Chapter 48
The knock finally came.
Emily jumped though she’d been anticipating it for half an hour. When she and Clint had spoken on the phone, they had agreed he would work until one so as not to draw any unnecessary suspicion.
She hurried to the door, almost opened it, but forced herself to check the peephole first.
Clint.
She slid the chain free of its catch and jerked the door open. “Hurry!” She grabbed him by the arm and yanked him inside. “I’m losing my mind!” She shut and locked the door and whipped around to face him. “Tell me what you found!”
“Do you know how hard it was to get out of there?”
Exasperation gushed out of her on a blast of air. “Tell me if you found the files!”
“First.” He gestured to the bed. “Sit.”
She couldn’t read his eyes . . . couldn’t tell if she needed to be worried. But since he appeared determined to do this his way, she did as he asked, anticipation bursting inside her.
He lowered to the mattress at her side. Even with grease staining his T-shirt and smudging his jaw, he looked good to her.
Just having him next to her made her relax a fraction.
Beneath the smell of grease, motor oil, and hard-earned sweat, she could still smell his skin.
The intimate knowledge of his body made her feel more at home than she had since before her life ended that night.
“I couldn’t get out of the courthouse with the entire box of case files.
” He held out his hands and indicated the size.
“So I carefully looked through the documents until I found what I figured would help us the most. Then I put everything back just as it had been so no one would know I’d looked—unless they inventoried every single page and photo. ”
She shuddered at the mention of photos. But Clint had been right to be cautious. She wouldn’t put inventorying those particular files past Ray.
“How did you get out?” She wanted to know what Clint had found, but she needed to know how he’d managed to escape more.
“First I had to outsmart Ray’s officers.”
“They came in there looking for you?” Damn. Ray really had believed she was lying. Not that she could blame him. She never had been a very good liar.
Clint nodded. “But I’ve had a lot of experience in making myself invisible.”
She wished there were a way to even begin to make that up to him. The one thing she could do was help him solve the crime that had devastated his life. But she was doing that as much for Heather and her family . . . and herself as for anyone.
“Lucky for me, they searched the files room first. As soon as they moved on to another room, I got the hell out of there.
“I barely squeezed through one of those dinky windows. Once I was outside I wasn’t worried. They were still inside. I got back to my place just a couple minutes before Ray showed up to make sure I was in the barn.”
A chill swept over her skin at the idea of how close he’d come to getting caught. He’d gone to work today like always. Higgins probably had orders to notify both Ray and Lee Brady if Clint didn’t show. Waiting until he’d gotten off work had driven her nuts!
“So where is it?” He hadn’t brought anything in with him.
If he said they had to go someplace else she was going to scream with frustration.
He tugged the front of his T-shirt from his jeans and reached underneath.
His hand reappeared with what looked like a single document folded multiple times and tucked into a sandwich bag.
“Is that it?”
He shot her a sidelong glance. “The idea was to get what wasn’t consistent with anything we already knew.
A lot of the other stuff I had seen during the second trial.
” He tapped the small plastic bag. “This is an evidence report. I kept it taped under my dash all day. I stuck it under my shirt before coming in here just in case I was being watched.”
“Good idea.” She reached for the bag, but he held it away. “Let’s talk about one thing first.”
Her patience thinned, but he obviously had a point to make. “Fine, but hurry.”
Those intense gray eyes flashed his appreciation. “Who knew about your window? I mean, the fact that you used it for sneaking in and out at night.”
Emily felt the weight of regret.
“Don’t go there,” he ordered. “Leave out the emotion. Concentrate. Who knew?”
She tried hard to do as he asked, but it wasn’t easy. “The girls. It was kind of mine and Heather’s secret, but that night the others knew because of the finagling required to get out of the house after my parents had given me strict orders to stay home with my brother.”
“By ‘the others’ you mean the cheerleaders?”
“Not everyone, just the seniors.”
“None of the guys knew?”
He meant Keith. He didn’t have to say his name. “No. We didn’t tell just anyone. I mean I can’t be certain one of the others didn’t tell but they weren’t supposed to.”
“You left that night, did your hazing duty, and then you came back. The window was open when it should have been closed. Do you remember anything else? Any other items outside or in the room that shouldn’t have been there?”
She thought long and hard, made herself look at those painful recollections for a whole minute, then two. Her stomach roiled viciously; then she shook her head. “Nothing. I was too caught up in trying to escape Principal Call and then trying to save Heather and trying to get you away from her.”
The ache in his eyes told Emily he remembered that part well. “I was told,” he began, his eyes clearing as he moved past those details, “that the only evidence recovered from the room was the knife.”
She nodded. That was right. She’d heard the same thing in the courtroom—both times.
A generic kitchen knife. No prints, nothing but Heather’s blood.
They’d used the fact that Clint had been wearing gloves against him.
Given his alibi, the gloves made perfect sense.
He had been in the middle of stealing a car to hold as hostage for a loan shark. Of course, Clint had worn gloves.
“Well,” Clint went on grimly, “they lied to us.”
“What?” Emily had known Chief Ledbetter. He’d gone to the same church as she and her family. “Chief Ledbetter lied? Maybe there wasn’t anything else, Clint.” But then he wouldn’t have made the statement. She felt cold, cold and afraid of what he might be about to tell her.
“He lied. They all lied. Read this.” He gave her the evidence report he’d taken from the sandwich bag.
She unfolded it and started at the top, read each line carefully.
Item: one gold necklace with attached gold cheerleading charms. Discovered: clutched in victim’s hand. Condition: broken chain, covered in blood.
“LOST” was stamped in large red letters, obscuring the “Disposition” category.
“They lost evidence?” This was unbelievable!
“Read the part handwritten beneath the stamp.”
The information entered on each line and within each block was handwritten.
Male handwriting, she decided, peering at the small, angrily slanted words that she might have labeled simply sloppy were it not for the darkness of the ink and the deepness of the indentation made by the author.
Emily angled the page and tried to read between the red letters of the single stamped word that had grabbed her attention before.
“Hand carried to lab for analysis by Officer . . . R . . . A . . . Y . . .”
Ray Hale.
Her breath bolted from her lungs.
“I don’t believe it.” The words were a scarce whisper, a thought spoken.
“The chain was broken as if it had been ripped from someone’s neck,” Clint clarified in case she’d missed it.
Emily tried to reason what this meant. Even as she did, her mind and body started to feel numb, as if bracing for something she didn’t want to see and definitely didn’t want to feel. She hadn’t noticed anything in Heather’s hand, but then she’d been distracted by the blood and the wounds.
“Does that necklace mean anything to you?”
She nodded. “All the upcoming senior cheerleaders were presented a necklace like that at the end of junior year. It was tradition to receive a special token of appreciation.”
“Do you think the one found in your room was Heather’s?”
Emily’s head moved from side to side of its own volition.
“That’s the part that has me unnerved. It wasn’t Heather’s,” she heard herself say as if she were far, far away in some distant place where the pain couldn’t touch her.
But it did. “I had Troy get hers from her room the day of her funeral so it could be buried with her.”
“The funeral was closed casket,” Clint countered gently.
Emily flinched. “Yes, but I was with Troy when he gave the necklace to the funeral director. Heather’s was accounted for.” She hauled in a big, cleansing breath. “And it wasn’t broken.”
“What about yours?”
Her gaze collided with his, but she knew the question wasn’t accusing. “A few weeks after Heather’s death my mother packed mine away with a lot of other stuff from that part of my life.”
“So,” he went on, “if the necklace wasn’t Heather’s and it wasn’t yours, why was it in your room clasped in Heather’s hand?”
“You know what it means.” Emily felt sick. The necklace had blood on it. It was broken. Heather had been clutching it in her hand which could only mean she had ripped it off her attacker.
Lunch last week with the others barged into Emily’s mind like a runaway train exploding from a tunnel. Megan had worn her necklace. Cathy had worn hers. Violet hadn’t.
I must have lost mine.
“This can’t be right.” Emily shook her head in denial. “There has to be a mistake.”
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Clint prodded softly. “I need to know.”
She turned to him. “Megan and Cathy wore theirs at lunch the other day.”
“What about Violet?”
Emily looked away, couldn’t believe what she was about to say had any significance. “She said she lost hers.” This was crazy. It was just a dumb necklace.