Broken (32 page)

He shrugged. “An answer doesn’t really matter if it’s a lie.”

“I admit he was being an ass, but he was also being forthcoming.” She snapped off her gloves and tossed them into the trashcan. “Did it occur to you that he has no idea Lena’s been doctoring all this evidence?”

Will scratched his jaw. “I’ve found that people tend to hide things for different reasons. They don’t want someone else to look bad. They think they’re doing the right thing, but they’re really not. They’re actually hindering an investigation.”

Sara had no idea where this was going. “I’ve known Frank for a long time. Despite that stupid, ignorant thing he said about Lionel, he’s not a bad man.”

“Sweetpea.”

She rolled her eyes. “I know it seems like I’m too close—”

“Those were nice gloves he was wearing.”

Sara found herself holding her breath. “I walked right into that, didn’t I?”

“Tommy took a beating.”

She sighed. Sara’s instinct had been to protect Frank. She’d never considered that Will would see this for what it was—hiding evidence. “Frank’s hand was cut up pretty badly. They must’ve sutured him at the hospital.”

“I don’t imagine they asked very many questions.”

“Probably not.” Even at Grady, cops were given a free pass on suspicious injuries.

“How dangerous is a gunshot wound if it grazes your hand?”

“Who was shot?”

Will didn’t answer. “Let’s say your hand was grazed. You didn’t get medical attention. You had a first aid kit to clean it out yourself, then you slapped some Band-Aids on it. What are the chances of getting an infection?”

“Extremely high.”

“What are the symptoms?”

“It depends on the type of infection, whether or not it gets into the bloodstream. You could be looking at anything from fever and chills to organ failure and brain damage.” She repeated her question. “Who was shot?”

“Lena.” Will held up his hand and pointed to the palm. “Here on the side.”

Sara felt her heart sink, though not for Lena. She was more than capable of taking care of herself. “Frank shot her?”

He shrugged. “It’s likely. Did you see the cut on his arm?”

She shook her head again.

“I think he ripped it open on some metal that was sticking out of the garage door.”

Sara put her hand on the counter, needing the support. Frank had stood right in front of her and said that Tommy had cut him with the knife. “Why would he lie about that?”

“He’s an alcoholic, right?”

She shook her head, but this time it was more from her own confusion. “He never drank on the job before. At least not that I ever saw.”

“And now?”

“He was drinking yesterday. I don’t know how much, but I smelled it on him when I got to the station. I just assumed that he was shaken up because of Brad. That generation …” She let her voice trail off. “I guess I glossed it over because Frank’s from a time when it was all right to take a couple of drinks during the middle of the day. My husband would’ve never tolerated it. Not while Frank was on duty.”

“A lot has changed since he died, Sara.” Will’s voice was gentle. “This isn’t Jeffrey’s police force anymore. He’s not here to keep them in line.”

She felt tears come to her eyes. Sara wiped them away, laughing at herself. “God, Will. Why am I always crying around you?”

“I’m hoping it’s not my aftershave.”

She laughed halfheartedly. “What now?”

Will knelt down and started rummaging through the box of evidence. “Frank knows Allison has a car. Lena didn’t. Lena knows Allison didn’t live in the garage. Frank doesn’t.” He found a woman’s wallet and opened the clasp. “It’s odd that they’re not working together on this.”

“Frank made it clear he’s finished with her. My personal vendetta aside, he has ample reason to cut her loose.”

“I gather they’ve been through a lot. Why cut her off now?”

Sara couldn’t think of an answer. Will was right. Lena had done a lot of things in her career that Frank had covered for. “Maybe this is just the last straw. Tommy is dead. Brad was badly injured.”

“I talked to Faith on the ride over. There’s no Julie Smith that she can find. The cell phone number you gave me was for a throwaway purchased at a Radio Shack in Cooperstown.”

“That’s about forty-five minutes away.”

“Tommy and Allison must’ve had throwaways, too. Neither one has a record of a phone. We’ll need their numbers before we can track back where the phones were purchased, but that’s not going to make much of a difference, I think.” He held up the knife Frank had given them. “This doesn’t appear to have blood on it. Would they clean it during surgery?”

“They’d throw iodine on it, but they wouldn’t clean it like this.” She studied the weapon. “You’d expect blood around the hilt.”

“You would,” he agreed. “I’m going to have the local field agent do a lab run for me. Can I leave some samples here so he can take everything when you’re done?”

“Nick Shelton?”

“You know him?”

“He worked with my husband all the time.” She offered, “I’ll call him when I’m finished.”

Will held up the suicide note and stared at the words. “I don’t understand this.”

“It says ‘I want it over.’”

He gave her a sharp look. “Thank you, Sara. I know what it says. What I don’t understand is who wrote it.”

“The killer?” she tried.

“Possibly.” Will sat back on his heel, staring at the line of text that ran along the top section of the paper. “I’m thinking there’s two
people out there—the killer and the 911 caller. The killer did his thing with Allison, and the caller is trying to get him in trouble for it. And then Julie Smith was trying to get Tommy off the hook by enlisting your help.”

“It sounds a lot like you’ve taken him off your list of suspects.”

“I thought you didn’t like to make assumptions.”

“I’m fine when other people do it.”

Will chuckled, but he kept his gaze on the note. “If the killer wrote this, who’s he telling he wants it over?”

She knelt down to look over his shoulder. “The handwriting doesn’t look like Tommy’s.” She pointed to the “I” at the beginning of the sentence. “See this? In Tommy’s confession, he used a formal capital with—” Sara realized how useless her words were to him. “Okay, think about it this way: if the first stroke of the ‘I’ is like a stem, and there are branches … Well, not branches, more like bars …” She let her voice trail off. Trouble visualizing the shape of letters was at the core of his language problem.

“It’s frustrating,” Will agreed. “If only he had written something easier. Like a smiley face.”

Sara was saved a response by Will’s phone ringing.

“Will Trent.” He listened for at least a solid minute before saying, “No. Keep canvassing. Tell him I’ll be there in a few minutes.” He closed the phone. “This day just keeps getting worse.”

“What’s wrong?”

“That was Lena. We’ve got another dead body.”

W
ILL FOLLOWED SARA IN HIS CAR AS SHE DROVE TO THE
campus. He was starting to recognize landmarks, houses with fences and play sets that were familiar enough for him to remember the turns. The campus was new territory, and like most schools, it seemed to follow no particular design. Buildings had been added on when the money was there to construct them. Consequently, the campus sprawled over several acres like a hand with too many fingers.

He had spent all morning with Lena Adams, and he thought he could read her mood by now. Her tone on the telephone had been strained. She was getting to the breaking point. Will wanted to press her a little harder but there was no way he could have Lena meet him at the crime scene right now. Sara had made it obvious that she wasn’t going to be in the same room with the woman she believed killed her husband. Right now, Will needed Sara’s forensic eye more than he needed Lena’s confession.

He dialed Faith’s number as he steered his car around the curve of the lake. Will saw the boathouse Lena had pointed out to him earlier. Canoes and kayaks were stacked up against the building.

“You’ve got me for three more hours,” Faith said by way of greeting.

“We’ve got a second victim. They think his name is Jason Howell.”

“That’s good news.” Faith was hardly the optimistic type, but she was right. A new victim meant a new crime scene, a new set of clues to follow. They had absolutely no useful information on Allison Spooner. The aunt was nowhere to be found. Allison hadn’t made any connections at home or school. The only person who seemed to mourn her loss was Lionel Harris from the diner, and he was hardly a
close friend. But Jason Howell’s death would surely open up new leads. A second body meant a second course of investigation. Find one detail, one person or friend or enemy, that tied together both Allison Spooner and Jason Howell, and usually that detail could lead to the murderer. Even the most careful killer made mistakes. Two crime scenes meant twice as many mistakes.

Faith told him, “You’re going to have a hard time getting a warrant for all the names of the students in that dorm building.”

“I hope the college will be compliant.”

“I hope this baby comes out clutching a bag full of gold.”

She had a point. Colleges were notorious for their desire for privacy. “Where are we on the warrant for Allison’s room?”

“You mean the real one?” She seemed to be enjoying this. “I faxed it to the station about ten minutes ago. There’s no landline to the Braham house, so that’s a dead end. Did you get anything from the autopsy?”

He told her about Allison’s injury. “It’s unusual that the killer stabbed her through the back of the neck instead of slicing through the front.”

“I’ll run it through ViCAP right now.” She meant the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, a database designed to detect similarities in criminal behavior. If Allison’s killer had used this method before, ViCAP would have a record of the case.

Will asked, “Can you give Nick Shelton a call, too? He’s the local field agent here. Sara knows him. I want him to run some stuff to the Central lab for me. Sara’s going to let him know when she’s got everything ready.”

“What else?”

“I still need that audiotape of the 911 call. I want Sara to listen to the voice and see if it belongs to our Julie Smith.”

“Can you say a sentence that doesn’t have ‘Sara’ in it?”

Will scratched his jaw, his fingers finding the scar that ran down his face. He felt jittery again, much as he’d felt when he’d been talking to Sara in the basement of the funeral home.

She said, “You know that Charlie is at Central this week?”

“No.” Charlie Reed was on Amanda’s team. He was the best forensics guy Will had ever worked with. “Central’s an hour away from here.”

“You want me to give him a call and see if he can come out?”

Will thought about the garage, the crime scene in the woods. He was working two cases now—one against Lena Adams and Frank Wallace and another against the man who had killed Allison Spooner and possibly their new victim. “I told the local chief I was bringing out a team. Might as well follow through on it.”

“I’ll give him a call,” Faith offered. “ViCAP shows no similar hits on a killer using a knife to cut from the rear through the carotid sheath, the carotid, the jugular, or the carotid and jugular. I cross-referenced the twist, too. No MO matches.”

“I guess that’s good news.”

“Or really bad news,” she countered. “That’s a clean kill, Will. You don’t do that your first time out. I have to agree with Sara on this one. I don’t see your retarded kid doing this.”

“Intellectually disabled.” Now that Sara had pointed it out, the word was starting to grate. Will supposed he should feel some solidarity with Tommy Braham since they both had a problem. “Call me when you hear from Charlie.”

“Will do.”

Will closed his phone to end the call. Ahead, Sara’s SUV took a turn up a circular drive that led to a three-story brick building. She parked behind a campus patrol car at the front entrance. The rain was still unrelenting. She pulled up the hood of her jacket before running up the steps to the entrance.

Will got out of his car and ran up after her, his shoes kicking up puddles. His socks hadn’t dried since he’d stepped into the lake this morning. They were in the process of rubbing a large blister on his heel.

Sara waited for him in a small alcove between two sets of glass doors. The sleeves of her jacket were dripping wet. She knocked on
the doors. “No one is in the patrol car out front.” She cupped her hands to the glass. “Is someone supposed to be here?”

“The security guard was told to remain in the building until we got here.” Will punched a few buttons on the keypad by the door. The LCD screen remained blank. He turned around, trying to find a camera.

“Back door’s open.”

Will looked through the glass. The building was wider than it was deep. A set of stairs faced the front door. A long hallway shot off to the side. At the back of the building, an exit sign glowed softly over the open fire door.

Sara asked, “Where are the police?”

“I told Lena not to call anyone.”

Sara turned to look at him.

“She got the call on her cell phone. Apparently, the campus police have her as an after-hours contact.”

“She didn’t call Frank?”

“No. Funny, right?”

“‘Funny’ isn’t the word I’d use.”

Will didn’t respond. Sara’s personal ties were clouding her view. She wasn’t looking at this as a criminal investigation. With two suspects, you always worked one against the other to see who would flip first to get the better deal. Self-preservation generally won out over loyalty. The garage where Tommy lived painted a grim story for Frank and Lena. At this point, it was just a matter of who would talk first.

Sara looked back through the glass door. “Here he is.”

Will saw a small black man making his way up the hall. He was young and skinny, the shirt of his uniform puffing out like a woman’s blouse. He gripped his cell phone close to his chest as he approached them. With the other hand, he waved his key card over a pad by the door. The lock clicked open.