“Hale, look at me.”
I force my gaze away from the lake, but it’s difficult to look into his knowing eyes. Still, I make myself do it, to face the cold truth.
His jawline is tense. A muscle feathers along his cheek. He’s holding back. “Are you seeing a similarity?” he finally asks.
I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
My mind flips through my psych classes. One of the signs of late onset schizophrenia is seeing patterns where they don’t exist. Then there’s frequency illusion. Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon. It’s also a sign of stress. Like when a person is working a cold case that resembles their attack.
Simplest, most logical explanation. Stress.
“Focus on me. Right here,” he says, directing my gaze to his eyes. Something flashes in his steely gaze, and he takes hold of the tablet. He zooms in on the laceration. “What does the ME report read?”
“Length of laceration is six inches, though it could be longer. And the case file didn’t have a photo from this angle. Maybe the pathologist measured wrong…”
“There are going to be similarities between this case and yours,” he says. “Certain familiarities that are going to make you uncomfortable, to react. No one will judge you if you can’t handle this case.” He swallows, and I watch the dip along his throat. “I won’t judge you.”
Pressure builds at my temples. I scratch my wrist. “I can handle it.”
He releases a heavy breath. “We should’ve gone over the case together before we hit the crime scene.”
“I’m fine, Rhys.” I catch my lip between my teeth, and his gaze lowers, sending a jolt of awareness through me. We’re too close.
As always, he’s able to sense my unease. He steps back, giving me space. He nods once, like he’s answering some unspoken question within himself. Then: “First thing I did was cover every similarity and search out every disparity. I made sure. Similar, but not our guy. If I thought, even for a second, that it could be related—”
“I know,” I say, forcing his words to stop. I drag my fingers through my hair as I look up at him. “Similar. But not a match to the MO.” Joanna’s clothes were removed. A very distinct difference for the perpetrator. “This isn’t about me or my case.”
“Do you believe that?”
“The victim suffered eight stab wounds to the torso focused on the abdomen, all in varying degrees of depth.” As I say this, his gaze flicks to my chest, and I feel as if he can see right through the sheer material, see the scars. I cross my arms. “The fatal wound was a stab delivered to the left side of the chest that severed her pulmonary artery and lung. Cause of death, drowning.”
I break it down, reciting the report like a pathologist; clinical, detached. This puts the case into perspective, separating facts from sentiment.
I suffered ten stab wounds. One profound laceration to my sternum. I died from trauma resulting in pulmonary edema. The most likely reason for my inability to recall the attack.
Rhys studies me closely. “This isn’t like you.”
I swipe at the loose wisps of hair battering my face. “I know.”
It’s been proven; I’m not an emotional person by nature. Even after my attack, I couldn’t be brought to tears. I wasn’t choked up by violence on TV. The news didn’t make me lose my faith in humanity. Rhys knows this about me, and he knows this outburst of…whatever it is, is out of character.
I haven’t cried since Amber.
I drag in a breath. “The crime scene image jarred me. That’s all.” It’s all I can admit.
He appears unsure at first, but then he accepts my excuse. “We can still go back.”
“No. I want to work this case. Joanna deserves to have us both on it.”
From my periphery, I watch Rhys lift and drop his hand. Maybe a moment where he thought about touching me, comforting me. He curls it into a fist by his side. “All right.” He glances around. “Looks like the third floor of the middle building, and the third and fourth of the last building could have a good viewpoint. We have some ground to cover.”
And like that, the discussion is dropped. Unless I push the topic, Rhys will end it right here.
As we navigate the shore, I snap pictures of the buildings. I tag any apartments in view of the crime scene with notes to further look into. Later, when I’m writing this scene, I’ll omit the conversation with Rhys. No one knows Cynthia or what happened to her. Lakin writes from a place of passion to uncover the truth. That’s her story.
We round the bend, the reeds overgrown and the marshy smell overpowering, and that’s when I see them.
Lotuses.
White and floating atop the gray lake. The flowers bob in the wake like a rolling satin sheet.
Oh, God.
Rhys is already rushing to me. I’m not expressive, but Rhys is even less so—he doesn’t touch; he respects boundaries. But his hands are on me, making a physical, grounding connection.
“Let’s go,” he says, his voice guttural, urgent. “Don’t look.”
I can’t stop staring at the white petals. “They weren’t here before.”
He doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t need to. The crime scene images taken at the time had no flowers. The reports made no mention. The lotuses are new—someone planted them here. Someone placed those awful flowers right over the place where the victim drowned.
9
Book of Cameron
Lakin: Then
Real memory or recovered memory? You might think: what’s the difference? A memory is a memory. Here’s the difference with recovered memories. They’re not always accurate. It’s like code. There’s a sequence to events, and when the mind can’t recall certain details, it looks at the events before and after to splice together the most logical sequence to fill the holes.
So what actually happened will be different than how my mind attempts to fill in the gaps.
I’ve been padding the blanks with what others tell me occurred, and what the case detectives—with years of experience—have deduced.
Below is my recount of that night to the best of my ability:
The thump of reggae music imbued the night air of the Dock House. White string lights dotted the blackness above like a starlit canopy. It was beautiful, and in my distraught state, I swayed to the slow rhythm on a barstool, trying my damndest to forget.
Everything.
Cam had convinced me to go to my parents’ house. To get away from campus. On our way to Silver Lake, she took a detour; a quick stop at a bar to drink away my sorrows.
I chased the burn of heartache with soda. Then I chased the carbonated sweetness with water. Though Cam thought the shot glass held Vodka. I was there for her as much as she was there for me. This was her attempt to cheer me up. I was trying, but I’d never been a drinker. Hell, I’d never been drunk before. But admitting to that would have made me feel even more awkward, and I just longed for a moment of normalcy.
I shivered as the night’s warmth blanketed my body. It was a generic kind of comfort.
Cameron stood at the end of the bar top, flirting her way to another round of shots from the bartender. His name… Tony? Tyler? I waved it off, as if blowing off any of the random guys that had hit on us that night. Except by that point, there weren’t too many around.