He was pulling into the parking lot when she went back out. He got out and saw McCormick at his truck.
“What’s up, Joe?”
He pointed to the sandal. “Recognize this?”
Cade froze. “Jamie Maddox was wearing one just like it.”
Sheila gasped. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.” Cade looked at McCormick. “Where did you find it?”
“Right where it is.”
Cade’s eyes shot up. “In my truck?”
Joe nodded. “That’s right, boss. It was in your truck. Maybe somebody tossed it in when they got her back to shore.”
Cade stared at the dead girl’s sandal. “If that’s been in my truck since Jamie was found, how did I not see it? No, I know it wasn’t there this morning.”
“Then somebody planted it.”
“Just like he planted the body.” Cade’s features were tight, drawn. “Don’t touch anything, Joe. Leave it right where it is. I have to tell Yeager.”
Sheila stared after Cade as he went inside, dumbfounded at the new development.
“I can’t take you home now, Sheila,” Joe said. “I have to stay here.”
She turned back to Joe. “That’s okay. I want to stay.”
“No, you can’t. I have to clear the parking lot. This is a crime scene now.”
“A crime scene?” What was he talking about?
“That isn’t just the dead girl’s shoe, Sheila. It’s a key piece of evidence.” His gaze came back to her. “I’m sorry, but you have to leave.”
Her heart sank. “All right, then. Will you … will you let me know if you learn anything new?”
“Sure.”
But she knew he was distracted and probably wouldn’t. She crossed the busy road and stepped onto the beach. The sun was beginning to set, and Amelia was still missing.
The oppression of helplessness hung like a metal coat over her shoulders, and she walked along the beach under the weight of it, the soft breeze blowing her hair.
With each step, her own self-loathing grew, choking her with its poison. Sins old and new passed through her memory, flooding her brain with that same venom, stabbing through her with deadly aim. She had laughed about them in jail, swapped war stories with her cell mates, tried to one-up them with accounts of near-death experiences brought on by those sins.
But now they made her sick. The drugs, the men, the choices … she hated them all with as much passion as she’d loved them. The very thought of them made her feel filthy.
Yet she still had the capacity to go back to them. Even as she drowned in the misery of those sins, part of her mind still whispered lies, that one drink would drown her sorrow, one snort would chase away this grief, one needle would solve her woes. If she let herself, she could believe them.
She was so weak. So incredibly weak.
Feeling that weakness deep in her muscles and bones, she dropped to the sand, just beyond the reach of the waves, and stared out at the water rolling up onto the shore at high tide, then hurrying back from where it had come. She wept at the sheer absurdity of her condition, the paradox of her thoughts, the division of her loyalties.
Hatred, vile and putrid, for herself and her actions—past, present, and future—forced more tears from her eyes. She had never cried so much in her life. She had never wanted death more.
“Just kill me, Lord! Just strike me dead, like I deserve. I don’t want to live with who I am anymore.”
She sobbed, letting her weeping carry on the wind, hoping that God would forget her sins for the moment and answer this one prayer, if no others.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
She realized as she said the words that she really was. For the first time, she knew that deep, cutting sorrow, that piercing anguish, that true authentic hatred of her sins.
She looked up at the sky, overcast with thick clouds. “Make me new. The old me needs to die.”
She’d heard Jonathan talk “of dying to self” so many times, and she’d pretended to understand what that meant. Being unselfish, putting others first, doing unto others …
But that wasn’t it.
Now she finally understood. It meant putting the past behind, stepping out of that old, sinful self, leaving it to rot in the grave where it belonged. Emerging new, fresh, whole.
But she couldn’t do it herself.
“I need your help!” Instead of beseeching God again to kill her, she found herself crying out, “Save me!”
She imagined herself wearing a dead, decaying skin, darkness on the outside, filthy slime dripping off of her. And God’s hand reached down and unzipped that skin, allowing her to step out of it like a new, regenerated, newly born baby, emerging from its womb.
Born again.
She closed her eyes and lifted her face to heaven. “Can You wash me clean, Lord? Is that really possible?”
A warm, wet wave came tumbling over her, soaking into her clothes, her skin … She started to laugh through her tears.
God had answered her.
Not only could He do it, but He’d already done it.
The crushing weight of her sin lifted, and she felt lighter, freer than ever before. God seemed just a breath away, His ear against her lips, waiting for her whispered prayer.
CHAPTER 30
I know how this looks.” Cade sat in his office with Yeager and Smith, aware that he’d just been promoted from person of interest to prime suspect. “Whoever did this is trying to set me up. You’ve got to see that.”
“The sandal isn’t all we found in your truck bed, Cade.”
Cade gaped at Yeager. “What do you mean, that’s not all?”
“There was blood.”
Cade sprang out of his seat. “What? No, there wasn’t blood. There couldn’t be. I didn’t see it.”
“It was there. The Luminol showed it.”
Luminol was the chemical reagent used to detect bloodstains, even after attempts to wash them away. If it had shown blood …
Closing his eyes, he brought the heels of his hands to his forehead and leaned back hard in his chair. “It’s part of a pattern. I found the body. I have the other shoe. There’s blood in my truck bed …”
He dropped his hands and looked hard at the detective. “Do you even know that it’s her blood … or human blood for that matter? It could be from fish, for Pete’s sake.”
The two agents exchanged looks. “We’re waiting for the lab report.”
Cade knew he was in trouble. “Look, just take my truck. Anything you need … search it, run tests. I had nothing to do with this. Anyone could have dropped that sandal in my truck. It’s been parked there all day. Gibson may have done it himself. Maybe there are fingerprints.”
“We’re dusting, Cade.”
“Good. Give me a polygraph. I want to take a polygraph.”
“We’ll have to take you to our offices. You can take the test there.”
He closed his eyes, nodded. Of course they were taking him in for questioning. What else could he expect? “All right. Let’s go. I’m ready to clear my name and get to the bottom of this.”
Blair drove up just as the tow truck came and lifted Cade’s truck to take it away. The parking lot was still cordoned off, but she parked her car across Ocean Boulevard and hurried over.
Scott Crown stood on the edge of the parking lot, holding back traffic as the tow truck pulled out.
“What’s wrong?” Blair demanded. “Why are they taking Cade’s truck?”
“A piece of evidence was found in it.”
“What evidence?”
Scott looked from side to side, as if he didn’t know whether to say or not. “I probably shouldn’t say.”
She grabbed his arm and looked up at him. “Off the record. I’m not asking as a reporter but as someone who cares about Cade. Please, Scott, what’s going on?”
He turned to her then and lowered his voice to a whisper. “They found Jamie Maddox’s shoe in his truck.”
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She caught her breath. “Who put it there?”
He just looked at her. “Apparently they think Cade did.”
“No! I was with him when he found the body. She was only wearing one shoe!”
Scott didn’t answer, just turned away. Television crews were set up across the street and were filming the tow truck. Finally, a group emerged from the front door, and she saw Cade being led out.
Blair ducked under the yellow tape. “Cade!”
He looked back at her but couldn’t answer before they put him in an unmarked car. Though he wasn’t cuffed, he was clearly not in charge. He waved through the window, as if to tell her that it was okay, that he would be all right.
She wasn’t buying it.
She turned to Scott. “Where are they taking him?”
“To the GBI Branch Office in Savannah. They have to question him.”
Blair ran back across the street to her car, dodging traffic as she did, determined to follow them all the way to Savannah.
When they arrived in Savannah, Blair watched as Cade was led into the state police office past the reporters that had already gathered like vultures. As she got out of her car, she heard a remote broadcast from in front of the building.
“… just bringing Chief of Police Matthew Cade in for questioning in the murder of Jamie Maddox, the girl found yesterday in Breaker’s Reef Grotto off the coast of Cape Refuge. Chief Cade admitted to having written Will You Marry Me on the wall of the cavern where the body was found.”
Blair caught her breath. Cade hadn’t written that. It was already there! She took a step forward, ready to run onto their makeshift set and set the woman straight.
“Sources tell us the girl was murdered with a .40 caliber revolver, the same gun used by police forces across Georgia. Until the sandal was found in his truck bed, police were wondering if Cade had simply been in the right place at the wrong time, but now it’s clear he’s being questioned about the murders. Meanwhile, Amelia Roarke, the dead girl’s best friend, is still missing.”
When the broadcast was over, Blair rushed forward and grabbed the reporter. “You got that all wrong! How could you report those things? I was there. I was with Cade when he found the body. He didn’t write that on the wall. It was already there!”
“Oh, you must be Blair Owens.”
She hadn’t expected the reporter to know her. “Yes, I’m the publisher of the Cape Refuge Journal.”
“And his girlfriend. My sources tell me that Cade admitted going out to the grotto early that morning to write Will You Marry Me on the wall. He wrote it for you, Blair.”
She stood, mouth agape, as the reporter took off to join the other cluster of reporters waiting for a statement. Could Cade really have written that? Why wouldn’t he have told her? Her heart raced, and she couldn’t catch her breath. Her eyes strayed to the door, and she swallowed back the tightness in her throat.
She had to get in there and find out how much truth there was in the reporter’s claim. If Cade had written the words, it meant he wanted to marry her. Hope fluttered up in her heart.
But then she realized that the proposal itself would implicate Cade further. No wonder they suspected him.
She shivered as she understood the complexity of the killer’s scheme … and his fearless execution of it.
CHAPTER 31
Blair knew she had no chance of getting into the police station as a reporter, so she kept her press credentials in her purse and found a back entrance. She slipped inside and hurried to the front desk. The place was a war room full of perpetrators and complainants, the chaos barely controlled by irritable cops.
“May I help you?”
“Yes,” she said. “My fiancé was brought here. I need to know if he’s been arrested.” The word had tumbled so freely from her lips—a lie she hoped Cade wouldn’t hear about—but she knew nothing less would get her information.
“What’s his name?”
“Matthew Cade.”
“Oh, yes.” The female officer looked her over. “There hasn’t been an arrest. He’s just being questioned. Are you the one who was with him when he found the body?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Wait here just a minute.”
She waited as the sergeant left the desk and disappeared into another room. A drunk man who reeked of body odor and Jack Daniels stumbled into her, and the cop behind him grabbed the man’s collar and pulled him back. “Sorry, ma’am.”
“It’s okay.” She looked past the drunk and saw the sergeant coming back.
“Miss Owens, could you come with me? Agent Yeager would like to talk to you.”
She went willingly, hoping to be taken to the same room where Cade was, but instead, they took her to an empty room. Two GBI agents and a transcriber came in with her, and she realized she had plunged herself into an official interview.
She started to protest but then realized that anything she told them could help vindicate Cade. So she sat down, trying to be submissive, and went through the whole story again.
Agent Yeager took copious notes as she recounted what had happened in the cavern. When she finished, he looked up at her, his small eyes boring into her. “What did Cade say to you about the writing on the wall?”
She tried to think. “Nothing, really. There was chalk there, under the writing, and I suggested that it might have fingerprints on it.”
“Then you weren’t aware that he’d written it?”
There it was again. She caught her breath and stared across the table at them. “No. The first I heard of that was a few minutes ago when one of the reporters was broadcasting it.” She leaned forward on the table. “Is that true? Did Cade say he wrote that?”
“Yes, he did. And frankly, I’m a little confused, Miss Owens. Didn’t you tell the sergeant at the front desk that you were his fiancée?”
Busted. She let out a long sigh. “I exaggerated, okay? I didn’t think being his girlfriend would get me in. I needed to be here for him. I had to make sure everything was all right.”
“So the two of you haven’t discussed the writing on the wall since the body was found?”
“Cade’s been busy ever since. We haven’t had much chance to talk.” She sat there, staring down at the wood grain on the table, trying to think. If Cade wrote those words on the wall, then he had planned to ask her to marry him. A sense of loss poured over her, mingled with that fragile joy.
He was going to ask her to marry him …
“Has there been any discussion of marriage before?” Yeager’s question shook her out of her thoughts.
She swallowed. “Not in so many words …” Tears came to her eyes, as she thought back over that day. He’d been so insistent about their taking that day off and going out to the grotto. It had seemed important to him. And when he picked her up that day, he’d had a glisten and a grin in his eyes. He’d been nervous, and very gentle, and enchantingly attentive.
She thought of the struggle they’d both had to keep their relationship Christ-centered, the way he always pulled away when their feelings pulled them together, the way he would kiss her good-bye at night with that look that told her he wanted to stay. You’re so hard to leave at night, he’d whispered a few nights ago.
How could such good intentions have gone so terribly wrong?
She struggled to steady her voice. “I don’t know for certain what his intentions were that day, but I know Cade better than anyone else. He was as shocked as I was to find that body.” She held Yeager’s gaze and leaned in toward him. “Agent Yeager, you’re questioning him. I can understand that, given the circumstances. But you need to be asking the right questions. Who wanted to set Cade up? Who knew he was going to be out there that day? Who are his enemies?”
Yeager didn’t respond. Maybe they were already doing that. If they weren’t, surely Cade was getting those things out in the interview. He wouldn’t be taking this passively.
“Is he going to be arrested?”
Yeager looked noncommittal. “I can’t say. It depends on what we find.”
When they were finished with her, they let her wait in the waiting area. She jittered and paced and tried to fight off the headache clamping on her temples. Two hours went by, and finally, Cade came out. His face was tense, exhausted, pale. She knew the work of deciphering every thought he’d had and every move he’d made in the last few days had worn him out.
When he saw her, his face changed. She saw a visible softening and a smile in his eyes. He was glad to see her.
She went to him, and he slid his arms around her. “How long have you been here?” he whispered against her ear.
“Since they brought you.”
“I’m sorry it took so long.” He stroked her hair and tipped her face up to his. “Take me home.”
“They’re letting you go?”
“I told them everything I knew. Passed the polygraph.”
Relief flooded through her. “I thought they were going to arrest you.”
“So did I. I guess my record and my service count for something. They’re letting me leave, but it’s not over yet.”
They got into her car, and as she drove, he stroked her hair and rubbed her neck, as if she was the one who’d been in the hot seat all afternoon. She wanted to ask him about the writing on the wall, but the words got caught in her throat.
“Cade, who do you think did this?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve been racking my brain. I gave them a list of everyone I could think of who we might have arrested in the last couple of years, people who might have it in for me.”
“Do you think you’re in danger?”
“It’s hard to say.”
She knew that meant yes.
He got quiet as she drove home, and she wished she could take the pain from him. “Are they giving you back your truck?”
“Not yet. Guess I’ll drive a squad car until I get it back.” He saw that she was heading to the station. “You can take me home. I need to eat something, and I’d love to get a shower before I go back to work. It was hot in there. You’d think they could afford better air-conditioning.”
They got to his house, and she sat in the car for a moment, not wanting to say good-bye with so many questions hanging over her. But how would she ask them?