Page 122 of This is Why We Lied

“Last night, Monica filled out a request for another bottle of liquor. Frank went out onto the porch to leave it for Mercy, but he stuck the note in his pocket instead.”

“And then he told me that Mercy had taken the note, which gave me the timeline we’ve been going by.” Will looked understandably annoyed. “Why the hell did he lie about that?”

“He probably lies a lot to cover for his wife’s drinking.” Sara reminded him, “Paul said that he saw Mercy around 10:30-ish.”

“I trust Paul even less than Frank.” Will looked at his watch. “Lunch service is over. Maybe you can approach Drew and Keisha. Amanda ran a background on all the guests. Drew has a twelve-year-old assault charge.”

Sara felt her lips part in surprise.

“I had the same reaction, but maybe that ties into what Drew was talking about when he told Bitty to forget that other business.”

Faith asked, “What business?”

They had reached the mini waterfall. She was walking across the stone footpath with her arms out for balance. Will waited for her at the edge of the water. Sara tuned out their conversation. Neither one of them seemed interested in helping Kevin. Sara thought to help, but he was already crossing the creek with Chuck’s full weight on his shoulder. Will was watching, too, but more out of envy than concern. He wanted to be the one balancing two-hundred pounds on his shoulder while he navigated what was basically an obstacle course.

Faith asked, “Could Monica be a poisoning victim, too?”

Sara realized the question was meant for her. “If so, the poison would’ve been a different agent by a different route. I can ask Monica’s permission to draw blood, but we’ll have to—”

“Wait for toxicology,” Faith finished. “What about suicide?”

“With Chuck?” Sara shrugged. “Unless he left a note, I can’t tell you.”

“Except for the sweating, he wasn’t acting guilty,” Will said. “He seemed pretty confident Dave was the murderer.”

Faith said, “I would be, too, without all the evidence that says he’s not.”

Sara remembered, “Wasn’t Chuck wearing glasses?”

Will provided, “The current is fast. They’re probably downstream.”

“Thanks, guys.” Kevin had made it across the creek. He went down on one knee, then he rolled Chuck onto the ground, then he sat back to catch his breath.

“Let’s stay away from the bank over here.” Sara indicated the point where she thought Chuck had gone into the water. “We’ll need to bag the gaff and water jug, then start an inventory of anything that’s found in his pockets.”

“I’ll get the supplies.” Kevin pushed himself back up. “I need some water anyway.”

“Make sure it’s from a sealed bottle.” Faith had found her purse on the ground. She took out her diabetic kit. “Can you guys start without me? I need to do my insulin thing.”

Sara caught Will’s eye as Faith walked a few feet up the trail and sat down on a fallen log. Faith was very good at her job, but she’d never been comfortable around the dead.

Sara asked Will, “Ready?”

He slipped his phone out of his pocket. “The creek was over the bank when I got here. We should video the area where Chuck went in before it’s gone.”

“Let’s do it.” Sara waited for him to start recording, then gave the date, time and location. “I’m Dr. Sara Linton. In attendance are special agents Faith Mitchell and Will Trent. This video is to document the scene where we believe the victim, Bryce Weller, also known as Chuck, went into Lost Widow Creek and subsequently expired.”

She waited for Will to slowly pan across the area, starting with the base of the trail and making a broad sweep of the creek bank. Sara took the time to develop a theory about what had happened. There were three distinctive sets of shoe prints, one of which was made by a pair of sneakers. She looked at the bottom of Chuck’s hiking boots. The soles were worn to the outsides where he pronated his feet. She already knew what Will’s distinctive HAIX treads looked like. The elements had worked against them in preserving Mercy’s crime scene, but the mud here had done them a favor. Chuck’s last moments might as well have been set in stone.

“Okay,” Will said. “Ready when you are.”

Sara said, “The soles of the victim’s boots match this W-shaped pattern in the mud. You can see where the victim’s weight shifted to his toes here, facing the water. The heel imprint is more shallow than the toe. These two spots here indicate where the victim went down to his knees. They’re not deep or irregularly shaped, which indicates it was a controlled action, not a sudden fall. There are two handprints on either side, here and here, so he was eventually on all fours.”

Will said, “It must’ve hit him fast. I only took my eyes off of him for a minute. I didn’t hear him call for help or cough or anything.”

“Chuck’s resources would’ve been directed toward staying conscious, not asking for help,” Sara said. “My theory is that his blood pressure dropped, literally bringing him to his knees, then forcing him to put his hands down for balance. The right-side imprint is deeper than the left. You can see this long oval shape is probably where his right elbow buckled and he fell onto his right shoulder, then collapsed onto his right side. From there, my guess is that he rolled onto his back, but he was too close to the edge of the bank. Gravity took over from there, pulling him into the water. The current took him out to the boulders.”

“His hand was caught when I saw him,” Will said. “By the time I jumped in, he was already moving downstream.”