“Did you check the arrival and departure logs at the gate?” Nick asked.
Joey answered. “No one signed in today who wasn’t supposed to be here.”
Nick’s cane tapped an agitated beat against the floor. “What did the email say? Anything other than the photo?”
“Sam printed a copy.”
Paper rustled. Nick read aloud, “You’re taking too long and you know what I want. Pay up before I give them all your buried secrets.”
“Any idea what it means?” Samara asked.
“Someone’s blackmailing Zhirov,” Nick said thoughtfully, as if he was working through a puzzle. “Sounds like they’re threatening to turn over evidence if he doesn’t comply with their demands. But evidence of what?”
“I wondered the same thing,” Joey said. “A body in a shallow grave could be a reference to Zhirov’s upcoming trial, but none of those bodies were hacked up like that dummy.”
“What about the name … Carl?” Nick asked.
“I did a quick search of the files from Zhirov’s investigation,” Joey said. “The name Carl only yielded one hit—Carl Westover, Theresa Hall’s stepfather. According to public records, he died last year. Stage four cancer. He was buried at home on a family plot.”
Vero squeezed my hand. Only part of that was true. Carl was presently buried at his home on a family plot—or at least, most of him was—but it hadn’t been his cancer that killed him. And one very large piece of him was still buried on my ex-husband’s farm.
The paper rustled again. My skin prickled at the renewed sense of urgency in Nick’s voice. “You think this message to Feliks has something to do with him?”
“Only one way to know for sure,” Joey said. “It’s a long shot, but if there’s something in that man’s grave that could implicate Zhirov—something big enough to be worth blackmailing him over—it might be worth checking out.”
Vero covered her mouth to stifle a gasp.
“We’ll never get a warrant to exhume him on a hunch,” Nick said. “We need something solid we can take to a judge.”
“What about his wife?” Joey asked. “You think Barbara Westover would mind if we poked around her property?”
“She hates Feliks Zhirov almost as much as I do,” Nick said. “It’s worth a try. Classes don’t start until ten tomorrow. I can head to the Westovers’ first thing in the morning and be back before the mock trial. Sam, can you go back through our network traffic and see if there were any other outgoing emails to that same address? It’s possible this wasn’t the first.”
“I’m on it.”
“Want me to do a search of the area where we buried the dummy?” Joey asked. “See if I can find anything?”
“Don’t bother,” Nick said. “Whoever staged that photo was smart. They knew dozens of students would be tromping all over those woods tonight. You’d be better off picking through the clues the students found. See if anything jumps out that wasn’t part of the exercise.”
I touched the hardware receipt in my pocket as the door to the faculty lounge shut behind them.
“This is not good,” Vero said.
“We have to get to Mrs. Westover before Nick does. If they dig up that grave and find Carl in pieces, they’ll open an investigation into his death. That will lead them straight to Barbara Westover and her daughter, and Theresa will lead them straight to us.” Feliks had been responsible for murdering Carl, but we’d all had a hand in covering it up. “Come on, we have to go.”
“Go where?” Vero whispered, chasing me out of the lounge through the dark cafeteria. “We can’t go anywhere. We don’t have a car!”
“We need Barbara Westover to move her husband’s body, and we can’t call her from here.”
I threw open the exit door and paced under the awning, shaking out my hands. It had begun to rain, a nasty wet mix of icy, slushy drops. I ran a hand down my face, willing myself to sober as the reflection of the parking lot beyond the fence blurred against the pavement. We couldn’t sign ourselves out; there would be a record of us leaving the campus. Somehow, we had to slip past the duty officer at the gate and find a car.
“What if we sneak out and ask Javi to meet us near the road?” Vero suggested.
“You said he’s meeting with his buyers about the Aston tonight.” Besides, Javi already knew too much. We’d have to do this on our own.
An unmarked police car turned into the parking lot. The officer on duty waved it past the security booth. The sedan didn’t even have to come to a full stop before entering the gate.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and hunched over the screen.
“What are you doing?” Vero asked.
“Texting my sister.”
You awake? I typed.
Three chat dots appeared, then, What’s up?
Need to run to the pharmacy for tissues and cold medicine. Can I borrow your car? Georgia was practically a germophobe. There was no way she would offer to drive me.
Sorry. Had an emergency. I’ll be back in the morning. See if Nick can take you.
My laugh was almost hysterical, and probably a little drunk. I shielded my face from the rain with my sleeve, pushing up on my toes to peer out over the parking lot. Sure enough, my sister’s car was nowhere in sight. My arm fell away from my face as I did a double take at the rows of retired police cars.
The training cruisers … Wade kept the keys in his top right desk drawer.
“I think I can get us a car,” I said. “Can you find us a uniform? You know, like the sweatshirts and hats the instructors have been wearing?”
“Where am I supposed to find one of those?” Vero asked.
“Try the locker room or the laundry. We just need something official. Something a cop here would wear. And make sure it’s warm,” I said as she turned to go. I had a feeling it was going to be a very long night.
CHAPTER 21
I wasn’t sure what I had expected when I’d scanned the card key I’d stolen from the metal box in the cabinet of the faculty lounge, but the soft click of the lock releasing still took me by surprise. The air inside Wade’s office smelled faintly of stale tobacco. A pale glow filtered through the window to the shooting range where a light had been left on in one of the stalls. A paper target dotted with tightly packed holes hung below it like a ghost.
“Hello?” I called out, just in case I wasn’t alone, my mind already spinning a story to explain what I was doing here with a stolen key at three in the morning. My voice echoed back to me as I tiptoed through the office. I checked the corners of the room for cameras, but the only ones I remembered seeing the day before had been inside the shooting range, directed toward the stalls. I crept toward Wade’s desk and slid open his top right desk drawer. Rummaging under a can of chewing tobacco, a soft pack of Marlboros, some notepads, and a lighter, I found a handful of key rings at the bottom.
The key chains had all been labeled with a permanent marker. I squinted at the makes, models, and years, looking for the oldest one. Hopefully no one would notice if a well-worn training sedan came back with a near-empty tank of gas or a little extra road grime.