“Not all of us, Lena.” He was gripping the pages hard enough to crumple them in his hand. “Leslie Truong was mutilated. Do you know what was done to her? The witness you let walk away?”
Jeffrey threw Sara’s summary in her direction. She struggled to catch it. Then she read the words. He watched the horror spread across her face.
“That.” Jeffrey stabbed his finger into the paper. “That’s what happened to the woman who saw the attacker’s face. You let her go. She had a god damn target on her back, and you sent her into the woods on her own, and this is what happened to her.”
Lena looked sick.
Jeffrey was glad.
“Chief, I—”
“You need to get your ass over to that construction site right now before I take your badge and frogmarch you out of my squad room.”
She jumped out of the chair.
He wasn’t going to let her off that easy. “You come directly back here when you’re finished, you hear me? Don’t dawdle around, don’t wander off chasing your tail. Right back here. I mean it.”
“Yes, Chief.”
He watched her run past Frank, through the saloon doors.
Jeffrey turned toward the window. Lena was in the parking lot. She was trying to unlock the door to her Celica.
“Chief?” Frank was at the door expecting an explanation.
“Not now.” Jeffrey had to get out of this building before he ripped it apart with his bare hands. “I’ll be back for the briefing. I’m on my phone if something comes up.”
Frank stepped aside to let him pass.
Jeffrey ignored the looks in the squad room, Marla’s pursed lips behind the reception desk. He resisted the temptation to kick open the saloon doors. He kept his shit together until he was outside on the sidewalk.
“Fucking god damn fucking shit,” he hissed, fisting his hands inside of his pockets.
A cold breeze pushed back against him as he walked the length of Main Street. Still, he was sweating by the time he took a left toward the lake. The wind turned into a knife as it sliced across the water. The grass was still wet with dew. He watched the cuffs of his gray pants slowly turn black from the moisture.
Jeffrey forced his hands to unclench. He tried to rationalize away his anger. Lena had fucked up, but she worked for him, which meant that every mistake she made fell squarely on his shoulders. He tried to see her side of things. He’d told her to clean up her notes. She had cleaned up her notes. When she had talked to Leslie Truong, she had believed that Rebecca Caterino had suffered from an unfortunate accident. Could Jeffrey honestly say that he would’ve found an escort to take the young woman back to campus? He sure as fucking hell would’ve mentioned to his boss that there was a man in a black knit cap roaming around a crime scene.
What kind of knit cap? What did nondescript mean—average height, body type, hair color? Or did she mean his face was absent a beard, mustache, piercing, tattoo?
“Shit.”
Jeffrey needed to talk to Lena again, this time without yelling at her. Her original notebook was somewhere. He needed to see the details from her interview with Leslie Truong.
He turned around, glancing at the back of the houses along the lake. He was about half a mile from downtown. Sara’s house was another quarter mile in the other direction. Jeffrey thought about knocking on her door. He had the pretense of the autopsy. He could pretend he hadn’t seen the fax back in his office. Sara would be getting ready for work, probably exhausted from the long night. Maybe they could take some coffee onto the back porch and he could walk her through the case and she could sprinkle around some of her white magic to clear his mind and he could go back to the station and figure out how to stop a sadistic killer from attacking another student.
Jeffrey rubbed his mouth.
It was a nice fantasy while it lasted.
He walked between two houses and found his way to her street. The wet hem of his pants stuck to the back of his calves. The sun was blinding. He held up his hand to shield his eyes.
Sara was standing fifty yards away. She was dressed in running gear, her hair tied up behind her head, her breath visible in the crisp morning air. She had her hands on her hips.
She did not look happy to see him.
Jeffrey lifted his hand to wave, but she turned her back on him and started to run.
Without knowing what he was doing, Jeffrey found himself running after her. Call it stupidity or desperation or a cop’s training. If someone was running away from you, then you chased after them.
Sara sprinted around a steep curve that followed the lakeshore. Jeffrey picked up his feet, pumped his arms. She had a head start, but he was a stronger runner. He saw her cut through Mrs. Beaman’s front yard. He sidestepped into the Porters’ driveway, then through their backyard. By the time they both reached the lake, he’d cut about twenty yards off her head start.
Sara wasn’t good on the grass. She looked back over her shoulder. Jeffrey gained another five yards. He gulped a mouthful of air and pushed his legs until they were screaming. Another five yards gained, but Sara had reached the back of her property. Her foot slipped as she sprinted up the steep slope toward the house, the same steep slope that her Honda had rolled down.
Jeffrey narrowed the gap even more, jumping
