Chris Collier was eating a can of tortilla soup that he’d microwaved in a measuring cup because all the other vessels that could hold soup were dirty. He wasn’t a slob, he was just the kind of guy that liked to run a full load of dishes. And that meant about once a week. Cooking for Emily was one thing. Cooking for himself? A chore. When the phone rang, he set down his spoon and answered.
“Hi, baby,” he said, seeing it was from her. His mood lightened. “Miss me already?”
“You know I do. But it’s more than missing you right now. I need you, Chris. The Crawford case is crumbling. Can you come over to Cherrystone?”
He didn’t ask why. There was no need to. “Of course. I’ll leave in fifteen minutes. I have to put some food out for the cat.”
“You have a cat?”
“Sure.” A kind of mischievous look came to his face. “And you thought you knew everything there was about me.”
“I guess I did.”
“Actually, I’m feeding the neighbor’s.”
That was more like it. She hung up feeling a sense of relief. Not because the man liked cats—always a good sign in her book—but because whenever she needed him, Chris Collier had always been there for her.
He never, ever wavered.
Emily pulled all the Crawford files and carried them to her car.
“Need some help, Sheriff?” It was Jason.
“No, I can manage.”
“I heard about Ms. Wilson,” he said.
If Jason had heard, it wasn’t from her. The word was getting around fast. Too fast. The minute Cary McConnell got wind of it, he’d be in front of the judge in the same breath.
“Let’s keep a lid on it, please, Jason.” Her tone was more scolding than she meant it to be.
Jason looked hurt. “I’m not stupid, Sheriff,” he said turning on his heels and leaving her to deal with the big box of files.
Emily called out after him, but he either pretended not to hear or the sound of traffic drowned out her call. She felt about two inches tall, and ashamed that she’d treated him with such a dressing-down. It was uncalled for. With all that was happening—in her life, in Jenna’s life—upsetting Jason Howard was the last thing she needed.
As Jenna would say whenever something had gone awry with the sorority job, “My life sucks royally right now.”
Like daughter, like mother.
She put the car in gear and went home, thinking that nothing else could happen to make the day any worse.
Chapter Fifty-one
Emily Kenyon couldn’t sleep. Something is so wrong about this Crawford case. It was more than Tricia Wilson, too. She was dog tired, but rest eluded her. She’d tried, of course, but her thoughts kept returning to the blue sleeping bag—Mandy’s down-filled body bag. She got dressed, clipped her hair back, and took a Diet Coke from the refrigerator. She cleared a space and sat down at the kitchen island and reread Jason’s reports. Nothing remarkable.
She pored over the photos taken by the forensic team when it had been examined at the lab in Spokane. She reread Jason’s reports. Her eyes landed once more on the five-inch square hole in the fabric. She wished right then that her eyesight was better, that the hour wasn’t so late, or that she had a photographer’s loupe. Something was percolating in her mind, but she couldn’t quite grasp it.
She looked at the kitchen clock and sighed. It was after 4:00 A.M.—that time of day when it was too late to go to bed and too early to go to work. Emily decided to go take another look at the sleeping bag. Photographs and a report—no matter how finely detailed—weren’t working.
The evidence vault for all of the sheriff’s cases was the size of a walk-in closet—and quite frankly, didn’t need to be much larger. Cherrystone, thankfully, was that kind of place. Emily pulled the clipboard from behind the counter and signed her name and Crawford’s case number. She searched her key ring. She seldom needed the vault’s key, because there was always someone on duty—even with a tightening budget. Evidence was serious business, of course. She flipped on the light. Inside, six black metal Gorilla racks purchased at the Spokane Costco held the bits and pieces of criminal cases still in work. When cases were adjudicated, key materials were dispatched to a secure storage vault in an undisclosed location managed by the state of Washington.
The sleeping bag was cataloged with a code, but there was no reason for Emily to locate it by an accession number. Among the file boxes, it stood out because it was kept in a clear plastic bag. It looked like a puffy blue pillow.
Emily put on a fresh pair of latex gloves and initialed the tag on the plastic bag. When she opened it, it released a musty odor that reminded her of a wet dog, or maybe a men’s locker room. Not overwhelming, but a heavy presence, nonetheless. That was at the first whiff, but by the second or third she’d wished she’d dipped her nose into Vicks, as the smell of Mandy’s corpse filled the room. Emily brushed it off and unfurled the bag on a table in the center of the small room. Next, she pulled on the reflective metal shade of a gooseneck lamp clipped to the edge of the table.
The deep blue sleeping bag lay there, doused in the light, like a moonlit ocean.
“Now,” she said to herself, “let’s see what that hole is really telling us.”
She pointed the light onto a spot near the top of the bag. The five-inch square void winked at her. She bent down closer. The edge of the fabric was fringed from the stress of being in the water, being moved and jostled as Mandy’s body began to bloat when the icy depths of the pond began to warm. She noticed that the fringe of the unraveling nylon fabric was slightly uneven in several places.
She looked up as if to speak to someone, though no one was there.
The fabric hadn’t been torn. It had been cut. Most likely with scissors, maybe the blade of a razor.
Emily looked at the top edge of the bag and followed the lines of the machine stitching. It was clear that there was a start and stop to the seam. It wasn’t one continuous line of thread.
She dialed Chris’s number and he answered.
“Early for you, isn’t it?” after hearing her voice.
“Chris, I know it’s early,” she said, knowing he wouldn’t mind as he went running along the Seattle waterfront at 6 A.M. every morning anyway. “I’ve been down here looking at the Crawford evidence.”
“Either you’ve got insomnia or you’re overly dedicated.”
“Somewhere between the two, if you must label me. Anyway, I’m not sure what it means, but I was looking at the sleeping bag. Remember the tear on the bag?”
“Sure. I guess so.”
“It isn’t a tear. It’s a cut. Someone cut out a window of fabric.”
“I guess I’m not following, Em.”
“When you rip nylon, it is a clean tear between the threads. There’s some jaggedness here. It’s subtle, but unmistakable.”
“OK. So what you’re saying is someone cut that hole in the sleeping bag and they did it on purpose.”
“Right,” she said, “I’ll bet the killer cut the hole to remove something that pointed to him as the owner of the bag.”
“OK. So the person had their name written on the bag.”
“I doubt that,” she said. “This fabric’s too dark for someone to ink a name and address. Even the fattest Sharpie would get lost on it. And really, why would you put your name there anyway? When the bag is rolled up you couldn’t see the name and address.”
“Again, I’m not following you. Sorry, babe.”
Emily exhaled. “No worries. You haven’t seen what I’ve just seen and you’ve never sewed a stitch in your life. I have. I made most of Jenna’s Halloween costumes.” The mention of it brought a warm smile to her face. “Anyway,” she said, returning her thoughts back to Mandy and the sleeping bag, “it looks to me like the top edge was re-sewn.”