Page 143 of Secrets Along the Shore

Tasha crosses her arms in front of her. “Sophie?—”

“Look,” I say, “I’d love to sit here all day, rehashing how I conduct myself, but”—I point at the whiteboard dedicated to Kamden Avery—“we need to talk about something.” I inhale and blow out a pensive breath. “Seriously.”

“What’s wrong?” she asks, her expression tightening.

“Before Kamden Avery, we had three murders and evidence to tie Fogerty to each of them—the writing on the arm, the trophies, the fact that the highway was on his route?—”

“His DNA on Teresa,” Keel adds. “Couldn’t have been neater if we tied it up with a bow.”

“Exactly.” I lean my forearms on the table. “But now, with Kamden…”

“I know.” Tasha walks over to the whiteboards. “I’ve been thinking about it too.”

Keel’s gaze flashes from me to Tasha, then his head drops to one side. “No…don’t go there.”

“Think about it,” I say. “There are differences. Kamden’s body was left much farther from 174 than the first three.”

“Teresa was buried farther in from the highway too, just notasfar,” Keel argues. “Fogerty realized that leaving the bodies in more isolated areas reduced his chances of being spotted.”

“Except, based on the timing of Kamden’s final posts and when herroommate saw her last,Kamden, not Teresa, was the third victim. Teresa was actually the fourth. Which would mean Fogerty started out leaving his victims close to the highway, then movedreallyfar in to bury Kamden,thenburied Teresa on property closer to the highway. That doesn’t make sense. And speaking of buried—Teresa and Kamden were the only ones buried in a tarp—or buried at all. The first two were just dumped.”

“We should wait to see what the coroner comes up with for a time of death for Kamden,” Tasha says. “Otherwise, all of this is speculation.”

“There isn’t a trophy for Kamden,” I continue. “Not one we’ve found or identified on the inventory list, anyway. Then there’s the fact that Kamden doesn’t fit his victim profile at all.”

I push out of my chair and start pacing. “We all want this to be Fogerty’s doing. If it’s him, we’re done, and there isn’t another murderer out there we have to find. But there are inconsistencies in Kamden’s case that we can’t ignore…inconsistencies that also shine a different light on Teresa’s case.”

“Uh-uh. Come on, Soph.” Keel groans. “Do you realize what you’re saying? What…Fogerty didn’t kill Teresa either? You’re really lumping her murder and Kamden Avery’s together?”

“Just go with me. What if it wasn’t a family member who shot Fogerty? What if someone wanted him dead for a reason other than to exact justice or get revenge? Maybe they wanted to keep him quiet.”

Tasha straightens a photo on Kamden’s board. “You’re back to the copycat or partner theory. Somebody who wouldn’t want Fogerty pointing us in their direction?”

“I’m just saying, we have to consider the possibility—in light of the jail attack and, now, Fogerty’s murder—that more is going on than we thought.”

“I do not want to believe there’s another monster out there,” Tasha says.

Keel squeezes his eyes shut, rubbing them with his thumb and forefinger. “Amen.”

“Me either, but?—”

A soft knock sounds at the door. “Excuse me?”

Our heads swivel simultaneously. The office assistant, Emily, stands in the doorway, her face so pale I worry she might faint.

“Umm…” She bites her lip. “I think there’s something I need to tell you.”

CHAPTER

SIXTEEN

Emily sitsat the end of the table with her back to the whiteboard, her hands clasped and resting on the tabletop. She is shaking like a leaf in the wind.

“It was about two months ago,” she begins, directing herself to Tasha. “You were in the thick of preparing for Fogerty’s trial and you asked me to send out inquiries about his whereabouts, remember? You were trying to establish everywhere he’d been from the first murder forward, and especially where he was on the dates the women went missing.”

“Riiiight…” Tasha says.

“I did exactly that. Whenever information came in, I logged it on the case calendar.”