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Josephs reaches into his pocket for the Sentra’s keys. “I’ll pop the trunk.”
Tasker and the tow-truck driver meet him at the back of the car. He sticks the key in the slot and turns it.
The lid pops open; the interior light flashes on.
“Jesus Christ!” The tow-truck guy takes two steps back.
“Fuck me,” says Tasker.
Josephs feels his stomach turn. But he leans in to get a closer look.
Alongside a set of jumper cables and some road flares is a bundled-up filthy blue sheet.
Staring out through a gap in the fabric is a grinning human skull.
CHAPTER
48
Seabrook, New Hampshire
In the motel shower, I press my hands against the tile, hang my head, and watch the dirt swirl down the drain. The soap and water sting my blistered hands. I breathe in the steam and imagine it seeping deep into every pore. Cleaning me out.
I’m exhausted. From digging all that dirt out of the hole and then putting it all back.
I cannot believe this night.
And I cannot believe what this investigation has turned me into:
Brea Cooke, attorney-at-law and grave robber.
On the way back from the woods, Garrett wanted to dump the shovels in a lake.
But the lawyer in me said no. That felt like cognizance of guilt.
But guilt about what? Trying to solve a crime that everybody else had given up on? Trying to bring closure to a family after seventeen years? Trying to find out what really happened toSuzanne Bonanno? Or are Garrett and I thinking more about our damn book than about solving the crime?
A quote from Sir Walter Scott comes into my head. My law professor Dr. Graham kept it pasted above his whiteboard at Columbia. He said it was a good caution for aspiring lawyers:
Oh, what a tangled web we weave / when first we practice to deceive.
When the bathroom fills with enough steam to overwhelm the exhaust fan, I turn off the water and step out of the shower. I do my best to wrap the ridiculously small motel towel tight around me before I leave the bathroom and make sure the room’s drapes are all the way closed before putting on a pair of boy shorts and a Columbia Law T-shirt.
Garrett is lying on the bed in his briefs, his hair still wet from the shower. He looks over at the nightstand. On top is a plastic bag. The tennis bracelet is inside.
“You’re sure that bracelet belongs to her?”
“It looks exactly like the one she was wearing in the video I saw.”
“So what do we do now? Maybe we should just take the bracelet to the police and come clean about where we got the lead.”
“Of course we should. Garrett, we’re on thin ice here, legally speaking.”
“I don’t want us to get charged with anything, Brea, but I also don’t want what we’ve learned so far to go nowhere.”
“If we hand it over,” I say, “we could be considered murder suspects ourselves—or accessories after the fact. Who the hell are we protecting? John DeMarco, a convicted felon? Seymour Washington, a crooked fixer? And what are we going to tell Washington?”
“That’s easy,” says Garrett. “No body, no deal.”