The Truth Seeker (38 page)

Quinn paused her. “Not with Marcus. Over here.” He held out keys.

“What?”

He pointed toward the hangar.

And she stopped. “You didn’t have to do this,” she whispered, overwhelmed.

“I know.”

“Why did you?”

“It gives me pleasure.”

She could barely breathe as his words settled inside. “Quinn—”

The convertible was even blue.

“It’s time someone spoiled you a little.” He smiled at her. “Besides, you need an excuse to visit often in the next few months.” He linked his hands around her and drew her back against his chest. “Like it?”

Her thoughts couldn’t keep up with her heart. A tremulous smile was the best she could manage as the emotions overwhelmed her.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” He rested his chin against her hair. “I like doing things that bring out that smile of yours. It makes my old heart feel good.”

She laughed and relaxed against him, comfortable suddenly with a man who had so often confused her. “You’re not that old.”

“I’m ancient,” he countered.

She squeezed his arm around her waist. “Lay off that malarkey.

Come on, I’ll let you drive me to the house.” He didn’t move, and she glanced back. “What?”

He smiled. “Nothing.”

“Uh-huh, something. What?”

“Kate said if you let me drive it I’d know that you really loved me.”

“It takes Kate to convince you I meant it?”

He kissed away her frown. “I love you, Lizzy.”

“I know that. I’m holding the car keys to prove it.”

He laughed. “Let’s go up to the house.”

Twenty-eight

Quinn, is there a cave with water?”

The mood had become solemn the farther they rode. Finding where Amy had been buried—or as Walter had claimed, hidden —remained a mystery they had not been able to crack. The only thing that made sense was that Quinn’s father had stumbled upon Walter and been shot in the back. Lisa had been back to look at the area with her family, but on this occasion she had asked only Quinn to come.

“Not that I know of.”

“You said the day your father was killed that this tributary running down to the Ledds River was still filled from a flash flood the week before.”

“Yes.”

“Does it cut close to a cave?”

Quinn stood up in the saddle and looked around. “Farther down

see where the streambed bends? If the water had topped its banks, it would flow into the bluffs. That’s how some of the deepest ravines have been cut. It’s possible the water would cut into a channel near some of the caves.”

“Have they been searched?”

“Those near here. There are dozens of caves in these miles of bluffs,

“Let’s explore a couple of them today.”

“You’re up to it?”

“I’m up to it.” She loved this man, and he was hurting. It was a quiet The key was the water. She was convinced of it. Every murder He’d bound Amy’s hands because he had to bring her out here,

and most of them branch off and go deep and interconnect with each other.”

grief. She had found him on more than one occasion sitting on the back porch with Old Blue late at night. It was where he went to pray. When she’d asked what she could pray for him, Quinn had replied with one word: peace. He was searching so hard to find it. She understood. He was grieving his dad in a way he never had before. The killer had been found. Now he had to find a way to accept what had happened.

Quinn was preparing to resign from the marshal service and return here for good; she wanted to make it a clean transition for him. If she had to search these bluffs for months, she would try to find those final pieces of the puzzle. Walter had revealed enough in his words and actions that she knew it had to be possible to put the pieces together.

Walter had said Amy had been hidden. He’d used that word because it was his predominant impression twenty years later of what he’d done.

Lisa could easily imagine that day in Walter’s life. Scared. Faced with the idea that Christopher had killed. Wanting to ensure that Amy was never found

since then he had hidden his victims near water because water had helped him hide that first victim. She knew it from a lifetime of seeing the graves. Patterns

it was all about patterns.

probably on a horse given the terrain. The way rigor mortis would have set in, he’d probably had to tie her body down, bind not only her hands but her legs to keep her resting across a saddle without spooking the horse. He’d buried her near water. She just had to prove it.

She shifted the reins. “Come on, Annie.”

R

“Are the batteries in your flashlight still strong?”

“Yes.” Lisa slid the flashlight strap around her wrist. Even though the reason for the exploration was grim, the cave spelunking presented just enough of a challenge behind every turn to be fun. They’d found arrowheads, places rock hounds had chipped out samples, several shed snakeskins. This would be the fourth cave.

Quinn tied the guide rope to a boulder near the entrance. “The inclines in this cave are not steep, you can walk them without a problem, but there are several dropoffs that will require a rope descent.”

“I’ll stay close,” she reassured. He had much more experience doing this than she did.

The entrance was no more than a four-foot-high opening in the bluff. She slid inside after Quinn, had to walk half crouched for the first four feet until the cavern opened up into a six-by-seven-foot hollow. It was cool in the cave, a slight draft of air suggesting at least one of the passages led back to the surface elsewhere. The rock floor showed two small depressions still holding water. “Is that moss?”

Quinn straightened as best he could. “Yes. There must be standing water in here most of the time.” His light illuminated the options.

“Which way? Left or right?”

“Right.”

The passage grew taller and more narrow. Quinn had to turn his shoulders to slip through the tightest places; she found it narrow but passable.

“Good choice.” His voice echoed, and a few steps later she understood why. It was a massive cavern a good fifteen feet high, ten feet wide, and thirty feet long, with limestone stalactites and stalagmites from the ceiling and floor meeting each other. His light illuminated the dripping formations. “There’s been water running through here.”

“The colors are pretty.”

“Metal deposits in the limestone.”

“I wish I had my camera.”

“We’ll come back,” he promised. “It keeps going. There’s another “How far?”

“Only about seven feet, but there’s water down below.”

She joined him, adding her light to his. It was more of a very steep

passage ahead.”

“Let’s go for it.”

His light cast back his shadow on the wall as he moved to the far end of the cavern and ducked to enter the next passage. “We’ve got our first drop.”

slope than a dropoff. “The water is still. It could be another shallow depression.”

“Or it could be similar to a well shaft with no bottom.”

“I don’t think so. The passage takes a bend and keeps going.” She studied it; she really wanted to go see what was around that bend.

“Even if the water is deep, that ledge is wide enough for two. You can go first, check it out.”

Quinn shrugged off his climbing rope and pulled on his gloves.

She knelt beside the dropoff and lit his way as he walked backward down the slope, controlling the rope to make a graceful descent.

“Okay, your turn.”

Holding the rope between her hands, playing it out slowly through the metal clip and balancing her weight, she took her time, determined to move as smoothly as Quinn. An afternoon of practice had removed the rust from her skills—she enjoyed this. She landed lightly on the ledge beside him. He steadied her with a hand on her back while she secured the rope.

“Lisa.”

Quinn’s light reflected off something in the water. It was tucked back under a rock outcrop. “I’m going to swing over to that outcrop.”

She stepped back, made sure her rope didn’t cross his. “You’re

clear.” She held her light to help him out.

Quinn swung to the other side of the standing pool, caught hold of the protruding rock. Gripping it, bracing his feet against the rock wall, he eased out more rope so he could turn, reach down into the water, and pick the object up.

He aimed his light at it, then turned his light to search the water.

“What is it?”

He slipped it into his shirt pocket, buttoned it, and looked up at the rope. With a push of his foot, he swung back across to join her. She caught his arm and steadied him.

When he had his footing, he looped the rope once to secure it.

“What do you make of this?” He pulled the object from his pocket.

It was a small piece of broken glass. The one side that was not jagged was a very smooth curve of thick glass. “Not something from a pair of eyeglasses, the curve is too circular, and it’s too thick.”

“A camera lens,” Quinn replied.

He was right. She turned the glass over in her hand, not able to determine a sense of age. The glass wiped clean under her finger.

She looked up at him and saw the change. The cop was back in front while he pushed his private emotions down. She knew him well enough to know those private emotions were going to overwhelm him.

“What’s up ahead?” It was time to finish this.

Quinn squeezed her hand and turned.

He led the way around the bend, had to crouch with the lower ceiling.

The passage was wide but a gash had the right side of the floor dropping away, falling into a trough, water trickling through the limestone rock slide.

Quinn shone his light along the water and rocks.

“Back up. There. Pinned between the rocks.”

“I see it.”

He was just able to reach it.

It was a lens cap, a piece of black plastic. Her light picked out the

Lisa appreciated her sister’s silence.

They had found the truth.

It was depressing.

She was relieved it had not been Quinn who had found the Walter had seen someone get away with murder, had seen Grant

impression in the plastic. “Nikon.” She rubbed the plastic with her thumb. “Quinn.”

“I know.” She heard the change in the words. He’d turned the corner, absorbed the emotion, and was taking charge. “Turn around, let’s go back to the entrance. If we’re going to systematically search this cavern and its passages, we need more people and a lot more equipment.”

Lisa let a handful of dirt trickle through her fingers. She sat beside the small fire keeping the chill away as night came.

Kate walked over from the truck to join her, knelt to warm her hands.

remains, but rather one of the sheriff’s deputies. Amy had died like the others had, strangled, buried face down, hands bound. Her dental records would confirm identity, but it was a formality. The locket she wore on the gold chain still glistened, engraved with her name.

“Grant killed Amy.”

Lisa nodded and tossed a twig onto the fire to watch it be consumed.

Grant had killed Amy. And Grant had blamed Christopher in order to manipulate Walter into helping bury her.

For twenty years Walter had fought the internal turmoil of trying to reconcile what he had done with his need to relive it. Lisa had seen too many murders not to understand that fatal attraction.

come back to Chicago and grow in power and money. And Lisa understood the impact of that. Grant had seemed invulnerable. While Walter’s life had been anything but.

Walter—the older brother who tried to make the world work, who

fought to keep his brother in line, who struggled to make the nursery business succeed—had to deal with the fact his brother gambled and drank, his uncle would sell the business out from under him. He had nothing in his life except A.M. mornings and work to do.

The forensic psychologist who had the job of reconstructing Walter’s motivation was puzzled by the complexity of his actions.

Lisa thought she understood the patterns. Walter had a lifelong pattern of trying to protect his brother, and in the end he had tried to frame him. It explained so much. Walter wanted out. But he had to eliminate what he was responsible for in order to get out. He couldn’t just walk away.

Walter blamed Christopher—so he would frame Christopher.

Walter saw Grant as a man who had escaped justice—so he would kill Grant’s girlfriend Rita and frame Grant.

Walter saw his uncle as betraying him—so he would murder him when there was no other way to stop him.

Walter saw her investigation as a threat—so he would burn down her house to force her away.

Walter acted to reexert control when he felt he had lost it. Walter murdered, hid the victims, and framed his brother for each one. For a moment in time Walter had had the control he wanted in life. He became the invincible one.

Kate reached over and stilled her hand. “It wasn’t something you missed.”

“Walter went to his grave taking the reasons he chose those particular women.” And she’d nearly fallen for his lies. Until the end she had thought it was Christopher. She’d liked Walter. And she hadn’t seen the other side of him.

“Let it go,” Kate said quietly. “Even if he had explained, how much of it would be the truth, how much a lie?”

“I know. It just makes me tired.”

“Walter took a lot, from Quinn in the past, from you in the present.

The coroner’s van was opened, the body bag carefully lifted inside.

Kate went to meet Dave.

Lisa watched the men talking but chose to stay where she was. She She shook her head.

“Would you like to have a service for him?”

It was such a simple question, and yet the comfort expressed

Had he lived, it would have been hard to find sufficient justice. At least now it’s over.”

“Yes.”

The battery-powered floodlights illuminating the cave entrance were attracting swarms of flying bugs by the time the men finally emerged from the cave carrying the body bag.

had been in on discussions such as they were having many times in the past.