I think about leaving Sara Meadows’ house before the police arrive, but since I went in and checked her vital signs, they’ll want to know the details. Besides, I want to know what happened. Did someone kill her because she was going to talk to me?
The neighbor is hysterical and seems to have forgotten me. I stay in the carport, leaning against Ms. Meadows’ car. When the first responders drive up, I meet them down the driveway, tell them who I am and that I’m working on a case with the department. I tell them what I know, then listen as they get the neighbor’s account. They quickly declare it a crime scene and begin securing the area. Radio transmissions go crazy as everyone realizes it’s Sara Meadows, the evidence lady they’ve all worked with.
“You say you had an appointment with her?” the first officer asks me.
I look toward the backyard, wondering if the killer had a hard time getting back there to take his shot. There is a gate, but it’s open. “Yes. This afternoon we talked at the department. She asked me to come here at seven thirty.” I pull out the Post-it note with her address, hand it to him. “I got here a little early, but no one came to the door. I didn’t see anyone else. The neighbor was working in her yard. She is the one who called.”
The neighbor is sobbing now, and I hear her telling the other officer that she didn’t see anyone but me.
“What was it about?” my guy asks.
“What?”
“Your appointment? Why were you coming to talk to her?”
“As I said, I’m working with the department on the Brent Pace case. She knew Brent, so I wanted to talk to her about their last conversation.”
I look toward the gate again. “Hey, I just noticed that back gate is open. Maybe the killer left footprints.”
The cop looks toward it. “Listen, I need you to wait here. I’m sure the detectives are going to want to question you.”
Right. I hope the detectives on rotation aren’t Keegan and Rollins, but even if not, those two will learn soon enough that I was talking to her. Keegan won’t be happy.
But I don’t take orders from him. I work for the Paces and at the pleasure of Chief Gates.
I hang around just outside the crime scene tape, sitting on the trunk of my car. I don’t see any bullet holes or shattered glass in the front. I know the side door had been locked, because the neighbor checked it.
Up and down the street, neighbors have come out of their houses and stand in their yards talking quietly.
I try to work out what happened. One scenario comes to mind. Someone was waiting in the backyard for her to get home, and they could have had a silencer since her neighbor didn’t hear it. Were they there when I was knocking on the door? How long before I arrived was she killed? Whoever it was clearly didn’t want to rob her. They simply wanted her dead.
The more I think about it, the more I realize it couldn’t have anything to do with me. No one except her coworker knew I had talked to her, and I doubt that it made a blip on her radar.
What had Sara Meadows been planning to tell me? More importantly, what was on the tape that Keegan was watching when I came into his office earlier?
After I give all my information to the detectives assigned to the case—who, thankfully, aren’t Keegan and Rollins—they let me go, and I drive home and sit in my dark living room, staring at the wall.
I close my eyes as I remember other deaths, also bloody. My buddies, laughing and trading barbs one second, blown into fragments the next.
I had tried to put them back together, tried to gather their parts . . . such a strange reaction. The shrinks repeatedly tell me they were gone, that nothing I could’ve done would’ve saved them. But I’m haunted by the thought that I did all the wrong things.
Some of that day is mercifully blank in my head, like how long it took for help to come. But I remember a shopkeeper just up the street, sweeping in front of his door and glancing toward us as though he’d just witnessed a fender bender. He just kept sweeping.
Death is attracted to me. It strikes at me often and misses, hitting those nearby.
I get hungry, but there’s nothing in my fridge. I go out to get some fast food, but as I sit in the drive-through line waiting to place my order, I think about Hannah Boon, Casey’s sister. If I tell her I found Sara Meadows dead after learning that she did an interview with Brent before his death—an interview about her father—will she talk more openly? I leave the line and drive over to Hannah’s house. By now her husband’s probably home, and she’s probably trying to get the baby to bed. It’s a terrible time, I know, but I have to talk to her.
A tall, lanky man answers the door with the baby on his hip. “Hey,” he says, real friendly.
“Is Hannah here?” I ask, then realize that’s rude. “I’m Dylan Roberts,” I say. “I spoke to her Friday?”
His eyes suddenly go cold. “She’s busy.”
“It’s really important,” I say. “I was just about to interview someone who was involved in her father’s case, and before I could talk to her, she was murdered.”
He catches his breath, gapes at me, then disappears into the house. Hannah comes back with him. She approaches me reluctantly. “What?” she asks. “I’ve told you everything I know.”
“Please, just a few more minutes,” I say.
“Who died?” she demands to know.
“The clerk in the evidence room at the police department. Her name was Sara Meadows. She knew your father.”
She mutters something to her husband. He takes the baby and disappears up the stairs. She steps outside and looks up and down the street, then steps back and lets me come in. I realize that anything I tell her could wind up being repeated back to Keegan, or maybe the department has had her house wired and can hear it right now. I have to be careful.
“I’m trying to follow Brent Pace’s tracks for the days leading up to his murder,” I say. “That trail led me to this woman who knew your father, and she had information about his death. She told me to meet her at her house tonight at seven thirty, but when I got there she was dead. Shot.”
Tears rim Hannah’s eyes, then she sets her chin, and her lips thin. She motions for me to follow her out to the backyard. There’s a picnic table there, but she walks past it and takes me to a rustic, dirty bench at the back of the yard. “I’m not sure that I’m not being listened to,” she says quietly.
She looks at me, desperate. “I have a child and husband. I can’t risk having them come after me too. If they ask you, you’ve got to tell them that I wouldn’t tell you a thing. That I’m convinced Dad killed himself.”
“It’s a deal,” I say. “Just tell me what’s going on.”
“I don’t know,” she says, shaking her head. “Casey had all these theories, but I don’t know if any of them were right. The only thing I can tell you is, you can’t trust the people you’re working with.”
I frown. “I’m not working with anybody. I work by myself.”
The back screen door scrapes open. Her husband steps out looking for us.
“I have to go,” she says.
I take a chance as she walks away. “There was a videotape,” I say. “I saw it on Keegan’s computer screen. It was Brent interviewing Sara Meadows. I walked up on him, but when he saw me he shut it down. Didn’t want me to see it.”
She swings around. “If you find Casey, you’re just gonna get her killed. They don’t want her in prison. They want her dead, like everybody else who tries to expose them.”
“I’m not looking just for Casey,” I say. “I’m looking for the truth.”
“But everything you think you know about the case is wrong. You’ve been lied to. The whole foundation of your investigation is a lie.”
“I need to talk to her,” I say.
She stares at me. “You said the woman is dead.”
“I don’t mean Sara Meadows. I mean Casey. Can you set up a meeting?”
“Of course not,” she says. “I don’t know where she is.”
Her husband is still waiting. I step forward.
“I know that you mailed a package to her in Atlanta.”
The color drains from her face.
“If you could give me just a phone number or an e-mail address. If I could talk to her briefly . . . It doesn’t have to be in person.”
“I told you no.”
I can see that she won’t budge, so I quickly jot down all my information—e-mail, cell phone, snail mail address, just in case she changes her mind. “Please. If she didn’t do this murder, then maybe I can help.”
Hannah laughs bitterly. “Yeah, we’ve heard that before.” She points to the gate. “You can go out that way.”
She marches toward her husband and back into the house, and I hear the deadbolt locking behind her.