Will should be ashamed of himself, because Sara had literally gotten down on her knees and repeatedly said that she loved Will and that she had chosen Will, but none of that had meant nearly as much as Nick Shelton casually stating that Will held Sara in the palm of his hand.
She still had not seen him. She put down her phone. He watched her open the top desk drawer. She found a tube of lotion. She started to smooth it onto her hands, then along her bare arms.
Will had lingered long enough for a guy who kept telling himself he was not a serial killer. He announced his presence by telling Sara, “Amanda wants me to witness the autopsy.”
She smiled up at him. Not her usual smile. Unsure.
She said, “Mom found an email address for Delilah Humphrey. I don’t know what to say.”
Will didn’t know what to say either. He had to find a way to put things right with Sara. This disconnection was dragging on too long. He took the chair beside the desk. He let his knee touch her leg.
Sara looked down, but the leg touch didn’t seem to be enough.
“My, uh—” Will cleared his throat. He held out his uninjured hand. “My skin is a little dry, too.”
Her eyebrows knit, but she played along. She massaged lotion onto his hand. He watched her fingers gently smoothing his skin. Will felt the tension in his shoulders start to smooth out, too. His breathing slowed. So did Sara’s. Slowly, finally, the air changed in the windowless room. He could tell she felt it, too. She smiled as she gently squeezed each of his fingers, then used her thumb to follow the lines of his palm. Will’s mother had been into astrology. He had found a palm-reading poster among her belongings. He thought of the names as Sara traced them.
Life line. Fate line. Head line. Heart line.
Sara looked up.
He said, “Hey.”
She said, “Hey.”
Like that, the plug slid back into the socket.
Sara leaned over. She pressed her lips to his palm. She was an unusual woman. She’d had a thing about Jeffrey’s handwriting. She had a thing about Will’s hands.
He asked, “You want me to help with the email?”
“Yes. Thank you.” She picked up her phone again. “Can I read you what I have?”
Will nodded.
Sara said, “There’s the usual reacquaintance stuff. I gave her my cell number in case she doesn’t want to put anything on the record. Then I wrote, ‘I know this is difficult, but I would like to speak with Tommi. Anything she says will be on background, the same as before. Please ask her to get in touch with me, but only if she’s comfortable talking. I understand and respect her right to refuse.’”
Will thought about Delilah’s reaction when she read the email. There wasn’t a reason for the mother to write back, let alone get her daughter involved. “Should you tell her why?”
“That’s the part I can’t decide.” Sara put down her phone again. She held onto his hand. “Tommi never believed that Daryl Nesbitt was her attacker. I showed her his booking photo. She said it wasn’t him. No hesitation.”
Will dropped the same bomb that had sent Nick and Faith careening in opposite directions across the state. “We’re re-testing DNA samples from Nesbitt and Heath Caterino.”
Sara’s lips parted in surprise. She saw the gaping hole more quickly than Will had. “You think Daryl had someone else to lick the envelope flap.”
“We know that Nesbitt likes to play games, and he definitely has an ax to grind. I’ve never met a con who didn’t blame somebody else for the mess he was in.”
“He blamed Jeffrey for the loss of his foot. He sued for damages as part of his lawsuit.”
“What about the evidence?”
Sara listed it out. “The hammer matched the brand and set that was found in Nesbitt’s garage. He lived two streets over from the woods. He was familiar with the town. Two victims had his number in their phones. He had no alibi for the attacks. He worked on a construction site near the fire road. He drove a dark van like the one Tommi remembered. Of course, it was doubtful that Tommi would testify. Then there was the shed.”
Will reminded himself to be careful. He wasn’t going to trample on her dead husband’s memory. At least not to her face. “I understand that he had his back to the wall because of the third missing student, Rosario Lopez. But you take away the fog of war, and that’s not a great case.”
“You won’t get any disagreement from me. That’s why Jeffrey didn’t push the district attorney to press charges.” Sara explained, “With Nesbitt locked up, he thought more witnesses would come forward, or more evidence would be found. He worked the case for another full year trying to find something, anything, that would hang the attacks on Nesbitt. But no one came forward and he couldn’t make the case, and eventually, Nesbitt managed to add attempted murder to his jacket, so …”
Gary knocked on the door frame. “Dr. Linton? We’re ready.”
“I’ll be there in a second.” Sara was back on her phone. She read the words aloud as she typed. “‘Please ask Tommi to call or email me. It is possible that she was right about the photo.’ How does that sound?”
“It depends,” Will said. “Do you want to scare her?”
“Shouldn’t she be scared?”
Will said, “Send it.”
Sara waited for the email to swoosh before sticking her phone into her back pocket.
She told Will, “Gary’s never done an exhumation, so it’s going to go slow, okay?”
“I’m good with slow.”
She held onto Will’s hand as they walked up the hall. Sara didn’t let him go until they reached the supply cabinet. She took out a yellow apron, blue surgical hat, two face masks.
She reminded Will, “With Alexandra McAllister, there were incised wounds made by a tool similar to a razor blade or scalpel. The killer knew the blood would lure predators to the
