Page 376 of A Matter of Time

“That guy was soup,” Chloe groaned. “It was disgusting.”

“Who fills an outdoor freezer with hot water and then puts a body in there?” Hefron asked.

“A fuckin’ psychopath that hopes the body will never be found,” Sam answered, rubbing his cheek against my forehead.

“Why didn’t he just bury the body?” Chloe asked.

“Ground is cold and hard now.” Hefron sighed loudly. “Too much time and effort. This just keeps getting bigger and weirder instead of starting to make sense.”

“What’d you find on Greg Fain’s body? Anything?”

“Jory’s phone was in the pocket of his jeans, but maybe when he and his partner took it off him, he just kept it. I doubt it was actually placed there like the other items we’ve found.”

“Did you find any other prints anywhere at the house?”

“Nope. There are no prints anywhere but in the shed. There’s no evidence at all that either Jory or Caleb were ever in the main house.”

“Shit. No blood, nothing?”

“Trace amounts of Caleb’s and Jory’s blood were found in the shed, but nowhere else.”

“And Greg Fain?”

“His blood’s in the shed too, but again, nowhere else.”

“How is that even possible?”

“This guy’s careful, Sam, really careful.”

“And the ME figures Fain died how?”

“He took a bullet to the head—thirty-eight, as far as we can tell. Must’ve been a helluva mess.”

“Which somebody must’ve cleaned up really good, since there’s no sign of it anywhere.”

“Right.”

I shifted to move, and Sam massaged the back of my neck.

“Beat it. I wanna talk to Jory.”

But I didn’t get up. I found myself too exhausted to move. I just took a deep breath and fell back to sleep.

It worked out well, because when I woke up an hour later, Sam was asleep and everyone else was gone. Major surgery being completely draining, when I moved off the bed, he didn’t wake up. I told the officers outside the door that I had to get something to eat from the cafeteria. Since neither of them could move from guard duty on Sam’s door, I was free to take the stairs without any interference.

Nothing had changed—Sam was still the focus for the cops, not me. I got back in my rental car and drove off the hospital lot, and even though I thought maybe someone would be watching me, nobody was. When I made it home, I parked around the block from my apartment. I got back in the same way I had left and was showered and changed and repacked an hour later. Back in the car, I drove toward Oak Lawn as I called Caleb.

“Hello?”

“Caleb, it’s me.”

“Jory, you’re driving me nuts.”

“That seems to be the general consensus, but listen, I need you to be on the phone with me when I go into the house. Will you do that?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I found the place where we were held today.”