River's Edge (8 page)

C
ade drove to the Bull Bridge, clocked out a half mile to the east. The land along the river was largely protected by the state’s Department of Resources, which had laid down strict rules about the homes built along the river. They hadn’t approved many of them before the DOR decided no more could be built—much to the delight of the few property owners, who knew their property values would shoot higher because of the rarity of riverfront homes.

The homes were widely spaced, with hundreds of yards between them. They were secluded and built among the trees, maintaining the integrity of the land along Bull River.

He left his car and walked through the trees until he reached a place where he used to come fishing as a boy. It reminded him of the place where Andy and Opie fished during the whistling theme song of
Andy Griffith.
He walked along the dirt patches and grass, looking down
toward the meandering river and scanning the ground for any signs of Lisa.

He didn’t even know why he was wasting his time. Some people on the island bought Carson Graham’s lies hook, line, and sinker. He had a nightclub psychic act that wasn’t doing so well. When tourist season was hopping, business picked up, but rumor had it that the proprietor was thinking about bringing in a magician to replace Graham.

As long as his lies were just part of a nightclub act or a palm reading business, Cade had decided the man wasn’t all that harmful, but this took the cake. Exploiting a woman’s disappearance by preying on the people who loved her beat everything.

He kept walking, leaning on his cane, wishing he could go home and put ice on his leg. Each step made it ache more, and he felt it swelling against his pant leg. He had a two-bit psychic to blame for this. A psychic who had sent him on a wild-goose chase. He was probably hiding and watching, laughing it up that Cade had followed up on his tip.

He started to turn back, then stopped as something caught his eye. Tire tracks dug into the bank, going right into the river.

He stood there a moment, staring. Was it possible Carson Graham had gotten it right this time? Was it just a coincidence? Was there really a car at the bottom of that river?

He studied the tracks and saw footprints mashed in next to them. This wasn’t a place to put a boat in—the launch ramp was only a mile down. The half shoe prints looked as if someone had pushed hard against a heavy weight.

He had no choice now. He was going to have to find out.

He went back to his car and radioed the Department of Resources to ask if they could send divers over with sonar equipment. They would be at Cape Refuge within the hour.

He then set about to cordon off the tire tracks and footprints until they could study them for evidence, in the event that a car…and Lisa…were found on the bottom of that river.

B
lair knew they must have found something when she heard Cade’s voice on the police radio, ordering all units to a place a half mile east of the Bull Bridge. She’d been on her way to photograph the search on the eastern side of the island, but now she turned her car around and headed to Bull River.

Squad cars from Cade’s department and the Chatham County Sheriff’s Department blocked off the road in front of a cluster of trees. She couldn’t see what was going on behind them, but there was clearly a lot of activity. She saw Rani arguing with an officer at the edge of the crime scene tape, so she got out and crossed the grass.

“Rani, has there been news on Lisa?”

Rani turned around. She was frantic, almost hysterical. “You bet there has! But they won’t let me in. I can’t see anything.”

“What happened?”

“I got a tip that Lisa’s Lexus had gone into the river right here. I gave the tip to Cade, but he didn’t believe me
until he came over here to check out the place. He must have found something!”

Blair scanned the landscape. Maybe she could find a place with a view of the water…It was forest land for as far as she could see right now, with no houses in sight. But Blair knew there was a house a couple hundred feet away on the other side of the trees. The house had a view of a portion of the river directly behind it. She knew it had a pier, and it might give her a view of what was going on upriver.

“Who gave you the tip, Rani?”

“Carson Graham, that’s who.”

Blair turned back to her. “The palm reader?”

“He’s a
psychic,
Blair, and he did a reading on Lisa today.”

“Come on. You’re kidding me.”

“Hey, I was a skeptic at first too. And I’m praying he’s wrong. But look at all this!”

Blair dropped her notepad. This was going to be a wash. She didn’t even know why Cade would entertain anything that guy said. She heard a helicopter overhead. Shading her eyes, she looked up and saw the chopper with the word
Observer
on the side. The tabloid hadn’t missed a beat to get the best seat in the house.

“I heard someone say they’re using sonar equipment to look for the car,” Rani said.

Blair couldn’t believe they would go to all this trouble for a hoax. “Wow, they must really think she’s there.”

“She is! I just know it!”

Blair looked around. “I’ve got to get a vantage point, even if I have to go across the river.”

“I’m coming with you,” Rani said.

“There’s a house down the way,” Blair said. “Do you happen to know who owns it?”

“Oh, yeah. It belongs to Melanie and Andy Adams. I sold it to them.”

Blair knew the couple. “Great. Let’s go ask them if we can use their pier.”

They went back out to the street, where a crowd of other reporters and onlookers had formed. No one was getting past the police line.

Blair led Rani toward the house, hoping no one else had already thought of this. She went to the door and knocked. Melanie, a nervous-looking blonde, answered quickly. “Hi.”

“Melanie, I don’t know if you remember me…”

“Of course I do. Nobody ever forgets you, Blair.”

Blair thought that was a reference to her scars, but she tried not to dwell on it. “Melanie, would you mind if we go out on your pier to see if we can tell what the police are doing?”

“The police?” Melanie’s face changed, and she looked out past them.

“Yes. They’re looking for Lisa Jackson, and apparently they think she’s in the water. We don’t know for sure what they’ve found, if anything.”

“Lisa Jackson? Here?” Her face drained of its color as she peered at the police. “Well…sure. Yes, you can use it. I’ll come too.” She came out with Blair and followed her and Rani around the house to the pier.

As they walked around Melanie’s yard, Blair bit her lip. Maybe this wasn’t going to help after all. Privacy hedges lined the sides of the property, and forest separated Melanie’s yard from where the police worked. Their part of the river was on a narrow bend that restricted their view to the right or the left.

Blair saw a few people with television cameras across the river, trying to get pictures of the search. She hurried out onto the pier, looked to the left, and saw one of the search boats on the water. “Yes! We’ll see some of it, anyway.”

Rani came and stood beside Blair. “They haven’t found her. They wouldn’t still be looking if they’d found her.”

Melanie stood behind Blair, gazing off toward the activity. “I hate this. It’s freaky. My husband is going to die when he hears about this.”

The heat was intense, steaming off of the water. Blair slowly sat down on the boards. “This could take a while. We might as well get comfortable.”

“I don’t want to be comfortable,” Rani said. “My best friend might be in that water.”

W
e got something!”

The yell came out over the water, and Cade went as close to the bank as he could without getting wet. The call came from one of the boats in the middle of the river, a little to his right.

“What is it?” he asked into his radio.

The response crackled. “Sonar’s showing a big object, straight down. We’re getting the divers down there. Might be a car.”

He prayed that it wouldn’t be. From here, he could see Blair sitting on the Adamses’ pier, her hand shading her eyes as she watched the activity. Rani towered behind her, standing next to Melanie.

Then the call came. “It’s a car, Chief. A Lexus XL330, and there’s a woman’s body in it.”

Lisa.
His heart slammed against his ribcage, and he stood there a moment, trying to process the reality.

Ben…how was he going to tell him? Should he get him over here or tell him later? Would someone else get to him first?

He went to Alex Johnson, who was holding back the crowd. “Alex, do me a favor and go get Ben. Pick him up and bring him here.”

The young cop looked as if he’d rather be beaten. “Really, Chief? You want him to see this? What do I tell him?”

“Just tell him we may have found her car. Nothing else.”

Alex rushed away, and Cade called the medical examiner’s office and told him to hurry.

He went back to the bank and waited.

The radio crackled. “Chief, what do you want the divers to do?”

“Just hold tight. We need to leave the body in the car so we won’t disturb the evidence. The ME is on his way, and the Georgia DOR will have to pull it out.”

It looked as if the search for Lisa was over.

But this wasn’t the way he’d expected it to end.

B
y the time the DOR tugboat was in position to pull the car up, a huge crowd had gathered. The media, trying to get a better shot, had collected on the opposite side of the river with cameras, and a news helicopter circled overhead. Cade saw Jonathan and Morgan with baby Caleb, tearfully arriving on the scene. Alex brought Ben back with him, and he stood, pale, face full of dread, as he watched the DOR working to pull the car up.

Cade had roped off the area around the crime scene to keep the evidence from being disturbed. Finally, the cable began to creak and squeal as the tail of the vehicle came up out of the water. It was Lisa’s burgundy Lexus.

And then he saw her as the front end was lifted out—Lisa Jackson, still strapped in by her seatbelt, her hair floating in the murky water-filled car…exactly where Carson Graham had said she would be.

The boat moved the car to the bank, then lowered it hard onto the grassy area a hundred feet from where it
went in, so as not to disturb the tracks and footprints. They opened the door, and the water gushed out.

The sight of Lisa in that car hit Cade in the gut. For a moment he stood there, staring at her through the wet windshield as if there were some possibility she would begin to cough. He told himself to move, to look for blood or a gunshot wound or evidence of suicide or foul play—to do
something
befitting of a police chief who’d just discovered a body—but he couldn’t catch his breath.

The medical examiner moved into action, checking for any sign of life. “No pulse,” he said.

“She’s not dead!” Ben’s words cracked out over the area. “Help her, you idiots!” Ben broke through the barricade of officers keeping him back and wrestled his way to the car. Cade tried to hold him back, but he fought to get to her door.

“She’s not dead!
Do
something!”

“Ben, you can’t touch anything! You’ll compromise the evidence.”

“Lisa!”
He began to shake, and the anguish on his face cut through to Cade’s soul. “Dear God, who did this to her?” Ben started to sob, and Cade felt torn between offering comfort to the man and dragging him away. “Please…maybe there’s a pulse.”

Cade pulled him away. “Ben, she’s dead.”

The words seemed to drag the strength right out of the grieving husband, and Ben covered his face and wailed out his pain.

Cade turned away. He had work to do; he didn’t have time to fall apart.

“You can’t just leave her like that,” Ben cried. “Get her out of there!”

“We will as soon as we can, Ben. Just stay back, okay?”

There was too much that had to be done before they could move her. The detectives had to take pictures of the car from every angle, with her exactly as she’d been found. Everything was critical, from the fact that she wore her seat belt, which didn’t sound like something a suicidal person would do, to the angle of any gunshot wound or injury that might explain how she died. If
she was killed and then pushed into the river, the killer might have left some clue behind. They couldn’t risk losing that by moving her.

Ben was led back to the shade, where Cade could hear the anguished sounds of his grief.

McCormick came to stand beside him. “You think his grief is for real, Cade?”

“Looks real to me. My gut tells me he’s not responsible.”

But his gut couldn’t dictate his conclusions. The evidence would have to do that. He looked at the body, still in the car. There would be many questions answered there, and many new questions raised.

He hated investigating homicides, but someone was going to have to do it. There was a killer out there somewhere, and Cade wouldn’t rest until he found him.

B
lair couldn’t see what was happening, but she heard yelling, and the one boat she could see drifted out of sight around the bend. She decided to try to get a little closer.

The three of them followed the river line at the back of Melanie’s property. There was a small path between the trees and the river bank, cutting right to the place where the police worked.

They got around the bend, and finally had a clear view of them pulling the Lexus out.

Rani cried out. “Lisa’s car!”

Then Blair heard Ben’s wailing and watched as he tried to get to the car.

She knew Lisa was there.

Rani screamed out her despair and denial, then bolted out of the trees toward the car too, but she was wrestled back.

Ben was weeping in a crowd of police, standing back from the scene.

Blair didn’t know what to do. They needed pictures for the paper, but somehow, it seemed cruel and opportunistic to snap them now.

She saw that Morgan and Jonathan had been allowed past the crime scene tape and were trying to comfort Ben. He staggered toward them and fell into Morgan’s arms, and she held him for a long time.

Blair blinked back her tears. No…she wouldn’t take pictures now.

Others found no problem with photographing the scene. Vince Barr of the
Observer
had gotten through the barricade somehow and was using his telescopic lens to get pictures of Lisa inside the car. Where was his helicopter? Had he parachuted out or just taken a leap into the water? She wouldn’t put either past him.

She sidled up beside him. “Don’t you think you’ve gotten enough, Vince? You’re not really going to publish pictures of her dead body, are you?”

“What do you think?” he asked with a smirk.

She thought of the JonBenet Ramsey case and the pictures his rag had published of the murdered child. Yes, he would indeed publish them. “Don’t you have the slightest bit of integrity, Vince?”

He lowered the camera long enough to shoot her a smarmy grin. “Don’t be such an amateur, Blair. Integrity doesn’t pay the bills. Graphic pictures do.”