Chapter 20
Marcus’s phone buzzed as they were walking through the Vanderbilt parking structure.
He read the text from Reyes. Read it again.
“Haven.”
She was already looking at her phone. She'd gotten the same alert through the task force channel.
“I saw it,” she said.
They were in the car in forty seconds.
* * *
She drove because she knew the streets and would get them there one hell of a lot faster than he could. Neither of them wasted time discussing it. She had the address from Reyes's text, and she was on it before Marcus had his seatbelt on.
Shelby Bottoms.
Again.
She didn't say anything about that. Marcus didn't either. She merged onto the corridor and pushed the speed to what the traffic would absorb and thought about what Reyes's text had said.
Female victim. Ligature strangulation. Staged. Suspect in custody.
Suspect in custody.
She turned that over while she drove. The task force channel had gone active in the last ten minutes. Reyes had the scene. Lieutenant Carver was en route. Paulson was calling Quantico. Webb had sent two words: Checking records.
Suspect in custody.
She thought about the four names on the board. About the one with more weight than the others.
She thought about what staged meant when you didn't have the full picture yet.
“Tell me what you're thinking,” Marcus said.
“I'm thinking staged is a specific word for Reyes to use in a text,” she said. “He's seen all the crime scenes. He knows what staged looks like in this case. If he's using that word, he means it.”
“Agreed.”
“But he also has a suspect in custody, and that could be making him want it to be what it looks like.”
“Also agreed.” Marcus was looking at his phone. “Reyes says the suspect was apprehended on the trail approximately forty feet from the victim. A jogger called it in. The suspect was still at the scene when the first unit arrived.”
Haven processed that. “He was still there?”
“Still there.”
“It’s daylight.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s off.”
“I agree.” Marcus braced as she swerved between two vehicles.
She drove and shook her head. She repeated, “It’s not the right time. It’s still daylight.”
Marcus nodded. “Strike one.”
“Why would he change his MO?” She glanced at him and accelerated when the car in front of her turned.
“He wouldn’t.” They looked at each other. “Unless he was pushed.”
She thought about it. About the lie Marcus told and the press conference. “He’d be smarter about it.”
“That’s my thought, too,” Marcus agreed. “But we have to deal with the facts.”
* * *
The scene was on the north maintenance path in a different section than where Angela Porter was found. It was also in a different section than Haven's attack but the same system. The same trees and the same river smell and the same early afternoon light coming through the canopy at a low angle.
Reyes met them at the tape.
“Walk me through it,” Marcus said.
The victim's name was Carla Owens. Thirty-four years old. Recreational runner, regular on the east trail, identified by her driver's license in the running belt she wore. She was dead when the jogger stumbled on the scene. He called it in fast and tackled the guy who he’d seen over her.
“Where is she?” Haven said.
“Over here,” Reyes said.
Haven looked at the tree line. “It’s different here. Not as much cover from above or the front and back path.”
Reyes led them down the trail to where the evidence markers were. The scene had been preserved well. Reyes ran a clean scene, and his people knew it.
The ground cloth was there. Blue tarp, cheap hardware store variety. The victim had been on it. The positioning was documented in the first responding officer's photographs, which Reyes pulled up on his phone and handed to Marcus. “She hasn’t been moved since the first responders arrived.”
Marcus looked at the photographs and then at the body.
Arms crossed. Ankles together. Eyes closed.
His jaw tightened.
Haven was beside him, looking too. He could feel her stillness.
“Her hand, look at the positioning and the nail,” Haven said quietly. Not a question. A statement directed at Reyes.
“Intact,” Reyes said. “Both hands. Nothing missing. Nothing disturbed.”
“The right index fingernail –”
“It’s positioned so it’s displayed. He wants us to know about the marker. That the marker is his identification. That he wasn’t random.”
Marcus handed the phone back.
Reyes drew a deep breath before he continued with his briefing. “He has a knife, dried blood on the blade. I have it bagged and tagged for the crime scene techs.”
“What kind?” Marcus asked.
“Folding knife. Four-inch blade. Found in his jacket pocket.” Reyes paused. “He didn't get the chance to use it.”
“Or he didn't intend to use it the way we're thinking,” Haven said.
Reyes looked at her. “You're already not liking him for this.”
“Not true. I'm looking at everything,” she said. “Same as you.”
Marcus pulled out a notebook. “Let’s run this down. Positioning is the same. No evidence of the marker being taken, although we have blood on the knife.”
“The ME in Angela’s case said she thought it was a scalpel.” Reyes sighed. “A four-inch knife isn’t that sharp or precise.”
“The area is different than mine and Angela’s.
It isn’t concealed as well. It isn’t in a shallow area, and the tree branches aren’t …
” Haven stopped, and they all looked down at Carla.
“Blunt force trauma visible.” Her hand lifted to her right temple, where she’d been hit twice.
She lifted her eyes to Marcus. “He didn’t have ready access to a branch. He would have had to bring one.”
He nodded. “This isn’t his MO.”
Reyes put his hands on his hips. “Do you think this is a fucking copycat?”
Marcus drew a deep breath. “That’s what we need to determine.”
* * *
The suspect was in interview room two. She'd seen him through the one-way glass before they went in.
Robert Lane. Forty-one years old. Five feet ten, medium build, brown hair going gray at the temples.
He'd been processed and was sitting at the table in his running clothes with his hands flat on the surface in front of him. She knew the stance. It was the stillness of a man who’d decided to be very careful.
He looked at the mirror once. Looked away.
She studied his face.
The build was in the range. The height was in the range. Brown hair, which was what she'd told the sketch artist and every interviewer since. Average features. Nothing that immediately eliminated him.
Nothing confirmed him either. She stared at him and tried to place him with her that morning. Tried to see him in a hoodie, to see the branch lifted and the coldness in his eyes.
She thought about the photograph from the personnel files. The one with more weight than the others. She looked at Robert Lane through the glass and tried to run the same process her brain had run on that photograph but got nothing definitive in either direction.
He was a maybe … a possibility. She hated both of those things.
Marcus was beside her. The rest of the task force was arranged along the other side of the two-way glass.
Carver had her arms crossed. Paulson was doing what she now called the FBI face.
Reyes was watching Lane with the focused attention of a man who had fifteen years of reading people in that room and was doing all of it right now.
“Ready?” Marcus said to her.
“Yeah,” she said.
* * *
Lane looked up when they came in. His eyes went to him first, then Haven, then back to him. He looked concerned but not too worried.
Marcus sat down. Haven sat beside him. He put the file folder on the table without opening it. Let it sit there while he stared at their suspect.
“Mr. Lane,” he said. “I'm Marcus King, Guardian Security. This is Detective Stone, Nashville PD. We'd like to talk to you about what happened on the trail this morning.”
Lane looked at the folder. “I didn't do anything.”
“Tell me about your afternoon,” Marcus said.
Lane's jaw moved. “I finished work at three. I went running. I run that trail three times a week. I've been running it for two years.”
“What time did you start?”
“Three thirty. Maybe three thirty-five. I changed at work and drove there.”
“What do you do?” Marcus asked.
“I’m a system specialist for medical transcription equipment.”
Marcus wrote that down. It was a job that fit the profile. He felt the slightest tightening in Haven at the man’s answer. She wrote on her pad. He glanced at it. The same words he’d written. He looked back at the suspect. “And the woman,” Marcus said. “When did you see her?”
Lane's eyes went to the folder again. “I found her. On the ground. I stopped. Who wouldn’t?”
“You were forty feet from her when officers arrived,” Haven said.
“That guy tackled me and wouldn’t let me up until the cops showed up.
I tried to explain that I’d just found her.
” Lane's voice had an edge in it now. The edge of a man who was either genuinely indignant or performing indignation very well.
“I didn't have my phone. I was waiting for someone else to come so I could tell them to call—”
“The jogger who called it in said you were standing over her when he first saw you,” Haven said. “Not crouching. Not performing CPR. Standing.”
Lane said nothing.
“The ground cloth,” Marcus said. “Where did that come from?”
Lane’s face went blank, then he frowned. “What ground cloth?”
“The blue tarp she was lying on,” Marcus said. He kept his voice level. “Where did that come from?”
Lane looked at the table. Something shifted in his expression. Something that wasn't quite a surprise and wasn't quite a calculation. Marcus watched it play out in Lane’s expression.
“I don't know anything about a tarp,” Lane said. “I didn’t see a tarp.”
“The knife in your pocket,” Haven said.
“I always carry a knife when I run. It's a trail knife. For—”
“For what?” Haven said.
Lane shook his head saying nothing. “The blood on the blade?” Marcus followed up.
“Blood?” Lane shook his head. “It’s mine. I cut myself sharpening it. I just folded it up and forgot to clean it.” He paused. “Wait … you think I … no. No.” The man shook his head. “No, that is not happening again.”
“Again?” both Marcus and Haven said.
“I want a lawyer,” he said.
Marcus looked at him for a long moment. Lane looked back. With the direct eye contact of a man who’d made a decision and was holding it.
“That's your right,” Marcus said, standing. Haven followed suit. He picked up the folder. “We'll arrange that.”
* * *
The hallway outside interview two was quieter than the room had been.
Carver was already there when they came out, with Paulson behind her. Reyes was at the end of the corridor with his arms crossed and the look of a man doing arithmetic in his head.
“Well?” Carver said.
“He's hiding something,” Haven said. “I don't know what, but he’s hiding something.”
“The positioning was right,” Webb said. “The staging matches the pattern.”
“The nail doesn't,” Marcus said.
“He was interrupted,” Paulson said. “The jogger—”
“The knife had blood on it, but it was dried. We can run it against the DNA of the other victims and against Lane,” Marcus said.
“If he'd been interrupted in the process of removing the nail, the knife would’ve been out and in his hand. There would be something on the blade or the finger.” He looked at Carver.
“The knife was in his pocket,” Reyes said. “He hadn't gotten to that stage yet.”
“The staging information was never released,” Haven said. “Arms crossed, ankles together, eyes closed. The tarp. None of it was ever given to the press.” She looked at Paulson. “How does Robert Lane know how to stage a body if he's not the killer and he didn't read it in the paper?”
“He could have access to—”
“To what?” Marcus said. “The case files are sealed.
The ME reports are sealed. Guardian put tape on every jurisdiction's files at the start of this investigation.” He looked at Carver.
“I want to know everything about Robert Lane.
Where he works. Where he's been. Every address he's lived at in the last five years. Every vehicle registered to him.” He paused.
“And I want to know how he knew what a staged scene looks like, and I want to know what again means.”
Carver looked at him for a moment. Then she looked at Reyes. “You heard him.”
Reyes was already moving.
* * *
He called his father from the parking garage at 4 p.m.
Not because he needed direction. Because something was sitting wrong in the back of his head. Maybe not wrong, but … there was something that was niggling at him. He hadn't been able to find it, and bouncing gut feelings off his father was a familiar exercise.
His father answered on the second ring. “Marcus, how are things going?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Then tell me what you know.”
Marcus walked him through it. The staged scene. The intact and positioned nail. The knife with dried blood on it. Lane's reaction to the ground cloth question. The way his expression had shifted when Marcus had mentioned it. Not quite surprise. Not quite a calculation.
His father listened without interrupting.
When Marcus finished, his father was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Walk me back. The expression. When you mentioned the ground cloth. What were the two things it could’ve been?”
Marcus stood in the parking garage and went back to that moment. Lane's face. The shift.
“Surprise that we knew about the tarp,” Marcus said slowly. “Or surprise that there was a tarp.”
His father waited.
“He didn't bring the tarp,” Marcus said.
Silence.
“He found her on it,” Marcus said. “Somebody else put her on it. Somebody else staged her. Lane came along afterward, and—” He stopped. “And either he knew what he was looking at, or he didn't.”
“Which is it?” his father said.
Marcus thought about the eye contact. The decision and the very specific look of a man who’d made up his mind to stop talking before the wrong thing came out.
“He knew what he was looking at,” Marcus said. “He knew exactly what it was. And he stopped talking before he had to explain how.”
“So, the question isn't whether he staged her,” his father said.
“The question is how he knew what a staged scene looked like,” Marcus said. “And why was he standing over her instead of running?”
His father was quiet.
“He's not the killer,” Marcus said. “But he might not be innocent either.”
“Yes,” his father said. “I agree.”
Marcus looked at the concrete wall of the parking garage.
“Thanks, tell Poppa I love him,” he said.
“You tell him when you call him.” His father chuckled.
“Was that a hint to call home?” Marcus shook his head.
“Of course, it was. Call me when you have this guy figured out,” his father said.
“I will. Love you, Dad.” He hung up.
Marcus stood there for a moment. Then he went back inside.
He had work to do.