Jeffrey couldn’t quite articulate why he believed the latter was a possibility. None of the evidence pointed to foul play. But he had done this job long enough to know that sometimes your gut could see better than your eyes.
He ran through the timeline he’d put together. Caterino’s roommates said she left around five. The 911 call had come in an hour later. The student was a frequent runner. Jeffrey had looked up the stats. A woman in Caterino’s age group could generally do a twelve-minute mile. Assuming she ran straight to IHOP and didn’t take a detour or stop, the mile and a half run would’ve taken eighteen minutes.
That left forty-two minutes for something bad to happen.
If Caterino had been targeted, then the next step would be determining who would want to hurt her. Was there an old boyfriend who was angry with her for cutting things off? Or was the opposite scenario the case, where an old boyfriend had a new girlfriend who wanted to erase the past? Did Caterino argue with a roommate? Was there an academic rival? Was there an obsessed professor who didn’t like being told no?
Jeffrey had sent Frank to feel out Chuck Gaines, the walking joke of a campus chief of security. Matt Hogan was interviewing everyone in Caterino’s dorm. Brad Stephens was checking on Leslie Truong, the woman who had found Caterino in the woods. Lena was talking to Dr. Sibyl Adams. By coincidence, Lena’s sister was one of Caterino’s professors. Sibyl had offered to come in early that morning to go over Caterino’s Organic Chemistry paper.
Jeffrey wasn’t sure the girl would be capable of delivering anything anytime soon. Sara had directed the ambulance to take Caterino to the closest trauma center, which was in Macon. The Heartsdale Medical Center was barely equipped to handle scrapes and bruises. When Jeffrey had asked Sara for a prognosis, she had been almost non-responsive. She was furious with Lena for not finding a pulse, focusing all her anger onto the young cop in a way that should’ve brought Jeffrey relief.
For once, he was not the one on the receiving end of Sara’s sharp tongue.
Jeffrey stepped aside so that a car could pass. He walked through the open gates of the university. Main Street stretched out ahead of him. The rain was hitting the ground so hard that it bounced two feet off the asphalt. The police station was on his left. Up the hill on his right, the Heartsdale Children’s Clinic sat like a monument to bad 1950s architecture.
High Penitentiary was the best way to describe the bricked-up style. There was nothing on the outside that would indicate children were welcome. The windows were narrow. The plastic overhang turned any natural light a sallow brown. A glass-brick octagon swelled out like a boil on the end. This was the waiting room. During the summer, the temperature inside could soar into the nineties. Dr. Barney, the owner of the clinic, insisted the heat helped patients sweat out whatever was ailing them. Sara vehemently disagreed, but Dr. Barney had been her own pediatrician before he’d become her boss. She had a difficult time openly challenging him.
The man had no idea how lucky he was.
Jeffrey climbed the steep slope of the drive. Sara’s silver Z4 turbo was in the lot on the side of the building. She had it parked at a showroom angle that looked not just directly at the police station, but at the front doors, because castrating Jeffrey with a knife could only happen once, but she could slap him in the face with her $80,000 convertible every single time he left work.
Speaking of castration, Tessa Linton was standing beneath the narrow overhang outside the side door to the clinic. She was dressed in cut-off jean shorts and a tight long-sleeved shirt with the Linton and Daughters Plumbing logo across her ample chest. As usual, Tessa’s long, strawberry blonde hair was spiraled onto the top of her head. Jeffrey tried a smile. When that didn’t work, he offered her the benefit of his umbrella.
He said, “Long time.”
Tessa stared blankly into the street.
Of all the people in town, Jeffrey had assumed that Tessa would be the most understanding about his transgression. She was not a woman without a past. She was not a woman without a present, either. The streets of Grant County were lined with hearts that Tessa Linton had broken. The two of them had clocked each other as kindred spirits the first time Sara had brought Jeffrey home to meet her family. Tessa had teasingly warned him about breaking her big sister’s heart. Jeffrey had teased back that it’s not cheating if it’s a different woman every time. They had joked like that for years. Then Sara had caught Jeffrey in the act. Then Tessa had slashed the tires on his Mustang.
Jeffrey asked, “Is Sara okay? We had a rough morning.”
“My father is on his way to pick me up.”
Jeffrey warily eyed the street. He offered Tessa his umbrella. “You can just leave it by the door.”
She crossed her arms over her chest.
Jeffrey watched sheets of rain pound the parking lot. Water cascaded from the slim overhang. The minute Tessa stepped out, she would be drenched. Jeffrey should’ve left her to the elements, but chivalry won out. And he doubted the umbrella would be here when he got back.
Tessa asked, “How’s the old Colton place working out for you?”
Jeffrey was going to ask her how she knew he’d bought a house, but then he realized the
