Breaker's Reef (17 page)

She looked over her shoulder, through the glass. Bob still wept into his hands. “But
I’m
her mother, and the Bible says the children will be cursed by the sins of their parents. So she comes looking for me, and this happens. All because of me. All because of my own sin.”

“What sin, Mom? You didn’t do this.”

“Didn’t I? Didn’t I get pregnant with some guy who didn’t care anything at all about me? Not once, but
twice
, like some fool who begged to be abused. I gave my baby up because I didn’t want the responsibility, but then I went and did it again.” She pushed herself up and got to her feet, turned around, and looked down at Sadie. “Things could have been so different. Every wrong I did, I did another wrong to undo it, and things just got worse. My sins piled up so high they were like a mountain I couldn’t climb. I was a terrible mother to you, baby. I would have been a terrible mother to her too. Even now, when I haven’t seen her in nineteen years, I’m still hurting her. And I can’t even pray for her.”

Sadie stared up at her mother. If only she didn’t feel so spent. Her mother needed her, but she had little to give. “Mom, I think you’re where God wants you. It sounds like you do hate your sins. You
can
repent. God will hear that.”

A car pulled into the parking lot. Joe McCormick and Scott Crown got out, saw Sheila and Sadie, and came toward them.

“You okay?” McCormick asked.

Sheila didn’t answer his soft question. “Did you find anything?”

“Not in my initial scan of the place. The GBI agents took over.”

“Do you think she’s dead?”

At her mother’s question, the detective’s eyes softened. He looked at her for a moment. “I didn’t see anything to indicate that, Sheila. She could very well be alive.”

She crumpled under her grief, and Joe took her into his arms and held her. Sadie saw the man with new eyes. Always before,
he’d just been a cop, on the hunt for whatever piece of evidence he needed. Now she saw him as a man—a kind man, who cared that her mother was broken.

Scott came and stooped down next to Sadie. In a low voice, he said, “You okay, Sadie?”

She wiped her eyes and wished people would stop asking her that. “Yes, I’m fine.”

“We’ll find her, Sadie. I feel like we’re close to it already. Now that we have pictures, names, people will start coming forward. We’ll fill in the timeline of where they were and what they did and who they were with.”

She didn’t want to cry in front of Scott, but the tears wouldn’t stop. He put his arm around her and pulled her against him, kissed the top of her head.

“It’ll be all right, Sadie. You’ll see.”

His touch calmed her fears and gave her hope—and for a moment, she almost believed he was right.

S
heila knew the questioning of Marcus Gibson would prove to be as unproductive as his first interview had been.

After a couple of hours, police convinced the Roarkes to go back to their hotel room and wait for an update. Blair came to pick Sadie up to take her back to the newspaper office, and Joe offered to take Sheila home.

As they walked out to his car, Sheila let her mind revisit the thought of death. She’d been suicidal many times in her life, but lately things had been going well. She’d had a better self-image, felt she could accomplish some things with discipline and hard work.

But now she wanted to walk to the Tybee Bridge and take a dive over the side.

McCormick seemed to read her thoughts. “You’ve got to have faith, Sheila. You can’t think the worst.”

She stopped before getting into his car. “Joe, do you believe in God?”

He nodded. “Yes, I do. I don’t know as much about the Bible as Cade and Jonathan do, but I do know God is watching over us. He’s watching over Amelia too, Sheila. Just like He’s watched over Sadie and Caleb.” As he spoke, he set his elbow on Cade’s truck bed.

“What are the statistics? Of finding missing people alive, I mean?”

“I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that we find
her.
”

She propped her own elbows on Cade’s truck bed and dropped her face into her hands. “But what are the chances? From your experience, when a friend winds up dead …”

“I’ve never been through this before.” He put his arm around her and rubbed her arm. “I could make something up, Sheila, tell you what you need to hear …”

She looked up at him. “I don’t want that.”

His blue eyes were soft, sad. “I didn’t think you did.”

He looked down into Cade’s truck, as if searching there for the right thing to say. His eyes locked onto something there, and he frowned and straightened. “What is that?”

She followed his gaze. It was a girl’s sandal, pink with a yellow daisy on top. He climbed into the truck, stared down at it. “I don’t believe it.”

“What is it?”

He just shook his head, but urgency filled his voice. “Go back inside and get them to call Cade. Tell them it’s an emergency.”

Whatever was going on, she knew not to stall. “Okay.” Sheila started into the building. What was the big deal about a sandal? Maybe Blair left it there, though it didn’t look like something she’d wear. She had the officer inside radio Cade at the motel and heard him say he was already on his way back in his squad car and would be there in a couple of minutes.

He was pulling into the parking lot when she went back out. He got out and saw McCormick at his truck.

“What’s up, Joe?”

He pointed to the sandal. “Recognize this?”

Cade froze. “Jamie Maddox was wearing one just like it.”

Sheila gasped. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.” Cade looked at McCormick. “Where did you find it?”

“Right where it is.”

Cade’s eyes shot up. “
In my truck
?”

Joe nodded. “That’s right, boss. It was in your truck. Maybe somebody tossed it in when they got her back to shore.”

Cade stared at the dead girl’s sandal. “If that’s been in my truck since Jamie was found, how did I not see it? No, I know it wasn’t there this morning.”

“Then somebody planted it.”

“Just like he planted the body.” Cade’s features were tight, drawn. “Don’t touch anything, Joe. Leave it right where it is. I have to tell Yeager.”

Sheila stared after Cade as he went inside, dumbfounded at the new development.

“I can’t take you home now, Sheila,” Joe said. “I have to stay here.”

She turned back to Joe. “That’s okay. I want to stay.”

“No, you can’t. I have to clear the parking lot. This is a crime scene now.”

“A crime scene?” What was he talking about?

“That isn’t just the dead girl’s shoe, Sheila. It’s a key piece of evidence.” His gaze came back to her. “I’m sorry, but you have to leave.”

Her heart sank. “All right, then. Will you … will you let me know if you learn anything new?”

“Sure.”

But she knew he was distracted and probably wouldn’t. She crossed the busy road and stepped onto the beach. The sun was beginning to set, and Amelia was still missing.

The oppression of helplessness hung like a metal coat over her shoulders, and she walked along the beach under the weight of it, the soft breeze blowing her hair.

With each step, her own self-loathing grew, choking her with its poison. Sins old and new passed through her memory, flooding her brain with that same venom, stabbing through her with deadly aim. She had laughed about them in jail, swapped war stories with her cell mates, tried to one-up them with accounts of near-death experiences brought on by those sins.

But now they made her sick. The drugs, the men, the choices … she hated them all with as much passion as she’d loved them. The very thought of them made her feel filthy.

Yet she still had the capacity to go back to them. Even as she drowned in the misery of those sins, part of her mind still whispered lies, that one drink would drown her sorrow, one snort would chase away this grief, one needle would solve her woes. If she let herself, she could believe them.

She was so weak. So incredibly weak.

Feeling that weakness deep in her muscles and bones, she dropped to the sand, just beyond the reach of the waves, and stared out at the water rolling up onto the shore at high tide, then hurrying back from where it had come. She wept at the sheer absurdity of her condition, the paradox of her thoughts, the division of her loyalties.

Hatred, vile and putrid, for herself and her actions—past, present, and future—forced more tears from her eyes. She had never cried so much in her life. She had never wanted death more.

“Just kill me, Lord! Just strike me dead, like I deserve. I don’t want to live with who I am anymore.”

She sobbed, letting her weeping carry on the wind, hoping that God would forget her sins for the moment and answer this one prayer, if no others.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

She realized as she said the words that she really was. For the first time, she knew that deep, cutting sorrow, that piercing anguish, that true authentic hatred of her sins.

She looked up at the sky, overcast with thick clouds. “Make me new. The old me needs to die.”

She’d heard Jonathan talk “of dying to self” so many times, and she’d pretended to understand what that meant. Being unselfish, putting others first, doing unto others …

But that wasn’t it.

Now she finally understood. It meant putting the past behind, stepping out of that old, sinful self, leaving it to rot in the grave where it belonged. Emerging new, fresh, whole.

But she couldn’t do it herself.

“I need your help!” Instead of beseeching God again to kill her, she found herself crying out, “Save me!”

She imagined herself wearing a dead, decaying skin, darkness on the outside, filthy slime dripping off of her. And God’s hand reached down and unzipped that skin, allowing her to step out of it like a new, regenerated, newly born baby, emerging from its womb.

Born again.

She closed her eyes and lifted her face to heaven. “Can You wash me clean, Lord? Is that really possible?”

A warm, wet wave came tumbling over her, soaking into her clothes, her skin … She started to laugh through her tears.

God had answered her.

Not only
could
He do it, but He’d already done it.

The crushing weight of her sin lifted, and she felt lighter, freer than ever before. God seemed just a breath away, His ear against her lips, waiting for her whispered prayer.

I
know how this looks.” Cade sat in his office with Yeager and Smith, aware that he’d just been promoted from person of interest to prime suspect. “Whoever did this is trying to set me up. You’ve got to see that.”

“The sandal isn’t all we found in your truck bed, Cade.”

Cade gaped at Yeager. “What do you mean, that’s not all?”

“There was blood.”

Cade sprang out of his seat. “
What
? No, there wasn’t blood. There
couldn’t
be. I didn’t see it.”

“It was there. The Luminol showed it.”

Luminol was the chemical reagent used to detect bloodstains, even after attempts to wash them away. If it had shown blood …

Closing his eyes, he brought the heels of his hands to his forehead and leaned back hard in his chair. “It’s part of a pattern. I found the body. I have the other shoe. There’s blood in my truck bed …”

He dropped his hands and looked hard at the detective. “Do you even know that it’s her blood … or human blood for that matter? It could be from fish, for Pete’s sake.”

The two agents exchanged looks. “We’re waiting for the lab report.”

Cade knew he was in trouble. “Look, just take my truck. Anything you need … search it, run tests. I had nothing to do with this. Anyone could have dropped that sandal in my truck. It’s been parked there all day. Gibson may have done it himself. Maybe there are fingerprints.”

“We’re dusting, Cade.”

“Good. Give me a polygraph. I want to take a polygraph.”

“We’ll have to take you to our offices. You can take the test there.”

He closed his eyes, nodded. Of course they were taking him in for questioning. What else could he expect? “All right. Let’s go. I’m ready to clear my name and get to the bottom of this.”

B
lair drove up just as the tow truck came and lifted Cade’s truck to take it away. The parking lot was still cordoned off, but she parked her car across Ocean Boulevard and hurried over.

Scott Crown stood on the edge of the parking lot, holding back traffic as the tow truck pulled out.

“What’s wrong?” Blair demanded. “Why are they taking Cade’s truck?”

“A piece of evidence was found in it.”

“What evidence?”

Scott looked from side to side, as if he didn’t know whether to say or not. “I probably shouldn’t say.”

She grabbed his arm and looked up at him. “Off the record. I’m not asking as a reporter but as someone who cares about Cade. Please, Scott, what’s going on?”

He turned to her then and lowered his voice to a whisper. “They found Jamie Maddox’s shoe in his truck.”

She caught her breath. “Who put it there?”

He just looked at her. “Apparently they think Cade did.”

“No! I was with him when he found the body. She was only wearing one shoe!”

Scott didn’t answer, just turned away. Television crews were set up across the street and were filming the tow truck. Finally, a group emerged from the front door, and she saw Cade being led out.

Blair ducked under the yellow tape. “Cade!”

He looked back at her but couldn’t answer before they put him in an unmarked car. Though he wasn’t cuffed, he was clearly not in charge. He waved through the window, as if to tell her that it was okay, that he would be all right.

She wasn’t buying it.

She turned to Scott. “Where are they taking him?”

“To the GBI Branch Office in Savannah. They have to question him.”

Blair ran back across the street to her car, dodging traffic as she did, determined to follow them all the way to Savannah.

W
hen they arrived in Savannah, Blair watched as Cade was led into the state police office past the reporters that had already gathered like vultures. As she got out of her car, she heard a remote broadcast from in front of the building.