“Sara? Is everything okay?”
“Yeah . . .” Sara turned her car off, frustrated with herself and her fear. “Stay on the phone with me, okay? I’m in the parking lot and there’s a guy at my apartment door, and he won’t go away. I think I need to see what he wants.”
“Does he look dangerous?”
“No. He looks like a Little League coach actually. But he’s been hovering for a good five minutes so I think I need to just see what he wants and get rid of him.”
“Okay, I’ll be right here.”
It was ridiculous to think that having Gabriel on the phone with her, fifteen miles away, was going to prevent her from bodily harm, but for some reason it was extremely comforting.
“I think I found a birth certificate for Anne Donovan’s daughter,” he said.
Sara was getting out of the car and crossing the parking lot. “Are you serious?” Sara briefly wondered if she should confess she knew who Anne’s daughter was—that she had all along. But if she did, Gabriel would want the whole truth, and she wasn’t prepared to tell that yet.
“Yes. Her name was Margaret Donovan, and she was six years old at the time of Anne’s death. I have no idea what happened to her though, but it’s a starting point. If we could find descendents of Anne, we could actually do something with the blood flakes that have been preserved from the knife found at the scene.”
“How? We don’t have John Thiroux’s DNA. If we found blood that didn’t belong to Anne, based on a comp to a descendent, it doesn’t tell us anything except that someone else was in the room, which of course we knew, since someone killed her.”
“Well—”
“Hang on, Gabriel.” Sara was behind the guy, and he had turned around curiously. She kept the phone at her ear but moved the mouthpiece down toward her chin. “Can I help you?”
Giving her a friendly smile, the man raised the envelope in his hand and waved it back and forth. “Are you Sara Michaels? I have a delivery for you.”
“Thanks.” She held out her hand, still weirded out by his behavior. He wasn’t a mailman, and he wasn’t wearing a delivery uniform. No truck with FedEx or UPS on it in the parking lot either.
“Can you sign here? I’m glad you showed up. I can’t leave this kind of thing on a doorstep. I don’t get paid until I can say I put it directly in your hand.”
That made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. “What kind of thing?” She propped her cell phone on her shoulder and signed the paper he held out for her, using what amounted to an S followed by a slash. It seemed like a bad idea to use her official signature, but she wasn’t going to argue either. She wanted him off of her sidewalk.
“Usually court documents. Subpoenas, stuff like that.” He shrugged and gave her an apologetic smile. “Sorry.”
“Well, who sent it?” Sara glanced down at the envelope. It had a return address, but no name.
“All I can tell you is what it says right there.” He tapped the return address.
It told her nothing, other than a Naples address. Heart pounding, she said, “Okay, thanks.” It had to be from her lawyer. He was the only one who knew her current address. Just paperwork from the house sale, or something regarding Rafe’s trial. He was just trying to keep her informed and up-to-date.
It wasn’t a warrant for her arrest or anything like that. They didn’t mail something like that to you. They just showed up and slapped cuffs on you.
“Have a great day.” He waved and jogged down the path to the parking lot.
“Yeah. You too,” she murmured absently, fixing her phone so she could talk. “Hey, it’s just a delivery guy. He gave me a package.”
“Oh, okay. Good. So what were we talking about?”
Sara turned, saw that the guy had gotten into his car and was pulling away, and then opened her apartment door. Locking it behind her, she told Gabriel honestly, “I have no idea. And I think I should go. I think this package is from my lawyer and I should probably check it out.”
Glancing around her apartment, she spotted Angel reclining on the sofa arm, sound asleep. Tossing her purse down, she tore open the envelope, not even wanting to wait until she was off the phone. She needed to see it was just house or banking documents. Something to do with probate court. Boring. Nothing more, nothing less.
“Your lawyer? What do you have a lawyer for?”
“For settling my mom’s estate and stuff . . .” Sara frowned. The papers she was pulling out didn’t feel like forms or documents. They felt glossy, like . . .
Pictures. She gasped as she saw the image of her mother, dead, blood everywhere—on the wall, the bed, her mother’s neck, shoulders, chest, stomach, arms.
“Oh, God,” she said, flipping through the stack in her hand. “Jesus Christ.”
“What?”
Sara struggled to take deep breaths, to not throw up. To not give in to the fear and shock that were crawling up her throat and cutting off her air.
“Sara. What is in the package?” Gabriel’s voice was calm and commanding.
“Pictures. Of my mother. Dead.” She got to the last one, taken at a downward trajectory through her mother’s bedroom window. It showed the wounds on her mother’s chest in brutal, gory detail, her naked flesh ravaged by the knife and her killer.
Sara rammed it back into the envelope. “I’m going to be sick.”
Her stomach heaved and she choked on the heels of a gag. She had seen the crime scene photos in court, but that had been brief, a quick flashing in front of her as the prosecutor had tried to unnerve her. She’d never had time to study them, to take in their full glossy gore.
“Sara, listen to me. Put the pictures back in the envelope and close it. Do you understand?”
“I already did,” she said, voice trembling, tears in her eyes, as she swallowed hard, the urge to vomit thankfully dissipating. “Did you request these pictures for the book?”
“No, of course not. I would never do that without asking your permission. But I wouldn’t use crime scene photos anyway. And if I did want documents from your mother’s case I would have them sent to me, not you.”
That was true, that all made sense. “So who would send these to me?”
Even before the words were completely out, Sara felt fear creeping up. Someone knew where she was, her address. No one had access to those photos except the police and those involved in Rafe’s court case. She pulled the pile of photos back out of the envelope and found the one taken at a downward angle. Were these truly police shots of the scene or were they taken before the police arrived? By the killer.