Page 84 of This is Why We Lied

“We took one of the trails down with the coroner to show her the crime scene. That was about twenty minutes, but we were walking as a group and sticking to the path.” He shrugged again. “Maybe ten minutes?”

“You’re just going to say everything took ten minutes?”

Will shrugged a third time, but told her, “Sara looked at my watch when she pronounced Mercy dead. It was exactly midnight.”

Faith wrote that down. “So, ballpark, there was roughly twenty minutes between the howl at the compound and when you found Mercy in the water, but Mercy needed ten of those minutes to get from the howl point to the scream point where she died.”

“Ten minutes is plenty of time to murder a woman, then set a cottage on fire. Especially if you had it all planned out in advance,” Will said. “Then you stroll back around the lake to the old campsite and wait for the local sheriff to botch the investigation.”

“Are you sure the howler was the screamer?”

Will thought about it. “Yes. Same tone of voice. Also, who else would it be?”

“We’re going to end up running around this entire property with stopwatches, aren’t we?”

“Accurate.”

He looked a hell of a lot happier about that than Faith was. “So why does Sara think Dave’s not our guy?”

“The last time I laid eyes on Dave was around three in the afternoon. Sara talked to Mercy roughly four hours later. She saw bruising on Mercy’s neck. Mercy said it was Dave who strangled her. But she seemed more concerned about her family coming after her, I guess over blocking the sale of the lodge. Mercy wasn’t worried about Dave. In fact, she said that everybody on the mountain wanted her dead.”

“Guests included?”

Will shrugged.

“I mean—” Faith tried not to get ahead of herself. She had always wanted to work a real-life locked-room mystery. “You’ve got a limited number of suspects trapped in a remote location. That’s some Scooby Doo shit.”

“There were six family members at dinner—Papa and Bitty, Mercy and Christopher, Delilah and I guess you can throw in Chuck. Jon showed up before the first course, drunk off his ass and yelling at Mercy. Then there were the guests. Me and Sara, Landry and Gordon, Drew and Keisha, Frank and Monica. Also the investors—Sydney and Max. We were all packed in around a long dinner table.”

Faith looked up from her notebook. “Were there candelabras on the table?”

He nodded. “And a chef and a bartender and two waiters.”

“And Then There Were None.”

He shoved the last of the Snickers into his mouth. “Heads-up.”

Amanda was walking back toward them, the sheriff straggling behind her. Biscuits looked exactly how Faith had imagined when she’d heard his voice on the recording. A bit round, at least a decade older than her and several IQ points shorter. She could tell from the look on his pasty face that he’d reached the third stage of dealing with Amanda, skipping over anger and acceptance and going straight to sulking.

“Special Agent Faith Mitchell,” Amanda introduced. “This is Sheriff Douglas Hartshorne. He’s graciously agreed to let us take over the investigation.”

Biscuits didn’t look gracious. He looked pissed off. He told Faith, “I’m gonna be in the room when you talk to Dave.”

Faith didn’t want the company, but she gathered from Amanda’s silence that she didn’t have a choice. “Sheriff, has the suspect said anything about the crime?”

Biscuits shook his head. “He ain’t talking.”

“Did he ask for a lawyer?”

“Nope, and he’s not gonna give you anything and it’s not like we even need it. We already got the evidence to put him away. Blood on his shirt. Scratch marks. History of violence. Dave likes to use knives. Always carries one in his back pocket.”

Faith asked, “Does he usually carry anything other than the butterfly knife?”

Biscuits clearly didn’t like the question. “This is a local matter, oughta be handled locally.”

Faith smiled. “Would you like to join me in room eight?”

Biscuits made a grand sweep with his arm in an after you gesture. He trailed Faith down the hall so closely that she could smell his sweat and aftershave.