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“Have you been inside?” Cassie asked.
“Not yet. I wanted to check out where Lucy’s body was buried first. They began exhuming her this morning. We should make it in time.”
“Perfect,” Cassie said. “I love a good exhuming right after breakfast.”
“Don’t we all.”
As the two women walked up the driveway, David met them halfway. He had a coffee in each hand.
“Hello, ladies.” He handed over the steaming beverages. “Take these. I’m already at my limit for the day.”
“What are you doing here?” Cassie glanced at Harris. “I thought you weren’t involved in an official capacity.”
“I asked him to be here,” Harris said. “And he agreed, despite it being his day off.”
David waved off her concern. “Had to file some paperwork because of the, uh, incident last night, so I figured I might as well see the job through. Plus, we could use all hands on deck.”
“The incident?” Cassie asked. “Is that what we’re calling it?”
“Better than Cassie-was-being-a-pain-in-my-ass-again, right?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Harris took a sip of the hot liquid and sighed happily. “So, you know where we’re going?”
“Yep. It’s about a hundred meters into the woods lining the property over there.” David pointed behind the house and off to the right. There was an officer standing at the edge of the trees. “Right by a big oak tree like Langford said.”
Cassie glanced around the lot. “Lots of big oaks.” She fell in line with the two detectives as they made their way into the trees. “Did Langford say anything else last night? Anything new?”
Harris pushed a branch to the side and waited for Cassie to sidestep it. “No. He gave us most of the basics during the interrogation. His statement was detailed, but no new information. He’s sticking to his story.”
“I’m surprised his lawyer let him open up like that.”
“He didn’t have a choice. We caught him in the act. He’ll serve far less time if he owns up to covering Lucy’s death and says he was coerced into killing the others.”
“Funny how justice works sometimes, isn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t give up hope yet,” David said. “Murder is still murder, even if someone else made him do it, and I don’t think there’s enough evidence there to show that he was scared for his life. Plus, his obvious lack of remorse. I don’t think he’s going to be getting out of prison any time soon.”
“What about his money? His reputation?” Cassie sidestepped a bramble and continued walking the path David was forging for them. “Do you think that’ll give him the upper hand in the courtroom?”
“We’ll work to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Harris didn’t sound as confident as Cassie would have liked. “Right now, it’s about finding as much evidence as we can to build a clearer picture of what happened.”
“What do we know about Lucy?” Cassie asked.
“I had someone reach out to her sister this morning. We have a missing file on Lucy since she’s been gone for about two months, but since all evidence pointed to her leaving on her own, there was nothing we could have done about it.”
“Sounds like you’re still trying to convince yourself of that,” Cassie said.
“It’s hard,” Harris replied. “You do the best you can, but it’s not always enough. You’re going to miss something and you’re going to make mistakes. If we had known about Lucy earlier, maybe we could’ve saved Sage or Elizabeth. But that wasn’t in the cards for us.”
“And we did save Katie and hopefully whoever he had planned for victims six and seven.”
“You were almost number six,” Harris said.
Cassie inhaled and held it for an extra beat. “No, I was bonus number one. Six and seven are still out there.”
“Five, too.” Harris scratched the back of her head. “Lucy was how Langford had described her, as far as we can tell. She was a good person. Did some charity work and kept her head down. Not even a parking ticket. She was way too good for that jerk. She didn’t deserve to go out the way she did, accident or not.”
