“Sometimes,” Sara admitted. “But not all the time.”

“All the time is my time,” Tommi said. “All the fucking time.”

“Tommi—”

“He cried,” she said. “That’s what I remember most. He cried like a fucking baby. Like, down on his knees, just wailing and rocking himself like a little kid.”

Will felt the air leave his lungs. Sweat beaded up at the back of his neck.

Just yesterday, he had seen a man cry that same way.

On his knees. Rocking himself. Sobbing like a child.

Will had been standing in Gerald Caterino’s murder closet. The father’s obsession with his daughter’s attack was splashed across the walls. Coroner’s reports. Newspaper articles. Police reports. Witness statements. DNA. A brush. A comb. A scrunchie. A headband. A hair clip. No one on earth knew as much about the attacks on Rebecca Caterino and Leslie Truong as Gerald Caterino.

Acolyte? Copycat? Nutjob? Murderer?

They had assumed Daryl Nesbitt had faked the DNA on the envelope.

What if Gerald Caterino was the faker?

Will struggled to reach for the phone in his pocket. Faith was probably pulling into Caterino’s driveway right now. He had to warn her.

Sara knew something was wrong. She said, “Tommi—”

“His mother was in the hospital.”

“What?”

Sara’s stunned question made Will freeze. She had almost shouted the word.

Tommi said, “That’s why he did it. That was his reason. His mother was sick in the hospital. He was afraid that she was going to die. He needed somebody to comfort him.”

“Tommi—”

“I’m a real fucking comfort.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Hey, Sara, do me a favor. Lose this number. I can’t help you. I can’t even help myself.”

The speaker clicked. She’d hung up.

Will tapped his phone, pulling up Faith’s number. “I’ve got to—”

“The latex,” Sara said. “Will, it’s not from a glove. It’s from a condom.”

Grant County—Thursday—One Week Later

27

Jeffrey tried not to limp as he walked down Main Street. Exactly one full week had passed since the raid on Daryl Nesbitt’s house, and he wanted the town to see that their chief of police was all right. Or as all right as a man could be with a broken nose, a strained back and a wheeze in his lungs that sounded like a sick chihuahua.

Rosario Lopez had never been in danger, and she hadn’t even technically been missing. The student had gone home with a boy she’d met in the cafeteria and, like a lot of students, they ended up spending the day in bed, eating take-out and talking about their childhoods. The manhunt through the woods, Jeffrey’s fear that she was being held captive in the shed, were both unfounded.

He could torture himself with all the different ways he would’ve handled Daryl Nesbitt without the possible abduction of Rosario Lopez hanging over his head, but Jeffrey had learned a long time ago kicking yourself about the past would only trip you up in the future.

Besides, there were bigger mistakes that he was losing sleep over.

Rebecca Caterino was still in a coma. No one could say how much damage had been done to her brain. Everything was wait-and-see. Jeffrey kept telling himself that she would eventually recover. Beckey would never be able to walk again, but she would have a life. She could go back to school. She could graduate. The county’s insurance company was already negotiating a settlement with the girl’s father. The school was going to pay through the nose. Way down on that list was the fact that Jeffrey would keep his job.

For now, at least.

Bonita Truong had flown back to San Francisco with her daughter’s body. She had called Jeffrey twice since then. Each time, all he could do was listen to her cry. There was nothing anyone could say that would lessen her grief. As Cathy Linton was known to say, time was a tincture.

Jeffrey yearned for that healing elixir. He wanted the clock to speed up so that he was on the other side of his own sorrow. He had left Birmingham to get away from these kinds of violent, heartbreaking cases. He had thought that Grant County would be his Valhalla, where the worst thing that would happen was a stolen bike or a frat boy wrapping his car around a tree.

He told himself that nothing had changed. Daryl Nesbitt was an aberration. A once-in-a-lifetime psychopath. Jeffrey’s career from this point forward would be spent shaking hands at Rotary Club meetings and helping old ladies find their cats.

He unwrapped a cough drop and flipped it into his mouth.

Spring was making itself known from one end of Main Street to the other. Downtown still looked picture-perfect, despite the horrors that had unfolded in the woods last week. The leaves on the dogwoods waved frantically in the breeze. The flowers the garden club had planted were in full bloom. The gazebo display in front of the hardware store was being kept company by a wooden bench. The rack of clearance clothes had been picked clean outside the dress shop.

Jeffrey coughed again.

The smoke inhalation wasn’t the only reason his throat was hurting. He’d spent the last hour arguing with the district attorney and the mayor about the evidence against Daryl Nesbitt. The hammer. The proximity. The phone number.

The shed.

Jeffrey was filled with dread every time he thought about the homemade prison in Daryl Nesbitt’s back yard. The bars on the window and door had been installed with eight-inch, one-way screws. They’d had to drill them out to open the door. Inside, they’d found a cot with a pastel pink blanket. There was a bucket in the corner. A pink hairbrush and matching comb.

There was also a length of chain attached to a metal ring that was concreted into the floor.

No blood. No fluids. No hair. No DNA. The shed looked like a prison cell, but having a shed that looked like a prison cell was not illegal. Neither was working near a fire road that offered easy access to the location where a body was found. Or owning a 1.5-pound mallet that was part of a Brawleigh Dead Blow set. Or driving a charcoal van. Or your number showing up in the phones of two women who were both attacked.

The child porn, on the other hand, was enough to put Daryl Nesbitt away for at least five years.

Five years.

Jeffrey could work with that. Witnesses would come forward. People would remember things. Tommi Humphrey could decide to break her silence. Jeffrey was dubious of her negative response to Daryl Nesbitt’s booking photo. He wanted to put the pedophile in a line-up, allow Tommi time to study his face from the safety of darkness. Seeing a one-dimensional mugshot was very different from seeing a man in person.

The biggest obstacle was Nesbitt’s lawyer. He was from Memminger, well-versed in the defense of scumbags. The lawyer would fight a line-up. He’d already refused to grant access to his client. He’d wrangled Nesbitt an extended stay in the Macon Hospital rather than in county lock-up. Worse, he’d filed a motion to dismiss based on a lack of probable cause to enter the house. If a judge bought his story, then Daryl Nesbitt would be allowed to go free.

Jeffrey and Lena were the only two people who could stop that from happening. Both of them had signed sworn statements under penalty of perjury. Both of them were willing to put their hand on a Bible and promise to tell the truth.

Both of them knew that everything they said would be a lie.

There was a doctrine in law called the fruit of the poisoned tree. Basically, if probable cause didn’t exist to enter a residence, then anything the police found once they stepped inside the residence could be deemed inadmissible in court.

Lena had definitely stepped inside the house without cause. It was perfectly legal to be inside your home with an erection. It was perfectly legal to refuse to speak to the police. You were even allowed to slam the door in their faces. The mistake Lena had made was grabbing Daryl’s arm. He’d pulled away. Instead of letting go, she had stepped inside the house. Then she had taken another step. Then the door had closed and all hell had broken loose.

The “I smelled weed on him” defense had collapsed in that moment.

Fortunately, Lena and Jeffrey had been able to arrive at an alternative set of events, where the thing that Frank had warned them would happen had actually happened: Daryl had grabbed Lena and closed the door.

It was worth the giant I told you so Frank kept hurling around. Matt and Hendricks were backing up the story. Jeffrey assumed they thought it was true. The men had been fifty feet away, crouched behind a Malibu. It was hard to tell at that distance who was pulling whom.

There were a lot of embarrassing details that were glossed over by the lie. Lena failing to announce that she was a police officer. Matt and Hendricks breaking formation. Brad running into the kitchen and firing off his shotgun. Frank collapsing on the other side of the shed. Lena losing her gun as she chased Daryl up the stairs. And, most crucially, Daryl flinging Lena across the bedroom like a rag doll. She’d banged her head against the desk. The laptop computer had been jostled awake.