Breaker's Reef (12 page)

Again, she nodded.

“Put your mask on,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“But the girl.”

“We have to leave her here. I can’t disturb the evidence.”

Blair looked at the body again. Who was she? “Do you recognize her?”

“No. I’ve never seen her before.” Cade pulled his mask on, hiding the emotions passing across his face. Blair tried not to think of more parents grieving over their child. She tried, instead, to concentrate on getting enough air to get out of the cavern.

She followed Cade down, down, down under the wall, and back up again. She burst into daylight, never so glad in her life to see the sky. Cade helped her into the boat and looked through his binoculars for any sign that the killer was still around. Then he radioed the state police.

Blair pulled a blanket around her body and tried to stop shivering.

C
ade was thankful Blair had managed to shake off her fear and slip into journalism mode as the various law enforcement agencies involved came out to work the crime scene. “Blair, you’ve obviously got a scoop on this, but I have to ask you not to report any of the details of the crime scene. There are certain things only the killer knows. We want to keep those things away from the public.”

“What about the writing on the wall? Can I report that?”

Cade wanted to scream out that the killer hadn’t written that on the wall—that
he
had—but he didn’t want his proposal to come that way. He’d wanted her to see the writing, then find the flowers, the oyster, and see the ring. He’d wanted it to be romantic and memorable, something they would tell their grandchildren.

It would be memorable, all right.

“No, especially not that,” he said. “And please don’t let it get out to the rest of the press.”

Blair sighed. “Are you sure? It would make great headlines.”

“I’m sure.”

She looked toward the cave. “I guess it’s the biggest clue you’ve got, huh? If you can trace the handwriting, get prints off the chalk, maybe you’ll figure out who it is.”

Cade didn’t answer.

“Gibson’s under surveillance, right? He couldn’t have done this without being seen.”

“Unless he hired someone to move the body. Maybe it was his way of throwing us off. Making us think he couldn’t be the one. Look, I have to go back in.” He brushed her wet hair out of her eyes. “You gonna be okay?”

“I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”

Cade put his mask on and swam back under the wall. He came up on the other side. Already Yeager and Smith from the GBI were working the scene, documenting the evidence and photographing the girl.

“I have to tell you something.” Cade’s voice echoed off the cavern walls.

The detective in charge of the investigation looked back at him. “What?”

“The writing on the wall. It’s mine.”

Everyone turned to stare at him. “What do you mean, yours?”

“I wrote it. I was here earlier today. I wrote it on the wall, and I was bringing Blair here to propose. The killer must have known. The body wasn’t here earlier—I’m sure of it—and he tied her to the ledge right under where I wrote my proposal, obviously
knowing
I would bring Blair right to that spot.”

Yeager’s eyes narrowed. “When were you here, exactly?”

“About ten this morning—” Even as he spoke, he knew he had become a suspect. He pulled the oyster out of his nylon pocket. “Here, look. I was going to have Blair come up and see the sign, and then I was going to set this on the ledge and direct her to find it. It has a ring inside it.” He opened the oyster and showed the detectives.

Yeager looked as if he didn’t know whether to congratulate or cuff him.

“Look, if you can keep this from Blair, I’d appreciate it,” Cade said. “I obviously didn’t get to propose. I don’t want her to know the writing was mine.”

“So you’re telling me that the chalk will have
your
prints on it?”

Cade fought back his frustration. “Of
course
it will. I didn’t try to hide my prints. I didn’t know I would have to answer for any of this later. But someone knew.”

“Who did you tell?”

“I told the jeweler, Zaheer, and the Colonel, who owns Crickets. And Jonathan Cleary, the mayor. And I mentioned it to the florist when I picked the flowers up. Some of my men knew. Any one of them could have told a dozen people, even though I swore them to secrecy.” If only he knew which one had wagged his tongue. He would personally like to throttle them.

And now what would he do? If he didn’t ask Blair to marry him today, word was bound to get back to her. But this wasn’t how he wanted to propose. Blair deserved better. He watched the detectives work, noting the tension in their movements, their hushed conversations. And he knew the evidence was pointing to him, because the killer wanted it that way.

With all his heart, he vowed not to let him win.

H
ours later, Cade met with Yeager and Smith in the GBI’s branch office.

“You won’t believe what we’ve found on Gibson’s computer,” Yeager said. “A scene describing this second murder was in the book he was working on. He had it down to a tee.”

Cade hadn’t quite expected that. It was too obvious. Did the man honestly think he would get away with it?

Cade clenched his jaw. “I still don’t understand why he’d goad me like this. Taking the dead girl to the very place I was going to be. Tying her right under my sign. Why?”

“He’s a novelist, remember? He makes things up. Acts things out. In some ways, he becomes his characters. And his characters are killers. Staging the bodies so they’ll be discovered is part of their thrill.”

“Was there anyone set up in the book’s murder? Did it describe the killer going there knowing someone else would be there?”

“No, that part wasn’t there. I think that was just icing on the cake for Gibson. Or maybe it
was
all a coincidence.”

“It wasn’t.” Cade got up and leaned over the table. “No way. Whoever put that girl’s body there knew she would be discovered that very afternoon. He came after I was there and timed it just right.”

“The girl’s time of death was estimated at one or two a.m. this morning.”

“So Gibson could have killed her after he was released from custody. Any way he evaded surveillance? Got away without being seen?”

Smith shook his head. “I don’t think so. We had cameras mounted around his house. Even if one of our guys fell asleep, the cameras would have shown him leaving. He didn’t leave the house.”

“We need to find out who he knows on the island. Someone he could have paid to hide the girl there.”

“We’re looking. So far, we haven’t found any witnesses who saw anyone but you going out there.”

“You need to interview everyone I told about the proposal. See who
they
told. See if you can make any connections to Gibson. Maybe he overheard somebody in my department talking about it when he was there. The walls are paper-thin.”

“By the way,” Yeager said, “Gibson was right about his first draft being bad. We’re talking amateur. Hack stuff, just like he warned us. I would have thought he had some command of the language. He was an English professor, after all. And he talks like Sherlock Holmes. Weird that he’d write something that would flunk him out of an English class.”

Cade had to admit he was curious. “Can I have a look?”

“Sure, I have a printout.” He handed Cade a stack of pages. Frowning, Cade scanned the scene. How had the man ever passed an English class, let alone taught one? He supposed that was what editors were for.

Maybe he had people to clean up all of his messes—the books, as well as the murders.

I
t was 7:00 p.m. when Cade got home from the GBI office. The phone was ringing when he walked in. It was Chief Grant of Tybee Island’s police department. “Cade, I need you to come over here to Tybee. There’s somebody here I want you to see.”

“I can be there in a few minutes. What’s up?”

“I’ve got a couple of parents here from Brunswick who think the body you found today might be their daughter. They drove here as soon as they heard it on the news. Some of what they have to say might interest you.”

Brunswick.
The town was about ninety miles away.

“All right,” Cade said. “I’ll be right over.”

A knot formed in Cade’s gut as he headed across the island to face another set of parents. He could only imagine what they were going through right now, hearing that a body was found, that the girl fit their daughter’s description.

He crossed the bridge and reached the Tybee police department, a building much more modern than the Laundromat
housing the Cape Refuge police department. He went in and asked for Chief Grant.

Grant was waiting for him in one of the interview rooms. As soon as Cade stepped into the doorway, he saw the grief-stricken couple. The woman’s foot jittered as she sat clutching her chair, white-knuckled. The father was sweating as he paced from one side of the room to the other.

They both wore wild, panicked expressions. Uncertainty about their daughter was clearly killing them.

When Cade stepped into the room, they froze.

Grant got up and introduced them. “Cade, this is Bob and Lana Roarke. They drove here this afternoon from Brunswick, after hearing about the girl you found.”

Cade shook the father’s hand.

“What did she look like, Chief Cade? The girl you found … we have to know.”

Cade cleared his throat. “She had blonde hair. Brown eyes.”

“Oh, no.” Lana pressed her mouth into the palm of her hand and shut her eyes as if that could mute Cade’s voice.

“You’ll have to identify her in person,” he said quietly, “but if I could see a picture of your daughter, maybe I could tell if she looks like the girl we found.”

Lana dug into her purse for a wallet-sized photo. Cade took the picture and studied it. Was it the girl? He wasn’t sure. Hadn’t the girl in the cave had a darker shade of blonde hair? Or was it just that it was wet?

“I can’t honestly say.”

Hope lifted both their faces. “Then you think it might be someone else?”

He didn’t want to get their hopes up—but there was no point in destroying it either. “She looks different, but the girl I found was wet, and … I just don’t know. Mr. and Mrs. Roarke, is your daughter a runaway?”

Lana started to cry. “If you can call it that at nineteen. She and her best friend Jamie Maddox vanished three days ago. It
took us awhile to trace her steps, but we’re pretty sure they were coming to Cape Refuge.”

Bob rubbed his mouth roughly. “Chief, was there a mole on her left temple?”

Cade shook his head and handed the picture back. “I don’t remember seeing one, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t. Why do you think she came here?”

Bob’s voice was raspy. “Our daughter is adopted, and she’s been on a crusade to find her birth mother. We kept discouraging her. We’ve given her a good home, and we couldn’t understand why she wanted another set of parents, especially when they didn’t want her to begin with. We’ve had her since she was a week old.”

“A year and a half ago, she tracked her mother down in prison,” Lana added. “She was crushed that she was there, and we thought that was the end of it. But she started checking her out again in the last few weeks and found out she was released a year ago. She kept it from us.”

“How did you find out?”

Bob sighed. “We weren’t able to get in touch with her, and we got concerned and called one of her suitemates at school. She told us Amelia and Jamie had been gone since Wednesday.”

“Did she know where they went?” Grant asked.

Lana got her purse and dug through it for a tissue. Swabbing her nose, she said, “She told us they went to Atlanta to find her mother. I guess she thought she could get a forwarding address from the prison or one of her former neighbors.”

“We tried to retrace her steps and found out that this woman had moved to Cape Refuge.”

Cade frowned. “What’s the mother’s name, Mrs. Roarke?”

“Sheila Caruso.”

Cade felt the blood draining from his face. Grant noticed his expression. “You know her?”

“Yes, I know her. She lives at Hanover House.”

Grant’s eyes narrowed, and he sat down. “Hanover House? That halfway house?”

“Yes. Sheila’s been there about a year. Grant, she’s the one who works for Marcus Gibson.” He saw the words registering on Grant’s mind and knew what he was thinking. Could Sheila be implicated here? Was the connection mere coincidence?

Lana stood up. “I want to talk to this woman.”

Grant turned back to Cade. “Doesn’t your fiancée own Hanover House?”

He didn’t bother to remind him she wasn’t his fiancée yet. “Blair’s family owns it. I’m sure I would have heard if your daughter contacted her.”

“Unless Sheila didn’t want anyone to know,” Lana touched his arm. “Is it possible she’s dangerous?”

“Sheila? No.”

“But she’s an ex-con.” That fear deepened in her eyes. “How do you know?”

“She was in prison for drug violations, Mrs. Roarke. Not for anything violent.”

Grant leaned on the table, arms crossed. “Cade, you think you should approach her first?”

That was a good idea. If Sheila had seen this girl, he needed to drill her about what had happened without her parents listening to every word. Their emotions might get in the way. “Good idea. After I interview her, then you can talk with her. For now, Mr. and Mrs. Roarke, you need to go to the morgue. That’s the only way you’ll know for sure if the girl we found is your daughter.”

Lana pressed the wadded tissue against her eyes and wilted into her chair.

“Yes,” Bob said weakly. “That’s what we need to do.”

Cade stood up. “I’ll take you. That all right, Grant?”

“Sure. Call me the minute you know.”

“I will.”

The couple were quiet as they got into Cade’s squad car. As he drove them to the Chatham County Morgue, he prayed it was all a big mistake, that the girl he’d found in the cave was someone else. Not Sheila’s daughter. Not Sadie and Caleb’s lost sister.