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Brown’s Landfill was located clear across the city of Dayton, and Sara spent the next hour and a half locating it. When she finally pulled up to the front entrance, she had trouble tracking down an employee. After wasting another half hour driving around the perimeter of the yard, she finally found a teenager who led her to Matt’s totaled car.
The Land Rover was dented and smashed up on all sides, but most noticeably on the roof. That made sense, seeing as Sara remembered reading that the car had rolled several times before landing upside down.
Only one car door would open—the front door, on the passenger side, because the others were too dented. Sara was able to climb into the vehicle and comb the floor, seats, roof, and various compartments for clues.
Though she was hoping for something obvious—like one of Lucy’s long blond hairs, perhaps—she had no such luck. She did find some red fibers that looked like they may have come off of a rope scattered along the driver’s side floor mat, but other than that, the car was remarkably clean.
She felt that she had hit another dead end. Just like at the office, her investigative work was not yielding any results. As she walked back to her car, however, her cell phone rang, and she perked up when she saw it was Evie on the caller ID.
“Evie?” she said, picking up.
“Sara! It’s been forever!” Evie gushed. “I am so glad you called, because I actually wanted to call you! Dan and I have some news... and seeing as you’re the one who set us up, we wanted you to be among the first to know. I’m pregnant!”
Sara smiled. “That is great,” she said. “I am so happy for you.”
“I mean really, I’ve been meaning to call you all week, so I thought it was so perfect when I got your message.”
“Great minds think alike!” Sara said sweetly. “We were both thinking of each other. So you did get my message?”
“Yes, and I looked up the tox screen,” Evie said. Her voice was slightly lower now, and Sara wondered if she might even still be at work. Sharing a patient's lab results was definitely not allowed, even if said patient was deceased. Sara felt grateful to have a friend on the inside.
“What did you see?” she asked.
“Looks like he was clean, all except for one thing. Sedatives. A pretty hefty dose, if you ask me. They were partially metabolized in his stomach, and had traveled through his blood stream. He must have taken them several hours before the crash. My guess is about six hours prior to getting behind the wheel.”
Sara was silent, taking this in.
No wonder Gabby acted strangely, she thought. She doesn’t want anyone to know that her husband had sedatives in his system. It would disgrace the family.
“Thank you,” Sara said to Evie. “That is very helpful.”
“You didn’t hear it from me,” Evie said.
Once they hung up, Sara couldn’t stop wondering about the sedatives. Evie said that it appeared that the drugs had been in Matt’s system for about six hours at his time of death. If he died from the impact of the crash at 10:45, that meant he took the pills around 4:45. It didn’t make sense. Why would he take sleeping pills? He was supposed to drive home, meet his family, and go out for a nice dinner to celebrate his daughter’s birthday.
It was 4:00 pm by the time Sara arrived at home.
Her roommates were all still at work. They were a hardworking bunch.
Part of the reason that she got such a good deal at the cabin was that she kept the house tidy, cooked dinners, and even did the laundry.
She was able to start a first draft of her article, but at five she had to take a break to get dinner ready. Vegetable stew was a favorite around the cottage, so she whipped up a big batch of it. While it simmered on the stove-top, she called Cinda and asked if she’d come over to discuss the case.
Cinda arrived at eight, just as Sara finished cleaning up the kitchen. Thankfully, her roommates retired to their rooms early, so Cinda and Sara had the cottage to themselves.
“It smells good in here,” Cinda said, as she settled onto the couch. “Have you been cooking?”
“As usual,” Sara said. “I made a veggie soup for the guys.” She’d brought two mugs of lemon ginger tea in from the kitchen, and she handed one to Cinda before sitting down on the couch as well.
“I can’t believe you cook for them,” Cinda said. “It is such a strange arrangement that you have here.”
“I know,” Sara said. “They really should have said they were looking for a housekeeper and a cook—not a roommate. But the rent is cheap, we all get along, and I’ve come to love this cottage.” She looked around at the rough beams on the ceilings, the whitewashed walls, and the houseplants tucked into every nook and cranny.
“It is unique,” Cinda said. “And you pay less rent than anyone else I know. But you’re not going to live here forever, are you?”
“Forever is a long time,” Sara said with a laugh.
Cinda grinned. “Eventually, you’re going to meet a guy, fall head over heels in love, and get married. Then the two of you will buy some little loft and live happily ever after.”
Sara scrunched up her nose. “I love the happily ever after part, Cin, but a loft? Really? I can’t see myself in a little loft. I want a house outside of the city...”
She thought dreamily of Amir’s place in Washton, with the sprawling lawn and beautiful gardens. For a brief instant, she imagined living there, with a little dog or two that she could walk through the neighborhood, perhaps on her way to visit her father, just a few streets over.
As if Fiona would allow it, she thought sullenly.
A question from Cinda pulled her quickly from the disturbing thought. “So.... you met your prince. How was he?”
“He’s not my prince, Cin,” Sara said, trying to keep a straight face. She wasn’t ready to reveal to Cinda, or herself, how much she already felt for Amir Malick.
“Oh, you know what I mean,” Cinda said. “Amir. What’s he like?”
“Handsome,” Sara said. “Smart. Funny. Charming. Kind.”
Cinda’s eyes widened. “Is there anything he’s not?” she asked. Then, as usual, she continued chattering without waiting for an answer. “He sounds amazing, Hon! I am so happy for you. He must have been taken by you, too. You’re just so darn pretty. You can’t help it.”
“I think he was ‘taken by me’,” Sara said with a smile, remembering the way Amir looked at her. “At least enough to ask me out to dinner.”
“Oh!” Cinda cried happily. “Really? When?”
“Tomorrow night. He said that he would pick me up at seven.”
“A date with a prince,” Cinda said, lifting her mug of tea. “Now that deserves a toast.”
Sara clinked her mug against Cinda’s, while rolling her eyes. “It’s just dinner,” she said. “I’m not marrying the guy.”
“I know you, Sara,” Cinda said. “You wouldn’t agree to go out with him unless you thought it could really lead somewhere. I see good things in the future.”
Sara smiled. The truth was, she did, too. Being with Amir just felt so right. She’d never felt that with any other guy. They clicked. Conversations with him were effortless and easy, yet exciting at the same time. She got butterflies in her stomach just thinking about him.
“I’d love to go on and on about him,” Sara said, “But we have work to do. It’s already past eight. I don’t want to keep you too late, but I’m dying to know... what did you find out when you looked into Abner Kirkwood’s death?”
“Okay, here’s the scoop,” Cinda said, resituating herself so that her knees were tucked up beneath her. “I called his home number, and his wife picked up. I went into this whole spiel about how I was from the newspaper and we were doing a piece about rare earth elements. Not far from the truth, you know.”
Sara nodded. “That’s perfect. And...?” She reached for a pen and notepad from the coffee table, and propped them on her lap.
“She opened right up about Abner’s death. Told me everything. She was so surprised and devastated when Abner died, obviously. Apparently, he was the epitome of health—they both were. They followed a strict diet, ran marathons and half marathons regularly, and were all round the ‘healthy couple’ amongst their friends. You know the type.”
“Sure,” Sara said.
“So, needless to say, she expected her husband to be around for a very long time. His death was a total shock.”
“Of course,” Sara said.
“She told me that Abner’s car crash occurred at just after six on a Thursday evening. It was early May. they live in Wyoming, and had just had a bit of a spring storm.”
“Six? That’s earlier than Matt’s,” Sara noted.
“Yes. The mine was out on a remote road, about an hour from home. His car skidded off of the side of the road, maybe due to the snowy conditions, the wife said.”
Sara jotted down notes as Cinda continued. “The vehicle tumbled down the mountain side, and came to a stop at the bottom. He had one of those fancy computer services in his car that call for help when there’s an accident. That’s the only reason, she felt, that he was found so quickly. It didn’t matter though. The first responders couldn’t do anything to bring him back. They said he was dead on arrival.”
“From the impact of the crash?” Sara asked.
“Exactly,” Cinda said. “The wife said that there was an autopsy done. It showed that his neck was broken in two places, and he had a fracture to his skull, and several broken ribs.”
Sara felt nauseated as she took in these gory details, but she didn’t want to wimp out before getting more information. She took a sip of tea to fortify herself, and then asked, “What about a toxicology report? Did they test his blood for substances, like drugs or alcohol?”
Cinda nodded. “I asked about that, too. The wife said that he was perfectly clean.”
“No sedatives?” asked Sara.
“No,” Cinda said.
“Shoot,” Sara said. She looked down at the notes she’d taken while Cinda spoke. “Other than the fact that it was a car accident, nothing else is lining up. I mean, his was early in the evening—before dark, even. He didn’t have sedatives in his system.”
“Why are you so hung up on sedatives?” Cinda asked.
“Because, I was able to get the results from Matt Ferris’s tox screen—don’t ask how, please—and it turns out he had taken sleeping pills six hours before his crash.”
“Like, in the middle of the day?”
“Around five. That’s just an approximation.”
“What a weird time to take sedatives,” Cinda said.
“I know,” Sara agreed. “That’s why it stands out to me as suspicious. I was thinking maybe that might be a pattern in all of these deaths.... You know, maybe someone drugged the victims and then staged car crashes... but Abner’s death seems almost legitimate.”
“And totally different from Matt’s,” Cinda said. “I mean, it was earlier in the evening, and the road conditions were bad.”
Sara placed her pen down, and bit her lip, thinking this over. The circumstances surrounding Abner’s death were not what she’d expected. A theory had been percolating in her brain, and it involved drugs and a staged vehicle crash. Now she questioned that theory.
Maybe I have it all wrong, she thought, placing the pen and pad back onto the coffee table.
“You look upset,” Cinda said.
“No... no. I’m not upset... I mean, it’s a good thing that Abner and Matt didn’t die in the same way. Maybe it means that there isn’t a serial killer out there after all. These deaths could just be a string of unfortunate events.
Cinda sipped her tea, swallowed, and then said. “She said she didn’t recognize those names, either—Byron, Davis, and Lucy. Or HiTech Minerals.”
“A dead end,” Sara said flatly. “Did she say anything else interesting?”
“Not really,” Cinda said. “The rest of the time that we were talking, we mostly shared tips about Paleo eating. She’s been doing it for two years now. And her husband, before he died, was totally Paleo for four years. Can you believe it? No refined sugar or flour for four years.”
“Sounds awful to me,” Sara said, thinking about the dinner rolls that she’d heated up to go along with the soup. They’d been delicious split in half, with a slab of melting butter in the middle.
“I know,” Cinda said. “It does sound pretty awful. I’m thinking of changing diets, and doing South Beach for a while. It’s less extreme.”
“I think that’s a good idea,” Sara said politely, though at the moment she couldn’t care less about her friend’s diet. She was too preoccupied with the possibility that she’d been chasing figments of her imagination around all day. Is it possible that all of this was just one big mistake? she wondered.
Cinda took another swallow of tea, and then said, “What about you? Did you find any hot clues? Or did you only find a hot prince?” She laughed at her own joke.
Sara was too deep in thought to laugh along. Did she find any clues? Anything substantial?
There was the security footage at the guard house. On the day that Matt died, the footage had been tampered with. Someone replaced the real footage with video taken on a different day. Why?
Then there was the suspicious name on the list of visitors that had entered Peak Mine. Ronald Fries. Surely that wasn’t just a coincidence.
To top it all off, she had the results of the toxicology report. Matt had sedatives in his bloodstream at the time he died.
Yet Gabrielle said that he didn’t take medicine.
“I think I found some clues,” she voiced aloud to her friend. “But I just don’t see how they add up. I was really beginning to think that Matt had been drugged, and then his accident was staged. I was even beginning to wonder if Lucy might have something to do with it. I found out today that she takes prescription sleeping pills.”
Cinda bit her lip. “I wish I could help,” she said. “But that was really all that I found out. I’m not sure where we could go from here. Is it possible that all seven of the deaths really were just accidents?”
“I don’t think so,” Sara said. “If that was the case, why would the security footage at Peak Mine be mixed up? One minute, Matt is wearing a striped tie. The next, its polka dotted. Someone tampered with that video.”
“Maybe they had a reason to,” Cinda said. “I heard that Jeremiah stole a stapler once, from the supply closet, and took it home with him. It was caught on video, and he had to go to a class about company budgeting and supplies after that. Maybe someone at Peak Mine realized that the videos would be scrutinized, after Matt’s death, so they did a bit of a cover up. It could have even been something little that they were covering up—like a security guard scratching a car by accident, or a meet up between lovers. Someone with access to the videos realized they had to cover up their misdeeds.”
“Lovers meeting up in a parking garage?” Sara asked.
Cinda wiggled her eyebrows. “You never know!” she said playfully. Then she sighed. “I’m just saying, Sara, that there are plenty of scandalous things people do that they’d want to cover up, and it doesn’t necessarily add up to murder.”
“Point taken,” Sara said. Cinda’s logic was actually making her feel better. At first, she was disappointed to think that all day she may have been investigating a crime that never really happened. But now, considering the implications, she realized it really was a good thing.
Maybe there wasn't a serial killer out there on the lose. Maybe Byron, Davis, and Lucy were just normal people with everyday issues and problems.
And who doesn’t have issues? Sara thought. Look at me. My stepmother hates me, and does everything she can do to keep me from being successful. If it wasn’t for her, my life would be so much better.
Just because Fiona is manipulative, jealous, and does unfair things doesn’t mean she’d kill.
And just because I’m hiding my lack of education from my co workers, that doesn't make me a killer.
We all have issues. We all have secrets.
With that, she stood and stretched. “It's a relief, actually,” she said.
“I’m sorry that we didn’t figure out something more exciting,” Cinda said.
“No, really, it’s fine,” Sara insisted. “I’m a business reporter, not an investigative reporter. I was getting in over my head. It’s actually really nice to think that maybe those deaths were purely accidental.”
“And your day wasn’t a complete waste,” Cinda said. “You did get to spend time with your prince.”
“A prince,” Sara corrected. She grinned. “That’s right. I did. And I’ll see him again tomorrow night.”
“I hope that you have a killer date,” Cinda said.
Sara grimaced at her friend’s choice of words, but let it slide. “Thanks, Cin. I do, too,” she said.