A Faint Cold Fear gc-3

by Karin Slaughter

  “He moved to New York. I think he’s some kind of agent now.”

  Jeffrey gave an exaggerated shudder, and she could tell he was making an effort to get past the argument.

  “Brock’s not that bad,” Sara told him, feeling the need to take up for the mortician. Dan had been mercilessly teased when they were growing up, something Sara could not abide even as a child. At the clinic she saw two or three kids a month who were not sick so much as tired of the relentless teasing they got at school.

  “I’ll be interested to see how the tox screen comes back,” Jeffrey said. “Rosen’s father seems to think he was clean. His mother’s not so sure.”

  She raised an eyebrow. Parents tended to be the last to know when their kids were using drugs.

  “Yeah,” he said, acknowledging her skepticism. “I’m not sure about Brian Keller.”

  “Keller?” Sara asked, crossing yet another landing and heading up another flight of stairs.

  “He’s the father. The son took the mother’s last name.”

  Sara stopped climbing, more to catch her breath than anything else. “Where the hell did you park?”

  “Top floor,” he said. “One more flight.”

  Sara grabbed the railing, pulling herself up the stairs. “What’s wrong with the father?”

  “There’s something going on with him,” he said. “This morning, he acted like he wanted to talk to me, but his wife came back into the room and he shut up.”

  “Are you going to interview him again?”

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “Frank’s going to do some digging around.”

  “Frank?” Sara asked, surprised. “Why don’t you get Lena? She’s in a better position to—”

  He cut her off. “She’s not a cop.”

  Sara kept her mouth shut the last few steps, nearly collapsing with relief when he opened the door at the top of the stairs. Even this late in the day, the upper deck was packed with cars of all makes and models. Overhead, a storm was brewing, the sky turning an ominous black. Security lights flickered on as they walked toward Jeffrey’s unmarked police car.

  A group of young men was hanging around a large black Mercedes, their heavily muscled arms crossed over their chests. As Jeffrey walked by, the men exchanged looks, pegging him for a cop. Sara felt her heartbeat accelerate as she waited for Jeffrey to unlock the door, inexplicably scared that something horrible would happen.

  Once inside the car, she felt safe cocooned in the plush blue interior. She watched Jeffrey walk around the front to get in, his eyes locked on the group of thugs by the Mercedes. All this posturing had a point, Sara knew. If the boys thought Jeffrey was scared, they would do something to harass him. If Jeffrey thought they were vulnerable, he would probably feel compelled to force something.

  “Seat belt,” Jeffrey reminded Sara, closing his door. She did as she was told, clicking the belt across her lap.

  Sara was quiet as they drove out of the parking deck. On the street she leaned her head on her hand, watching downtown go by, thinking how different everything was since she had last been here. The buildings were taller, and the cars in the next lane seemed to be driving too close. Sara was no longer a city person. She wanted to be back in her small town where everyone knew one another—or at least thought they did.

  Jeffrey said, “I’m sorry I was late.”

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  “Ellen Schaffer,” he began. “The witness from yesterday.”

  “Did she say something?”

  “No,” Jeffrey said, then paused before finishing, “She killed herself this morning.”

  “What?” Sara demanded. Then, before he could answer, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I’m telling you now.”

  “You should have called me.”

  “What could you have done?”

  “Come back to Grant.”

  “You’re doing that now.”

  Sara tried to quell her irritation. She did not like being protected like this. “Who pronounced the death?”

  “Hare.”

  “Hare?” Sara said, some of her irritation rubbing off on her cousin for not telling her this on the phone. “Did he find anything? What did he say?”

  Jeffrey put his finger to his chin and affected Hare’s voice, which was a few octaves higher than Jeffrey’s. “ ‘Don’t tell me, something’s missing.’ ”

  “What was missing?”

  “Her head.”

  Sara let out a long groan. She hated head wounds. “Are you sure it’s a suicide?”

  “That’s what we need to find out. There was a discrepancy with the ammo.”

  Sara listened as he filled her in on what had happened this morning, from his interview with Andy Rosen’s parents to finding Ellen Schaffer. She stopped him at the arrow Matt had found traced into the dirt outside Schaffer’s window. “That’s what I did,” she told him. “To mark the trail when I was looking for Tessa.”

  “I know,” he said, but offered nothing more.

  “Is that why you didn’t want to tell me?” Sara asked. “I don’t like you withholding information from me. It’s not your decision—”

  With sudden vehemence he said, “I want you to be careful, Sara. I don’t want you going on that school campus alone. I don’t want you around any of the crime scenes. Do you understand me?”

  She did not answer, mostly out of shock.

  “And you’re not staying at your house alone.”

  Sara could not stop herself. “Hold on—”

  “I’ll sleep on your couch if that’s what it takes,” he interrupted. “This is not about getting you to spend the night with me. This is about me not needing another person to worry about right now.”

  “Do you think you need to be worried about me?”

  “Did you think you needed to be worried about Tessa?”

  “That’s not the same.”

  “That arrow could mean something. It could be pointing back toward you.”

  “People draw marks in the dirt with their shoe all the time.”

  “You think it’s just a coincidence? Ellen Schaffer’s head is blown off—”

  “Unless she did it herself.”

  “Don’t interrupt me,” he warned, and she would have laughed if his words were not tempered with his obvious concern for her safety. “I’m telling you, I’m not going to leave you alone.”

  “We’re not even sure if this is murder, Jeffrey. Except for a few things that are out of place—and those could be explained away easily enough—this could prove to be a suicide.”

  “So you think Andy killed himself and Tess was stabbed and this girl today killed herself and they’re all unrelated?”

  Sara knew it was not likely but still said, “It’s possible.”

  “Yeah, well,” he said, “a lot of things are possible, but you’re not staying alone in town tonight. Is that understood?”

  Sara could only offer her silence as acquiescence.

  He said, “I don’t know what else to do, Sara. I can’t worry about you like that. I can’t feel like you’re in jeopardy. I won’t be able to function.”

  “It’s okay,” she finally said, trying to sound as though she understood. Sara realized that what she’d been looking forward to most was being in her own house, sleeping in her own bed, alone.

  Jeffrey told her, “If it’s all unconnected, you can call me an asshole later.”

  “You’re not being an asshole,” Sara said, because she knew that his concern was real. “Tell me why you were late. Did you find out anything?”

  Jeffrey said, “I stopped at the tattoo parlor on the way out of town and talked to the owner.”

  “Hal?”

  Jeffrey gave her a sideways glance as he merged onto the interstate. “How do you know Hal?”

  “He was a patient of mine a long time ago,” Sara said, stifling a yawn. Then, just to prove that Jeffrey did not know everything about her, she added, “Tessa and I were going to get tatt
oos a few years back.”

  “A tattoo?” Jeffrey was skeptical. “You were going to get a tattoo?”

  She gave what she hoped was a sly smile.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  Sara turned in her seat so she could look at him. “You can’t get them wet for a while. We were going to the beach the next day.”

  “What were you going to get?”

  “Oh, I don’t remember,” she told him, though she did.

  “Where were you going to get it?”

  She shrugged.

  “Right,” he said, still disbelieving.

  “What did he say?” Sara asked. “Hal?”

  Jeffrey held her gaze a few beats before answering. “That he doesn’t do tattoos on kids under twenty-two unless he talks to their parents first.”

  “That’s smart,” Sara said, thinking Hal must have done this to stop the flood of angry phone calls from parents who sent their kids to school for an education, not a permanent tattoo.

  Sara suppressed another yawn. The motion of the car could easily lull her to sleep.

  “There could still be a connection,” Jeffrey said, but he did not sound hopeful. “Andy has the piercing. Schaffer has a tattoo. They could’ve gotten it done together. There are three thousand tattoo parlors between here and Savannah.”

  “What did his parents say?”

  “It was kind of hard to ask directly. They didn’t seem to know anything about it.”

  “That’s not the thing a kid would normally ask permission for.”

  “I guess not,” he agreed. “If Andy Rosen were still alive, he would be my number-one suspect for Schaffer. The kid was obviously obsessed with her.” His face took on a sour expression. “I hope to God you never have to see that drawing.”

  “Are you sure they didn’t know each other?”

  “Her friends are positive,” Jeffrey said. “According to everyone at the dorm, Schaffer was used to guys having unrequited crushes on her. Happened all the time, and she never even noticed them. I talked to the art teacher. Even he noticed it. Andy mooned over Ellen, and she had no idea who he was.”

  “She was an attractive girl.” Sara could not remember much prior to Tessa’s stabbing, but Ellen Schaffer was beautiful enough to leave an impression.

  “Could be a jealous rival,” Jeffrey said, though he did not have much conviction in his tone. “Maybe some kid had a crush on Schaffer and took out Andy?” He paused, working through the theory. “Then, when Schaffer didn’t come running to the would-be suitor, he killed her, too?”

  “It’s possible,” Sara said, wondering how Tessa’s attack would fit in.

  “Schaffer could have seen something,” Jeffrey continued. “Maybe she saw something in the woods, someone there.”

  “Or maybe whoever was waiting in the woods thought she saw something.”

  “Do you think Tessa will ever remember what happened?”

  “Amnesia is common with that sort of head wound. I doubt she’ll ever really remember, and even if she does, it wouldn’t hold up under cross-examination.” Sara did not add that she hoped her sister would never remember. The memory of Tessa’s losing her child was hard enough for Sara. She could not imagine what it would be like for Tessa to live with those events constantly in her mind.

  Sara changed the subject back to Ellen Schaffer. “Did anyone see anything?”

  “The whole house was out.”

  “No one stayed home sick?” Sara asked, thinking that fifty college girls all going to class like they were supposed to was rare enough to make the papers.

  “We canvassed the whole house,” Jeffrey told her. “Everybody was accounted for.”

  “Which house?”

  “Keyes.”

  “The smart kids,” Sara said, knowing this would explain why they were all in class. “No one on campus heard the shot?”

  “Some people came forward and said they heard what sounded like a car backfiring.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “She used a twelve-gauge pump-action.”

  “Good God,” Sara said, knowing what the result of that would look like.

  Jeffrey reached around to the backseat and pulled a file out of his briefcase.

  “Close range,” he said, taking a color photo out of the file. “The rifle was probably in her mouth. Her head could’ve muffled the sound like a silencer.”

  Sara turned on the map light to look at the photograph. It was worse than she had imagined.

  “Jesus,” she mumbled. The autopsy was going to be difficult. She glanced at the clock on the radio. They would not reach Grant until eight, depending on traffic. The two autopsies would take at least three to four hours each. Sara said a silent thank-you to Hare for offering to fill in for her tomorrow. The way things looked, she would need the entire day to sleep.

  “Sara?” Jeffrey asked.

  “Sorry,” she said, taking the file from him. She opened it but her eyes blurred on the words. She concentrated on the pictures instead, flipping past the photo of the arrow drawn into the dirt to find the ones of the crime scene.

  “Someone could’ve sneaked in through the window,” Jeffrey continued. “Maybe he was there already, hiding in the closet or something. She goes to the bathroom down the hall and comes back to her room and—boom. There he is, waiting.”

  “Did you find prints?”

  “He could have worn gloves,” Jeffrey said, not exactly answering her question.

  “Women don’t usually shoot themselves in the face,” Sara conceded, looking at a close-up of Ellen Schaffer’s desk. “That’s more something a man would do.” Sara had always thought the statistic sounded sexist, but the numbers proved it out.

  “There’s something wrong with this.” Jeffrey indicated the photograph. “Not just because of the arrow. Let’s take that out of it, take out Tessa. The shooting still doesn’t look right.”

  “Why?”

  “I wish I could tell you. It’s just like with Rosen. There’s nothing I can put my finger on.”

  Sara thought of Tessa lying in bed back at the hospital. She could still hear her sister’s words, ordering Sara to find the person who had done this to all of them. The photograph of Schaffer’s room brought back a memory for Sara. She had driven to Vassar with Tessa to help her get settled in. Tessa’s dorm room had been decorated the same way as Ellen Schaffer’s. Posters for the World Wildlife Federation and Greenpeace were tacked to the walls along with pictures of men torn from various magazines. A calendar hanging over one of the desks had important dates circled in red. The only thing that did not jibe was the array of gun-cleaning tools on the desk.

  Sara flipped back to the report. She knew that reading without her glasses would give her a headache, but she wanted to feel like she was accomplishing something. By the time she had finished reviewing all the information Jeffrey had compiled on Ellen Schaffer’s death, Sara’s head was pounding and her stomach was upset from reading in a moving car.

  Jeffrey asked, “What do you think?”

  “I think . . . ,” Sara began, looking down at the closed file. “I think I don’t know. Both deaths could be staged. I suppose Schaffer could have been taken by surprise. Maybe she was hit on the back of the head. Not that we know where the back of her head is.”

  Sara pulled out several of the photographs, putting them in some kind of order, saying, “She’s lying on the couch. She could have been placed there. She could’ve lain down on her own. Her arm isn’t long enough to reach the trigger, so she used her toe. That’s not uncommon. Sometimes people use clothes hangers.” She glanced back over the report, rereading Jeffrey’s notes on the ammo discrepancy. “Would she have known how dangerous it is to use the wrong ammunition?”

  “I talked to her instructor. According to him, she was very careful with the gun.” Jeffrey paused. “What’s Grant Tech doing with a women’s rifle team in the first place?”

  “Title Nine,” Sara told him, referring to the legislation that forced universiti
es to give women the same access to sports that men had. If the policy had been around when Sara was in high school, the women’s tennis team would at least have gotten time on the school court. As it was, they had been forced to hit balls against the wall in the gymnasium—but only when the boys’ basketball team wasn’t practicing.

  Sara said, “I think it’s great they have a chance to learn a new sport.”

  Surprisingly, Jeffrey conceded, “The team’s pretty good. They’ve won all kinds of competitions.”

  “So people at school who knew she was on the team would know she had a rifle.”

  “Maybe.”

  “She kept the gun in her room?”

  “Both of them did,” Jeffrey told her. “Her roommate was on the team, too.”

  Sara thought of the gun. “Did you take her prints yet?”

  “Carlos took them,” he told her, then anticipated her next question. “Schaffer’s fingerprints are on the barrel, the pump, and what’s left of the shell.”

  “One shell?” Sara asked. As far as she knew, a pump-action rifle carried a three-shell magazine. Pumping the fore end would put another shell in the chamber for rapid fire.

  “Yeah,” Jeffrey told her. “One shell, the wrong caliber for the gun, the skeet choke screwed on so the barrel would be tighter.”

  “Does her toe match the print on the trigger?”

  Jeffrey admitted, “I didn’t even think to check.”

  “We’ll do it before the autopsy,” Sara told him. “Do you think someone forced her to load the rifle, maybe someone who didn’t know much about guns?”

  “The first shell has a good chance of jamming in the barrel. If she didn’t have another shell in the magazine, then she could buy herself some time. Maybe even turn the gun around and use it to hit the guy.”

  “Wouldn’t the shell explode in the barrel?”

  “Not necessarily. If she had a full magazine, the second shell would hit the first and they would both explode near the chamber.”

  Sara said, “Maybe that’s why she only loaded one.”

  “She was either really smart or really stupid.”

  Sara kept staring at the pictures. A lot of her cases were suicides, and this looked just like any other. If Andy Rosen had not died the day before, and Tessa had not been hurt, Sara and Jeffrey would not be asking these questions. Even the scrape on Andy’s back would not have been enough to warrant opening a full investigation.