“Are you two even listening?”
“Of course we are, love.”
Beck is clearly skeptical, twisting his lips up at Cal’s overenthusiastic answer. “What did I just say then?”
“Yeah, what did he say, Cal?”
We both stare at him, waiting for him to say something. When he throws his hands up in surrender, we all share a laugh. It’s short lived, this moment of levity, but it’s a nice glimpse into the future we’re working towards.
“Anyway,” Beck says eventually, ready to get back to work. “I was asking if you had anything on Sanders’s death, Selene.”
“Nothing outside of what was readily available to the public,” I tell him, moving over to the conference table to find the file. “I had Nichelle put it together, but I never really got around to looking through it because I’ve been so focused on Sutton.”
“It was probably the better use of your time.”
Cal hums his agreement with Beck’s statement. They join me at the table, watching as I lay all the items out. There’s the printed history of Sanders’s health, which he made public record after his hospitalization during the campaign. Multiple articles about his death, including an emotional tribute by his oldest daughter that was published in the Times. Lastly, and to my complete surprise, there’s a copy of his autopsy accompanied byphotos taken outside of the Sanders’ Chesapeake Bay home from the day he died.
Press descended on the waterfront home within minutes of the 911 call Deborah Sanders made when she found her husband unresponsive on the patio where he’d been having his morning coffee, so there are plenty of angles to work with. I take the stack of photos and split it between me and Cal while Beck takes the autopsy.
“How did Nichelle even get this? I thought these didn’t become public record for years.”
“They don’t,” Cal says. “But they’re always available somewhere if you know the right place to look.”
He’s right. The internet is a vast and extremely dark place sometimes. I heard once that photos of the report written by the coroner who examined AJ’s body ended up there, free and available for the whole world to see. I don’t find it shocking at all that the same thing has happened here. Sanders died in the midst of an election, so there were bound to be questions and impatient constituents unwilling to wait twelve years for the documents to be released by the National Archives and Records Association.
Both men go quiet, disappearing into their work, and I do the same, walking the length of the room as I shuffle through the pictures. Even though Cal has half the stack, I still have close to fifty photos in my hand. Some of them are basically the same photo just with minute differences like a person’s hand moving from inside their jacket pocket to running a finger over the yellow tape billowing in the late October wind.
It’s an odd thing to do.
Touch a line that’s not meant to be touched.
That’s what catches my eye. The audacity. The disregard. The flirting with the idea of crossing a clearly defined boundary. But what keeps my attention, what steals my breath and makes myskin vibrate over my bones is the scar. Thin and silver in the shape of a crescent moon and attached to the hand of a man whose face I couldn’t make out in Sutton’s photo but see clear as day now.
“Oh my God.”
The rest of the stack falls away, landing in a messy heap at my feet, and I slip on them as I rush over to my desk, clutching the only one that matters to my chest. My outburst has, of course, drawn the attention of the men in the room. They’re on me in an instant, large bodies curved over my desk and crouching by my chair, wild eyes watching my fingers fly across the keyboard.
Cal gazes up at me from his perch on the floor. “What is it?”
Beck scoops up the photo I’ve left beside the keyboard, onyx eyes roving over the photo trying to see what I saw. “Did you find something?”
“Please, just hold on a second.”
They both go quiet, barely breathing while I click through several pages of Google links looking for the article I need. It’s buried deep. I should have been more specific with the search terms, but I wasn’t thinking straight. I don’t even think I spelled his name right. Glancing up, I see there are three f’s in officer instead of two and an extra ‘l’ in his last name. None of it matters though, because after just a few minutes, I’ve found it. The article published just over a week after AJ died, the one that shows Officer Travis Langham in his dress blues standing next to me and Aubrey at our son’s funeral. I’d remembered it as the one with the clearest view of his face, and I was right.
It’s him.
The officer who stood on the other side of a line of caution tape and told me my son was gone is the same man in the photo Beck is holding. With a few clicks of my mouse, I pull up the email Sutton’s dad sent, opening the image he showed me that day in his home. I refused to take it then, but I’m glad I haveit now because it’s a tangible link between Aubrey, Sutton and Sanders.
I fall back into my chair, staring blankly at the screen until Cal and Beck block it out with their bodies, and I’m left with no choice but to look somewhere else.
“He didn’t have the scar back then,” I mumble, studying the skin on the top of my right hand while they compare the man in the photo they’re holding to the ones on the screen.
“It’s definitely him,” Cal confirms. He glances at me over his shoulder. “How well do you know this Langham character?”
“He was the officer in charge of the scene at Beaumont High. I haven’t seen him since the funeral. I don’t know him at all.”
“But you did,” Beck insists, shifting around to sit on the edge of my desk. Cal mirrors his stance, and suddenly I’m the subject of an interrogation. They don’t mean for it to come across that way, I know, but it still does. It’s their expectant gazes and perked ears open and ready to receive information I don’t have to give. It’s the questions that roll into each other.
