“Chief?” Frank handed Jeffrey his suit jacket and shirt, both of which were dripping with blood.
“Jesus,” Jeffrey said, extracting his police badge and wallet. They were as soaked as his clothes. He found an evidence bag and sealed the plastic strip inside, asking, “What the hell happened?”
Frank held out his hands, speechless.
The gesture irritated Jeffrey, and he bit back the cutting comment that came to mind, knowing that what had happened to Tessa Linton was not Frank’s fault. If anything, it was Jeffrey’s. He had been standing with his thumb up his ass less than a hundred yards away when Tessa had been attacked; he’d known something was wrong when Tessa was not at the car, and he should have insisted on going with Sara to look for her.
He tucked the bag into his pants pocket, asking, “Where are Lena and Matt?”
Frank flipped open his cell phone.
“No,” Jeffrey told him. The worst thing that could happen to Matt in the middle of the forest was to have his phone ring. “Give them ten minutes.” He glanced at his watch, not sure how much time had already passed. “If they’re not out by then, we’ll go look for them.”
“Right.”
Jeffrey dropped his clothes on the ground, resting his wallet and badge on top. He continued, “Call the station. Get six units out here.”
Frank started to dial in the number, asking, “You want to cut the witness loose?”
“No,” Jeffrey told him. Without another word he started down the hill toward the parked cars.
He tried to get his thoughts together as he walked. Sara had felt there was something suspicious about the suicide. Tessa’s being stabbed in the immediate vicinity made that possibility even more likely. If the kid in the riverbed had been murdered, it was possible Tessa Linton had surprised his assailant in the woods.
“Chief,” Brad said, his voice lowered so as not to be rude. Behind him Ellen Schaffer was on her cell phone.
Jeffrey cut his eyes at Brad. Within ten minutes everyone on campus would know exactly what had happened.
Brad winced, understanding the mistake he had made. “Sorry.”
Ellen Schaffer followed the exchange, giving a quick “Gotta go” into her cell phone before ending the call.
She was an attractive young blonde with hazel eyes and one of the most off-putting Yankee accents Jeffrey had heard in a long time. She wore a pair of tight running shorts and an even tighter cropped Lycra shirt. A belt with a CD player sat low on her hips, and an intricately designed sunburst was tattooed in a circle around her belly button.
Jeffrey began, “Ms. Schaffer—”
Schaffer’s voice was more grating than he remembered when she asked, “Is she going to be all right?”
“I think so,” Jeffrey said, though his gut twisted into a knot over the question. Tessa had been unconscious when they loaded her onto the stretcher. There was no telling if she would ever wake up again. He wanted to be with her now—with Sara—but there was nothing Jeffrey could do at the hospital except wait. At least this way he might be able to find some answers for Sara’s family.
Jeffrey asked, “Can you tell me again what happened?”
Schaffer’s lower lip trembled at the question.
He prompted, “You saw the body from the bridge?”
“I was jogging. I always jog in the morning.”
He looked at his watch again. “This exact time?”
“Yes.”
“Always alone?”
“Usually. Sometimes.”
Jeffrey made a conscious effort to be polite when what he really wanted to do was shake the girl and make her tell him what he wanted to know. “You usually jog alone?”
“Yes,” she answered. “I’m sorry.”
“Do you normally take this trail?”
“Normally,” she echoed. “I go down the bridge and then up into the woods. There are paths . . .” Her voice trailed off as she realized he must know this.
“So,” he said, getting her back on track, “you jog this same path every day?”
Ellen nodded, a quick up-and-down. “I don’t usually stop at the bridge, but something didn’t feel right. I don’t know why I stopped.” She pressed her lips into a thin line as she considered it. “There are usually birds, nature sounds. It felt too still. Do you know what I mean?”
Jeffrey knew. He had sensed that same eerie feeling when he was running through the woods looking for Sara and Tessa. The only sounds had been those of his own feet pounding into the ground and his heart pounding even more loudly in his head.
Ellen continued, “So I stopped to stretch, and then I looked over the railing—and there he was.”
“You didn’t go down to check on him?”
She looked embarrassed. “I didn’t. . . . Should I have?”
“No,” he said and then, to be kind, added, “it’s better that you didn’t contaminate the scene.”
She seemed relieved. “I could tell . . .” She looked down at her hands, silently crying.
Jeffrey glanced back at the woods, nervous that Matt and Lena were not back by now, especially with the noise the helicopter had made. Sending them out into the forest was probably not one of his better ideas.
Schaffer interrupted his thoughts, asking, “Did he suffer?”
“No,” he assured her, though he had no idea. He said, “We think he jumped from the bridge.”
She seemed surprised. “I just assumed . . .”
He did not give her time to dwell on her feelings. “So you saw him. You called the police. Then what did you do?”
“I stayed on the bridge until the officer got here.” She indicated Brad, who gave a sheepish smile. “Then the others came, and I stayed with him.”
“Did you see anyone else? Someone in the woods?”
“Just the girl going up the hill,” she said.
“Anyone else?”
“No. No one,” she answered, looking over Jeffrey’s shoulder. He turned, seeing Matt and Lena walking out of the woods. Lena was limping, her hands out to the side in case she fell. Matt offered his hand to help her down the hill, but she waved him off.
Jeffrey told Ellen Schaffer, “I’ll follow up with you tomorrow. Thank you for making yourself available.” Then, to Brad, “Make sure she gets back to the dorm.”
“Yes, sir,” Brad said, but Jeffrey was already running up the hill.
The soles of Jeffrey’s loafers slipped on the ground as he ran toward Lena and Matt, but all he could think was that he had jeopardized another woman by sending Lena into the woods. By the time he reached them, remorse was a tight band around his chest. He put his hand under Lena’s arm to help her sit.
“What happened?” Jeffrey asked, feeling like a parrot, thinking he’d asked that question a million times today and still had not gotten a satisfactory answer. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” Lena said, shrugging him off so quickly that she fell the rest of the way down. Frank started to help her, taking her arm, but Lena jerked away, saying, “Jesus, I’m all right,” though she winced as her foot touched the ground.
The three men stood transfixed as Lena untied the laces of her shoe, and Jeffrey knew they were feeling the same emotions he was. When he glanced up, both Matt and Frank leveled him with an accusatory glare. Lena could have been seriously hurt in the woods. Whatever had happened to her—and whatever could have happened—was Jeffrey’s fault.
Lena broke the spell, saying, “He was still out there.”
“Where?” Jeffrey asked, feeling his pulse quicken.
“The bastard was hiding behind a tree, looking to see what was going on.”
Frank muttered an angry “Jesus,” but Jeffrey did not know if his anger was for the attacker or for Jeffrey.
“I chased him,” Lena continued, oblivious to the tension, or perhaps just choosing to ignore it. “I tripped on something. A log. I don’t know. I can show you where he was hiding.”
Jeffrey tried to get his head around this
. Was the attacker staying around to make sure Tessa got help, or was he watching what happened like a home movie, sucking up the drama?
Frank had an edge to his voice when he asked Matt, “Where were you when all this was happening?”
Matt used the same sharp tone. “We spread out to cover more area. Say, a coupla minutes later, I saw the kid running.”
Frank grumbled, “You shouldn’ta left her in the first place.”
Matt grumbled back, “I was just following procedure.”
“Both of you,” Jeffrey said, trying to stop them. “We don’t have time for this.” He turned his attention to Lena again. “How close was he to the scene?”
“Close,” she said. “Off the trail, about fifty yards away. I backtracked, thinking if he was still hanging around, it’d be close, so he could see the action.”
Jeffrey asked, “Did you get a good look at him?”
“No,” she told him. “He saw me before I saw him. He was crouching behind a tree. Maybe he was getting off on watching Sara freak out.”
“I didn’t ask for speculation,” Jeffrey snapped, not liking the condescending way she had said Sara’s name. Lena had never gotten along with Sara, but now was hardly the time to bring up the grudge, especially considering the state Tessa was in.
He said, “You saw the guy. Then what?”
“I didn’t see him,” she shot back, her anger ignited. Jeffrey realized too late that he had pushed the wrong buttons. He looked to Frank and Matt for help, but their faces were just as hard as Lena’s.
“Go on,” Jeffrey said.
Lena was terse. “I saw a blur. Movement. He stood up and took off. I ran after him.”
“Which way did he go?”
Lena took her time, looking up to find the sun. “West, probably toward the highway.”
“Black? White?”
“White,” she said, then added a flippant, “maybe.”
“Maybe?” Jeffrey demanded, aware that he was fueling the fire but incapable of stopping himself.
“I told you,” she said, defensive. “He turned and ran. What was I going to do, ask him to slow down so I could ascertain his ethnicity?”
Jeffrey paused a moment, trying to hold back his temper. “What was he wearing?”
“Something dark.”
“A coat? Jeans?”
“Jeans, maybe a coat. I don’t know. It was dark.”
“Long coat, short coat?”
“A jacket . . . I think.”
“Did he have a weapon?”
“I couldn’t see.”
“What color was his hair?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“I think he was wearing a hat.”
“You think he was?” Suddenly, all the helplessness that had been building up since he had seen Tessa lying near death exploded out of him. “Jesus Christ, Lena, how long were you a cop?”
Lena stared at him with the kind of burning hatred he was used to seeing in suspects he interrogated.
He demanded, “You chase a fucking suspect, and you can’t even tell me if he was wearing a hat or not? What the fuck were you doing out there, picking daisies?”
Lena kept staring up at him, her jaw working as she held back what she wanted to say.
“It’s a damn good thing he didn’t go after you,” Jeffrey said. “We’d be looking at two girls on that chopper instead of one.”
She snapped, “I can take care of myself.”
“You think that little knife on your ankle’s gonna protect you?” He was disgusted by the surprised look on her face, mostly because he had taught Lena better than that. Jeffrey had seen her ankle sheath when she’d slid on her ass down the riverbank.
He said, “I should run you in for carrying concealed.”
She continued to stare, her hatred palpable.
“You better check that look,” he warned her.
Lena’s teeth were so tightly clenched that her words were hard to make out. “I don’t work for you anymore, asshole.”
Something inside Jeffrey was very close to snapping. His vision sharpened, everything coming into startling focus.
“Chief,” Frank said, putting his hand on Jeffrey’s shoulder. Jeffrey backed down, knowing he was acting insane. He saw his bloody clothes on the ground, Tessa’s blood. Everything rushed in on him in that moment: The tears on Sara’s face making tracks on her bloodstained cheek. Tessa’s arm, limp, dangling off the stretcher as they lifted her.
Jeffrey turned away so they could not see his expression, picking up his badge, polishing it with the tail of his undershirt, trying to buy himself time to calm down.
Brad Stephens chose that moment to walk up, twirling his hat in his hand. He asked, “What’s going on, Chief?”
Anger made Jeffrey’s throat tight. “I told you to walk Schaffer to her dorm.”
“She ran into a couple of friends,” Brad said, turning pale. “She wanted to go with them.” His clear blue eyes were wide with fright, and he stuttered, “I-I-I figured she’d be better off with them. They’re with her house. Keyes House. I didn’t think—”
“All right,” Jeffrey interrupted, knowing that taking out his anger on Brad would only make him feel worse. He told Frank, “Get some of our people on the highway. Tell them we’re looking for someone walking. Anyone walking. Maybe in a jacket, maybe not.” He did not look at Lena on this last part, though she must have known a description would make all the difference.
Frank said, “The units should be here soon.”
Jeffrey nodded. “I want a grid search from this area up to the last point where Lena saw the attacker. We’re looking for a knife. Anything that doesn’t belong.”
“He had something in his hand,” Lena said, like she was offering up a prize. “A white bag.”
Brad Stephens gasped, then blushed when everyone looked at him.
Jeffrey asked, “What is it?”
Brad spoke with a mixture of apprehension and apology. “I saw Tessa picking up some stuff on the way up the hill,” he said.
“What kind of stuff?”
“Trash and things, I guess. She had a plastic bag, like the kind they give out at the Pig.” He meant the Piggly Wiggly, the town’s grocery store. Thousands of people shopped there every week.
Jeffrey forced himself not to speak for a few seconds. He thought about the piece of plastic he had found in Tessa’s hand. The scrap very well could have been the torn handle of a plastic grocery bag.
Jeffrey asked Brad, “Tessa found the bag on the hill?” noticing for the first time how much trash littered the area. The college grounds crew spent most of their energy maintaining the land closest to the college. They had probably not cleaned up out here all year.
“Yes, sir,” Brad said. “She just kind of picked it up and started putting some stuff in it while she walked up the hill.”
“What stuff?” Jeffrey asked.
Brad stuttered again, something that happened only when he was nervous. “T-trash, I reckon. Wrappers and cans and stuff.”
Jeffrey tried to moderate his tone with Brad, mostly because for some reason the stutter made his own anger boil back up. “You didn’t think to go up there and ask her what she was doing?”
“You told me to stay with the witness,” Brad reminded him. Another blush crept up his pasty cheeks. “And I . . . uh . . . didn’t want to interfere with what she was doing up there. You know, p-p-personal stuff.”
Jeffrey told Matt, “Put that out on the radio. Dark clothes, maybe carrying a white bag.”
“You think he stole the trash?” Lena asked, skeptical.
Matt cupped his cell phone to his ear and walked a few feet away to carry out Jeffrey’s orders. Frank was looking down at Lena, but there was no telling what he was thinking.
Jeffrey saw Chuck taking his time walking up the hill. When the other man stopped and bent to the ground, Jeffrey tensed, but Chuck was only tying his shoe.
When Chu
ck reached them, he said, “I was staying with the body. Securing the scene.”
Lena ignored him, asking Jeffrey, “You think this is connected?”
Jeffrey could tell from Frank’s expression that, with all that had happened, he was only now considering the question. The old cop would have gotten to it eventually, but Lena was leaps and bounds ahead of the more senior officers on the squad. Her quick mind was the thing Jeffrey missed most now that she was gone.
Lena repeated, “There’s got to be some kind of connection.”
Jeffrey shut her out, and not just because Chuck was taking all of this in. Lena had chosen to stop being a cop seven months ago. She was not part of Jeffrey’s team anymore.
He told Frank, “Let me see the suicide note.”
“It was under a rock at the end of the bridge,” Frank said. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of notebook paper. Jeffrey did not have it in him to reprimand Frank for not putting the note in an evidence bag. Both of their hands were bloody enough to stain the page.
Jeffrey glanced at it, his eyes not really focusing.
Chuck put his hand to his chin in a thinking pose. “You still think he took a swan dive on his own?”
“Yeah,” Jeffrey said, staring at the college security guard. Chuck was a walking sieve where secrets were concerned. Jeffrey had heard him gossip about enough people to know that the man could not be trusted.
Frank backed up Jeffrey, explaining, “A killer would have stabbed him, not pushed him off the bridge. They don’t change their MOs like that.”
“Makes sense,” Chuck agreed, though anyone with an ounce of intelligence would have asked more questions.
Jeffrey handed the note back to Frank, saying, “When a team gets here, you take the other side of the river. I want a fingertip search if we have to. You understand?”
“Yeah,” Frank told him. “We’ll start at the river and go to the highway.”
“Good.”
Matt had finished his calls and Jeffrey gave him another assignment. “Call over to Macon and see if we can get some dogs out here.”
Chuck crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ll get a couple of my people—”
Jeffrey jabbed a finger at the other man. “Keep your people the fuck out of my crime scene,” he ordered.