“I’m still trying to figure out how you knew to look here,” Jamison told Caleb, his tone suspicious, his eyes narrowed.
“It wasn’t Caleb, it was me,” Sarah informed him. “I heard how this is where the housekeeper from the Grant place was lynched, and when I came out here on a tour today, I started looking around, and I saw how the dirt looked disturbed. Then I remembered that the Jane Doe had been buried before being thrown in the water. I didn’t know we’d find Winona Hart, but I thought we might find proof that Jane Doe had been buried here and then dug up.”
“I find it more than interesting that you keep finding dead people,” Jamison said to Caleb.
Caleb tried to think about everything Adam had ever tried to teach him about keeping his cool. “You know, the night Winona Hart disappeared—”
“You had just gotten to town,” Jamison said. “You were with us on the dive the next day. So you were here when she disappeared.”
“And you had mud all over your shoes earlier today, before you ever came out here tonight, didn’t you?” Caleb countered.
Jamison swore. “I’m a homicide lieutenant, and I know my business. Get out of here—get out of here now, before I arrest you.”
Furious, Sarah spun around to leave the cemetery.
Caleb followed her quickly.
“Hey, Anderson!” Jamison called after them.
In unison, Caleb and Sarah stopped and turned back. They might have been onstage, caught in the unforgiving glare of the floodlights. Everyone working the crime scene stopped awkwardly to watch.
“Don’t even think about going anywhere,” Jamison said loudly. “I spoke to Renee Otten again today. She thinks she saw you on the street, right before she was attacked.”
Caleb stepped forward angrily, but Sarah grabbed his arm to stop him. “Tim, that’s impossible, and I told her so. Caleb was with me. We left the bar, walked back to my house and went to bed. We didn’t leave until this morning.”
“Are you sure he didn’t duck out in the middle of the night, Sarah? While you were asleep, maybe?” Jamison asked.
“Of course I’m sure,” Sarah said indignantly.
Caleb got hold of his temper at last. “I know exactly where I was, lieutenant. My conscience is completely clear—on every level. Can you say the same?”
Then he took Sarah’s arm, and they left together.
It was growing late, so they considered and rejected the idea of stopping at Hunky Harry’s, and went straight to the house. Caleb felt more tense than ever before in his life. Sarah went upstairs to take a shower, and when she came down, he was pacing like a caged tiger, furious that Jamison was trying to direct suspicion toward him.
“Get the mud off—you’ll feel better,” she told him.
He nodded and headed up the stairs. The water was steaming hot, and as he stood beneath it, eventually some of the tension began to ease.
When he went back downstairs, Sarah was busy in the kitchen.
“Omelets,” she said.
“That sounds wonderful,” he told her, then sat at the counter, grabbed a scratch pad and started making notes as he talked his way through everything they knew so far. “Killed, that we know about—Frederick Russell, banker. His wife claims he went to help someone and got himself murdered, and that he would never have driven off a curve. Jane Doe—we still don’t know her story. Winona Hart, found this evening buried in unhallowed ground, near where a witch was hanged.”
Sarah came over to stand by him. “Don’t forget the past. We know that a girl named Susan Madison was murdered—and that Nellie Brennan saw the corpse. Also, I looked it up in the records today and found out that Nellie herself died from a fall from her bedroom window, not long after she saw the corpse. At least one other girl’s corpse turned up, too—and don’t forget Eleanora. And then there are the bones in my walls. Maybe they’re connected somehow, too. Plus there are several references to Martha Tyler’s book of spells. Our killer has to be someone who knows all the stories—who’s maybe even found the book—and is trying to replicate history.”
She hesitated, then asked, “What was going on tonight between you and Jamison? Why were you talking about mud?”
“When I went to see him at the station today, he had mud all over his shoes. Mud—like the dirt we dug up tonight, outside the cemetery.”
“Oh, my God, you can’t think that Tim Jamison…” Sarah’s voice trailed off, but her horror was written all over her face.
“He’s a local. He knows the area, the tides, how to fool forensics—and all the stories. And even some of the other cops are starting to talk,” Caleb told her.
“Plus he’s seeing Cary Hagan,” Sarah said thoughtfully.
“Either that—or he wants people to think he’s seeing her, setting up an alibi. Better to be an adulterer than a murderer,” Caleb said.
“As soon as we’re done with dinner, I want to pay a visit to your friend Renee. And then you and I are going bar-hopping.”