“He lied. They all lied. Read this.” He gave her the evidence report he’d taken from the sandwich bag.
She unfolded it and started at the top, read each line carefully.
Item: one gold necklace with attached gold cheerleading charms. Discovered: clutched in victim’s hand. Condition: broken chain, covered in blood.
“LOST” was stamped in large red letters, obscuring the “Disposition” category.
“They lost evidence?” This was unbelievable!
“Read the part handwritten beneath the stamp.”
The information entered on each line and within each block was handwritten. Male handwriting, she decided, peering at the small, angrily slanted words that she might have labeled simply sloppy were it not for the darkness of the ink and the deepness of the indentation made by the author. Emily angled the page and tried to read between the red letters of the single stamped word that had grabbed her attention before. “Hand carried to lab for analysis by Officer ... R ... A ... Y ...”
Ray Hale.
Her breath bolted from her lungs.
“I don’t believe it.” The words were a scarce whisper, a thought spoken.
“The chain was broken as if it had been ripped from someone’s neck,” Clint clarified in case she’d missed it.
Emily tried to reason what this meant. Even as she did, her mind and body started to feel numb, as if bracing for something she didn’t want to see and definitely didn’t want to feel. She hadn’t noticed anything in Heather’s hand, but then she’d been distracted by the blood and the wounds.
“Does that necklace mean anything to you?”
She nodded. “All the upcoming senior cheerleaders were presented a necklace like that at the end of junior year. It was tradition to receive a special token of appreciation.”
“Do you think the one found in your room was Heather’s?”
Emily’s head moved from side to side of its own volition. “That’s the part that has me unnerved. It wasn’t Heather’s,” she heard herself say as if she were far, far away in some distant place where the pain couldn’t touch her. But it did. “I had Troy get hers from her room the day of her funeral so it could be buried with her.”
“The funeral was closed casket,” Clint countered gently.
Emily flinched. “Yes, but I was with Troy when he gave the necklace to the funeral director. Heather’s was accounted for.” She hauled in a big, cleansing breath. “And it wasn’t broken.”
“What about yours?”
Her gaze collided with his, but she knew the question wasn’t accusing. “A few weeks after Heather’s death my mother packed mine away with a lot of other stuff from that part of my life.”
“So,” he went on, “if the necklace wasn’t Heather’s and it wasn’t yours, why was it in your room clasped in Heather’s hand?”
“You know what it means.” Emily felt sick. The necklace had blood on it. It was broken. Heather had been clutching it in her hand which could only mean she had ripped it off her attacker.
Lunch last week with the others barged into Emily’s mind like a runaway train exploding from a tunnel. Megan had worn her necklace. Cathy had worn hers. Violet hadn’t.
I must have lost mine.
“This can’t be right.” Emily shook her head in denial. “There has to be a mistake.”
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Clint prodded softly. “I need to know.”
She turned to him. “Megan and Cathy wore theirs at lunch the other day.”
“What about Violet?”
Emily looked away, couldn’t believe what she was about to say had any significance. “She said she lost hers.” This was crazy. It was just a dumb necklace.
“On that list you made,” Clint nudged, once more pulling her away from the emotional side of this, “you noted that Violet was jealous of Heather. That she wanted to be captain of the squad. That she wanted Keith for herself.”
