroline turned to walk back to the car, feeling a little foolish and a lot reckless. She’d come here completely on a whim, and even though Patterson was being held and questioned for the murder of Amy Jones, Augusta was right, until he was proven guilty beyond a shadow of doubt, an isolated graveyard where few people ventured was not the place to be alone.
She slid into her car, stabbed the key into the ignition and drove away, this time heading straight to the police station to report last night’s visit from a certain ex-priest. At some point, she intended to tell Jack about his ex-girlfriend’s visit, too, but at the moment, it was completely overshadowed by Patterson’s.
She made her way out of the cemetery, peering one last time into the rearview mirror . . . but she never saw the figur
e watching behind a nearby crypt.
Chapter Fifteen
Ian Patterson didn’t behave like a man who was concerned about a homicide conviction. He sat quietly in the interview room, answering questions without breaking a sweat. Nor did he lose his temper even with the most leading questions. In fact, he seemed, as far as Jack could tell, like a man who was genuinely willing to cooperate. His face practically turned green when Jack revealed the detailed photos of Amy Jones, postmortem lividity transforming her milky skin to bluish- and reddish-purple splotches where gravity pooled her blood into the lowest regions. Unless he was a damned good actor, he wasn’t their guy.
On the other hand, he didn’t look like a straitlaced priest either. Tall and lean, with scruffy hair, a Vandyke, dark Lennon sunglasses and a small hoop earring, he reminded Jack more of a pot-smoking drummer—a heartthrob in a star band.
Without blinking, he agreed to a polygraph, and in the end, they weren’t able to hold him, nor did they have probable cause to legally search his house since he had an alibi for the time of the Jones death. Apparently, he was watching a girlfriend’s band play a gig at the Windjammer.
They had phone records to tie him to the victim, witnesses who placed him at a nearby gas station with the victim at about eight P.M.—two and a half hours before the actual murder—and fingerprints on the back end of her car—near her gas tank, all consistent with his story. The evidence was purely circumstantial and the guy had zero motive as far as Jack could tell—if they were dealing with a single homicide.
Patterson claimed Jones had run out of gas. Apparently, he lived in the area and he was on his way out for the evening and found her walking down Fort Lamar Road in the dark so he gave her a ride to the station, bought her a can of gas and took her back to her car to empty the contents into her tank—pretty straightforward. The guy’s Good Samaritan story checked out one hundred percent. He even had receipts and credit card records to wrap up a nice little paper trail.
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