Thicker Than Water (17 page)

Kayla ran closer, looking at the items on the ground, then peering into the bag. “If I knew what it was…”

“It doesn't matter. It's gone.” Dawn rose to her feet, kicked the backpack and shoved a hand through her hair. “Someone must have taken it. Oh, God, this is terrible.”

“But, Dawnie, you haven't let that backpack out of your sight all day. I mean, you had it with you every time I saw you.”

Dawn racked her brain, mentally moving backward
through her day. “It sat on the cafeteria bench right next to me during lunch.” She licked her lips. “I went back for more milk. Maybe that's when it happened. Or in the girls' room. I set it on the windowsill and faced the mirror to fix my hair.” She kept thinking. “Or last night, at the house. God, there were people in and out all night. Those lock guys, and my mom, and Sean.”

“Who's Sean?” Kayla furrowed her brows, then lifted them. “Oh, Porsche guy, your mom's new partner, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I saw them last night. They were great together.” Kayla tipped her head. “Dawn, you look really awful. Is it that bad?”

“It could be. I was trying to help my mom, but I think I might have made things worse.”

“Come on,” Kayla said. “Let's get back to school before my mom shows up.”

Dawn closed her eyes and tried to think of some scenario where this might end up being all right, but she couldn't imagine one. Someone had taken that knife. And God only knew what they would do with it.

She repacked her bag, zipped it up and slung it over her shoulder, then followed Kayla along the path back to the road.

A car passed, and they both looked up.

Dawn frowned. “Hey, isn't that the same Jag that went by us once already?”

“Twice,” Kayla said. “Not that I know one black car from another, but I think it passed by again while you were down by the lake.”

They watched the car approach. As it did, it slowed to a crawl. Dawn couldn't see much through the tinted windows,
but she was pretty sure the head she saw silhouetted there was turned her way. She thought about Sean Googin, the fifteen-year-old boy who'd been murdered here years ago, his body found in the lake at her back, a hundred and fifty yards from shore, weighted down with rocks. It took the cops ten years to catch the guy who did it. It was a famous case in this town, because it had been the first murder in Cazenovia's two-hundred-year history. Everyone remembered it. They still talked about it.

The car slowed some more. “Shit,” Dawn muttered.

“It's stopping,” Kayla said.

“Let's get out of here!” Dawn gripped Kayla's hand and tugged until she turned and ran with her, back along the path. She heard a sound, like the opening and closing of a car door, and knew Kayla heard it, too, when she ran even faster.

* * *

“So you made it back,” Sean said softly, rising from the sofa in the reception area with a fresh cup of coffee in one hand.

Julie looked at Sean and got the feeling he'd been waiting for her. She felt guilty as hell for what she'd done to him, but she hadn't had a choice. She had to protect Dawn. “Yeah, I'm back.”

“Feeling better?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“You get a chance to view the tape?”

She licked her lips, glancing nervously at the receptionist, Penny, who pretended not to be listening. “Yeah. Uh…about the tape.”

Sean lifted his brows, waited.

She pulled the cassette out of her bag, the tape hanging out of it in an impossible tangle. “My machine kind of ate it.”

He closed his eyes slowly.

“I'm really sorry, Sean. I know this must have been the biggest story of your career, and if I could make it right, I would, but—”

“I don't give a damn about the tape.” He took it from her, turning as if to toss it into the wastebasket beside the reception desk, but then he stopped himself, shaking his head.

“I really am sorry,” she repeated.

He lifted his eyes to lock them on hers, started to speak, then seemed to think better of it. “Your office is closer. Come on.”

Swallowing hard, wondering what on earth he was going to say to her, she followed. Not that he gave her much choice, with the grip he had on her elbow. He had every right to be angry—furious—with her for what she'd done. She'd expected it, and she would deal with it.

He entered her office first, closing the door after she came in behind him. He didn't hesitate or offer any preamble. “You're not sorry at all. You destroyed the tape on purpose, probably hoping it was my only copy. It wasn't, Jones.”

She stared at him, her eyes growing wider.

“I had a feeling that's what you would do. I just hoped to God I was wrong. You really let me down, you know.”

“You don't under—”

“I understand more than you think, because I went home and watched that footage, just like you probably did. And I saw what got you so upset. I saw
you.
You were there.”

“No!” She turned away so fast she nearly wrenched her neck. “There might have been someone who looked like me. But it wasn't me. I was never there.”

“Don't.”

“It wasn't—”

“Jones.” He moved in front of her, caught her shoulders to prevent her turning away and held her eyes with his. “Don't. Don't lie to me, please, not about this. I was there, too, goddammit.”

She had to close her eyes; she couldn't look at him.

His hands on her shoulders tightened, guiding her to her chair, easing her into it. “Look, I know what you're thinking. That I've finally got the dirt on you that I've always wanted. And you're right, I do. You should have known I would. Jesus, Jones, I'm too good not to find out about something this big.”

“Not so big when compared to the size of your ego,” she said, automatically, though her heart wasn't in it.

“I'm not going to tell anyone about this.”

She shook her head. “Yes, you will. Maybe not today, but eventually, you will. It's what you do.”

“Not this time. It's different this time.”

She opened her eyes, dared to peer up into his. “Why?”

His lips thinned; he seemed to swallow. “Let's just say—I owe you.” Straightening away from her even as she frowned, he turned his back, pressing a hand to the nape of his neck and rubbing there, as if it ached. “I thought everyone in that compound died. How the hell did you get out alive?”

She sighed. “I…can't. I can't talk to you about this, MacKenzie.” She got up, heading for the door.

But he stopped her, his hands clutching her arms almost too tightly, and the look in his eyes was something she'd never seen there before. He seemed almost desperate.

“You
have
to talk to me about it, Jones.”

“Why?”

“Because I have to know.”

Two quick taps on the office door preceded its opening. Bryan stuck his head in. “You two are on the air in five, you know. Holler if you need anything.”

The door closed again. Neither of them had blinked; they were still staring at each other. She didn't like this—this serious, life-and-death kind of tension hanging between the two of them. She wanted the old banter back, the fun of hating his guts. Not this. This was too real.

Finally, she looked away. “We have to go.”

“This isn't over,” he warned.

“I'm sorry, Sean, but it is.”

He lifted his brows. “I'll force it if you make me, Jones. You know I can. Don't make me do that to you. You'll end up hating me more than you already do.”

“I don't think that's possible.”

“You're a liar, and we both know it.” His grip on her shoulders eased, but he didn't let go. She felt his hands change, soften, and then begin to tug her closer to him, just a little. His gaze focused on her lips, and something stole her breath.

She wrenched herself away and fled the office so fast she nearly tripped over her own feet on her way out.

* * *

Sean's stomach was queasy, and he kept having to force his hands steady as he and Jones read the news to the cameras that evening. His attempts at baiting her were lame, her reactions barely there and way below her usual standards. They wouldn't be winning any public praise for tonight's broadcast, he thought. The crew loved it, but he knew they could be so much better.

Their hour was nearly up, and they were just coming back from commercial when Allan Westcott rushed in, handed
Sean a sheet of news copy and ducked back out of camera range just as the red light came on.

Westcott stood beside camera one, pointed at Sean and gave him a nod.

“This just in,” Sean read. “The Syracuse police are seeking the public's help in the Harry Blackwood murder investigation. They are looking for a woman in connection with the case. She is described as approximately five-five, slender, with very dark hair.” He was aware of the photo being flashed on the monitor to his left, caught it just from the corner of his eye. Black and white, grainy, unidentifiable, it showed a woman who was all but concealed beneath a trench coat, huge sunglasses, a scarf. The handbag, though, was one he'd seen before.

He had to clear his throat to convince his voice box to keep on working. “The police want to stress that the woman is not a suspect at this time. If anyone saw this woman at the Armory Square Hotel between 11:00 p.m. and midnight Monday night, or can identify her, they are asked to call the SPD Tipline at 800-555-TIPS. Now, here's TV-Four Meteorologist Danny Kellogg with your final look at the weather.”

“Roll three!”

Danny Kellogg was in the third chair behind the desk, smiling into camera three, which was giving a wide shot that included all three of them. “Hey, that photo could have been anyone, even our own Julie, don't you think, Sean?” He was joking, trying to give some life to an otherwise dead broadcast.

Sean glanced at Jones, who looked pale and shaken. He put a teasing expression on his face. “It's probably the first and only time she can be glad she got stuck with me tagging along
on a story, Danny. She was never outta my sight. Which is more than I can say for the sun this week, up until this afternoon. Any more of this fabulous sunshine in the forecast?”

“Roll four!”

The light on camera three went out, and camera four focused solely on Danny, following him as he moved to the weatherboard. “You're right, Sean, things cleared up nicely for a couple of hours this afternoon, but it looks like the clouds are due to roll back in. Let's take a look at the radar.”

He went on. Sean glanced at Jones. She was studying him as if she'd never seen him before. They were both still miked. He couldn't say anything, didn't know what the hell he would say if he could. He had just become, publicly, her alibi. He'd lied to protect his worst enemy, and he knew damn well why, and he hated it.

He
hated
it.

* * *

Lieutenant Cassie Jackson sat in a small room with two televisions running. One was tuned to Channel Four's evening news. She just couldn't get enough of watching Julie Jones coming undone. Oh, no one else might see it. But Cassie did.

She was pretty sure she'd been looking for a woman for this Blackwood killing from the moment she'd gone over the evidence from the scene and spotted that tube of mascara. When she'd heard about Jones's little purse-dumping incident in the room, she'd become suspicious. The witness placing Jones's silver Mercedes in the parking garage an hour earlier than she would admit added weight to the theory, and the anonymous note on her car tipped the scales even more, even though the search of the house had turned up nothing.
Then there were the massive withdrawals from Jones's retirement accounts over the past six months. More than two hundred grand. She hadn't matched it up yet with deposits into any of Blackwood's accounts, but she was working on that.

She'd gone over the damned surveillance camera footage from the hotel elevators for hours, countless hours, and the only suspicious female she'd found on those tapes was the one in the silk scarf and raincoat, who kept her face averted from the camera like a goddamn pro.

Her height and build fit Jones, though. So did that single lock of dark hair that had escaped the scarf. She'd ridden from the parking garage to the 12th floor at 11:22 p.m.

The mascara tube was still being analyzed. So far they'd only lifted one partial print from it, and it was smudged to hell and gone. They were still working on trying to extract some DNA from the brush. A couple of eyelashes had been retrieved, but it would be a few days before she knew if a sample had been extracted.

Meanwhile, she had the kid as her mom's alibi to contend with. It didn't surprise her that the girl would lie to protect her mother. She couldn't even hate the kid for it. But it was really throwing a monkey wrench into her own investigation. A jury would want to believe a girl like Dawn Jones.