Tumbledown (27 page)

A CSI walked past with bulging evidence bags in her arms. Alex gave up on her sandwich and leaned forward to try to gain a better view. Several items of clothing had already been salvaged from the fire pit, one of which—the flowered material—was the remains of a woman’s shirt, and all of which bore stains that a Kastle-Meyer test had identified as blood. For the last hour, ever since a sympathetic tech shared the preliminary findings, Alex had been torturing herself trying to think of a local woman who might have collaborated with Deakin. When Emerson had collected Alex to bring her out here, he had given her the list of names she had asked for. Twelve people had helped to search her and Sarah’s land the day after Lyssa had died, and three of them were women. That Alex hadn’t even considered the possibility of a female accomplice made her feel like handing in her badge and gun before Quinn got around to demanding them from her.

“So fucking stupid,” she muttered, not for the first time, her fingers picking furiously at the bark on which she was sitting. She knew she was overreacting; it wasn’t as if she had questioned every man in town, ruling out all the women as suspects, but still she felt like an idiot. Her phone rang, earning a reprieve for the shredded remains of her fingernails. Castillo had promised to call back within the hour for another update.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey, Sherlock.” Castillo’s droll response was enough to make her smile. “Caleb Deakin’s married.”

And just like that, everything turned on its head again. She was conscious of her mouth flapping soundlessly. “Why wasn’t that mentioned on the bulletin?” she eventually managed to ask.

“Administrative SNAFU by the boys in North Carolina. It’s real hot down there this time of year, so they figure they’re allowed to let things slide a little. They apologized, if that helps any.”

“Not really.”

“No, I guess not. I’m looking at a picture of her now. Leah Deakin, twenty-four years old, which puts ten years between them. Needless to say, she’s not at home. Been a regular patient at the local ER for the past three years or so. Seems to have gotten real clumsy since she married into the Deakin family.”

“Poor kid.” Alex’s response was instinctive.

“A poor kid who may have been complicit in Lyssa’s murder,” Castillo reminded her.

“Yeah.” She scrubbed at her grimy face. “When are you coming up here to straighten all this crap out?” The Deakins, their Church, and the events in the Cascades were all originally Castillo’s case. If a direct connection could be established between Caleb Deakin and Lyssa’s murder, no one would be able to prevent Castillo’s involvement in the investigation.

“Just waiting on clearance. Bosses are dragging their heels a little. They’d prefer to wait for the forensics to come back, but they’re also worried they’ll be associated with what looks like a cataclysmic fuckup on the part of the Avery PD, so I don’t think they’ll leave it that long.”

“Gotta love that as a motivating factor.” She stood and paced away from the glare of the lights, too tense to sit still any longer. “No mention of finding Lyssa’s killer or clearing Sarah, just a bunch of suits trying to avoid being left with egg on their faces.”

“You know how this shit works, Alex.”

“I hate it.” Above her, the sky was paler, hues of blue and lilac bleeding into the edges of the black. She had no idea how long it had been since she last slept. “I fucking hate how this shit works.”

“Looking on the bright side, I did get the go-ahead to request that Quinn split the forensics. We’re getting a batch of samples couriered down here, and the lab’s agreed to put a rush on them.”

“Oh, thank fuck for that.” She put her hand out, feeling the abrasion on her palm catch against a tree. The pain helped to keep her upright.

“You okay over there?” Castillo had raised his voice, making the concern in it more apparent.

“I’m okay.”

“Figured that might reduce the risk of Quinn ‘losing’ any of the samples.”

“That possibility had crossed my mind,” she admitted. “And the labs here have been known to take weeks.”

“Ours will be four days, max.”

“That’s great, Mike. Really, I don’t…Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, honey.”

She raised her head as the first hint of sunlight caught the tops of the trees. “What do I tell Sarah?”

He answered without hesitation. “Tell her we’ll have her home soon.”

The trailer rocked if its occupants walked from room to room too quickly, and its walls were paper-thin. Sitting as still as she could on the bathroom floor, Leah pressed her ear to the partition and strained to hear the conversation between Caleb and his contact.

She hadn’t seen the man arrive. His abrupt knock had sounded on the door as she was trying to scrub out the stains on the shower stall. She had smiled, lowering her head to her hands in thankfulness, but only one man had crossed the threshold, and he had made no attempt to arrest Caleb. Instead, the kitchen door had slammed hard enough to make her cling to the stall, and seconds later, Caleb had yelled something unintelligible. The other man was talking now, his tone a tremulous mixture of placation and tension. She knew what it was like, standing in front of Caleb as he raged, but she felt no sympathy for his victim; she only hoped he would bear the brunt of Caleb’s temper so that she wouldn’t have to.

The police had found the cottage. That in itself was bad enough, but they had also found the fire she had started and then left unattended. Bloodstained clothing and the knife handle had been pulled from the ashes. She understood little about forensics, but she supposed that if the handle was intact then Caleb’s fingerprints would probably be on it. He had worn gloves to stab the woman, but Leah remembered that when he had given her the handle to destroy he had done so with his bare hands. He must have remembered that, too, because he was pacing, the floor reverberating beneath his tread.

“How long before she’s out?” he asked.

“If it was up to our labs, two to three weeks, but the feds have gotten involved.” The man hesitated as if wary of Caleb’s reaction. “I heard Quinn say four days.”

“Then what?”

“Then the charges will be dismissed and the feds’ll probably take her and Alex into protective custody while they look for you.”

A flicker of movement caught Leah’s attention, and she leaned her head against the wall to watch a roach scurry into the damp corner behind the sink. She hated this trailer. They had been here for five days, after moving at a moment’s notice in the middle of the night. She didn’t know exactly where they were, only that they hadn’t traveled far enough to have crossed the state line. Like the apartment by the river, the trailer belonged to a relative of Caleb’s contact, except that this relative had lived here until she died and she hadn’t been house-proud.

“Jesus, Caleb. I don’t think I can do that.” The raw fear in the man’s voice made the flesh on Leah’s bare arms ripple with goose bumps. She tucked herself close to the wall again, wondering what she had missed.

“I think you can,” Caleb said. His voice was level and reasonable and made Leah want to curl up into a ball.

The man was starting to panic, obviously sensing a trap. “They’ll find out; they’ll find out and I’ll lose my fucking job. God, they’ll lock me up as an accessory. I can’t go to prison. They’d tear me apart in there.”

“You won’t go to prison. I won’t let that happen. You gotta trust me here.”

Leah shook her head, but she already knew the man was lost. Either he helped of his own volition or Caleb would resort to violence or blackmail.

“I trust you,” the man said. “I trust you.”

Even though she couldn’t see Caleb, she could picture his smile, and any remaining hope that he might decide to give up and run was finally snuffed out.

“They’ll never see it coming,” he told the man. There were two distinct hisses as he opened bottles of beer. Glass clinked against glass, the sound incongruous, as if they were friends sharing a drink at a backyard barbecue. The way Caleb laughed made her shiver.

“Be like taking candy from a baby,” he said.

*

Alex pushed the sheets of paper aside, folded her arms on the table, and laid her head on them. She was so worn out that the interview room spun every time she moved, while the cover sheet she had just completed for her statement contained more corrections of simple spelling errors than useful information. She had seen Quinn utilize this tactic before, most recently with Sarah: if your suspects were disoriented from exhaustion or terror or grief, they were far more likely to make mistakes or confessions during interrogation. Quinn’s only problem was that Alex—unlike Sarah—understood exactly how the game was played, and, though her coversheet might be shoddy, the statement itself was not only cogent but airtight. It would also make uncomfortable reading for him and for ADA Kryger, whom Alex had seen lurking at the front desk as she was brought into the station, but she was long past caring about Quinn’s sensibilities, and she had never cared about Kryger’s.

The familiar sounds of the shift handover faded out as she drifted into a light sleep. She heard a door open and the approach of footsteps, and for a long, surreal moment, she thought she was still dreaming, until she raised her head to see Quinn and Kryger in front of her. In no hurry to assume an air of composure, she smacked her dry lips together and grimaced at the sticky patch of drool on her forearm. Kryger’s moue of distaste was well worth the crick Alex could feel at the back of her neck.

“Emerson dotted all his i’s and crossed all his t’s for you?” Ignoring Kryger, she directed the question at Quinn. They had kept her separate from Emerson throughout the search of the cottage, and then driven them straight to the station for questioning.

“He’s already gone home,” Quinn said.

The lack of subterfuge and the profound weariness in his voice took Alex aback. She collected the pages of her statement together and held them out to him, studying him obliquely as he stepped closer. He looked haggard, as if the night had aged him twenty years. Despite everything he had done and all the chances he had missed to make amends, she couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for him.

He tucked her statement into the bulging case file he had brought with him. “Esther just got off her shift. She offered to drive you home,” he said, and held up a hand as Kryger drew a breath to protest. “Alex can come back in when she’s gotten some sleep,” he told her.

He turned back to Alex, effectively ending Kryger’s contribution to the conversation. “Agent Castillo acknowledged receipt of the samples a half-hour ago. They’ll be in the lab by now.”

With an effort, she kept her expression neutral. “Thank you, sir.”

He opened the file again and passed her a plastic evidence bag. “Sergeant Emerson said you would recognize this.”

She squinted at it. “Yes, sir, I know what this is.” It was the original order docket for Lyssa’s gate key, well thumbed and tattered but still legible. She passed it back to him, wondering what point he was trying to make. The answer came when he exchanged the docket for a Polaroid.

“A tech found this key in the pocket of one of the shirts he dug out of the fire.”

Dizziness hit her again and she dropped the photograph onto the table. The small gate key stood out prominently in the center of the image, a splash of silver on a jet-black background.

“Do you need one for comparison?” she asked, once she was certain she could speak without embarrassing herself.

“Later,” Quinn said. He did not explain his reasons for showing her the photo, but she knew the locked gate had formed the crux of his theory against Sarah. She suspected this was as close to an admission of error as he could make at this stage, something he confirmed when he spoke again.

“Two of the guys we arrested at the warehouse made bail yesterday, freeing up a cell in Ruby. I’m going to request that Sarah be transferred back across here, make things a little easier for you both.”

Torn between wanting to thank him and slap him, Alex merely picked up the photograph and handed it back. She dared not look again at Kryger, whose face had been reddening throughout the exchange, and who now appeared to be on the verge of dragging Quinn bodily from the room before he made any more concessions. The ADA rarely found herself on the losing side and was not about to admit defeat prematurely on this case.

Alex didn’t have the energy to care. Four days, she thought, four days for the forensics to come back, and in the meantime, Sarah would be closer for her to visit. She stood and straightened her rumpled clothing, determined not to walk through the station looking like a suspect.

“Can I go home now, sir?”

“Can you be back here by four?”

She checked the time. He was giving her nine hours to sleep, feed herself and the animals, and phone Sarah. “Sure,” she said.

He nodded, suddenly more his familiar, authoritative self. “Good. Let’s not keep Esther waiting any longer, then.”

*

“Exercise is good for back pain.”

Sarah mouthed the mantra as she jogged toward the scorched area of grass she used as a lap marker and forced herself to continue past it for the fourth time. Her prison-issue sneakers hit the ground flat and hard, making pain jolt through the twin areas of bruising where Barrett had hit her. The muscles in her back seemed to have seized up overnight. After struggling to get out of her bunk that morning, she had limped down to the shower block, where a rare blast of hot water had alleviated some of the discomfort. She suspected Camille had subsequently had a quiet word with Kendall, because two Advil had been issued to her at breakfast and Kendall had waited, hands on hips, until she gave in and swallowed them.

She could see Kendall now, standing by the ruined grass, watching Sarah steadily close the gap between them. It was too hot and she was too sore to go any faster, but Kendall seemed content to let her finish in her own time.

“You’re keeping everyone busy today, Hayes,” Kendall said as Sarah stooped low, gasping for air.

“I am?” She straightened cautiously and used the bottom of her T-shirt to dry her face. “Did I do something wrong?”