The Lexus was sweating heat by the time Amanda exited off the split-lane state highway. Sara’s voice text had served as a beacon. All they knew back in Atlanta was that the cell tower that had pinged her text was located in North Georgia. Amanda had started driving toward the downtown connector while the phone company worked on triangulating the signal. Ten minutes later, they were told to go northeast, so Amanda had jumped onto I-85. There was a long, unbearable stretch of silence, then suddenly, the cell phone’s last known location was pinpointed to a radius of less than twenty feet. Amanda had forked onto Lanier Parkway by the time the Rabun County sheriff’s department had raided the King Fisher Camping Lodge.
Two deceased males. No witnesses. No suspects.
“There it is,” Amanda said, steering a hard turn into the motel parking lot.
Gravel spit up from her tires. She had trimmed the nearly two-hour journey by half an hour. Every minute had felt like a year off Will’s life. No Sara. No Michelle. No license plates to follow up on. No witnesses. No suspects. No one to talk to who could tell them a damn thing.
Amanda slotted the Lexus into a space between the motel office and the GBI’s Crime Scene Unit bus.
Will reached for the door handle.
Amanda put a hand on his arm. “Careful what you say.”
She nodded toward the cops milling on the wide porch that skirted the front of the motel. Rabun County sheriff’s deputies. The Georgia Highway Patrol. The City of Clayton Police Department.
Will asked, “You don’t trust them?”
“This is a small town. I don’t trust the people they’ll talk to at church or over fried chicken at the diner.” She let go of his arm. “There’s Zevon.”
Zevon Lowell, the GBI agent from the Appalachian Regional Drug Enforcement Office, approached the car with two cups of coffee in his hands.
Amanda took one of the cups as she got out of the car. “Run it down for me.”
“Nothing new to report, boss. Charlie’s processing the room as fast as he can. He’s got a crew coming up from Atlanta.”
Will stared at the motel room in the center of the building. The door was open. A sheet of plastic kept the air conditioning inside. Bright work lights beamed onto the porch, leaked around the curtain in the window. Charlie Reed would be on his hands and knees combing the carpet for evidence. He was the best crime scene investigator in the state. He worked closely with Sara. He would do everything in his power to help find her.
“Motel’s been vacant for over a year.” Zevon took his notepad out of his pocket and flipped it open. “Owner was a guy named Hugo Hunt Hopkins. Real estate attorney from Atlanta. He died without a will. It’s been caught up in probate while his two kids battle it out.”
“Are they local?”
“One lives in Michigan, the other is in California. There’s a caretaker in and out, makes sure the roof’s not leaking, pipes aren’t freezing.” He shifted around so that Amanda’s eyes were out of the sun. “Look over my shoulder.”
Across the street from the motel, Will saw a metal building clapboarded in wood to give it the appearance of a hunting lodge. The parking lot was empty. The sign showed a rabbit holding a mug of beer.
“Peter Cottontail’s,” Amanda said. “This isn’t a dry county. Why is it closed?”
“It’s a social club. Keeps its own hours. The building’s held by a shell corporation. Been that way for eight years. The guy we believe runs the place is Beau Ragnersen. He’s also the motel caretaker. He makes his money down in Macon.”
“Ah.” Amanda pursed her lips. Something had rung a bell, but she didn’t stop to explain. “Go direct that choir practice for me.” Choir practice was slang for a bunch of gossiping police officers. She told Will, “Let’s go.”
He followed her toward the motel room. Part of the parking lot was taped off. The gravel showed tracks where a box truck had backed into the space. The wheels had stopped six feet from the porch. The tires had lost traction in the gravel, but Charlie had already set plaster casts in the best impressions.
Will stared at the spot where the truck would’ve parked. The gravel looked disturbed where someone’s feet might have been, but maybe that was wishful thinking. He wanted to believe that Sara had jumped down under her own steam. That she wasn’t carried in kicking and screaming. That she wasn’t knocked out, tied up, drugged into oblivion.
“Here.” Amanda found two pairs of shoe protectors in Charlie’s duffel bag outside the door. She pulled aside the plastic sheet. She took a moment to collect herself before going in.
Will instinctively ducked his head down as he followed her. The ceiling was low. The room felt claustrophobic. Brown shag carpet. Beige walls. Looking around, he understood Amanda’s need to steel herself. Will had been to hundreds of crime scenes. He had seen worse, but he had never felt worse.
Blood painted the room in dark, violent streaks—across the two beds, the mini-fridge, the nightstand, the television, the chest of drawers, the ceiling, the ugly carpet. The source seemed to be the dead man sitting up in the bed by the window. His head was bent down, but not in the guise of peacefulness. His torso was ripped open like an animal had torn its way out of his chest.
Will swallowed down acid. The man was naked from the waist down. His penis was black with blood.
“This is the phone Sara used to text Will.”
Will pulled his gaze away from the dead man on the bed.
Charlie Reed was dressed in a white Tyvek suit. He was holding an evidence bag that contained the remnants of a shattered cell phone. He told Amanda, “The IMEI number matches what the wireless company has on file. We’re getting a warrant for the user’s name.”
“Good,” Amanda said. “Don’t waste your time telling me you’re not a medical expert. How did these men die?”
Charlie pointed to the bed by the wall. “This one received medical treatment prior to death. The bullet wound in his side was patched with a chest seal. An IV was run into his right arm. A needle was used to draw the tension out of what was probably a pneumothorax.”
“Sara,” Amanda guessed.
“I’m assuming,” Charlie said. “I’m praying, actually.”
Will didn’t care about prayers. “That’s the guy who called himself Vince. He was the passenger of the F-150. I shot him in Sara’s BMW.”
Amanda did not respond.
Charlie offered, “Someone shot him again, twice, in this room. One of the bullets penetrated the mattress. The other round is still in his chest. We’re going to rush ballistics and see if anything comes up on the gun.”
Amanda asked, “And the second man?”
“Without being a doctor—” Charlie caught her look. “I think we can assume he was stabbed to death. Look at the handprint on the headboard.”
Now that he was pointing at it, Will could make out the bloody outline of four slender fingers and a thumb wrapping around the wooden edge.
Charlie said, “My guess is that the attacker was either a woman or a very small man.”
Will looked at his own hand, as if holding Sara’s hand for so long had made him an expert on the bloody impression her fingers would leave. Could she kill a man like that? Straddle him, stab into his neck and chest so many times that the skin started to pulp?
He fucking hoped so.
Amanda snapped her fingers for Will’s attention. She was waiting.
He walked around the bed. He squatted down on the floor. He looked up. The taste of the man’s name filling his mouth was sickening. “Adam Humphrey Carter.”
Charlie said, “That tracks with the wound in his upper thigh. The femoral artery was nicked. His pants were cut off. I’m assuming a procedure was started to remove the knife. Then—”
“The then doesn’t matter.” Will drilled his words into Amanda. “There were five guys at the car accident. The one called Merle is already at the morgue. Vince is dead. Carter is dead. The fourth guy, Dwight, was knocked out the entire time. Hurley is the only man left who can identify my face, and he’s cuffed to a hospital bed under armed guard.”
She pressed her lips together. “Anything else, Charlie?”
Charlie looked uncomfortable to be caught between them. “I think someone was taken into the adjacent room. The bedspread shows blood transfer, not active bleeding. Also, you probably didn’t smell it when you walked in, but I caught a whiff of rubbing alcohol when I opened the door. Someone tried to remove any trace of their fingerprints from the scene. The table has been wiped down, so he or she must’ve been confined mostly to this area by the window. I’ll need to luminol the entire motel to make sure we’re not missing anything. But if we find a fingerprint in blood, that puts the person here when the murders took place.”