Chapter 14
Marcus briefed the task force on the current status of the investigation, which was that they were basically on hold until the press briefing.
Carver had texted and informed him that the captain had briefed the police commissioner, and they’d all agreed with his plan to publicly identify the killer as a person who picks his victims at random.
There were several questions, which he answered the same way as he did with Carver.
Their killer was escalating in speed. He still wasn’t making mistakes, and anything that could cause him to make one was an acceptable risk.
Other than the briefing, there was nothing major to do until they received the documentation they’d asked for.
Haven stopped him on the way out of the morning briefing.
“I want to go back to the trail,” she said. “Both scenes. I need to walk it. I need to go back.”
“If you’re sure.” He’d forgotten she hadn’t actually been back to the place where she’d been assaulted. “When?”
“Now. Before it gets busy.”
He grabbed his jacket off the chair. “I'll drive.”
She didn't argue, which told him something. Haven didn’t relinquish control of anything without a reason. He noted it but didn't comment. If she needed to go to the trail where she’d escaped the killer, he’d be the one to take her and be with her as she relived it.
* * *
Shelby Bottoms Greenway was busy with joggers and dog walkers.
A woman pushed a stroller with a toddler who was laughing and grabbing leaves she could almost reach.
The leaves of the trees were turning color, and the river was visible through the gaps in the tree line, flat and gray in the morning light.
It was a beautiful trail. That was the thing about it.
It was just a beautiful trail where a terrible thing had happened, and not many people knew the difference.
Haven was quiet on the drive over. Not closed off. Just inside herself, and he let her be.
“Park over there,” she directed him to the parking area.
“This way.” Once parked, she led him down the trail from the east trailhead.
She obviously knew this path. He matched her pace and stayed a half step back.
He watched her move through the attack. She was reading the terrain the way cops do, cataloging and cross-referencing what was present against her memory.
She stopped near the two-mile mark.
He recognized the location from the pictures included in the incident report. The section where the tree canopy closed in and the path ran briefly below grade. Early in the morning, it would be dark with minimal sightlines.
She stood in the middle of the path and looked at it.
“He was behind me,” she said. “Twenty feet, maybe. I caught the sound before I saw him. Footsteps behind me. Controlled. Not a runner.” She looked back at him.
“For a moment, that was my thought. That maybe another runner was overtaking me.” She turned and looked back down the trail.
“I turned my head. Just a casual look. He'd already gone still. The trail was empty. That was … wrong.”
Marcus said nothing. This wasn't a briefing. She wasn't talking to him. Not exactly.
“I kept running.” Her voice was even and professional but softer, as if she were trying to understand what had happened in a different way.
“Then he stopped pretending to be quiet.” She looked at the tree line on the left side of the path.
“He came out of there. I got my arm up and blocked part of his blow.” She rubbed the spot where the branch had hit her.
“The branch connected with my right temple.” She touched the spot briefly.
“I went down. My cheek hit the asphalt.”
He looked down. It didn’t look like the place where a woman had gone down fighting.
It should’ve looked like something more than a blank piece of asphalt.
It should show the impact the way he saw it.
There should be some permanent marker here, because inside him, in places no one had ever ventured, it was marked, and he’d never forget this place or her words.
But then again, that was the way of life.
Extraordinary things happened in ordinary places.
“I got up,” she said. “Which he didn't expect.” She walked to the edge of the path and stood where it had happened.
“Jiu-jitsu. Hip throw. We went sideways into the tree line. I got my elbow back into him. He made a sound.” She paused.
“Not pain, exactly. More like a grunt of acknowledgment. Like he was noting my response.”
“He was,” Marcus said quietly.
She looked at him. Nodded once. “He grabbed my wrist. Turned it over. Looked at my hand.” She looked at her own hand now, the French manicure fresh and intact. “I kicked his knee. Scrambled for my weapon. He bull rushed me. I moved and screamed for help. Got back to the path.”
“And the second strike.”
“Yeah. Same spot. Exactly.” She looked up at him. “I heard Ted before I came back to myself. He was talking to me. His dog Maggie was sniffing my neck. She lay down next to me. Ted went to get water I didn't want so I could think.” She paused. “I called dispatch.”
He stood there with her in the tree line where it had happened and didn’t say anything because there was nothing useful to say.
But she didn't need him to be useful. She needed to stand here and put it back in its place, and that was a thing a person had to do alone, even when someone was standing next to them.
She looked at the trail for another moment. Then something settled in her shoulders. Infinitesimal. But it was there.
“Okay,” she said. “Let's go find where he did this to Angela.”
* * *
He pulled up the crime scene photos on his phone as they walked back to the vehicle.
Angela Porter was thirty years old. She’d worked at the front desk at a physical therapy clinic three blocks from the east trailhead.
She’d been found near the west connector path.
He had the scene photos, Reyes's documentation, and the ME's report.
He'd been through all of it four times. He knew this terrain on paper. Now, he’d know it on foot.
They drove to the west access lot. It was smaller than the east side. There was no coffee cart later in the morning. No regular morning crowd. This was a utilitarian entry point that serious runners used. He parked, and they got out. He held the phone so they could both see the photos.
“West connector branches off here,” Haven said, orienting herself. “About eight hundred feet in.”
He saw the terrain match the photos as they moved.
The tree canopy here was denser than on the east side.
The path was narrower, and less foot traffic meant less ambient noise, less cover, and less chance of interruption.
He'd selected well. Marcus noted it with the particular cold clarity that came from thinking about crime scenes professionally rather than personally. It was something he’d struggled with at Haven’s scene.
Being emotionally involved with her had its disadvantages.
He thought about Haven walking her own scene twenty minutes ago.
The cold clarity of rage lifted its head before he shoved it back down.
Rage would do nothing to catch this man.
Focus would. And then he’d let his rage out.
A heavy bag, a sparring round, anything to let the hatred, anger, and emotion out.
He’d do it as many times as needed. But that would wait until the bastard was behind bars.
Haven stopped at the branch point.
He held up the photo. They were standing where she’d been found.
“Here,” she said.
“Here,” he agreed.
She looked at the path. At the tree line.
At the specific geometry of sight lines and shadows that a man with days of preparation would have assessed, confirmed, and found adequate.
She was reading it the way he'd read it off the photos, but she was also reading it the way he couldn't—from the inside of what it felt like to be on the other end of it.
“She wouldn't have heard him,” Haven said. “This section. The river noise is louder over here. And look at the grade.” She pointed. “She'd have been working on the uphill. Breathing harder. Focused forward.”
“He knew that.”
“He knew all of it.” She looked at the spot where Angela Porter had been found.
Where Reyes had documented the staging. Arms crossed.
Ankles crossed. Eyes closed. The order imposed by a man who believed in order above all other things.
“She had a dog she walked every morning. She had people at the clinic who liked her.” Her voice was still even, but something underneath, it wasn't. “She had an arm around her at a birthday party.”
He looked at her. The things that she’d just mentioned were in Reyes’s notes. The things they all read that made the victim a person. It was something none of them could afford to forget.
She was looking at the tree line. Her jaw was set, and her shoulders were stiff. Everything about her posture said she was holding it together, which was true, but holding it together was not the same as being fine.
“She didn't deserve this,” Haven said. “None of them did. And she especially didn't deserve—” She stopped. “He came back to this trail because I survived. He came back here because I got up.”
“Haven.”
“I know.” She exhaled. “I know that's not—”
“This murder is not on you,” he told her, taking on the tone his father used to say things to him when he was younger and carrying a case the wrong way. “He came back because he doesn't leave things unresolved. That's his pathology. His pathology caused him to kill this woman. Not your survival.”
She looked at him. Her eyes were bright with tears, but nothing was falling.
She wasn't going to let anything fall out here. He knew that about her already, but thank God he was here for her in case she broke. He’d protect her from the outside world while she crumbled and wait for her to put herself back together. No matter how long it took.
“I know,” she said again. Quieter this time. Like she was trying to make herself mean it.
He didn't have anything to add. Sometimes you knew things and still needed time to actually absorb the truth of them. He understood that completely.
They stood there in the west connector path, and the river made its noise through the trees. Somewhere back toward the east trailhead, a dog was barking at something it found interesting. An ordinary morning on a beautiful trail.
He looked at Angela Porter's tree line one more time, and then he put his phone in his pocket.
“Ready?” he said.
She nodded.
They turned back toward the vehicle. The path was narrow enough that they were walking close.
He wasn't sure how it happened exactly. His hand and her hand connected. The same moment. Neither of them broke stride. Holding her hand was the most natural thing that had happened since he’d kissed her this morning in her kitchen.
She was indispensable and getting more so with each hour he spent with her.
The path widened back out near the lot. His mind raced with thoughts about Angela Porter, the west connector, a man who selected with intention and who Dr. Wheeler believed documented everything.
The man who could not tolerate loose ends.
He was thinking about what Wheeler had said.
Watch her. He was thinking about the press briefing this afternoon and the lie he would tell in front of two hundred thousand people in the greater viewing area.
He thought about the potential cost of that move and whether it would be worth it.
He was thinking about all of that.
But he was also thinking about her hand in his.
The warmth and weight of it and how, if Haven hadn’t been the fighter she was, he’d have never experienced it.
He thanked God she was a fighter. Missing the chance to know this woman was something he never wanted to think about.
But he did. Every time he read one of those files.
The possibility was in his face every day.
He had no doubt that knowledge floated around her mind at unpredictable times, too.
He squeezed her hand, and she glanced up at him before returning the gentle pressure. Reassurance given and received.
They reached the vehicle. He let go. She let go.
She went around to the passenger side and got in, and he stood by the driver's door for one second longer than necessary and looked back at the tree line. He wondered who else wouldn’t experience the rightness of the perfect person walking beside you, holding your hand because of that man.
Then he got in.
“Briefing's at two,” she said.
“It is.”
He started the car.