Rachel lay asleep in her room as Rath sat at his kitchen table with the envelope. He opened it and for a long time he did nothing but stare at the two strands of hair inside it: Preacher’s and Rachel’s.
He took both hairs out and placed them side by side on a blank piece of white paper. He connected his trail cam by USB cord to Rachel’s laptop computer.
Thumbnail images from the SD card appeared on the screen.
Several dozen.
A prompt appeared on the screen: Import or Delete Images?
He needed to erase evidence of himself from the card then mail it with the remaining images to the police. It was likely moot. No doubt Sheldon’s image was on the SD card. Sheldon and Preacher had experienced a falling-out and Sheldon had done his deed.
Rath began to enlarge each photo as he selected them. Some of the photos were of birds. Others were of raccoons and skunks foraging at night. There were images of the neighbor coming and going. Images of Test and Larkin coming and going. Images of Rath and Test and the troopers and forensics. Images of Preacher. Images of Rath setting up the trail camera, and of him from hunting and fishing trips when he’d used the SD card in his regular camera.
And still other images of someone else entering Preacher’s house.
Rath sat staring at those images for a long time. Checked the time code.
The time right before the estimated time of death for Preacher. The same person left an hour later.
Rath took a drink of beer.
The woman in the pictures had her hat pulled down and a scarf around her chin, but it was her.
It came clear now.
Sheldon’s tattoos of his daughter’s name on his chest.
The pain of his daughter’s death. Preacher’s own crimes were of the same ilk as had been exacted on Sheldon’s daughter. Remorseless, guiltless Preacher. Somehow, over sixteen years, Sheldon had forged a fake bond with Preacher. Gained Preacher’s confidence. Perhaps feigned an affinity for such cruelty. Or been so desperate he’d lied and told Preacher he, Sheldon, had been the one to rape and kill his own daughter. One way or another, he’d won Preacher’s trust and stolen or traded the truck for the Polaroids.
The gray hair in the tub may not have been Dana Clark’s, but Dana had been the woman the motel manager had seen at the North Star. Had she gone there with Sheldon, distraught and sobbing from shock so she appeared drunk to the manager? Had she perhaps even fought Sheldon on the Wayside steps, enough to cut herself before he calmed her and convinced her he was not her attacker, but Preacher was, and that he, Sheldon, had a plan?
Rath could not figure the specifics. They didn’t matter. He’d seen Dana Clark with her granddaughter and her daughter. She loved life. Her life. She’d done what she’d done because it was what she needed to do, to do more than survive, but to live.
She’d done what Rath had not dared to do.
But. It did not make what she’d done right, legal, or moral.
He of all people understood this.
She’d almost gotten away with it.
She’d left no proof behind and had the perfect alibi of being wrecked in the trees and fog at the time of Preacher’s killing. As of yet, there was no evidence whatsoever to link Preacher and Dana Clark. No reason at all to suspect her, except for the images on the SD card and computer screen.
Rath thought about Preacher in the interview room. People got away with murder. How many went to their grave with a murder on their conscience? Most of them heinous, stupid people who somehow managed, in the only respect that mattered, to commit the perfect murder. Mean, merciless, cruel people who deserved to pay, yet didn’t.
While girls like Jamie Drake and Lucille Forte and Mandy Wilks lay in their graves, and people like Dana Clark slipped up and now faced prison for the rest of her life if discovered.
There was nothing anyone could do to right that sad balance sheet.
Almost nothing.
Rath studied the photos of Dana Clark coming and going from Preacher’s house.
He glanced at the hairs on the blank sheet of paper. Blew on them lightly. The hairs shivered, lifted on his breath, danced in the air, and were gone.
He looked at the photos of Dana Clark on the laptop screen until his vision blurred and the images of her seemed to be dissolving in a fog.
Then, he hit Delete and went down the hall, checked on his sleeping daughter, climbed into his bed, and slept like a man with no regrets.