“Rad.” The voice on the other end belonged to one of the patrol officers who’d been at the memorial earlier. “You need to get out to the burned-out cabin at Ember Lake. The floor has been ripped up. The whole place has been gone through.” A brief pause. “And… We found a body.”
“Who?” Rad’s eyes moved to his father’s face.
“Mrs. Clark,” the officer replied. “The Morrisons’ housekeeper.”
“We’re on our way,” Rad told him and set the phone down.
He looked at Holt. “They found Mrs. Clark’s body at the old cabin, and the floor’s been torn up throughout.”
Holt was already on his feet. “June and I will meet you there,” he said, and turned for the door.
Rad watched him go.
Then he looked down at the notepad on his desk. He picked it up, carefully tore the page free, folded it once, and pushed it deep into the pocket of his dress pants.
He logged out of his email.
He closed the laptop.
He stood up, straightened his uniform, and followed his father out of the office. Rad knew that what was on that page had now become his business, and it was long overdue for the truth to be told. Because he was sure the one person the truth affected the most was totally unaware of what he’d just found out.
17
HOLT
The cabin looked worse in the late afternoon light somehow.
Holt had seen the file images taken in the immediate aftermath of the original fire, the blackened timber frames and collapsed interior walls, and the specific, comprehensive destruction that accelerant produced when it was given enough time to work. Ten years of weather and neglect had done the rest. The structure that remained was a shell in the truest sense, open to the sky in two places where the roof had surrendered entirely, the walls still standing but barely, the whole thing carrying the particular, exhausted quality of something that had been destroyed a long time ago and simply hadn’t finished falling yet.
The floorboards were another matter entirely.
Holt stood in the doorway of the cabin and looked at what had been done to the interior floor and felt the specific, cold clarity that arrived when evidence stopped suggesting something and started confirming it.
Every board had been pulled up.
Not haphazardly. Not in the way of someone searching in a panic. The boards had been removed with deliberate, systematic thoroughness, working from one end of the cabin to the other in sections, the pulled timber stacked to the sides in a way that suggested time and intention rather than urgency. Whoever had done this had come prepared. They’d known what they were looking for, and they’d been willing to take the time to look for it properly.
June was beside him, her eyes moving across the interior with the same careful read.
“This wasn’t a search,” she said quietly. “This was a retrieval.”
“Or an attempt at one,” Holt replied. “Let’s hope whatever they were looking for, they didn’t find it, or they will disappear into the wind.”
“I don’t know, Holt,” Junes said, pulling on the blue latex gloves that he knew she hated, and gave her a slight rash. “It’s just off.” She spread her hands wide, gesturing. “Victoria had ten years to find whatever she thought she’d find in this cabin.” Her head swiveled as they carefully made their way through what small pathways of the floor were left. “Why would she suddenly do this now?”
“She could’ve buried something here or gotten someone to bury something here and come to look for it,” Holt suggested. “Or maybe Victoria got word that whatever she was looking for was buried here.”
Two of his officers were working the perimeter outside, and the forensic team he’d called on the drive over was twenty minutes out. Lucy was already inside, crouched near the far corner of thecabin where the floor cavity had been fully exposed, her kit open beside her.
Holt crossed the debris carefully, watching his footing on the uneven ground where the boards had been removed, and crouched beside Lucy.
Mrs. Clark lay in the floor cavity.
She was on her side, partially obscured by the shadow of the remaining wall above her, and the days she’d been there had done what days in a Florida summer did to the exposed deceased. Holt looked at her with the contained, focused attention the situation required and noted what needed noting without letting it become anything else.
“What’s your estimate on time of death for me, Lucy?” Holt asked.
Lucy looked up from her examination. Her expression was professional and careful, as it always was when she was working, the personal responses locked down behind the clinical ones until the work was done.
