Chapter Fifty-Three Judson
Chapter Fifty-Three
Judson
Back at the office, Meg was waiting. She’d analyzed the footage from the six hunting cameras.
“Anything?” I asked.
“Definitely human activity.”
She swiveled her computer screen toward me. Six different black-and-white feeds glowed on the screen. The first two showed Hale House—front and back.
I zeroed in on those. The house sat dark, silent, quiet. “Any activity at the house?”
“You’d be amazed.” She fast-forwarded to mid-September.
At midnight on the twentieth, a light flared in the kitchen. It moved across the room. The refrigerator opened; a shadowed hooded figure placed items inside. Then the light drifted deeper into the house and then reappeared on the second floor.
“Is that a bedroom at the end of the hallway?”
“That’s my guess,” she said.
“That room belonged to Raine’s mother,” I said.
“The figure appears to be a woman.” She tapped the screen. “Watch.”
The figure stepped to the window, flashlight beam glaring. The hood slipped back—blond hair, pale skin, but no sharp facial details. The gait was also wrong for a man. Narrower stride. Smaller steps.
The trespasser could’ve been Amy.
Raine also fit the description.
I didn’t want to believe it was Raine—that she was a part of this. That personal bias was a problem. It could cloud how I interpreted evidence.
“Any guess?” Meg asked.
“Could be Amy.”
“Or Raine?”
“Maybe. Do we have footage of a car in the driveway?”
“No. The disk on that camera was missing.”
“Intentional?”
“If I were sneaking into Hale House regularly, I’d kill the camera, too.”
It was a smart move. Someone had been thinking ahead.
Meg folded her arms. “Whoever she is, she moves around the house as if it’s very familiar to her.”
“When does she leave the house?”
“Six a.m., Sunday, September 21. She stayed in the house for thirty hours.”
“And no clear image of her face?”
“No.”
I drew a frustrated breath. “What about the other cameras?”
She placed her cursor on the image and fast-forwarded to Wednesday, October 14. Eight days ago. “The good stuff comes toward the end.”
This time, the feed caught a blond woman staggering from the shadows through the woods on a path toward the creek bed.
Several times, she paused, resting a hand on a tree trunk.
A hand pressed to her belly, she dry-retched.
She glanced back, wary. Then she staggered forward, vanishing from the frame.
The woman was Amy.
I leaned closer, waiting. At 12:10 a.m. another figure emerged. Also female. Hooded. Steady. Methodical. Following.
“Amy looks sick.” Meg noted the time stamp. “I’m no medical examiner, but I’d say Amy Stocker’s time of death was Wednesday, October 14, around midnight.”
“ME’s rough estimate is about that time.”
Meg kept watching the screen. “The fibers the medical examiner found in Amy’s nostrils are being tested. No matches yet.”
“Okay.” I watched the footage, observing Amy’s movements. “She stumbles. Collapses in the creek.”
“She doesn’t die fast enough.”
“And someone finished the job—pressing fabric over her face until she stops breathing.”
“Any more footage?”
“That’s all.”
“I’ll reach out to the sheriff’s office,” I said. “There are gas stations, fast-food places, and a farm-supply outlet near Hale House. See who has security cameras.”
Meg nodded. “Thinks she’s thought of all the camera angles.”
“And there’s always one more.”