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“Yeah.” Xander Vale was nodding, his expression grim. “I cut her down and Harper called nine-one-one. They got here fast.”
“Not fast enough,” Nowak said. “She was too far gone. The EMTs worked on her, but it was too late.”
“Anyone know who she is? ID?”
Nowak nodded. “Phone and driver’s license in her back pocket. Annessa Cooper. Got a car registered to Clint Cooper, a Mercedes, parked two blocks over on Chinook.” Nowak looked at him. “Must be the husband. Isn’t he part of some financial group buying up properties around here? I read about it. Like from Seattle or Tacoma or someplace up there?”
“Yeah. I think so,” Cade said slowly, his gaze moving to the spire of the chapel, his stomach turning a little. The name meant something to him. “Annessa was local. Originally from here. Last name of Bell.” Was it possible? Another classmate of Rachel’s, an alumni of Edgewater High, murdered? Within a week of Violet Sperry’s death?
“You said she was blindfolded?”
“Tape,” Nowak clarified. “Over the eyes.”
Like Violet.
Fuck.
Cade’s arms tightened around his daughter. He thought of the two murders and the weird text Rachel had received, the vandalism on the house. Connected? Possibly. Certainly more than coincidence.
“Look, you said you got statements?” he said to Nowak. “Let’s get these two home.”
He felt his daughter tense. “You’re not going to tell Mom, are you?” Harper asked, drawing away to stare at him with a newfound worry in her eyes. “Dad, please—”
“I’m pretty sure that can’t be avoided.” He kept his gaze on Vale. “As a matter of fact, I think both of you should be there when I do. Give me ten minutes to check out the scene before we head out.” He turned to Nowak. “You’ll stay with them?”
“You’ve got it.” Nowak gave a curt nod.
“Okay.” To Harper, he said, “I’ll be right back, okay? I just have to check out a few things. Stay with Officer Nowak.”
“I’ll be here,” Vale offered, as if that were any kind of comfort.
“I won’t be long,” he told Harper.
“Okay, Dad.” His daughter moved away from him, looking small and pale.
“Ten minutes,” he repeated, then headed across the uneven ground of the old school yard. Voss was over by the school, her flashlight illuminating the patches of grass and dirt.
“We think the attack started here,” she said. “You can see signs of a struggle.” She ran her flashlight’s beam onto a door and the broken cement of the porch where there was evidence of blood and scuff marks in the dust. “One shoe here.” She illuminated a red high heel. “Another here.” Not far away, the mate of the first shoe lay on its side.
“Then he dragged her this way.” She ran the beam over the ground where shallow, parallel ruts were scraped into the bare earth—a trail leading across the yard. They disappeared in the spots of grass only to show up in other spots of wet earth. “Her heels are scraped, so it looks like he dragged her.” Voss was slowly walking toward the chapel. “He probably picked her up and carried her from here. The door was pried open and there are no drag marks inside the building.”
Cade nodded, reviewing what she’d told him, trying to envision the crime as it had been committed.
A fierce attack.
Brutal.
The killer had been determined.
He glanced up at the spire of the church, and then let his gaze move downward in the night sky to the fence at the back of the chapel. Just beyond the fence, he could see the roof of the building next door, his old man’s law office. A muscle began to work in his jaw. He knew the place well, especially the apartment where Vale had taken up temporary residence.
Hadn’t he used that very spot himself when he was younger?
Hadn’t he and Rachel spent nights alone up in that studio?
Doing the same things his seventeen-year-old daughter was doing with Xander Vale?
What goes around, comes around.
