Rebecca Caterino/DOA—attempted murder/sexual assault.
Jeffrey had documented arriving at the scene in the woods, discussing crowd control with Brad, getting the rundown from Lena. Like most cops, he used a shorthand, abbreviating Lena as L.A., Frank as F.W., and so on.
He’d written a phone number in the margins. No name, just a number. Sara’s brain automatically went to the assumption that it belonged to a woman he’d been seeing. She sat back in the chair. She tried to clear the spark of jealousy that accompanied the thought.
She turned the page.
TALK TO SL RE: 30 MINUTES.
Jeffrey had been haunted by the thirty minutes that Beckey Caterino had lain in the woods. Sara felt haunted, too. Thirty minutes was a long time, half of the golden hour in which a patient’s remaining lifespan was predicted by the actions that were taken to prolong her survival. Sara had equivocated when Jeffrey had asked her if thirty minutes would’ve made a difference. Medically speaking, thirty seconds might have made a hell of a difference. The tragedy on top of the tragedy was that they would never know.
Sara looked down at the notebook. Beneath her initials, Jeffrey had written the name Thomasina Humphrey.
Sara combined the two details, and suddenly, she found herself back in Jeffrey’s office. She had been waiting for the email to be sent to his computer when Jeffrey had returned from his talk with Sibyl Adams. Sara had been so close to telling him about her own rape. She had wanted to protect Tommi from the pain of an interrogation. She had been certain that the girl’s attack had nothing to do with Leslie Truong and just as certain that it could not be linked to Beckey Caterino.
She had been wrong.
She turned through the pages, searching for anything that could help them now. Brock was still the official coroner during that time period, so all of the lab reports and findings would be wherever he stored his files. Jeffrey had transcribed some of Sara’s observations into his notebook, but what had Sara missed? What had Jeffrey missed? Was there a detail, a piece of forensics, that they had been blind to, that they had ignored, that had allowed a violent, sadistic murderer to get away?
Sara was Jeffrey’s widow. She had inherited his estate. It seemed she had also inherited the guilt.
She heard a key scrape into the deadbolt on the front door.
Sara closed the notebook. She stacked together the files and crammed them back into the box. By the time Will entered the apartment, she was standing up, waiting for him.
Sara noticed a lot of things at the same time. That he had showered. That he had changed into jeans and a button-down shirt. That his expression looked strained.
She swallowed down all of the sharp questions that churned up into her mouth: Where have you been? Why didn’t you call? Why did you go to your house to shower before coming here? What the hell is going on?
Sara saw that Will was doing his own reconnaissance. His eyes moved around the room to her unfinished dinner, the bottle of Scotch, the boxes of Jeffrey’s things.
She took a deep breath and let it go slowly, trying to avert what she was certain would be a disastrous blow-up.
She told him, “Hey.”
Will knelt down. The dogs had rushed to meet him. Betty danced around his feet. Sara’s greyhounds pressed into his legs. The air felt heavy, like they were each drowning in their own separate pools of water.
Sara spotted a cut on the knuckle of his middle finger. Blood was weeping from the wound.
She tried to joke, “Please tell me you got that from hitting Lena.”
He went to the refrigerator. He opened the door. He stared into the shelves.
She couldn’t deal with his silence right now. She asked him a question he’d have to answer. “How did it go?”
Will took a deep breath similar to the one Sara had taken.
He said, “Lena thinks you’re trying to jam her up.”
“I am,” Sara admitted, but she was galled that Lena thought all Sara did was sit around and wait for opportunities to make her miserable. “What else?”
“I almost punched her in the face. Then I nearly pulled my gun on Jared. Then I beat up Faith’s car. Oh, and before all this, I told Jared we were getting married.”
Sara felt her jaw set. The first part was obviously hyperbole. As for the last part, if this was some new, backward way of Will asking her to marry him, it wasn’t going to work. “Why did you tell Jared we’re getting married?”
Will opened the freezer. He looked inside.
Sara pivoted. “Did you have dinner?”
“I ate something at home.”
She didn’t like the way he’d said home. This was his home, the place that they shared together. “There’s yogurt.”
“You told me not to steal your yogurt.”
Sara couldn’t take this anymore. “Jesus, Will, I’m not the Javert of Yoplait. If you’re hungry, eat the yogurt.”
“I can have ice cream.”
“Ice cream isn’t the same as yogurt. It has zero nutritional value.”
He closed the freezer door. He turned around.
“What?” she asked. “What is wrong with you?”
“I thought you put a moratorium on talking.”
She wanted to kick him. “It really sucks when the person you’re supposed to be in a relationship with won’t tell you what they’re thinking.”
“So, this is a teaching moment?”
Sara thought this was a moment where things could go really, really wrong. “Let’s just drop it.”
“Why didn’t you text me?”
“I did text you.” She grabbed her phone. She showed him the screen. “Three times, and nothing, because I guess you turned off your phone.”
He rubbed his jaw with his fingers.
“I can’t take your grunts and long silences right now, Will. Can you just talk to me like a normal human being?”
Anger flashed in his eyes.
Anger was something Sara could deal with. She had already picked a fight with her sister. She was furious about Lena. She was hurt that Faith had lied
