Page 71 of Secrets Along the Shore (Beach Read Thrillers #1)

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

The sky has opened up and is drowning our little town.

My umbrella is open and my trench cinched tight as I walk from the parking lot toward the courthouse, the wind whipping my hair into my face.

I hold it back with one hand, taking stock of the crowd assembled along the rope barrier at the portico-covered side entrance where defendants transported from the county jail are brought inside.

All these people—journalists, the victims’ family members, the defendant’s family members, looky-loos—are here to see Kurt Fogerty, convicted serial killer, trotted out to receive justice for his crimes.

Tasha called me fifteen minutes earlier to let me know he should be there soon.

It appears I’m not the only one that got word of his impending arrival.

By now, they’ve probably all seen the news about the body found on Saturday.

Fortunately, the details about the victim and the evidence still haven’t slipped out—whoever’s got loose lips hasn’t shared them—but I wonder how many here suspect, as we do, that Fogerty is responsible for that death as well.

I join the gathering, sidling up to a platinum-haired reporter and bulky cameraman from a Birmingham station.

Half a minute later, a white van with “Mitchell County Sheriff’s Department” emblazoned on the side materializes from behind the courthouse.

When it pulls underneath the portico, the crowd’s chatter hushes, our umbrellas poking one another as each person shifts for a better view.

The man they pull out of the back of the van doesn’t look like the Kurt Fogerty I went head-to-head with in the jail two days ago. This man has a black eye and fat lip, a bandage on his right hand, and a new limp. There’s also something in his eyes I haven’t seen before.

Defeat.

This is not the Kurt Fogerty I’ve come to know. That man is cocky. Self-assured. Invincible. This man is a ghost of that one. Flanked by jailers, he shuffles miserably toward the building entrance, his feet and hands chained and head hanging.

I weave through the bodies, jockeying for a better line of sight, hoping to catch Fogerty’s attention.

If we make eye contact, maybe he’ll want to talk.

It might also give me a sense of what’s going on in his head, depending on how he reacts.

I push through the throng and am almost to the barrier that’s been erected to keep the public at bay, when a shot rings out.

Screams erupt and the crowd scatters in all directions. Reporters and camera operators duck for cover behind the van and portico support columns, scanning the surrounding area with their lenses.

Before I can talk myself out of it, I sprint down the parking lot, making a beeline for the incline at the wooded rear boundary—the side with the best vantage point for a shot at the portico and entrance.

I slam against a tree trunk and shield myself with it.

My heart thunders as I survey the treed land between me and Callaway Street, which runs alongside the courthouse, about fifty yards away.

I’m looking for anything that gives away the shooter’s location—a glint of metal, rustling weeds?—

And then I see it. Movement in the thicket about ten yards ahead, in the direction of the street. I take off, my boots plowing the ground as I snake between trees and leap over the prickly undergrowth. I stumble, nearly face-planting, but manage to stay upright.

When I get to the spot, no one is there.

Someone definitely was here, though, as evidenced by the trampled brush.

My pulse whooshing in my ears, I bend down to get a better look.

The path of broken vegetation leads toward the back end of Callaway Street, where there is an alley that connects it to the next street over.

The buildings lining Callaway obstruct the view of the alley from the courthouse.

It’s the perfect place to park a getaway vehicle.

I snap photos of everything before pulling out my hairband and looping it several times around a bush branch to mark my place. Then I do my best to back out, causing as little damage as possible, retracing my steps and continuing to take photos.

At the bottom of the rise, I run back through the parking lot to the portico, which is now swarming with deputies and the regathered crowd. A siren wails in the near distance as I slip under the rope barrier.

Fogerty is laid out on the ground beside the van, his arms bent across his chest, where blooms of bright red stain his orange jumpsuit. Raindrops splash in the blood pooling on the pavement, carried away by rivulets created by the downpour. He is unnaturally still.

Soaked through, my hair plastered to my head by the rain, I stand there, staring.

When Fogerty held my gaze in the courtroom, I thought his eyes were devoid of life. That nothing was behind them. Now I think I was wrong.

I think what I saw…was the presence of evil.

Because looking into his eyes now, the difference is undeniable.

A chill flutters down my spine.

These eyes…these dead eyes…truly hold nothing, and that measure of eternal void is terrifying to behold.

Tasha, Keel, and I sit around the war room table.

Their faces are taut, bleary-eyed, and bear the same stunned disbelief wracking my insides.

D.A. March paces at the front of the room, as tense as I’ve ever seen him.

He pauses every so often to spin toward us, as if about to say something, then grunts and resumes pacing.

Finally, he squares up to the table as if it’s challenged him to a fight. “ How does this happen?! How does this happen with the sheriff’s department right there? !”

It’s a fair question, but I don’t have an answer.

At least not one I want to say out loud.

The bottom line is, the sheriff’s department likely dropped the ball.

I say likely because tighter security measures might not have prevented this, but they definitely would have made it harder to accomplish.

In short, they underestimated the risk posed to Fogerty by people who wanted to make certain he got a death sentence—no matter what the jury decided.

March pounds a fist on the table. “He was about to be sentenced. He was literally hours from receiving the death penalty!”

“ Probably receiving the death penalty,” I counter. March’s laser eyes nearly cut me in two, and I make a mental note to rein in the sarcasm.

Keel clears his throat. “So what are we thinking? A victim’s family member wasn’t willing to leave Fogerty’s fate up to twelve strangers? Took the shot when he could…it would have been hard to get to him after sentencing,” Tasha muses.

“Mr. March?” A young secretarial assistant sticks her head inside the room. Her petite frame is drawn in on itself, her face scrunched apologetically.

His head snaps to her. “Yes, Emily?”

“Sheriff Vickers is here to see you.”

March strides out of the room without a word, sucking the air out of the room as he goes.

Tasha locks eyes with me. “This is insane. After everything, after all these months, after getting a guilty verdict…”

I understand how she’s feeling. An assassination isn’t the same thing as true justice. It’s as if something has been ripped away from us. I can’t imagine how the families of the victims feel. Or how low one of them must have sunk to take matters into their own hands—if that’s what happened.

If that’s the case, this whole situation just became even more tragic. Someone with a connection to the victim will end up in prison for murder—a person who never would have found themselves in that position, if Fogerty hadn’t taken their loved one’s life first.

It also doesn’t escape me that, now, I won’t have the chance to question Fogerty again about the Kamden Avery murder. I’ll never get to confront him about his assertion that he was innocent and ask who we should be looking at, if not him.

The urge to shift gears grasps me. “Tasha, where’s the paperwork on what we pulled from Fogerty’s place?”

She points to a stack at the end of the table. I walk over and begin leafing through the records and photographs, searching for anything to connect Fogerty to Kamden.

“What are you doing?” Tasha asks.

“I can’t just sit here and wait for March to come back and scold us some more.”

“I’ve already been through that.” Keel ticks his head at the materials spread in front of me. “Don’t waste your time. I didn’t find anything relevant to Kamden Avery.”

My heart dips, but still I pull out the inventory of items we collected from Fogerty’s trailer, including the objects identified as tokens he kept from the first three murders—Aria’s ring, Hailey’s earring, and Teresa’s earring.

I don’t need to review the notes to know we found Aria’s ring under his mattress, Hailey’s earring in his nightstand drawer, and Teresa’s earring at the back of a dresser drawer.

I scan the list for the hundredth time during this case. Like Keel, I don’t come across anything that jumps out as potentially being related to Kamden. No unaccounted-for jewelry or suspicious items screaming “murder token.”

Keel stands at the window, peering through the blinds. “Wow. It’s a circus down there. Even more reporters than before.”

Tasha steps over to join him. “This is not good.”

I pile the pages back in a neat stack and tap the document on top. “I’m going to talk to Sheriff Vickers about executing another search of Fogerty’s trailer. Now that we know about Kamden, it’s possible something new will jump out.”

As I say it, I realize there’s little chance of uncovering new evidence. Not only have we been over Fogerty’s place with a fine-tooth comb, but his family could have cleaned it out at any time since the property was released months ago.

I return to my chair and take a long sip of my lukewarm coffee. An uncomfortable heat rises up my neck, as my mind starts making connections I don’t want it to.

Four murders, but only three trophies that we know of.