32. Aus
AUS
Thea’s been crying on Wick’s porch for a few minutes now. I’ve been doing everything I can to comfort her.
But she’s right.
I can say the words “circumstantial evidence” until I’m blue in the face. We could hire her the best lawyer in the state of Illinois. It won’t matter if the forces conspiring against her are strong enough.
I don’t say that, of course. That’s the last thing she needs to hear right now.
Or maybe it’s not.
Maybe I need to stop treating her like she’s a fragile snowflake.
Because she isn’t. Thea is strong. And whispering little nothings in her ear, telling her everything’s going to be all right? That’s not what the doctor’s ordering right now.
“You know, Thea? You’re right.”
She lifts her head. “I’m right about what?”
“About being fucked.”
She narrows her eyes. “Thanks.”
“No. Just listen. You are right. It doesn’t look good. The odds are stacked against you. But maybe… Maybe we’ve been going about this wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve been searching for evidence to prove you’re innocent. Maybe we need to start looking for evidence that proves someone else is guilty.”
She runs her hands through her hair. “How do you suggest we start doing that?”
“We start where anyone would start. The scene of the crime.”
She bites her lip. “You mean where the big stone was dropped on Kin?”
“I mean exactly that.” I help her to her feet. “Come on, let’s go.”
Yellow tape ropes off the crime scene. No surprise there.
Kin’s body is gone, only a ghostly chalk outline marking where he was found.
The tractor that dropped the stone is still there, a placard posted to it noting that it’s not to be used for further construction until the investigation is complete.
The large stone that crushed Kin is absent, probably since they had to remove it to get his body out of there.
It’s what I expected based on what I heard happened.
What is missing, though, is police activity. No one is around to make sure the crime scene remains undisturbed. There’s the yellow tape, of course, but anyone can cross it. It’s not as if alarm bells will start blaring if we do. I scan the surroundings. No cameras or security of any kind.
It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Maybe whoever did this is hoping we’ll disturb the crime scene.
Thea and I duck around the yellow tape—I half expect an alarm to blare, but it doesn’t—and look around.
My head hurts. I don’t know what to think anymore.
I lean down to the chalk outline. Dried blood cakes the pavement. My stomach churns. I put on a strong front, but I don’t like blood. I don’t like gore. Those gross-out horror movies aren’t for me. I’ll walk out every time and go watch some Disney shit.
Poor Kin. If he was drugging my clientele—even if he did so under duress from his brother—he deserved to be punished. But he didn’t deserve to be crushed to death. I can’t imagine a worse way to go.
I crane my neck toward the tractor. Maybe there’s something there.
“Aus, don’t.”
“Don’t what, babe?”
“Don’t mess with the tractor.” She gestures to the placard. “It’s not allowed.”
I chuckle. “We’re not supposed to be here at all.”
“But we really shouldn’t move anything. We have to preserve the crime scene. If someone sees what we’re doing, that’ll be all the more damning.”
“Every single object within this tape has had photos taken of it from every possible angle. They probably have some AI bullshit running an algorithm to make a three-dimensional model. It’s already been combed for clues.
” He jumps onto the tractor. “We’re just checking things out.
Seeing what was missed—unintentionally or otherwise. ”
She swallows. “Be careful. Have you ever operated a tractor before?”
“No, but I’m not going to operate it. I’m just looking around.”
“Okay. Just… Just be careful.”
“Of course, sugar.” I scan the area. It’s what I expected to see. Gear shift. Display. Dash. The lever that lifts giant rocks that are then dropped on construction sites and my employees.
I pull out my phone and turn on the flashlight under the seat. The light bounces off something shiny.
Odd. A few pebbles are scattered down here, but most of them wouldn’t catch my light like this.
I reach in and pull out a handful of pebbles. Most of them are brown, black, tan. But our culprit—the rock that shone—is red.
A gemstone kind of red.
My heart starts pounding in my throat.
The red gemstone I’m holding in my hand.
Most people would think it’s a ruby.
They’d be wrong.
It’s a diamond. A red diamond.
I associate red diamonds with one person only.
A woman I used to know who wore dozens of them on her neck, wrist, and ears.
And she’s been in the ground for nearly a year.