Page 38 of The First Hunt (The Final Hunt)
HOLLY
H olly trudged down the carpeted stairs the next morning to refill her coffee.
She wore the same sweats as yesterday, having been too tired to undress last night when she’d finally gone to bed at two in the morning.
After knocking out three more chapters in her manuscript, she’d succumbed to a deep, dreamless sleep, despite Andy’s phone call last night about Jared.
When she neared the bottom of the stairs, movement outside the front window caught her eye.
She moved closer to the window, holding her empty mug.
It was a mail truck parked in front of her house.
The mailman slipped a handful of mail into her letter box before walking to Clint’s with a small stack of envelopes tucked under his arm.
As the mail truck pulled away from the curb, Holly set the mug on the entryway table and stepped outside. She wasn’t getting any mail sent here, so she hadn’t checked the mailbox since she’d moved in. But if Laurie’s in-laws were still getting mail delivered, it could be stacking up.
Holly looked down at her slippers and her clothes, noticing the coffee stain on the front of her sweatshirt, then shot a glance at the quiet house next door.
Not that it mattered—Clint wasn’t interested in her.
She thought of the pretty dark-haired woman she’d seen leaving yesterday morning.
But she’d be quick anyway, just in case he was home.
Clint may be seeing someone else, but she still had her pride.
She withdrew a stack of mail from the mailbox along with an issue of The Tacoma Times wrapped in a plastic bag inside the newspaper box. She cast one last cursory glance at Clint’s house before swiftly retreating inside her own.
She carried the mail to the kitchen, retrieving her empty mug on the way. She refilled it with steaming coffee before sliding the bag off the newspaper. It was the Sunday edition. She racked her brain to recall what day it was. Tuesday? she wondered, realizing she hadn’t checked the news in days.
She flipped through the paper, scouring the headlines for news of the woman who’d gone missing from the Albertson’s bus stop last week.
But there was no mention of her disappearance or her being found.
There was, however, a half-page article detailing Holly’s car getting run off the Strander Boulevard Bridge into the Green River.
The article didn’t mention her name, but that didn’t make Holly feel any better.
If Jared had been the one behind the wheel of the other car and he’d seen the news, he would know she survived.
She had no doubt he would strike again. After turning to the last page, Holly slid the paper aside to sort through Norm and Maurine’s mail.
She tossed a Domino’s coupon and a cable TV flyer in the trash before setting aside a JCPenney catalog addressed to Maurine to give to Laurie.
She set an envelope for Norm on top of the catalog.
When she reached for the next one, she stopped cold.
It had been put in the wrong mailbox. It was for the house next door.
But it wasn’t the address that made the air around her feel like it had dropped ten degrees. It was who it was addressed to: Louie Clinton Prescott . A hollow chill spread through her limbs.
Numb, Holly stared out the window at Clint’s house, imagining a nine-year-old John in the backseat while his dad picked up Sally Hickman in 1984. John would’ve been waiting in the car while his dad butchered Sally in the woods. Goosebumps crawled across her arms like frost.
No, she thought. Detectives had ruled Louie Prescott out. He’d not only passed a polygraph but also had an alibi for some of the Green River Killer murders. Clint being the suspect that Jared interviewed in 1985 didn’t make Clint a killer.
Holly thought of the brunette leaving Clint’s house the morning after Clint kissed her in the kitchen. Was Clint such a good liar that he’d gotten away with the unthinkable?
Holly turned for the stairs to retrieve her address book to find her contact at the Tacoma Homicide Unit. There was only one way to find out.
***
“Our casefiles are organized by casefile number.” Detective Amanda Corrado handed Holly a handwritten nine-digit number on a legal pad. “This is Diana Carter’s casefile number. Sorry I can’t help you look.”
“That’s okay. I know you’re busy.”
“Yeah, sorry it was a bit of a zoo upstairs. I’d like to say it’s not normally like that, but these last few months have been crazy around here.
” Amanda gestured to the paper in Holly’s hand.
“That happened before I started in homicide. Our department has had a big turnover since then, and a lot of the detectives working at the time have either retired or transferred to other units. But there’s still a few around that we can track down if you have questions. ”
“Thanks, Amanda.” Holly surveyed the wall of file cabinets in the small, windowless room in the basement of the Tacoma Police Department. “And for letting me come down on such short notice.”
“No problem. I need to go make a few calls—we got a new homicide this morning, which means I’m up for the next one—but I’ll come back down once I’m done.
The files can’t leave the building, but if you want to photocopy anything, you can use the copier upstairs.
Just put everything back when you’re done. ”
“I will. Thanks.” Holly turned to the detective, who stood several inches taller than her, even in flats.
“You’re lucky you called when you did. We’re running out of storage space, so all the closed cases prior to 1985 are going to be moved to the city archives later this week.
” A beeping filled the room, and she glanced at the pager at her hip.
“Shit. I gotta go.” She made for the door and threw Holly a glance over her shoulder.
“Can you find your way out if I don’t make it back? ”
“Yeah, no problem.”
Holly watched Amanda disappear down the corridor before searching for Diana’s file. She’d met Amanda when she’d been researching her third true crime novel, and they’d stayed in touch.
Once Holly found the right file cabinet, it took five minutes of sifting through tightly packed casefiles before she found Diana’s. She took the thin file to a small folding table against the wall.
When she opened the file, her eyes caught on Diana’s last name—Carter, not Prescott. She’d never taken Clint’s last name, which was why Holly hadn’t made the connection when Andy told her the last name of the suspect who’d taken the polygraph in 1985.
Holly read through the autopsy report first. While her broken neck and head injuries seemed to match what she’d read in the paper, Holly was surprised to see Diana had sustained other injuries that hadn’t been mentioned in the article and couldn’t be explained by her fall.
Diana had a linear red mark on her stomach as well as a bruise on her forearm.
Holly studied the postmortem photo of Diana’s arm lying atop the metal autopsy table.
The bruise was oval shaped, the size of a large finger or thumb.
Holly flipped to the examiner’s report of the injuries on the next page.
The bruising on the right forearm appears consistent with an injury sustained approximately 48 hours prior to death, aligning with the husband’s statement that he grabbed her arm to prevent her from drunkenly falling over their indoor stairwell railing two days prior to her fatal fall.
Holly popped a stick of gum into her mouth as she contemplated the examiner’s words.
Next, she turned to the toxicology report.
Her jaw fell open, causing her gum to almost fall onto the page before Holly clamped her mouth shut.
Diana’s blood alcohol level was 0.05 the night of her death.
That was hardly the picture Clint had painted of Diana getting drunkenly depressed and jumping off the balcony.
She’d been under the legal driving limit and likely had only one drink.
Holly flipped to the detective’s summary report, which was less than a page.
Some tension eased from her shoulders as she read through the report, relieved to see the detective had, at least, interviewed all the neighbors and consulted a handwriting expert to compare Diana’s handwriting to the suicide note found at her home.
A paper fell to the floor. Holly picked it up, her pulse spiking when she saw it was a photocopy of Diana’s handwritten suicide note.
Clint,
I can’t keep going like this. It’s too much. I need to be free of it, of you, and of everything. By the time you read this, We’ll I’ll be gone. Goodbye forever.
D
The investigator had added a postscript at the bottom of the report that theorized that Diana had likely planned to kill her son, then herself, but had changed her mind and altered the note.
Holly couldn’t believe it. It was plain as day. Clint had to have altered the note, not Diana.
Diana hadn’t planned on killing herself. She was leaving Clint—and taking their son with her.
Holly rifled through the pages to study the markings on Diana’s stomach from her autopsy photos. Seeing the linear red marking, Holly drew in a sharp breath, nearly inhaling her gum.
Diana hadn’t jumped from that balcony. She’d been pushed.