“Four eyes are faster than two.”
“It’s a lot of jargon, technical stuff.”
“I can read technical stuff.”
Sara caught her sharp tone too late. “Tessie, I know you can—”
“I’m not Amelia Bedelia. I understand jargon. I know basic anatomy. I’ve been reading a lot of blogs on midwifery.”
Sara tried to hide her laughter in a cough.
“Are you laughing at me?”
Sara stifled another laugh.
“Jesus H. Christ.” Tessa pushed her chair back from the table. “I have to listen to this bullshit from Lemuel. I’m not taking it off you.”
“I’m sorry. Tess.” Sara laughed again. “I didn’t—I’m sorry. Please don’t—”
It was too late. Tessa slammed the door behind her.
Another laugh slipped out of Sara’s mouth.
Then she felt the sinking guilt that came from being an inexcusable asshole. She should’ve gotten up and followed her sister into the hall, but her legs wouldn’t move. She looked back at the boxes. Three in all. Jeffrey had labeled them eight years ago. Before he was back with Sara. Before they had rebuilt their lives together. Before she had watched the life slowly drain from his beautiful eyes.
REBECCA CATERINO BOX ONE OF ONE
LESLIE TRUONG BOX ONE OF ONE
THOMASINA HUMPHREY BOX ONE OF ONE
Sara found a pair of scissors in the kitchen. She carried the bottle of Scotch back to the table. She found the remote and turned on some soft music. She had a legal pad and pen in her briefcase. She sat down at the table. She cut open the first box.
Was there a smell attached to the pages?
Jeffrey had used oatmeal lotion on his hands when he thought no one was looking. He didn’t wear a cologne, but his aftershave had a wonderful, woodsy scent. Sara could remember the rough feel of his skin at night. The soft touch of his fingers tracing slowly down her body. She closed her eyes, trying to summon the deep baritone that had thrilled her, then infuriated her, then made her fall in love with him all over again.
Was this cheating?
Were her memories of Jeffrey betraying Will?
Sara put her head in her hands. She had started to cry. She wiped her eyes. She poured herself a drink. She pulled the first stack of pages out of the box and started to read.
Grant County—Wednesday
10
Jeffrey studied the contents of Rebecca Caterino’s case file. The paperwork on the accident in the woods covered his desk. Witness statements from her dorm mates. Lena and Brad’s reports. Frank’s summary. Jeffrey’s own recollections. Photos from Lena’s BlackBerry. Sara’s notes on the resuscitation. Some scrawled preliminary lines from Dan Brock, who was still officially the coroner on the case, even though a coroner wasn’t needed.
Not yet, at least.
He closed the file and dropped it in the cardboard box behind his desk. The label read GENERAL, but Jeffrey didn’t feel right about filing the girl away. Actually, his didn’t feel right had turned into a straight-up felt wrong.
He wasn’t quite sure what had tipped him over the line. Maybe the fact that the only person who might be able to fill in some details about the accident was currently missing.
Leslie Truong had left the Caterino crime scene around six yesterday morning. The one-and-a-half-mile trek back to campus would’ve taken her twenty, maybe thirty minutes. The rainstorm had rushed in around that same time. Jeffrey told himself that Truong had taken cover under a tree or slipped in the woods. A twisted ankle. A broken bone. That was the only reason she hadn’t made it to the nurse’s office. She was waiting for someone to find her.
Half of his patrol force and several volunteers from the college had spent the night trying to locate the missing woman in the woods. Jeffrey had participated in his share of grueling searches for missing teenagers, but this was different. Truong was an older student, a senior who was close to graduating with a major in chemical polymers. When the woods hadn’t panned out, Jeffrey had driven to her off-campus apartment. Truong’s blue Toyota Prius had been found parked in the lot behind her building. Her purse was locked inside her bedroom. The three students who shared rooms there had no idea where she was. The list of friends that they gave him had all been dead ends.
Truong had taken her phone with her into the woods, the same phone she’d used to call 911 to report finding Caterino. The battery had died, or maybe the phone had gotten wet. No calls could get through. According to Lena’s official report, Truong had been upset about discovering Caterino, but not so much that she’d needed an escort to see the school nurse. Lena had offered to find her a ride. Truong had said she preferred to walk back to campus.
Of course, that was according to Lena.
Jeffrey still had men in the woods, trying to take advantage of the fresh daylight. The biggest obstacle was that they had no idea which path Truong had taken. There were several options winding through the dense forest. And that was making the assumption that Truong followed a path. It was possible she’d run through the tangle of vines and briars because she had just seen a body and she was desperate to reach a safe, familiar setting. He let himself think about her waiting under a tree. It was possible someone was finding her right now.
Or it was possible none of that was true and someone had taken her.
Jeffrey’s thoughts kept swinging along the same pendulum as they had with Rebecca Caterino. Throughout the night, Jeffrey had vacillated on the reason behind Truong’s disappearance. One minute, he was thinking that she was hiding out somewhere after the trauma of finding the body. The next minute, he was thinking that something bad had happened and the girl had been abducted.
He had no idea why a bad thing—any bad thing—would happen to either of them. As with Caterino, Truong
