She had fallen back on dense medical jargon as she had relayed the physical ramifications of Tommi Humphrey’s attack. Jeffrey had tasted blood in his mouth by the time she’d finished. He wanted to write down every word, to memorialize what had happened to the twenty-one-year-old girl in case she ever got to the point where she felt strong enough to file an official complaint.

Time was not on her side. The abduction alone was a felony charge, but Georgia’s statute of limitations narrowed down her window for filing to seven years. Rape was limited to fifteen years. Unfortunately, Tommi had refused to allow Sara to collect samples from the attack. The slivers, the buccal swabs, the fingernail scrapings—any one of those pieces of evidence could have bought Tommi some breathing room. The law stipulated that the prosecution of kidnapping, aggravated sodomy, and aggravated sexual assault could commence at any time when DNA was used to identify the suspect.

If fourteen years from now, a defense lawyer asked why Tommi Humphrey had waited so long to come forward, and how she could be so sure about the details, Jeffrey wanted to be there with his dated and time-stamped notebook to cram the details down the asshole’s throat.

His phone rang again. He tapped the screen to put it on speaker. “What is it, Lena?”

“I found the guy going by the name Little Bit,” she said. “His name is Felix Floyd Abbot, twenty-three years old. He took off on his fucking skateboard. I had to chase him half a mile. He had a couple of dub sacks on him. Just under the limit for distribution.”

“Book him. Let him stew. I’ll get to him later.” Jeffrey ended the call. Felix Floyd Abbott, not Daryl, so he still needed to locate the man from Beckey Caterino’s phone book. He told Sara, “Little Bit is the campus pot dealer.”

Sara nodded. Her hand rested on the door handle. Jeffrey was pulling into the staff parking lot. She was anxious to get this over with.

He told her, “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For helping with Tommi. For being here.”

She could’ve said a lot of things that would’ve made him regret his appreciation, but Sara only nodded.

He parked the car. He looked at the time. Bonita Truong’s plane had landed one hour ago. She had texted Jeffrey that she was heading straight to Grant County as soon as she could rent a car. The woman had at least two hours of driving. He told himself it wasn’t cowardice that kept him from calling her right now. Leslie’s mother would want details. Jeffrey wanted to offer her as many as he could.

Sara got out of the car before he did. She walked over to Brock’s mortuary van. He was pulling the folded white canvas tent from the funeral home out of the back. Frank was trying and failing to give him a hand. Jeffrey felt a sickness in his gut. Frank hadn’t said anything about a tent. Yesterday’s storm had reached the Carolinas. The scene was bad enough that they had already agreed that they needed to obscure the body.

“Hey, Brock.” Sara rubbed his arm. “I’m here if you want me. Don’t feel crowded.”

“Oh, Sara, crowd me all you want. This is something terrible. I’m not sure I can handle this job anymore.”

“You’ll be fine.” She took the crime scene kit out of the van and looped the strap over her shoulder. “I’ll help you as much or as little as you ask me to.”

Jeffrey grabbed the stack of tent poles from Frank.

Frank pointed into the woods. “Body’s about three hundred yards thattaway.”

Jeffrey followed the general direction of Frank’s finger. The area lined up with Kevin Blake’s office window. He imagined the dean was already on the phone with the board, the school lawyers, and the mayor. Jeffrey didn’t care what they were talking about. He wasn’t worried about his job anymore. He was worried about catching the animal who had hurt these women. The town was his responsibility. So far, he had failed three victims, one who didn’t trust the police to take care of her, one who had almost died while they stood around shooting the shit, and another who had been left to make the half-hour trek back to campus on her own and never made it.

The death of Leslie Truong rested solely on his shoulders.

Frank said, “Brad says she’s dressed in the same clothes she was wearing yesterday morning at the Caterino crime scene. Yoga stuff, it looks like. Body’s real cold and stiff. She was probably there all night.”

Jeffrey felt ill. He looked at Sara. She said nothing, but for once, he knew exactly what she was thinking.

He told Frank, “I had fifteen people out with me searching those woods. How did we miss her?”

Frank shook his head, not because he didn’t know the answer, but because the answer was obvious. The forest was sprawling. There hadn’t been a moon last night. You could only see what you could see.

Jeffrey tried again. “Felix Abbott. He goes by the name Little Bit. Do you know him?”

“No, but Abbott’s a Memminger name.” Frank shook a cigarette out of his pack. “All of ’em are Dew-Lolly pieces of shit.”

Dew-Lolly was the seedy intersection of two hopeless streets in Memminger County. The area was two counties over, so the occupants were not Jeffrey’s problem. He had often heard the Memminger sheriff refer to some of the county’s more idiotic offenders as a real Dew-Lolly.

Jeffrey said, “Caterino had a number stored in her phone for someone named Daryl. That name ever come up in connection to Felix Abbott?”

“Daryl?”

“No last name. Just Daryl.”

“Not ringing a bell, but you know my bell is from the Liberty Line.” Frank asked, “Why’re you asking? You looking at either of them?”

“I’m looking at the entire town.” Jeffrey watched Sara gather the tent stakes and rope. Her jaw was tensed as they set off toward the crime scene. She had seen first-hand the damage to Tommi Humphrey. Of the four of them, only Sara really understood what they might find deep in the woods.

Brock shifted the heavy canvas tent onto his shoulder. “Sara, please thank your mother for coming by last night. It was sweet of her to sit with Mama. Her asthma’s been acting up something fierce. I’m afraid she’ll end up in the hospital again.”

Sara rubbed his arm again. “You can call me night or day if she needs help. You know I don’t mind.”

“Thank you, Sara. That means the world to me.” Brock looked away. He used his sleeve to wipe his eyes.

Frank said, “Truong was found by a student, Jessa Copeland. Matt’s taking her statement back at the station.”

“Tell him to stay with her until her family or a friend can take over.”

“He knows.” Frank lit his cigarette. He was the only one of them who wasn’t carrying anything. Considering his poor health and the three-hundred-yard hike, that probably wasn’t a bad idea. “Copeland, the one what found her, was running in the woods. She got turned around, strayed off the path. That’s when she saw Truong. She recognized her immediately from the message boards. I came out with Matt and Brad. Brad’s still with her.”

“What does she look like?”

“Same as Caterino. On her back. Clothes in place. She’s got a mark here.” Frank tapped his fingers on the side of his temple. “Bright red, circular, like the size of a quarter.”

Sara looked back at Jeffrey.

Like the head of a hammer.

Frank said, “It was pretty obvious she was gone, but I felt for a pulse. Matt felt for one. Brad tried, too, then he put his ear to her chest to make sure.”

Jeffrey got to the bad. “What else?”

“Blood.” He indicated the lower part of his body. “Everywhere.”

Sara asked, “Was she lying on an incline, her pelvis lower than her chest?”

“Nope.”

“Only two things make blood flow: gravity and a pumping heart. She must’ve been alive for a while.”

“Dear God,” Brock murmured. “That poor, broken creature.”

Sara looped her free arm through his. Brock was her age, but he was one of those men who had always presented himself as older. She talked to him in a low, soothing voice. Brock seemed relieved to have the comfort.

Frank told Jeffrey, “I might hang up my hat alongside Brock’s after this one.”

“There’s another case, a living victim, who might be connected to this.” Jeffrey wasn’t going to share the details. “We need to look at the sex offender list.”

“Easy-peasy.”

Jeffrey tried not to let Frank’s sarcasm get to him. The GBI was mandated by law to maintain a searchable database of registered sex offenders, but the legislators, in their wisdom, hadn’t allocated additional money or resources to make that happen. The backlog was tremendous. Some of the rural counties were still using dial-up to go online. The Department of Justice had found the state’s records deficient almost from the outset.

That didn’t mean they shouldn’t try.

Jeffrey told Frank, “Pull somebody off patrol and sit them down in front of a computer.”

“Why don’t I hang one more exit sign on the Titanic while I’m at it?”

“You got any better options?” Jeffrey demanded. They had no clues, no suspects, and their only possible witness was lying dead at their second crime scene. “What did Chuck Gaines say?”