“I’m so sorry, Bailey.”
She wanted to cry. “He got his man,” she said. “That’s it, isn’t it? He didn’t need it anymore.”
His man.
Logan. Her husband. She brought a hand to her belly. The father of her child.
“Check the closet,” Stephanie suggested. “You never know.”
Bailey did. Two cardboard boxes. “Bingo. Let’s get to it so we can get out of here.”
One box was full, the other nearly empty. Bailey started with the full one. Photos. Newspaper clippings. Notes.
The victims in neatly organized and labeled folders. The first was Nicole Grace. The fifteen-year-old girl found strangled.
Nicole. The letter N.
The image of the initial necklace, its lightweight chain draped across her fingers, popped into Bailey’s mind.
With the image, Henry’s voice. And her own. Asking where he had found the box.
“Where did you get these things, Henry?”
“Found ’em.”
“Where?”
“Aren’t they pretty?” He looked hurt. “I thought you’d think they were pretty.”
“I do, Henry. Please … I just—” She cleared her throat. “Were they all together like this? In the box?”
He nodded. “Did you see? Logan’s box. Roane had one, too.” He frowned. “Don’t know where his went. With him, maybe.”
Bailey’s stomach went sour. She struggled past the feeling. “So, all the pretty things were in the box. Where, Henry? Where did you find the box?”
“I shouldn’t have taken it. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’m not mad.” She made her voice as gentle as possible. “I just need to know where you got this.”
“The bad place. I’m not supposed to go there. No one is.”
“The bad place?” She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Bad things—” His eyes filled with tears. “Roane.”
The hay barn. Where Roane hung himself.
Located far from the house. No longer used, left to deteriorate. What better place for a killer to set up shop? Obviously, he stored his treasures there. Did he bury his victims there, as well? Did he bring them there to die?
She reined in her imagination. She couldn’t let it run away with her, not now.
Her hands shook. She tried to hide it from Henry. “I need to go there. You have to tell me how to get there.”
“Miss True, you can’t go out there.”
“You could take me, Henry. Show me the way.”
“Can’t drive.” He peered out the window. “Too far to walk now.”
The golf cart, she thought, then rejected the idea. She would have to explain why she needed it.
And she wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.
This might be her only chance. She had to know. Before she took this to Logan. Or the police.
“How can we get there, Henry?”
“Ride.”
She started to shake her head, then stopped. August had told her she was ready. Tea Biscuit was as gentle a horse as one could be.
She was up to it, she promised herself. She could do it. Not just for her marriage, but now, for her child as well.
“Yes, Henry, that’s a good idea.” He smiled happily and she stood. “I’ll go change clothes and come back on Tea Biscuit. Then we’ll go together.”
CHAPTER SIXTY
Thursday, April 24
2:05 P.M.
Bailey lifted her gaze. Stephanie in the doorway. Looking at her, the oddest expression on her face.
Bailey blinked. “What’s wrong?”
“Just checking on you. What have you found?”
Not what she’d found, what she’d remembered. But she didn’t have time to share that now. She shook her head. “It’s pretty much all here. How about you?”
She slid her hands into her pockets. “The photos he lifted from Uncle Henry’s. Some others. I don’t want to be here much longer. I have this feeling he’ll be back soon.”
Bailey nodded and got back to the material in front of her. She took the spiral notebook and pen from her purse.
She carefully wrote Nicole Grace’s name and placed a number one beside it. The teenager had been strangled. The initial necklace must have been hers. Her killer had taken it from around her neck.
Trista Hook. Long, wavy hair. In one of the pictures, she had it pulled away from her face. Could the sparkly hair clip have been hers? She noted her question and moved on.
Amanda LaPier. Number three. She flipped through news clippings, stopping on a brief bio. Graduated from Covington High in 2010. The class ring had belonged to her.
In her mind, that clinched it. The class ring, the initial pendant … A killer’s souvenirs. His box of trophies.
No doubt that’s what it had been.
Billy Ray had begun a file on Dixie. Bailey saw nothing in it she didn’t already know.
True’s file. Logan’s. Then … nothing.
She frowned. The other three woman, where were they? She pictured the whiteboard, the diagram. Remembered standing in front of it … the names.
Why had Billy Ray excluded them from the box? What did it mean?
Something. Something important.
“Ready when you are.”
Bailey glanced up at Stephanie. “One last look through.”
She took her time, knowing this would be her last opportunity to peek into Billy Ray’s mind. She made a few more notes, reviewed them quickly, then stood.
“Leave the top off the box and the closet door open.”
Bailey frowned. “Why?”
“It’ll totally mess with his head.”
In another situation, where the stakes weren’t nearly so high, she would have smiled—even laughed—at the suggestion. But the stakes today were about as high as they could get. “Are you sure you want to do that? He could figure it out.”
“Let him. I’m itching for a confrontation.”
She was, Bailey realized as they drove away from Billy Ray’s. She could see it in the way she clenched and unclenched her hands on the steering wheel, the muscle that jumped in her tight jaw.
“What’s wrong?” Bailey asked.
“Too many memories. That’s all.”
But it wasn’t. Obviously. “What did you do in there?”
“Looked around.”
“Find True’s head in the freezer?”
“What! No.”
“Someone else’s head?”
“No, God, no. Bad joke, Bailey.”
“I was only half joking.”