Nearly Found (24 page)

I flew to my feet. “You don’t think it would kill me to have to turn my own father over to the police? If I’m right, that’s exactly what Reggie wants!”

“But what if you’re wrong.” Lonny frowned, pushing and pulling the barbell through his lower lip. “As far as Reggie knows, you’ve been looking for your father all this time. He could be working on the assumption you’d try to cover for him. He might be expecting you to hide the evidence.”

“Or counting on her to destroy it,” Reece said.

Eric inched forward in his chair, his eyes wide with panic. “Why would Reggie want that? If Leigh destroys the evidence, no one will ever know who killed my father.”

“Exactly.” Reece looked at Lonny. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“That Reggie was the one who actually killed Karl Miller, and he’s hoping to use our girl here to clean up his mess? It makes sense. He’d kill three birds with one stone. He’d be off the hook for Karl’s murder and there’s enough circumstantial evidence to make it look like David Boswell did the deed. The cops would be a lot more motivated to hunt him down. There would be more pressure on them to find him and prosecute him on murder charges, leaving Leigh to go to jail for obstruction of justice in a felony homicide investigation.”

I sat down slowly as everything clicked into place.

Reece swore quietly and scrubbed a hand over his face. “We have no way to be sure.”

But I was sure. This was the answer. The motive. This was the outcome Reggie wanted. It had to be.

“There’s only one way to know.” I said. “We solve this. And we end it now. We figure out the riddle of the club, and find proof that Reggie really killed Karl Miller.”

“And if the evidence points to your father?” Eric asked.

“We find the evidence and expose it, no matter what it is.” Eric deserved this much. If my father did murder Karl Miller, then his freedom was a price I was willing to pay. Not Reece’s life. Not anyone’s in this room.

Anh slipped her hand around Jeremy’s arm. “
The club isn’t what you think.
That’s what the message said. So if it’s not the poker club, then what is it?”

“When I went to visit TJ, he said the secret to finding out who killed Karl Miller was in the club,” I said.

“Which means the club probably has something to do with Eric’s dad,” Reece said.

“So what do we know about Eric’s dad?” Lonny asked. We’d all forgotten that Lonny had been in jail since all this started. There were pieces of the puzzle we’d have to fill in for him.

“Karl Miller was in a poker club with my dad,” I said. “And TJ’s. He made an anonymous call to the police five years ago, which resulted in arrest warrants for both of them. Then Mr. Miller disappeared. We know he was murdered and buried under a false front in the golf course at Belle Green.”

“False front?” Lonny asked.

Vince rolled his eyes, looking impatient. “It’s a slope built into the golf course, to make the game harder. The one they found the body in was being constructed when Eric’s dad was brained—”

“Vince!” Anh shushed him. “That’s an awful thing to say.”

“Well, he was!”

“Brained with what?” Lonny pushed and pulled at his lip ring thoughtfully. No one answered. He raised an eyebrow, like he was surprised we didn’t know. “You want to convict a man of murder, you need three things. Motive, opportunity, and a murder weapon. So what is it?”

“I don’t know,” I said, thinking back to the day I’d seen the bone fragments in the Fridge. “Doc Benoit’s been tied up, waiting on some forensic anthropologist to finish the reconstruction of Karl Miller’s skull.” Eric’s jaw clenched and he stared at the floor. I spoke delicately. “I saw the remains. There was evidence of blunt force trauma to the head. The skull was crushed in several places, but a lab tech I work with said the impacting object probably had a small surface area, suggesting multiple blows with a . . .” My voice trailed off.

The club isn’t what you think.

“With what?” Vince muttered. “Your mom’s baseball bat?”

Eric and I locked eyes across the circle.

The enemy hides beneath a false front. The club will illuminate its secrets.

“No,” I said. “Like a golf club.”

• • •

Jeremy, Anh, Eric, and Vince piled into Jeremy’s Civic. Lonny’s Lexus was still impounded for evidence, so he rode with me and Reece in the Benz. We headed to Eric’s house. He punched in the garage door combination.

“Do you think they’re still in here?” Anh asked.

“My dad’s clubs?” Eric’s voice was tinged with urgency as he darted under the opening door. “Yeah, they’re here. My mom tried to sell them once, but they’re lefties. Plus they’re engraved. She was asking way too much for them.”

Eric led us around the shiny gray Audi sedan parked inside. On the wall behind it hung two bicycles with thick, clean tires, some folding beach chairs, a dirt-grimed shovel with a bright red handle, and a leather carrier full of golf clubs, the heads coated in a thick layer of dust. Eric reached up.

“Careful!” I said. “Don’t touch the clubs.”

He threw me an irritated look, and lifted the bag off its hook.

“They look normal enough. Exactly the same as my dad’s. Fourteen,” Jeremy counted. “They’re all there.”

Vince pushed his way toward the bag. “I thought you said your dad was a lefty, Miller?”

“He was.”

“So why’d he play with a right-handed nine iron?”

Eric scrunched up his face and studied the club heads. I didn’t know the first thing about golf, but one of the bigger heads seemed to angle differently than the others. Eric shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t really play.”

Vince grabbed a rag from a car-care kit on a shelf. He raised an eyebrow, as if asking my permission. I nodded, curious. Carefully, Vince wrapped the rag around the club and slid it from the bag. He handled it confidently, like he was comfortable with the weight and shape of it in his hands. Then he withdrew another. This one was almost identical, if not a bit smaller. “These aren’t from the same set. See the engraving?”

We all circled close. The smaller club was left-handed, like the others, and engraved with the letters
K.M.,
just below the leather wrap. The larger one—the right-handed nine iron—was the only one that wasn’t. “I think we just found the missing nine of clubs,” Vince said.

The club will illuminate its secrets

The truth will come to light.

I threw off my backpack and dug my hands to the bottom. I’d taken the luminol kit to make good on my agreement with Bao, but after the fire, I’d forgotten to bring it back to the lab. I grabbed the bag of dry chemicals, and read the directions on the label on the bottle. Moving out into the open air of the driveway, I angled my face away while I poured the pale powder into the spray bottle of reagent.

“Shut the door,” I instructed, still shaking the solution as I came back into the garage. If the luminol reacted with any latent blood on the club, it would be easier to see the reaction in the dark.

Eric punched in the code and the door lowered, plunging us into semi-darkness.

Vince set the club on the concrete, and we all gathered around it. I knelt beside it and sprayed the head of the nine iron. A bright white luminescence flashed and gradually began to fade as I sprayed a fine mist over the shaft.

“Someone tried to clean it,” I said aloud to myself, certain that’s what I was seeing. “Probably with bleach.” That would account for the brightness of the initial reaction. Curious, I moved to the carrying case. I sprayed the leather bag. Pale neon-blue spatters awakened on its surface. “That’s blood. The nine iron is the murder weapon. It has to be. And the killer used bleach to clean the metal part of the club. But he didn’t bleach the bag, or the grip. Why?”

“Because the bleach would have ruined the leather,” Reece answered. “It would have discolored it. Made it obvious that something was wrong with it.”

“And if the killer didn’t bother to clean the grip—” Anh gave me a pointed look.

“He might have left fingerprints too.”

Anh jumped to her feet. “I’ll go home and get the coffee can and some glue. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes, tops.”

“The glue won’t work,” I said, stopping Anh. “The grip’s made of leather, which means it’s porous. We’d have to use iodine.”

“We can’t do it here.” Eric checked the time on his phone. “Let’s meet up in the chem lab at school in thirty minutes.” He reached for the nine iron. Vince took a step back, using the rag to hold it just out of his reach.

Eric’s face was flush with emotion. “That thing killed my father. It was in my garage. I should be the one to bring it.”

Vince held it out to me. But one look at the hard set of Eric’s jaw and I knew he wouldn’t let me take it. Thirty minutes was more than enough time if I’d wanted to get rid of it, and he had no reason to trust me. Before I could say anything, Reece stepped forward and took the club from Vince, careful to grasp it through the cloth.

“But—”

“We can’t afford to screw this up,” he said. Then he handed the nine iron to me.

E
RIC HAD INSISTED
on riding with me and Reece, so he could keep an eye on the club. I guess I couldn’t blame him. Lonny rode ahead with the others to pick up the coffee can, and we stayed behind to safely dispose of the luminol and return everything in the garage to its place. Eric excused himself and disappeared into his house. He was gone for a while, and I hoped he was checking to make sure Emily’s foot was still safely hidden. When he emerged, he set the security system and closed up the garage, and we left to meet up with the others. When we finally arrived at the school, the front door was unlocked. We carried the club up the stairs to the science wing, and surfaced to the sounds of an argument. Vince was kneeling in front of the chem lab door, working a credit card between the latch and the frame.

“You’re doing it wrong,” Lonny growled.

“Says who?” Vince muttered.

“Says someone who knows what he’s doing.”

“What else did they teach you in prison?”

“Fuck you.”

“You too, Leonard.” Vince drew the card down too hard, snapping off the edge inside. “Screw this. It worked downstairs.”

“Because the door was already unlocked, you idiot,” Lonny growled.

Eric turned at the sound of our footsteps. His eyes darted from Reece to me, searching for the club. As soon as he saw it, his shoulders slumped with relief.

Reece reached inside his jacket and withdrew the sleeve of tools I’d salvaged from his saddlebag after the accident. He unrolled it, revealing a collection of slender metal implements. Lonny’s dark eyes appraised the row of shiny picks and he stepped aside to let Reece through. Lonny and Vince hovered close, watching appreciatively.

The lock popped and we filtered in. Anh set the coffee canister on a lab table, then disappeared into the closet in search of iodine. Reece and Vince picked the locks on the supply cabinets, Eric put on a lab apron, and Jeremy hunched over the computer on the teacher’s desk.

Lonny stood by the door with his hands in his pockets, looking uncomfortable—completely out of place.

“Anyone have a knife?” I asked.

Lonny lifted his head and reached in his pocket, producing a silver blade that made an elegant swish in his hands when he flicked it open, similar to the one I’d seen in the mailroom at the lab. It looked too long to be a utility knife, and I had no doubt it would light up like the Milky Way galaxy if I sprayed it with luminol. I gave Lonny a pair of gloves, instructing him to carefully cut the leather grip from the club.

Knife poised, he paused before making the long vertical incision. “You sure about this?”

The question sliced me all the way through.

If I did this—if I removed the grip from the murder weapon—it was destruction of evidence. Even if we did find the prints . . . even if we found a match and delivered the proof of the identity of Karl Miller’s killer to the district attorney’s front door . . . it would be inadmissible. And if the match was to my father, I’d be responsible for setting him free. But if the print belonged to Reggie, we would have solid proof that he killed Karl Miller. If we told Gena and Alex everything now—about the notes and the codes and how they tied to the golf club—they would have to believe us. With their help, we could prove he’d killed Emily and Adrienne too. Which would be enough to send Reggie back to prison for a long, long time.

My future balanced on the tip of the blade. But the decision wasn’t only mine to make.

I searched the room for Eric. Found him, arms crossed and face severe, watching me.

“If it’s Reggie, there’ll be other evidence to convict him,” I said.

He swallowed. “Do it,” he said. “I have to know.”

I nodded, feeling the pinch in my gut as the tip of the blade pierced the grip. In a few hours, Eric might know the identity of the person who’d killed his father. Lonny made the careful cut down the length of the grip, then carefully peeled back the curling leather.

As it fumed, I peered into the canister, waiting for some sublime reaction. Some confirmation that this choice—Eric’s choice—hadn’t been in vain. If we could find one print, if we could match it, maybe we could bring an end to the suffering Reggie Wiles had inflicted on all of us. Maybe just by knowing the truth, we could bring Eric some peace.

Anh checked the time on her phone. She pulled on a pair of gloves and opened the coffee can.

“We’ve got one!” Anh said triumphantly. “We have a print!”

Vince and Lonny slapped hands. Jeremy put a supportive arm around Eric’s shoulder, and hugged Anh with the other. I looked at Eric. Neither of us smiled.

“Jeremy, can you get us back into the police network from here?”

He thought for a moment. “I’m pretty sure I can get in using Nicholson’s user ID and password.” It was already after five o’clock. Nicholson was probably off for the night. Once he was in, I could use Raj’s password to access AFIS, and run a search based on the characteristics of the print for a list of possible matches.

“Then let’s figure out who this print belongs to.”

Anh and I carefully transferred the prints using the remaining black powder I’d stashed in my backpack the day I’d taken it from the Latent Prints lab. Then Jeremy used his smartphone and the lab’s computer to create a digital image of the prints. My breath caught when he projected the partial thumb and full index finger on the overhead screen at the front of the room.

I stood before the killer. Close enough to trace the loops and whorls he had left on the world.

I began to count, measuring the space between them. Orienting myself against the slopes and angles of the peaks of what could be my father’s hands.

Then I fed him to The Monster.

• • •

Hours passed. Anh and Jeremy sat on the floor against the wall, her head resting against his shoulder. Eric had collected all of our loose change and headed downstairs to the vending machines for sodas and chips. I listened to Vince complain about the new padlock on the ethyl alcohol cabinet while Reece paced the long line of windows, watching the darkness deepen.

“What’s taking so long?” Lonny grumbled, head tipped back and eyes closed as if he’d been sleeping. His feet were propped on a lab table and crossed at the ankles.

“We’re waiting on a list of possible matches.”

“If we don’t get out of here soon, someone will notice the lights.” Reece was right. It was late. The school should be empty. We couldn’t risk getting caught here. Not with the murder weapon that killed Eric’s father.

Jeremy eased out from under Anh’s sleeping head. He got up and bent low over low keyboard, checking the screen. “Leigh,” he said. “I think it’s done.”

This was it. This was the answer I’d been searching for. Not the
where
of my father, but the
who
. This was the truth. “Search Completed” flashed on the screen. I clicked “Print Report,” and the ink jet in the corner hummed to life. The cartridge slid too slowly, back and forth, less than a dozen times across the page, before spitting the printout to the floor. There it was. The black and white I’d been searching for.

And I couldn’t make myself touch it.

Jeremy bent to pick it up. His eyes silently skimmed the page. Then they froze. He curled it in his hand as he backed away.

“What’s wrong?” I reached for the report, but he put it behind himself, making me snatch it from his hands. What was he trying to protect me from? I already knew my father’s name would be on it.

Only it wasn’t.

There were less than ten names. I didn’t recognize any of them.

Except one. Jason Fowler. Jeremy’s dad.

“Oh, Jeremy, no.” A wave of emotions crested inside me, burying any relief I should have felt.

The first slow tear fell down his face. He shook his head. “It’s wrong. It has to be.” He ripped his glasses from his face to wipe his eyes. Then he stared at the wire-frames, at the small dent near the hinge where his father had knocked them from his face. His eyes lingered at his wrist, over the fine white scar there. The first in a trail that disappeared up his sleeve. “I didn’t know,” he whispered.

Eric came through the door, struggling to balance an armful of soda cans, candy, and chips. “I brought dinner,” he said, his voice fading as he looked at our faces. He set the food on a lab table without looking at it. Without shutting the door. A soda can rolled slowly over the edge to the floor.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, looking like a cornered animal. We were all staring at him. At Jeremy. Unsure what to say.

I unrolled the report. Eric’s eyes widened and he dashed toward me, ripping it from my hands. His eyes moved over the page, frantic. Desperate.

“I’m so sorry, Eric.” Tears streamed down Jeremy’s face, his voice thick with emotion. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know!” He pressed the heel of his palms into his face, like he was pushing back memories. “I mean, I know he gets angry. I know that. Sometimes he gets angry, but he doesn’t hurt me . . . he wouldn’t . . .”

Anh’s eyes shone with tears. She reached for his hand, and he snatched it away, clutching it to his body. Because his father did hurt him. Over and over.

A strange expression passed over Eric’s face. A collision of relief and rage. His hands balled at his side and he choked on something between laughter and a cry. Lonny rose slowly to his feet, maneuvering himself nearer to Jeremy, close enough to break up a fight. I caught the smell of Reece’s jacket. The heat of his body at my back.

Eric’s breathing became rapid and strained. His hand clenched into a fist and I grabbed it without thinking, making him look me in the eyes.

The taste of his anger was sharp and fast and metallic. It beaded like quicksilver off my tongue, revealing something deeper underneath. Gratification, I realized. Sweet and satisfying and complete.

Eric knew the truth. He’d found his father. He’d discovered the answers. He’d quenched his fire, the one I still felt burning inside me. He was not suffering. Not like Jeremy. Not like Anh, or Reece, or Lonny, or Vince. Or me. This moment, these answers, were a gift.

Wait. No, not a gift.

These had been earned.

This gratification was Eric’s . . . reward.

Eric was the mole.

“He used you,” I said to the broken, angry boy I saw crouched inside him. My mind raced back to Powell Ridge Penitentiary. I had asked TJ if his father was the one behind the bad things that had happened. He’d never really answered, only told me to think about it. That bad couldn’t be fixed, but that small freedoms could be earned—like the cyber-tutoring and the video-visitation Simms had mentioned—and a little freedom was all that was needed to exercise that muscle. He’d pointed to
his head
.
His mind
.

He hadn’t been talking about his father. He’d been talking about himself.

He had planned this. Orchestrated the whole thing behind bars.

“TJ used you.” I gripped Eric’s hand, the truth curling my tongue like a bitter pill. “He told you he’d help you find your father. You wanted the answers so badly, you were willing to dig him up yourself. And TJ promised you he would help you find the person who killed him. That he would help you get revenge if you agreed to do everything he asked. That’s why you took the Google searches from my bedroom. Because he had you completely convinced that my father killed yours. You were going to help TJ get his revenge on me, and then TJ was going to help you find my dad.”

The room fell silent. The others gaped at Eric. Reece tensed behind me. Eric jerked his hand from mine. “I didn’t do anything. I was only the messenger. I only delivered the notes. Passed along information.” He backed toward the door. “I never hurt anyone.”

Then he turned, and tried to sprint.

Just as the door snapped shut in his face.

The lock clicked.

“No!” He launched himself at it, clawing to get out. “No!” He banged it with his fists. “This wasn’t the plan. I called you! I told you they were here! You’re supposed to let me go!” Eric banged hard, again and again. Then his fist paused. His wide eyes drifted down to the corner of the room near the door. He scrambled backward, into a lab table, toppling chairs. The smell of sulfur followed him, and we all inched back, away from thin wisps of smoke spilling over the lip of a bucket of some kind of industrial grade cleanser.

Anh pulled her sleeve to her mouth and grabbed my shoulder. We pressed against the chalkboard behind the desk. Reece dashed over with a metal trash can, and slung it over the bucket, slowing the fumes.

“Hydrogen sulfide,” Anh said through her cuff. She was right. The rotten egg odor was a giveaway, but it was already fading, overpowering our sense of smell as the gas spread through the lab. We didn’t have much time. If we couldn’t get out, we were all dead.

“Get on top of the tables!” I shouted. “Get as high as you can.” The gas was denser than the air. It would stay low to the floor, until it slowly filled the room. Until there was no air left to breathe.

Air. I looked to the windows.

I jumped from table to table and landed on the shelf beneath them. Anh and Reece, Jeremy, Vince, and Lonny were right behind me. The cranks were stubborn and slow, and when we finally got them open, we put our heads out, sucking gasping lungfuls of cold night air. Below, the front door of the school smacked open hard, and a man lunged onto the sidewalk, breathing loud and fast like he was already winded.

“Hey!” Reece shouted down. The man looked up, still running, his gait uneven and slow. TJ’s uncle Billy was red-faced. He focused on the end of the sidewalk ahead of him, and ran faster, toward the ball fields and the trees. Home, toward Sunny View.

Reece threw off his jacket and squeezed his shoulders through the narrow window. He looked down the two stories, and swore. Lonny slipped through the window beside him. Vince struggled, sucking in and angling his chest, almost too wide to make it through. He was taking too long.

“Jump!” he yelled at them. “It’s not that far.” Lonny and Reece looked down and cringed, teetering on the edge and gripping the window frames. “Go! He’s getting away! I’ll be right behind you.”