Chapter 44
“There he is.”
Alex pointed out the car window at a familiar figure standing in the distance.
What the hell is he doing here?
They were literally in the middle of nowhere, a narrow freeway splitting through the Mojave Desert. About a quarter to the east stood an impressive rock outcropping.
Con stood beside the rock, hands buried deep into his pockets.
“What the hell?” AA said under his breath. He pulled in front of Con’s car and parked.
Alex got out and hurried toward her partner.
The sun was angry today and she was sweating profusely by the time she made it within earshot.
“Con?” she shouted as best she could with little air in her lungs.
“What’s he doing here?” Con asked, hooking a chin over her shoulder.
The man’s eyes were but lumps of coal buried deep in unleavened bread.
“I didn’t have a choice,” Alex said defensively. “I don’t have a car and you left me.”
“I—”
“Con, what the hell are you doing way out here?”
Con stepped out from behind Alex’s shadow.
“The Sandman sent me,” he said simply.
AA screwed up his face, but Alex understood.
The message in the audiobook… it had led him here.
Alex placed her hands on her hips and looked around.
Here…?
The only thing special about this place were the holes that riddled the ground around the rock.
This is where he came , Alex thought instinctively. After Martin’s party, Con came here. And he dug all night, looking for whatever might be left of his sister’s corpse.
It was incredibly heartbreaking.
Devastatingly so.
“I think he’s just fucking with me,” Con said. “I searched and there’s nothing here. Valerie’s not here.” His voice was thick with desperation.
Alex didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know what Con needed in that moment and even if she did, she wasn’t certain she was the person to give it.
AA began to walk around the rock, and Con finally dropped his eyes.
“There’s nothing here, AA,” her partner repeated. “I’ve searched everywhere.”
The police chief grunted and continued his tour of the rock.
“He agreed to meet me today,” Con said softly.
At first, Alex didn’t know what her partner was talking about.
“…he?”
“Matthew Nelson Neil. I visited him at San Quentin.”
Alex had been right: the email that she’d seen on Con’s phone from San Quentin had to do with The Sandman.
“Are you all right?”
“I… I’m not sure. He killed her, Alex. He killed my sister. I know he did. I just don’t understand why he won’t fucking admit it.”
Alex thought back to what AA had told her in the car about how Con felt responsible for what happened to his sister. She started to wonder if Con would ever get the closure he so sought even if he found Valerie.
Or if he’d be worse off because of it.
“He’s getting some sort of sick pleasure out of torturing you, Con. Whether he had something to do with your sister's disappearance or not. You must know that.”
Con nodded.
“I know, but—”
“Found something,” AA suddenly shouted. “I found something!”
Con stopped speaking and bolted around the rock. Alex ran after him. They found AA around the backside, squatting in front of a hole that was about a foot and a half wide and equally as deep.
He used a pen to lift something out of the hole.
“What the fuck?” Con gasped.
Based on the horror on her partner’s face, Alex had expected bones or maybe a piece of fabric.
It was neither; it was a watch.
A big, expensive-looking silver watch.
Martin Yeo’s watch.
Con took two steps back.
“What—what is that doing here? It wasn’t here last night.”
AA held the watch up higher, dumbstruck.
“You sure?”
“Of course, I’m fucking sure. I wouldn’t have missed that .”
If it hadn’t been here last night, that meant that someone had put it here after Con had been called out to the Yeo McMansion by Marcus Allen.
Alex’s eyes suddenly shot back to the road.
She remembered the video that Con had received in the email from DLean1908 .
Someone had been watching him dig and that same someone most likely put the watch in the hole.
And they’d done it to frame Con.
There was no doubt in her mind who that person was.
Her eyes drifted back to the road, past their parked cars. When AA had pulled up, Alex had instantly spotted Con by the rock. Neither Alex nor AA had so much as glanced to the other side of the road. There was no matching rock there but there were two large Joshua Trees standing about six feet apart.
But it was what lay situated between those trees that Alex focused her attention on.
The desert was littered with low-lying creosote bushes, but between the tree trunks there seemed to be an unnaturally large pile of them.
Alex was no expert, but some of the plants even appeared to have been uprooted, almost as if they had been torn up and used to cover something. The sun glinted off a hidden object buried within the pile.
Not almost as if someone had covered something, Alex realized, but that was exactly what they’d done.
“It’s him!” Alex yelled. “That’s Edward’s car! He’s here!” She looked at both Con and AA, her eyes as big as the glowing orb in the sky. “Edward’s here!”
All three of them broke into a run.