The Polaroid was of Dana Clark. A younger Dana Clark. Not that anyone other than Rath and Dana Clark’s daughter would ever be able to identify the bloodied body so cruelly cut and brutalized as being Dana Clark, or even being female. Rath doubted Dana Clark’s husband or closest friends would be able to ID her. Rath and Tammy Clark had an advantage, a disadvantage. They’d both seen this photo before, or one like it. And witnessed the woman herself, left for dead in her flower garden.
“Fuck,” Rath said.
“There’s more of them inside,” Pines said. “Dozens.”
Rath looked out toward the highway hidden in the fog, listening to the sound of cars and trucks swoosh past in the rain.
“Dozens,” Rath heard Test say. “How long would that take?”
“At least a minute for each photo to develop, I’d think,” Pines said. “He’d have to place the photos somewhere, not just let them fall facedown on the grass, get ruined. He’d have to change film, too.”
“He brought boxes and boxes of film with him. He knew he was going to take all those pictures?” Test said. “He attacked Dana Clark back then. He gets out of prison and . . . finishes what he started. He moved right across the river, has a vehicle. Unlike Preacher.”
“It makes no sense,” Rath said, turning to them from looking at the fog. “He has no prior. He robbed a store and killed a kid. I bought that he was suicidal about it, that he’s never forgiven himself for that.”
“Bought a bill of goods, sounds like,” Pines said.
A woman in forensics garb and eyeglasses with thick blue frames stepped outside from the unit. She held up a sealed evidence bag. “A hair from the bathroom floor. Near the droplets of blood. Long. Gray. Likely belonging to a female.”
“Dana Clark’s,” Test said.
“We’ll see,” the woman said and marched off across the parking lot into the fog.
“We wondered if Preacher and Sheldon were tight, that’s why we visited Sheldon the first time,” Test said. “Sheldon convinced us otherwise. But maybe he and Preacher were tight. Are tight. Maybe Sheldon opened up to Preacher about his own dark past that no one else knew about, and no one would understand, appreciate, except someone like Preacher. Sheldon is the perfect age for the CRVK. He lived within twenty-five miles of most of the murders.”
“If we buy that he and Preacher were tight,” Rath said. “If we believe Glade over Sheldon.”
“Pick your convict,” Pines said.
“We’re here,” Test stressed, “because you visited Glade, on your own and believed him. And now you question it? It led us to a gray hair, blood, an abandoned motel room, and these photos. To Sheldon. It doesn’t mean Preacher’s not involved just because it doesn’t lead straight to Preacher; and it doesn’t mean it’s not good police work on our part. Your part. If Sheldon shared his plans with Preacher, it explains how Preacher knew about Jamie Drake’s hanging. But we follow evidence. If Preacher’s not our man for this he’s not our man. We’ll get him on something else eventually”
“Where’s that leave our Quebec girls?” Rath said.
“I don’t know,” Test said. “Where’d you find the photos?” she asked Pines.
“Plastic baggie hidden in the back of the minifridge. Not inside in the back, but between the minifridge’s plastic shell and its interior body.”
“God damn it,” Rath said. “We had him and we let him get away.”