The man hesitated a moment, as if fumbling through his files. “Yeah, uh . . . I have his file here, but I’m gonna have to call you back.”
“No, you don’t.” Joe had had enough. “I’m trying to conduct a police investigation here, and I need to know if the man’s shooting was a suicide attempt or a homicide attempt! You people are supposed to be the forensics geniuses. Just tell me if the man had gunpowder stains on his fingers!”
Silence again, then finally, a loud sigh. “All right, Detective, just a minute.” More fumbling. “Okay, the man did not have gunshot residue. Of course, this isn’t conclusive. The rain or blood could have washed it off.”
Joe leaned back hard in his chair. “All right, fax me that report, will you?”
The man agreed, and Joe hung up. Carefully, he read back over his notes and studied the photographs taken at Clark’s car. The fact that Clark had no gunshot residue on his hands only corroborated the conclusions he’d already drawn. The gun had been fired from at least two feet away. From the position of the bloodstains, it appeared that Clark was resisting the shot, backing away, possibly opening the door.
His shirt had a trace of mud stains that hadn’t been completely washed away by the rain, as if he’d fallen out on his back.
Those things, coupled with the angle of the bullet hole and, now, the lack of gunpowder residue on the dead man’s fingers made Joe suspect that someone in the passenger seat had shot him, then left him for dead. But Clark had lived, and he had gotten up and stumbled through the woods to the busy street beyond them.
So it was a homicide. Someone had been with William Clark when he pulled his car into the woods. Someone had shot him, then vanished.
But who?
His wife?
The gun had been registered to William Clark. So someone had shot him with his own gun, and other than his and his wife’s, there were no new prints on either the gun or the car. Ann Clark was looking guiltier all the time.
And how did Cade fit into this? If the woman had tried to kill him, then the fact that Cade ran into him would not provoke an act of revenge.
But the man had spoken to Cade. He distinctly remembered Cade saying that in the press statement he’d made. He went to the door and called across the squad room, “Somebody get me the video of Cade’s press conference the other night.”
In a moment, J.J. Clyde loped in with the video. “Want me to pop it in?”
Joe nodded and stared down at his notes. J.J. put the video in and turned the set on.
Joe watched and listened through the statement. Nothing about the man speaking. Then someone asked a question.
“Chief Cade, did the impact kill him instantly?”
Cade shook his head. “No, it didn’t. He was alive and speaking right after he was hit, and did make it to Candler Hospital in Savannah alive. He died shortly thereafter.”
There it was. Joe stared at the television, running the facts through his mind. So the woman, who had heard the report that night, thought that her husband had spoken to Cade. Could she have wanted to get him out of the way before he identified the killer?
But that was crazy. He was a cop. Of course he would have identified the killer the moment the man told him. For Ann Clark to wait for the next morning, then do him some kind of harm, wouldn’t even make sense.
“That it, Joe?” J.J. asked him. “Want me to play it again?”
Joe rubbed his mouth. “No, thanks. That’s all I needed.”
As J.J. headed out, Georgette, the woman who served as office clerk to the small operation, came in. “Here’s your mail, Joe. I’m giving you all of Cade’s too, in case there’s anything important.”
He took the stack of mail and started sorting through, as his mind still worked through the evidence.
And then he froze. In the return address corner on one of the envelopes, he saw the name “Matthew Cade,” typed with no address.
He dropped it on his desk, pulled some tweezers out of Cade’s drawer, and pulled the letter from its envelope. He grabbed a plastic evidence bag from another drawer and slipped it inside. It might have fingerprints, or some other evidence he could use. Slowly, he began to read through the plastic.
CHAPTER 23
The phone was ringing when Blair got home from Hanover House, and she dove for it. “Hello?”
“Blair, Joe McCormick here.”
Blair froze. His voice sounded grim, clipped.
“Do you have something on Cade?”
He was silent for a moment. “Can you come down to the station for a minute? I have something I need to show you. I just got off the phone with Jonathan. I want him to see too.”
Blair didn’t want to know, yet she forced herself to ask, “What is it, Joe?”
“Just come in, Blair. You’re not going to believe this if you don’t see it.”
For a moment after she hung up, Blair just stared at a spot on her wall. If Cade was dead, would Joe have told her over the phone?
She tried not to panic, but forced herself to move and made it to the station in record time. Jonathan was just pulling in too. She jumped out of the car and crossed to her brother-in-law, who stalked across the parking lot with a grim look on his face. “Jonathan, what’s going on? Have they found Cade?”
“He wouldn’t say. But I have a bad feeling.”
They burst into the station together and found Joe in Cade’s office. He sat in Cade’s executive chair, slouched back with his legs crossed, his shoulders hunched as he leaned on the armrests.
He looked up at them with weary eyes.
“What is it, Joe?” Blair demanded.
He pointed to a clear bag with a handwritten letter on his desk and turned it around so they could read it. “A letter from Cade. Don’t touch it. It might have evidence.”
“A letter from Cade?” Jonathan leaned over it, and Blair began to read.
Joe,
Just wanted to touch base with you guys and let you know that I haven’t dropped off the face of the earth. I was just a little depressed after the accident, so I decided to take some time off. The truth is, I’d been seeing a girl from Savannah, and we decided to get married.
I know it sounds crazy, and I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do when I get back, but I’ve never been happier. Let everyone know that for me, will you?
I’ll call as soon as I know when I’m coming back. Meanwhile, I know Cape Refuge is in your good hands.
Matt Cade
Rage rose like lava inside her, and Blair backed away. “No way,” she said. “There’s no way. Cade did not write that.”
Jonathan stared at the words. “It looks like his handwriting, Blair.”
“It’s not, though.” She looked up at Jonathan as if he’d just betrayed his best friend. “Jonathan, you know Cade better than anybody. Would he just run off with some mystery girlfriend and get married? Is that even possible?”
He sighed. “I wouldn’t think so. But at least it would mean he’s alive.”
She slammed both hands down on the desk. “Then why wouldn’t he call?” she yelled. “Why would he write a stupid note like some kind of wimp? He killed a man just a few days ago. He wouldn’t just run off and get married! Jonathan, why would he hide a girlfriend from you . . . from us? It’s not true, that’s why!”
“I’m gonna have a handwriting expert analyze the letter, Blair,” Joe said. “But I think it’s his. I’ve seen Cade’s handwriting a good bit. He has a funny way of making his ds. This is it. And his fingerprints are on it.”
She couldn’t catch her breath, so she sat down and studied the letter again. The paper shook in her hands. She read it over, looking for some sign, some clue, in the words. But there was nothing . . . until . . .
“His signature!” she said. “Since when has Cade gone by ‘Matt’? I’ve never heard him refer to himself as Matt in his life! He goes by Cade, just Cade. Why would he sign ‘Matt,’ all of a sudden? Matthew, maybe. That’s his official signature. But neve
r ‘Matt.’”
Jonathan looked over her shoulder. “She’s right.”
“Of course I’m right.” She bent over the desk. “If someone was holding him, say Ann Clark, she might not know that he only went by ‘Cade.’ It would be his way of telling us that things about the letter weren’t right or true. That he was being forced to write it.”
“Maybe the girlfriend—er, wife—calls him Matt,” Joe said. “That happens, you know. My brother went by Billy for twenty-five years, and all of a sudden he meets this girl, and he becomes ‘Bill.’”
“It’s not the same thing!” Blair said. “There are too many things that don’t add up! This is a sign—a clue for us. He’s letting us know.” “What, Blair?” Joe asked. “What is he letting us know?”
“I don’t know,” she said, her eyes beginning to sting. “That the letter isn’t true. That he’s not really married and irresponsible and reckless. That he’s not really a different person than we all knew.”
Her voice cracked, and she turned away. Could it be true? Could Cade be a different person, someone she thought she knew, but didn’t really?
No, her mind couldn’t adjust to the new picture. It couldn’t be possible.
Tears pushed to her eyes, and she realized that at least the letter did put their fears to rest, that Cade’s corpse didn’t lie undiscovered in a swamp somewhere.
She looked up at Joe. He needed a shave, both on his face and his head. She knew he hadn’t gotten much rest since this whole thing had started. He sighed. “I guess I wanted to believe that Cade’s disappearance wasn’t connected to Clark’s death. That all I had to figure out was who shot him before he walked out in front of Cade’s car.”
“Shot him? I thought it was suicide.”
“Nope, couldn’t have been. No gunpowder stains on Clark’s fingers, and the gun was fired from a couple of feet away, in the direction of the passenger seat. There was definitely someone in that car with him. But if you’re right and Cade didn’t mean anything in this note, then what would the shooter have to do with Cade?”
Blair needed to think. She got up, paced back and forth across the room. She looked back at Jonathan, saw that his eyes were fixed on a spot on the back wall, as if he could reach an answer if he stared hard enough.
“Who knows, Joe?” Blair asked. “But I’ll guarantee you the shooter knows what happened to Cade. If you were going to skip town and get married, would you go park your truck at Cricket’s? No. Even if it was some spontaneous crazy last-minute idea, you’d take a minute to take your truck home and leave some food out for your cat. And he was seen with Ann Clark!”
“Yep,” Joe said. “She’s my number one suspect.”
Blair backed up against the door’s casing. “So are you going to arrest her?”
Joe stiffened. “Not yet. I have some work to do yet, Blair. It doesn’t pay to go arresting people before you have enough evidence. I’m going to start with this letter.”
“What about fingerprints in the car?”
“Well, her fingerprints were in the car, all right, but that’s to be expected. She was his wife. She would have been in that car all the time.”
“What about the gun? Were her fingerprints on it?”
“Yes. But again, she was his wife and they owned it.”
She looked at Jonathan, saw the deep lines of worry around his eyes. “That woman knows where Cade is. She knows who shot her husband. And they’re not going to do anything.”
“We are going to do something, Blair,” Joe said. “Just not your way and not in your time. We’re going to go by the book and get this right.”
“Meanwhile, Cade’s life is in jeopardy,” Jonathan said quietly.
Joe tipped his head. “You think I don’t realize that?”
Blair pointed at the letter. “I need a copy of this.”
“No, Blair, you can’t have one.”
“Joe, please. I just want a copy to take home. I won’t give it to anybody. You know you can trust me.”
He looked up into her face. “Why do you want it, Blair?”
She sighed and looked down at the page. “I don’t know. But sometimes if I have something in front of me, I’ll get ideas. I might notice something. I just want it so I can look back at it if something comes to me.”
He groaned and took the letter into the squad room to the copier, made her the copy. “I don’t know why I’m doing this. But Cade put a lot of stock in your brains, so maybe I ought to, too.”
She took the copy out of the machine. “Thank you, Joe.”
“Yeah, no problem.” He shot Jonathan a look. “I’m not making one for you.”
Jonathan just nodded. “I’ll look at hers if I need to see it again.”
Joe stalked back into Cade’s office, and Blair looked around at the other cops sitting at their desks, staring up at her. They were practically kids, most of them. How could they be expected to solve a murder and find their missing chief?
She headed for her car, and Jonathan came out behind her. “You okay, Blair?”
She turned back to him. “Yeah. You?”
“He’s alive,” Jonathan said. “Don’t forget that. He’s not dead somewhere. He’s alive and well enough to write.”
“Yeah, I’ll try to hold onto that.” She stopped at her car and realized she was going to shatter. Any minute now, she’d fly into a million pieces. “I’m telling you, he’s in serious trouble. We have to help him, Jonathan.”
“I know,” he said. “I agree with you. But Joe is our best bet for finding him. Don’t give up on him yet.”
But as Blair drove home, she realized she had all but given up on Joe and Jonathan and anyone else who was looking for Cade. His life was, quite possibly, on the line. And she was the only one she could trust to find him.
When she got home, Blair crossed the street to the Bull River and stood on the rock wall, looking out at the water. Any moment now, they would get a phone call. There would be a body lying in the woods, and they would discover that Cade was dead, after all, murdered like her parents.
She sat down on the grass and looked up at the dark sky and the angry constellations above her head. Times like these she desperately needed to believe in something. But a belief system wasn’t something you concocted just when you were in need. God wouldn’t exist just because she forced herself to believe, any more than Cade would be all right just because she wanted him to be.
Believing in God had to do with a system of convictions, deep faith, things that her parents and her sister and Jonathan had, things that had never come easily to Blair.
She was tired, bone-weary, for she hadn’t slept well in days, not since Cade had disappeared. She couldn’t think, couldn’t eat, for thinking of him somewhere helpless and wounded, praying to the God he believed in that some rescue was imminent. But they were failing him, everyone who loved him and cared for him. Everyone who would hear about that stupid letter and believe it . . .
Tears rolled down her face, and she wiped them away, then got up to walk some more. She had been by his house to check on Oswald at least three times a day. Joe had sealed up the place so evidence couldn’t be disturbed, so she hadn’t been able to go back in. But it was clear he hadn’t been home. His truck still sat at Cricket’s as if waiting for its owner to return. Somewhere there had to be a clue, a puzzle piece, that would lead them to wherever he was, but she couldn’t help believing that Ann Clark held the mystery to it all.
She walked back to her house, but instead of going in, she got back in the car and pulled out of the gravel driveway. As if her car knew exactly where to go, it headed across the bridge to Tybee Island and up toward Savannah. She navigated her way through the town and back to Washington Square. Her heart pounded with urgent certainty as she stopped directly across the park from Ann Clark’s house.
The old Victorian home had an eerie look at night, like a Halloween screen-saver with its haunted windows blinking on and off. Light shone from these windows, star
k white in some, a yellow flicker dancing against the curtain in others. The drapes were closed, but Blair watched them for shadows walking by—Ann Clark’s or even Cade’s.
What if he was there, just on the other side of that wall? What was keeping him from escaping?
Was he bound in some way? Injured? Had she taken him somewhere else?
Or was he honeymooning with his secret bride who called him Matt?
She chased that renegade thought out of her mind. No, Cade was in trouble.
She would find him, no matter what it cost her.
CHAPTER 24
Morgan woke during the night and saw that Jonathan wasn’t sleeping. He lay on his back with his hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling.
“Can’t sleep?” she asked him softly.
He shook his head. “I just don’t know what to do.”
Morgan sat up and turned on the lamp. It lit the small room in a yellow glow, illuminating the pictures they’d hung of Caleb and Sadie, a painting Mrs. Hern had done, and a tapestry wall hanging over their bed that Morgan had made herself.
Even though her parents had been gone for several months now, she hadn’t had the heart to move into their room. It still sat just as they’d left it on the morning of their death.
But nights like tonight, she wished they had a sitting area with a Bible on the table, rather than a twelve-by-twelve room that could barely contain a bed, dresser, and chest of drawers.
Her shadow moved across the wall as she lay back down and snuggled up to her husband. “You can’t do anything, Jonathan,” she said. “You just have to wait, let the police do their job.”
“He’s my best friend,” he said, as if that heightened his own responsibility. “What would he do if I was missing?”
“That’s different. He’s a cop. You’re not.”
“I don’t know what I was thinking, considering a campaign for mayor. I’m completely inadequate. That letter was a cry for help, and here I am in bed.” He threw back his covers and sat up.