AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Lucy glanced over at the receptionist, still wringing her hands at the situation.
“Is she the one that leaked this?”
“No, that was the sheriff’s personal assistant, Jill. Finn’s already terminated her employment and sent her home. I’m going to pack up her desk at the end of my shift and drop her things at her house.”
“She didn’t even get to pack her desk?” Lucy asked.
“Finn marched her out as soon as she admitted that she’d told Cooper.”
Zack jumped on that statement.
“She told Cooper?”
That meant that his brother had known for hours.
“She did. Apparently, they were…involved at one point in the past, although I don’t know the details. They’re both divorced and they can do what they want with each other, but from what she admitted, she called Cooper the minute that Lloyd made his statement. She was in the room to take notes. She knows better than that. She was crying when she left but Finn’s a stickler for stuff like this. She won’t get her job back.”
Ah, one of Cooper’s ladies. That explained a lot. But if Cooper knew then it was a good bet that Tate knew as well. Maybe even Frankie. The only question marks were Sam and Piper.
And Joel Winslow, of course. Did he know yet?
Blake picked up a piece of paper and slid it across the desk to Zack and Lucy.
“Here’s one thing that Jill didn’t get to talk about. We got a preliminary report from the coroner. No one has seen this yet except me and the sheriff. It appears that Sarah died from blunt force trauma to the head. Her skull was fractured. She also had a broken ankle. The coroner cannot be sure that foul play was involved. It could have been a tragic accident where she fell and hit her head, especially because her ankle was also broken. You and I both know how dangerous it is out there on those hiking trails.”
“I do,” Zack conceded, still taking in the information he’d been given. “Although we don’t know why she was out there to begin with.”
“That’s true, although Sarah’s mother believes her daughter ran away because of an argument. It’s a strong possibility that she was out there and got into a situation over her head. If the weather was bad, things could have taken a turn quickly. Finn is going to wait for the coroner to make the final call. There’s some toxicology that hasn’t come back yet, but it looks like the official cause of death is likely going to be accidental or unexplained.”
“I’m still not clear as to why she would go out to the forested area,” Lucy said. “If she was running away from home, wouldn’t she go to a friend’s house or catch a bus out of town? It doesn’t make sense. It was cold at night in October. She had to know she would have died from exposure without any camping gear or at least a campfire.”
“Her mother thinks that Sarah never intended to spend the night out there. She might have gone there to blow off some steam, and then was trying to hike back home when she had some sort of an accident. Their house back then wasn’t that far from those woods. Most of the kids in town would hang out there in the summer or on weekends.”
Zack had memories of more than a few keggers there when he was in high school. No one had even thought it was dangerous, but then they hadn’t wandered away by themselves or hiked those trails alone. Still, of all the places Zack would have gone when he was angry and threatening to run away, those woods weren’t it.
“I was hoping that by telling you this, it would set your mind at ease,” Blake went on. “It was probably just a terrible and tragic accident.”
“I appreciate you letting us know,” Zack said. “This whole situation is…”
He simply didn’t have the vocabulary at the moment to express the fuckery that this all was. His emotions were swirling inside of him, one minute angry and the the next disappointed and sad. So many thoughts as to what might have been if this situation had been handled differently.
“I know that none of this is easy for your family,” Blake replied with an understanding nod.
“Will there be a DNA test?” Zack asked.
Blake’s brows shot up in surprise at the question.
“Um, no. I don’t think so. Why would there be?”
“I just thought that since my dad is now connected to Sarah that there might be a DNA test.”
He didn’t want to say out loud that his dad might have had a motive to see his illegitimate daughter dead. Zack had never thought his father was a killer, but now two people connected to Joel Winslow had disappeared. He didn’t like it, but it raised a few questions in his mind. It didn’t help that his dad was an arrogant asshole who never explained anything to anyone because he thought he was too important to have to.
“You might want to ask the sheriff about that. I don’t think there’s any plans to do that.” Blake’s gaze pivoted to the formerly closed office door that had just been opened. “It looks like Finn is ready to talk to you now.”
Who was walking out of Finn’s office?
Tracy Daniels, Sarah’s mother.
