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She hung up the phone and looked at Duke, who was still growling and barking at the ground. She tried to pull him away, but he resisted, his teeth sinking deeper into the flesh of the hand.
Caroline felt a wave of nausea wash over her as she stumbled back, tripping over a stray tree branch and falling to the ground. She lay there for a moment, her heart pounding, before struggling to her feet and running back to her house, where she locked all the doors behind her.
Chapter37
"Good morning, everyone," Chief Annie began, a smile spreading across her face.
I lifted my gaze and met hers as she entered the morning meeting at the police station. The room was filled with detectives and officers, all eager to hear any new information she would bring. My eyes were glued to Chief Annie as she addressed the room. Her normally stern face was lit up with a smile, and I couldn't help but feel a sense of relief wash over me.
"I'm happy to say that we have our guy. Everything points to John Baker killing his wife, Rachel Baker, and frankly, the evidence is mounting against him. Now, John is currently in the hospital, recovering from a gunshot wound, and hasn't woken up yet. But there's no doubt in my mind that he’s our man. I want to applaud everyone here for working tirelessly to apprehend him, especially Agent Thomas and Detective Miller, who figured him out and chased after him when he ran. Agent Thomas was the one who shot and wounded him. He then managed to escape and took shelter in an abandoned house but had nowhere to go from there, and he was bleeding too heavily to move. That's when the real estate agent found him as he was about to show the house to potential buyers. Well done, Agent Thomas and Detective Miller."
Chief Annie paused with a satisfied smile on her lips. A round of applause erupted from the room. It was a relief to finally have a suspect in custody.
"But we still have a lot of work to do," Annie continued. "We received the autopsy report this morning, and it's not pretty. Rachel was killed by a single stab wound to the chest. The time of death is between 8:20 and 9:20 a.m. on the day she disappeared."
A hush fell over the room as we all absorbed this brutal piece of information. It was quickly replaced by a murmur of disgust and outrage that rippled through the room. I clenched my fists, feeling the anger and frustration bubbling up inside me. But I tried to stick to the facts, and this news meant she wasn’t killed inside the car since that would have left blood stains.
So, where was she killed?
"And that's not all," Annie added, her tone becoming more serious. "We found a bag of bloody clothes in John Baker's attic. There are also blood stains on the wall in the living room that he tried to wash away, but we found them with the use of luminol. A sample of that blood is in the lab right now, and my guess is it will prove to be Rachel's. As I said, the evidence against him is piling up. He's definitely our guy, but we need to be one hundred percent sure—or as close as we can get, of course. That's where all of you come in. We need to review all the evidence, the crime scene, and everything else with a fine-tooth comb. We can't afford to miss anything. I want us to make absolutely sure we've got everything covered. We need to go through his personal possessions, phone records, and financial transactions to see if anything else can tie him to the crime." Chief Annie paused and looked at all of us. "But personally, I just want to congratulate all of you who work so hard on…."
She didn't get to finish the sentence before someone entered the meeting room. It was the sergeant. He walked up to her and whispered something in her ear. Her eyes grew wide, and she looked at me.
"Okay, listen up, people. I have just been informed that a local patrol was called out very early this morning regarding someone finding something suspicious. They waited for forensics to get there, and it took a while to dig it out. It looks like it’s another dead body. And it was found buried in John Baker's backyard."
Chapter38
"Why are we watching this house?"
David Parker looked at the woman next to him in the car. She was beginning to get on his nerves. Her name was Ivy, she had told him as they drove toward Cocoa Beach, and him jumping into her car when he did was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her, she claimed. She had been his ticket out of Jacksonville, but now she seemed to want to stick around. Parker let her since being with her made him seem less suspicious. He could send her to get the money he had buried in that small area by I-95 that no one knew about. He could ask her to get them food so no one had to see his face and might recognize him. She was good to have around, especially since the police were looking for a man, not a couple. Plus, she was kind of cute with her blue eyes and brown hair. But boy, she could get on his nerves with all her questions.
"I can't explain why,” he said. "I just need to."
She sighed. "We've been watching it for two days now. It's getting dull. I’m bored. This is no fun."
"Well, since this morning, it suddenly got more exciting, don't you think?"
Parker's eyes were fixed on the house at the end of the street. There was a flurry of activity with several police cars and forensic vans parked out front. His heart pounded, and he knew he was taking a huge risk by sitting there, watching.
Parker watched as the police officers went in and out of the house, carrying evidence bags and searching through drawers. His mind raced as he tried to piece together why they were there. What did they find that was so important? What secrets were hidden in this house? He had a feeling he knew. The house had been already blocked off when they got there, but this morning, something had happened, something unusual, and now it was crawling with more police than ever.
Ivy shifted in her seat, obviously uncomfortable with their current situation. "What do you think is going on?" she asked impatiently.
Parker shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "But I think it has something to do with me." He didn't want to tell her why he was watching the house, not yet anyway. He had his suspicions, but he needed more information before he could be certain.
As he watched the house, he couldn't help but feel a pang of fear in his chest. What if they saw him? What if they knew he was here, watching, waiting? He tried to calm himself, telling himself that he was being crazy. But he couldn't shake the feeling that he was being watched, too. He was probably just being paranoid.
"And why do you keep writing things in that notebook of yours?" she asked.
"I'm noting things down so I won't forget," he said. "And I have seen my share of things since we got here. While you were sleeping most of the time."
"Well, I was tired after the long drive. It was quite exhilarating, though," she chirped. "Escaping the long hand of the law. Don't you think?"
He gave her an annoyed look. No, he didn't find any of this exhilarating or even exciting at all. This was his daughter. She had been murdered. He heard on the news when they stopped at a diner that they had found her body—at a freaking storage unit. He had wanted to cry, to shed tears, but the anger that boiled inside him prevented him from doing so. His rage was so intense that he couldn’t muster a single tear, only the burning desire to set things right.
Chapter39
As soon as Matt and I pulled up to the house, we could see the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles. The adrenaline was already coursing through my veins as we approached the front door, where a group of officers was gathered.
