The Silent Wife (Will Trent #10) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,76
about thirty-nine weeks after Beckey was attacked.”
Gerald could only hold her gaze for a few seconds before he looked down at the floor.
“Here’s what I think,” Faith said. “I think that five years ago, Daryl Nesbitt wrote to you from prison.”
The muscles along Gerald’s throat tightened.
“I think you saw that letter, and you realized that Daryl Nesbitt licked the flap to seal the envelope. His saliva was on the back of the stamp.” Faith tried to be as gentle as she could. “Did you test Daryl Nesbitt’s DNA from the envelope, Mr. Caterino?”
Gerald kept his head bent, his chin touching his chest. Tears splattered onto the carpet.
“You know what would scare me, Mr. Caterino? What would make me put up security cameras and gates and fences and sleep with a gun by my bed?”
He took in a deep breath, but still kept his eyes on the floor.
“The thing that would keep me up at night,” Faith said. “Was worrying that the man who attacked my daughter would find out that, nine months later, she gave birth to his son.”
9
Sara looked at the clock on the stove.
7:42 p.m.
Time had slipped away from her while she was taking care of Alexandra McAllister. First, there were the logistics of getting Ezra Ingle to change the official cause of death. Then Amanda had started working with the sheriff’s office to put through the formal requests to allow the GBI to take over. Next, Sara had to transport the body to GBI headquarters so she could perform the autopsy. Then she was dictating her report and signing off on all the evidence and lab orders and forensics. Then a junior medical examiner had asked her to review the autopsy records on Jesus Vasquez, the murdered inmate from the prison riot. Then Sara had sat at her desk for God only knew how long trying to bring some clarity to her endlessly troubling day.
Sara hadn’t registered how late it was until she’d walked out of the building and looked up into the black, moonless sky.
She stood up from the kitchen barstool. The dogs looked up from the couch as she started to pace. Sara felt useless. Tessa was on her way from Grant County with Jeffrey’s files. She’d hit the tail end of rush-hour traffic. There was nothing Sara could do right now but wait. The dogs had been fed and walked. She had straightened up the apartment. She had fixed herself a dinner that she could barely eat. She had turned on the TV, then turned it off. She had done the same with the radio. She was so antsy that her skin itched.
She scooped her phone off the counter. She re-read her last texts to Will: A telephone with a question mark. Then a dinner plate with a question mark. Then a single question mark.
He had not written back.
Sara told herself the obvious—Will had lost track of time, too. They were handling a murder now. Possibly multiple murders. Lena had probably flipped everything upside down the way that Lena always did. Sara shouldn’t read too much into his silence. Nor should she read anything into the fact that Will had obviously turned off his phone. Sara had tapped the Find My app half a dozen times trying to locate him on the map, and each time, all she’d gotten was Lena’s address and the number of minutes, then hours, that had passed since Will had been there.
Sara heard a banging at the door.
“Sissy?” Tessa’s knock sounded more like a kick. “Hurry up.”
Sara found Tessa juggling three file boxes. She’d left shoe scuffs on the bottom of the door.
“Don’t help, I’ve got it.” Tessa dumped everything onto the dining room table. Thankfully, Jeffrey had strapped down the lids. “You wouldn’t believe that traffic. I got a blister on my palm from pounding on the horn. And now I’m dying of thirst.”
Sara gathered from her tone that she didn’t want water. She hesitated before opening the bottom cabinet. Will had a thing about Sara drinking, as if one glass of Merlot was going to turn her into Judy Garland.
“Scotch.” Tessa reached past her and grabbed the bottle. “Pour me a small one, like what you’d give to a baby. I’ve got to drive back tonight. What’s with the paper towel?”
“Don’t ask.” Will dried paper towels to reuse them, because her smart, sexy boyfriend had apparently grown up during the Depression. “Why do you have to drive back tonight?”