“Sara—”
“My parents are expecting me for lunch.”
Jeffrey watched her gather her purse, her car keys.
He said, “This isn’t over, Sara. I’m not going to lose you.”
She walked toward him. She rested her hands on his shoulders. She raised herself onto her tiptoes so she could look him in the eye.
They stayed like that for a moment, locked into each other. She chewed her bottom lip, drawing his attention to her exquisite mouth.
Jeffrey started to move toward her.
Her hands patted his shoulders. “Turn off the lights when you leave.”
Jeffrey watched her until the door closed off his view. Her shadow didn’t linger in the frosted glass. On the other side of the masking tape, he could still see the TOLLIVER.
He took as deep a breath as his smoke-damaged lungs would allow. He looked around the ancient morgue. Sara’s office was in the back. He could see she’d brought in cardboard boxes to store her new files. A bulk pack of pens. An unopened stack of legal pads. The ancient compressor on the walk-in freezer started to whine as the motor ramped up.
Other than buying a ridiculously expensive sports car, Sara had made two life-altering decisions the day after she’d kicked Jeffrey out. She’d filed divorce papers down at the courthouse. She’d left her letter of resignation from the coroner’s position with the mayor. Here they were one short year later and only one of those things was still in effect.
Jeffrey liked those odds.
He took out his BlackBerry. He clicked the scroll wheel to access the notes section.
Jeffrey was old school in every aspect of his life but one. He still had a Rolodex. All of his case notes and reminders were written down. He kept a paper calendar. His spiral-bound notebooks were stacked in boxes in his attic and would probably end up in the attic of whatever house he was living in when he retired.
Sara was going to be living in that house with him if it was the last thing he did.
Jeffrey looked at the secret list of names and phone numbers on his screen.
Heidi. Lillie. Kathy. Kaitlin. Emmie. Jolene.
One by one, he went through the list and deleted them.
Atlanta
28
Sara’s shirt was off. She stood with her arms out while Faith taped a small microphone to her bare chest. They were in the GBI’s crime scene investigation bus. The monitors on the wall showed a live image of the closed back doors. The camera was concealed inside Sara’s purse. The tiny hole piercing the leather was no larger than the circumference of her pinky finger.
Faith tore another piece of tape off the roll.
Sara looked up at the ceiling. She had to keep her eyes dry, but thinking about what she had missed, what had been right in front of her eight years ago, made her feel like she was tumbling inside of an avalanche.
The latex in Shay Van Dorne’s teeth had set off the first tremor. Sara had been mentally walking herself through the sequence—the latex had not been in the teeth before Shay was embalmed, yet it was there afterward—when Tommi Humphrey had called.
The second tremor was caused by a familiar phrase.
Tommi’s attacker claimed he had been forced to abduct her because she was too stuck up to give him the time of day.
Stuck up.
Sara could recall Brock staring longingly at the cheerleaders as they walked to the popular table in the cafeteria.
“They won’t even look at me,” Brock had whispered. “They’re too stuck up to give me the time of day.”
The third tremor was the sobbing.
Sara did not know Daryl Nesbitt personally, but she could not imagine him crying over any of his crimes. The only man she had ever met who routinely broke down was the same man who had sat beside her on a school bus for ten years.
The fourth and final tremor had brought down the sky.
Brock’s mother had been admitted to the hospital the last week of October. Sara could not recall all of the details, but she could still remember how different Brock had been when he’d come to relieve her in the middle of the night. His overly obsequious manner was gone. He’d been animated, practically giddy. Sara had chalked it up to anxiety about his mother. In retrospect, she could see his behavior for what it was.
Triumph.
“Almost finished.” Faith stood behind Sara, clipping the transceiver for the microphone to the back of her pants.
Dan Brock had spent two years earning his associate degree in mortuary sciences. The classes were intense, demanding an intimate understanding of thanatology, chemistry and human anatomy. As the county coroner, he had been mandated to attend forty hours of training at the Georgia Public Safety Training Center in Forsyth. There, he had learned about forensics and crime scene investigation. Every year, he’d been required to undergo twenty-four hours of additional in-service training so that he was up-to-date on any advances in death investigation sciences.
He would know how to paralyze a person. He would know how to cover his tracks.
Beneath the rubble of the avalanche, Sara had located the final, most damning clue.
She had texted Brock’s photo to Tommi Humphrey, asking—
Is this him?
After four unbearable minutes, Tommi had texted back—
Yes.
“Okay,” Faith said. “You can put your shirt back on.”
Sara buttoned her shirt. Her fingers felt thick. She thought about Faith’s math equation during yesterday morning’s briefing.
A + B = C.
The man who had attacked and mutilated Tommi Humphrey was the same man who had attacked Rebecca Caterino and Leslie Truong.
He was the same man who had murdered the women on Miranda Newberry’s spreadsheet.
He was the same man who had abducted, drugged and raped Callie Zanger.
He was the same man that Sara had called her friend.
Tears flooded her eyes. She was angry. She was terrified. She was devastated.
For over three decades, Sara had felt such warmth and true affection for Dan Brock. How could the little boy who’d sat beside her in kindergarten, the gawky teenager who’d been so self-deprecatingly
