“Why did she stop talking?” Because Eliza Cook confessing and then going completely mute was strange, and Vaughn knew that as well as Lucy did.
Lucy was one of the office’s better interrogators, and the only thing she’d been met with after two hours of throwing all that she had at the girl had been silence and the relaxed body language of someone who knew they weren’t going to break.
“There was no reason to say anything further,” Vaughn countered.
Lucy finally slid her eyes back over to her boss, whose expression remained calm and even. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Because murders so often do?” Vaughn held up her hand before Lucy could volley back a retort. “Walk me through what you’re thinking.”
Coming from her, that was significant. Vaughn must have her own doubts about Eliza’s behavior—she wasn’t the type of boss to indulge in an agent’s special pet projects without cause. There was enough of a field agent left in her that she could appreciate a good gut feeling, but there was enough of a bureaucrat in her that she had a constant tally in her head of just how many cases they all had sitting on their desks.
Their budget was only getting tighter, their resources sparser. There was no way Vaughn would let Lucy investigate this further if it really was a closed case.
This, though . . . this wasn’t a no. This wasn’t a firm Drop it, Thorne. This was Convince me.
The hard part was culling logic from where it was tangled up with instinct, emotion, and exhaustion.
“To be able to hold off a professional interrogator for two hours, Eliza had to have come here with the plan to confess and then shut up,” Lucy said slowly, making sure her mouth didn’t outpace her thoughts. If she wanted this case—and she did—this was her one shot. “But why would that be her plan? If she’d simply wanted to turn herself in for murder, why not answer the questions I asked? It would have been far easier for her to do so.”
Vaughn didn’t explicitly agree with the point, but she didn’t interrupt, either, her eyes narrow, her attention completely focused.
“She came to us in the middle of the night, yet there was no evidence she was in the midst of a psychotic break,” Lucy continued, this argument not as strong as the first but still salient in her opinion. Panic-induced confessions didn’t look like what they’d just witnessed in that interrogation room. “What prompted her to come here now? Why at three a.m.? She must have just killed him and then . . . gotten on a bus? Why not just go to her local law enforcement?”
“Psychosis presents differently in different people,” Vaughn pointed out.
Lucy swallowed the snark that wouldn’t have won her any favors. “The weekend. Give me the weekend.”
What Lucy could figure out in a weekend probably wasn’t much. Maybe it would give her only enough time to drive out to Idaho, realize everything was as it should be and nothing was suspicious, and then turn back around. Maybe she’d return empty-handed to Vaughn’s unsaid I told you so.
But Lucy knew if she went home now, if she tried to put this case behind her, she wouldn’t be able to sleep. She’d stare at the walls, her thoughts caught in an endless loop, her body paralyzed by the memory of those eyes, the whisper of that soft, sure voice. The confession that had sounded far more like a plea than a guilty conscience.
Vaughn studied Lucy as if she could see her at her most pitiful, stuck in her dark, nearly empty house, thinking about a murder that didn’t even need to be solved. “All right. You’ll have until Monday. Not a day later.”
The relief was short-lived. Before Lucy could even release the breath she’d been holding, Vaughn lifted a hand.
“But only if you promise me one thing.” Vaughn watched her steadily. “You have to promise—don’t get sucked in, Lucy. I mean it. Obsessions get people killed.”
Lucy shook her head as if the warning itself was absurd when they both knew it wasn’t. She had a habit of getting sucked in, of caring too much. “Just a few days. I’ll check out the body drop location. Talk to the families. The sheriff out there, too. Hicks, you said?”
Vaughn glanced at the short report from the Spokane team that Lucy knew was pulled up on her screen. “Yes. Knox Hollow Sheriff Wyatt Hicks and his deputy, Zoey Grant.”
“Hicks and Grant.” Lucy nodded and wondered once again why Eliza hadn’t just gone to them to confess.
“She knew about the knife,” Vaughn said quietly, an almost non sequitur. “Lucy, she knew about the wounds on the body.”
Lucy ignored the warning beneath the words. Don’t get sucked in. Obsessions get people killed.
“We’ll get a timeline going,” Lucy said, forcing an easiness she didn’t feel. “It can’t hurt the case, right? I’m sure the prosecutor will be sending me flowers when I get back.”
Sighing, Vaughn pointed a finger at Lucy. “You need to get a life.”
Knowing she’d won, Lucy let her muscles unclench as she leaned back in her chair. “Look who’s talking. You were here when Eliza came in.”
In years past, Vaughn’s commitment to the job would have inspired Lucy, would have nurtured a nugget of guilt and dedication that somehow came packaged together to spur her into staying later, working harder. Now it just made her sad for Vaughn. And a little bit for herself when she realized it was early morning and she’d been at the office the entire night, too.
“I have to sleep and shower and become a human again,” Lucy said, glancing down at her pitiful outfit, the dried sweat on her skin sending cascading waves of shivers along her arms every few minutes. “I’ll leave first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Monday,” Vaughn repeated. “If you don’t have anything by then, I’ll come out there and drag you home myself.”
“Grace Vaughn hauling herself into the wilds of Idaho just for me?” Lucy batted her eyelashes as she stood, ignoring Vaughn’s feigned exasperation. She sobered as she paused with her hand on the doorknob. “It’s off, Vaughn. There’s something off about it all.”
“I hope you’re wrong,” Vaughn said, the words bare and honest in the soft golden silence that pulsed in the room.
“You know what?” Lucy said, thinking about how much easier her life would be if she could just get her brain to shut up. “I hope I am, too.”
CHAPTER FOUR
LUCY THORNE
Friday, 9:30 a.m.
The lone figure on the hill was just a silhouette in the early-morning light. A cowboy’s hat, a cowboy’s stance.
He stood unflinching despite the downpour.
Lucy watched the man from where she sat in the safe, still-warm confines of her sedan—the frantic wipers revealing him only in quick glimpses before the pounding rain turned the world blurry once more.
She assumed he was Knox Hollow Sheriff Wyatt Hicks—when she’d asked if she should meet him at his office, he’d sent her this address instead.
Resigning herself to the inevitability of getting drenched, Lucy shrugged into the green slicker she’d brought and then pulled her stubby ponytail through the back hole of her baseball cap, yanking it low over her face.
She left most of her gear in the car as she stepped into the elements. It was northern Idaho, and it was well into fall, so when the water hit the exposed skin at her neck, it sliced like tiny razor blades. There was nothing for it, though, so she huddled deeper into her jacket and crossed the small distance to the man.