The Healer

  She eventually just set down her fork. “I appreciate this, your quietness. Gage pushes.”

  Cole thought about that. “Gage likes to listen to himself talk.”

  She paused in lifting her glass and laughed. “You’re right. He does.”

  “He’s also worried about you.”

  “Join the crowd.” She rested her chin on her hand and circled her glass, pushing the moisture around. “I’m tired, Cole, deep inside bone tired.”

  He leaned over and rubbed her back. “You’ve been doing a great job. And try to remember that God designed us to sleep for a third of our existence, and you are woefully behind.” A few hours at a time over the last week were not enough to keep her going.

  “I’m getting a crash course in how to lean hard against His strength,” Rachel said. She shifted away her plates and lowered her head onto her arms. “I’m just going to rest here a while before I go back to the hotel for the night. Wake me when the brownies are done?”

  He glanced at the timer he had set. “You’ve got fourteen more minutes.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  He rose to get the teapot as it began to whistle. Rachel had stressed her voice to the limit today. Hank barked once and Cole went to let his dog in. He turned on the backdoor light. The weight Rachel had to carry wasn’t over, for the coming week would be uniquely stressful. With the funerals over and school back in session, it would be a struggle for the students to accept normalcy in life. They still felt overwhelming grief and had to return to the schools where the violence had occurred.

  Cole shut off the timer and pulled out the brownies to cool.

  “Rachel.”

  She didn’t stir.

  Cole brushed her hair back and realized she had already fallen asleep. He thought about moving her but in the end decided to simply let her rest where she was. He kissed her forehead. “Sleep well.”

  He quietly put dinner away.

  The lights shining across the window warned him. He moved to the back door to meet the unexpected company.

  “Can I come in, Cole?”

  “Sure, Lisa.”

  She knelt to greet his dog. “Where’s Rachel?”

  He nodded to the kitchen. “She came over for dinner, laid her head down on her arms, and fell asleep.”

  “She’s exhausted.”

  “Past it. You’ve got news.”

  Lisa pushed her hands into her back pocket. “More of the inevitable, we’re back to looking at the evidence that Brian Rice murdered his ex-wife and that probably started this rolling crisis of events.”

  “I hate to wake her up.”

  “I’m awake,” Rachel said, reluctantly stirring. “It’s going to be hard to prove since Brian’s alibi for the night was his son, and Mark is dead. He’s not around to admit he lied.”

  Lisa tugged out a chair beside Rae. “We’ve had harder challenges.

  If you can handle it, Marcus would like to meet tomorrow afternoon to go over what we’ve found.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  Lisa looked at him.

  “We both will,” Cole agreed.

  Cole had sent brownies with her to the hotel. Rachel let herself into the room she had made her home, balancing the package, grateful for the freedom that came with being anonymous. Now that the funerals were over and the schools were reopened, the reporters had probably moved on from her apartment, but she was too tired to go check. Marcus’s gift of the hotel voucher had become a source of refuge for her.

  She pushed off her shoes and left them at the end of the bed. She laid her pager and phone on the dresser. She only had a few calls to return and they could wait a few minutes.

  Her hardest work of this crisis was coming up in the next week. She had to walk the fine line to teach how it was possible to continue to grieve while at the same time you went on with life. One action did not contradict the other. But for students stuck on either side of that line, it was hard to understand those on the other.

  In a sea of people wanting to move on, there were many who weren’t ready yet. Rachel had cried herself out during the day, sharing tears with students struggling with the fact that their lives were torn apart and yet a new week was coming and it was time for them to get back to the routine of being a student. The sympathy of last week would give way to encouragement, which would appear like pushing to those who needed to move more slowly.

  Rachel turned on the television for the first time in a week and listened to the late news as she got ready to turn in.

  She picked up her diary from the bedside. She tried to keep a diary during a crisis if only because it was a safe place to process her own emotions. She turned to a blank page.

  Day 6.

  The last funeral was today.

  Jesus, I am so glad I saw the verse in the Bible when You saw Lazarus’s tomb. It said, “Jesus wept.”

  I cried today.

  My heart breaks for the four children who were lost.

  Every night I have come to You for strength for the next day.

  I come tonight to ask for sleep, renewal, and strength.

  Send Your healing, dear Lord. You understand what is happening here much more profoundly than I.

  R.

  She closed the diary. News about the funerals came on the television and Rachel reached for the remote to turn it off. She couldn’t handle any more sadness today. Instead of hitting the off button, she accidentally changed the channel. The laughter on the show stopped her and she watched for a moment, smiling. She moved pillows around and settled down to watch the old comedy. Her emotions lifted as she listened to the soundtrack of laughter.

  Rachel wasn’t setting aside the sadness as she normally did. It remained heavy on her heart, a burden that was difficult to lift. In the nearby hotels there were other counselors from the National Crisis Team similarly ending their evenings. Only they were carrying the weight of this crisis not knowing beforehand the community and students they had come to help. They came because of the need. There were days it was easier not to know the community you were trying to help.

  Rachel reluctantly reached over to the side table and picked up the composition book that recorded this crisis. Over time, every crisis brought a change to her life, and this one was bringing a change to her focus and a reexamination of where she was heading. For the first time a tragedy was teaching her that maybe she was at her limit of what she could absorb for a while.

  Life was short. Sometimes cut shorter. She traced the names in the book. So many kids had been impacted by this event.

  She knew what drove her desire to help. She saw a child hurting and couldn’t stop herself from putting her arm around that child. In the midst of her own personal tragedy as a child, she’d been chosen by the O’Malleys. For years she had been giving back by choosing children from within a tragedy she would give her card to with a promise to help no matter what the cost, what the duration, what the need.

  She had found that same kind of lifeline with God. No matter what the need or when she called for help, He was there with everything she required. There was never any lack either in His love or His provision.

  She had returned to the cemetery before going over to see Cole. She sat by the gravesides of Greg and Tim, and she began to face the hardest question: Did she have it in her to sit beside the graveside that was coming, one for Jennifer, for the first O’Malley to die? This family would need her then in a very big way, and she wasn’t sure if she could meet that need.

  Jesus, it’s a lonely time tonight.

  The phone rang as Rachel dozed watching T V. She reached for it and offered a sleepy “hello,” knowing only a few people had this number.

  “Rae, I’ll be by to pick you up in ten minutes,” Cole said, his voice tense, a total change from when she had last seen him.

  She swung her legs over the edge of the bed. “What’s going on?”

  “They found the missing Amy Dartman.”

  All the implications of that ne
ws settled in. She’d known since last week that Amy was missing and that Marcus and Quinn were part of the investigation. She’d known then that the answer would be terrible news when it came. A missing person had been found, and they had contacted Cole. She didn’t ask questions. There would be time for those soon. “I’ll be waiting by the lobby door when you get here.” She glanced out the window and changed to jeans and a sweatshirt, adding a windbreaker. She pushed keys and cash into her jeans pocket and tucked her phone and pager in her jacket pocket. She headed downstairs.

  Cole pulled to a stop before her building eight minutes later, driving a fire department SUV. He leaned over and opened the passenger door as the vehicle was left running. She was hit with the strong smell of pine air freshener. The attempt to kill the smoke smell had been a bit overdone. Cole waited until she was buckled in and then picked up the radio and called in to dispatch.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Carillon Estates. The river finally abated enough to get into the cut-off homes that had taken the brunt of the flood damage.”

  The expensive homes. She’d been meaning to get down there to see the situation but never had. Another team had been working that subdivision. “Who called you?”

  “Lisa. She asked that I pick you up.”

  Rachel huddled in her jacket. They had found Amy Dartman. Rachel had hoped it would be alive, that Amy had somehow been gone by choice, but with Lisa involved, that clearly wasn’t the case. “Do you know why Lisa asked for me?”

  “No.”

  It was a quiet drive that took twenty minutes. The area was crowded with vehicles: police, the coroner’s office, rescue personnel, and the media. Cole flipped on his blue light and a cop waved him through toward the center of the scene.

  The river had not given up its turf without a fight. The stretch of homes on this block was badly damaged. Near the river four homes had been destroyed, the walls knocked out and roofs caved in. The water was receding, but it remained several feet deep in homes at the end of the block. The devastation had left a river of mud and piled debris.

  Rachel got out and stood by the vehicle, scanning the area. She saw Marcus and Quinn talking with a cop and eventually spotted Lisa and Jack. The fire department rescue boat had been brought in. “Stay here for the moment,” Cole requested.

  She nodded and leaned against the vehicle, watching as Cole crossed over to the assembled group. It was a long conversation, but eventually Cole broke free to rejoin her.

  “The collapsed house on the far left—a car crashed through the windows and ended up in the living room. The driver is unidentifiable as the vehicle has been underwater three weeks, but the ID on her is for Amy Dartman. They need the car hauled out of there.”

  “How?”

  Cole opened the back door of his vehicle and took out his heavy gear. “We’re going to haul a chain in there by boat, attach it to the car, and pull the wreck out. At this point the river has beaten the car to pieces. Dragging it out isn’t going to change the evidence much.”

  She held his coat and helmet as he pulled on boots. “Do you ever get asked to do simple jobs?”

  “I was asked to rescue a cat once,” Cole offered. “Lisa’s going to have another tough case to solve.”

  “No wonder they couldn’t find Amy. The car was inside a collapsed house.”

  “Not something they considered,” Cole agreed. He slipped on the coat.

  “Be careful out there.”

  His gloved hand touched her cheek. “Always. Lisa needs to talk with you about Amy’s parents before she calls them. It may be a few minutes though before she’s free to come over.”

  “I’ll wait here.”

  Cole joined Jack at the boat. Rachel watched them push off for their grim task.

  They worked their way to the destroyed home and Cole slipped from the boat. He waded in to attach the chains. Cole came back and signaled the tow truck. The winch started. They hauled the car out of the destroyed house.

  The river had beaten the car into a hunk of metal.

  When it was pulled clear of the water, Lisa and her team moved in. Quinn and Marcus joined the group. Rachel watched as a photographer came in, the car door was forced open, and a body bag was brought in. When the body was removed, a preliminary search of the vehicle began.

  How could Lisa do this job? It was one thing when someone had just died and looked very much as if they were asleep, but when they had been underwater for so many days…

  Quinn was the first one to break free and come to join her.

  “Is it Amy?”

  “Yes. Her seat belt was half off like she was trying to get out of the car,” Quinn said. “I can see how it happened. Carol’s murder happened late on a Friday night; it’s raining; Amy witnessed the murder; and she’s driving on roads at high speed trying to get away from the killer chasing her. We know Rosecrans Road was flooded that night, as were several others. She drove into water and thought she could get across, not realizing how deep it was or how powerful, and got swept into the river.”

  Quinn pointed to the wreckage. “See how the back fender and trunk is crushed in? Something hit that car hard, or the car hit something hard. That impact jammed the doorframe so even if she could get leverage against the force of the water, she couldn’t get the door open. It looks like she was trying to get out the window but she drowned before she succeeded.”

  “Does this help solve what happened that night?”

  “It only explains the mystery of what happened to Amy. The real work will happen at the lab to see if there are any clues that can still be found in all this water-soaked evidence.”

  The drive back to the hotel was quiet. “Would you like a dry towel? I’ve got a couple in my emergency bag,” Rachel asked Cole as he pulled to a stop in front of her building.

  “I’ll clean up at the fire station. I’m getting accustomed to being wet and uncomfortable.”

  He had to be miserable. “It has been an unusual couple weeks for water. Oh—” she dug in her pocket—“for you.” She held out his new watch. “I kept it nice and dry.” She’d had it in her hand most of the night and the metal still felt warm.

  Cole slipped it back on. “I appreciate it.”

  “I hope you get a chance to go home before dawn.” She didn’t want to say good night, but it was very late. He needed time to decompress from this.

  “I’ll help Jack get the boat cleaned up and then call it a day.”

  She slipped from the vehicle so he could get going. “Good night.”

  “If it’s not too late when I get home, I’ll give you a call and let you say good night to Hank.”

  She closed the door and leaned against the window so she could smile over at him. “Do that.”

  They looked at each other, neither one ready to close the evening with action. “Want to talk about the weather awhile so we don’t have to call it a night?” he asked, hopeful.

  She stepped back with a laugh. “Go to work, Cole.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Thirty-four

  Lisa, take the whiteboard.” Marcus pitched her a marker as more people came into the conference room to join them Monday afternoon. “I want to go back as far as we have leads on the missing gun, and that starts with the murder of Carol Iles.”

  Cole looked around the assembling group. From the breadth of people Marcus had pulled together Cole could see how rapidly the school shooting was rolling together with the other investigations into one very broad case.

  “Just a sec, Marcus.” Lisa leaned over to confer with Detective Wilson and then moved to the board. “I’m going to give a brief summary of the time line and then come back to discuss the details within each. Hold the questions for a moment.” She pushed a pad of paper down the table. “Dave, scribe this for me. Some of this information has been coming in over the last hour.”

  Lisa wrote the date March 16. “Carol Iles was shot with a .38 that Friday night. That same night Amy Dartman disappeared.
The lab evaluation on her vehicle came in last night—Amy’s car was probably run off the road. You can see where her vehicle was hit from behind. Her death is also considered a homicide.”

  Lisa drew a line connecting the two names. “We have placed Amy at Carol’s house that night. We believe she was there when Carol was murdered and tried to run from the scene. We assume the same man who shot Carol also ran Amy off the road. We know Carol was shot in her living room, by someone who stood a few feet inside the front door. The floodwaters have limited what we’ve been able to recover about that shooter.”

  Lisa drew a line on the board.

  “From there we have nothing on the .38 until it is used again on April 24 to kill Tim at the middle school. Where was it in between those times? Where did it go after the twenty-fourth? Those remain central questions to resolve.”

  She connected with an arrow the school shooting back to the murder. “We’re coming back to the original theory that Carol’s murder was a domestic case—Brian Rice killed his ex-wife. His son is just too strong a link to ignore. Brian’s alibi for the night of her murder is his son Mark. We have them confirmed at a basketball game at the high school, but the coach said Mark was ejected from the game and sent back to the locker room early in the first quarter. While parents report Brian did take Mark home after the game, Brian left the gym when his son was ejected, and we’ve not been able to confirm where he was for a period of time during the game. We know he wasn’t with his son in the locker room when the coach got back there after the game. Wilson is not ready to say Brian’s alibi has been broken, but he’s close.”

  Cole watched Rachel’s head nod down against her chest as she fell asleep. He gently pushed Rachel’s chair. She jerked awake and shook her head, then tipped her chair back on two legs to rock and keep moving. She’d been returning pages throughout the night and her sleep had been sporadic.

  “Can you break his alibi through tracing the guns?” Marcus asked.

  Lisa looked to Wilson. “The most likely theory is that Brian killed his ex-wife Carol with the .38, and he kept the gun. Mark lifted the guns from his dad and he brought the .38 to school along with the two .45s.”