The Silent Wife (Will Trent #10) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,129

ran into some employees leaving the breakroom. All of the offices off the corridor were filled with workers who looked up as she passed. In the lobby the receptionist wished her a good morning, but Sara was beyond good mornings.

She let out a string of curses as she tripped down the stairs. She should’ve asked Brock if he knew where Delilah or Tommi Humphrey were living. The only place better than a church for picking up gossip was the local funeral home. The Brock Family Funeral Home had serviced the tri-county area for two generations. Either Brock or his mother were always up on the local news.

She stopped in her tracks, but only for a moment.

The thought of going back inside was a non-starter. Instead, Sara made a beeline for her car. She rolled down all the windows to let in the fresh air. She still had to breathe through her mouth. A sharp pain made her loosen her grip on the padlock key. She was squeezing it so tightly that the metal had dug a groove into her palm.

Brock had likely chosen the U-Store for the same reason as Sara. It was the only facility in Grant County that offered climate-controlled storage. Otherwise, Jeffrey’s police files and Sara’s medical examiner reports would’ve rotted in the humidity or crumbled in the heat. She could not send Tessa back to the facility for a second time. Not because Tessa would refuse, but because there was a chain of custody protocol to follow. Sara would have to go herself, which meant driving to Grant County, which brought up the same guilt she had struggled with yesterday.

She considered calling Will to tell him where she was going, but Find My app aside, their relationship was predicated on trust. She did not have to report her movements to him, and he would be puzzled if she tried.

So why did this feel like cheating? Because the U-Store was located on Mercer Avenue, directly across from the Heartsdale Memory Gardens, where Jeffrey was buried?

The location of the building was not within Sara’s control. What she needed to do in the immediate was to study the information from Leslie Truong’s autopsy. There could be a clue inside the pages, something they had all overlooked, that helped find the killer.

Sara took the path of least resistance, texting Amanda—

Heading to Grant County to retrieve Brock’s files. Still working on locating Humphrey. Back at HQ ASAP.

She started the engine. She pulled out of the space.

For the first time in her life, Sara dreaded the thought of going home.

Grant County—Thursday

18

Jeffrey flipped on the lights as he walked through the station. As usual, he was the first person in the building. He turned on the air conditioning. He started the coffee. He opened the blinds in his office. He sat at his desk.

The clock on his computer told him it was 5:33 a.m. Sara had worked through the night. She would be finished with Leslie Truong’s autopsy by now. Brock had assisted her. Frank had acted as a third witness. Normally, Jeffrey would’ve taken that job, but he’d spent the last twelve hours talking to potential witnesses, re-canvassing Rebecca Caterino’s dorm, interviewing Leslie Truong’s roommates, interrogating the college staff, combing the woods for evidence and offering Bonita Truong, Leslie’s mother, a shoulder to cry on.

None of it had made a damn bit of difference. He was in exactly the same position he’d been in this time yesterday morning, except now he had a dead college student on his hands.

Jeffrey rolled out the topographic map of the forest onto his desk. The bird’s-eye view afforded him a better understanding of the terrain. The dips and valleys. The rolling hills. The lakes and streams. The paper was still damp from spreading it across the hood of his car. He had used a ruler and different colors of Sharpies to draw lines across the woods. Red traced the possible path that Beckey Caterino had taken on her run. Blue followed the most likely trail that Leslie Truong had walked back to campus after finding Beckey’s body. The rain had washed away both scenes, but he’d still ordered a thorough search of the two-mile stretch.

Leslie had been found in dense overgrowth approximately thirty yards from the main trail that wound its way from the campus to the north side of the lake. Jeffrey didn’t know if she had walked there on her own or been carried there by her killer. All he knew for certain was