There. There it was, the white house with the black shutters and the red door, the color having faded a bit since the last time he’d been here. The grass was patchy and unkempt, and weeds grew up through the cracks in the walk that led from the street to the front door. The Realtor’s sign was still out front, but Sam suspected there’d been precious little interest in the house.

Fiona slowed.

“Sam, did you want to stop…”

“No. That’s okay. Thanks.”

Fiona accelerated and drove on.

“Thanks,” he said again, and he knew from the look on her face that she knew without asking that the house they’d just passed had been the house he’d shared with Carly, the house in which she’d been tortured and killed.

They rode the remaining six miles to the prison in silence.

FOURTEEN

There’s the crime scene.” Fiona slowed down and pointed to the bright yellow tape that marked off a long rectangle from the side of the road to well past the middle of the field.

“I guess you can park anywhere along here. We’ll walk out,” Sam said.

“Walk all the way out there?” She frowned.

“Why wouldn’t we?”

“No reason,” she mumbled.

She pulled to the side of the road and parked, then got out and looked across the field. The grass and weeds were almost knee-high. Sam was already in the field. He turned and looked back at her and stopped. “Are you coming?” he called.

“Sure.” She stepped into the grass and felt it tickle the bare skin under her pants legs. She shuddered and tried to decide which was worse. Not looking, and therefore not knowing what manner of creature lurked in the tall grass, or watching every step and therefore possibly avoiding anything that might be there. And anything could be under the grass and weeds. Snakes. Mice. Ticks. Spiders. Rats.

She reminded herself that she’d read somewhere that field rats were nothing like city rats, that they were smaller and much less aggressive. She decided to follow in Sam’s footsteps-literally. She walked the path he’d made into the field and prayed that he’d scared off anything that might be living there.

“Hey, you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she told him, feeling more than a little foolish. She’d faced serial killers and child murderers and kidnappers, but the thought of some unseen furry or crawly thing making its way up her leg made her blood run cold. “We all have our little quirks,” she muttered.

“What?” Sam turned to her as he stepped over the yellow tape.

“I said, I guess it’s impossible to tell exactly where Wilke was killed. Since he was strangled here, there’s probably no physical evidence. All the blood would be over near the fence, where he was stabbed.” With one arm she brushed away the low-flying squadron of insects that had been flushed out of the grass.

She caught up with Sam in the middle of the section that was cordoned off. “Well, I suppose even as late as last week it would have been easier to see where the killer parked the car. This much later, there’s nothing.”

“I’m surprised the tape is still in place,” he remarked. “I’d have thought between the press and the curiosity seekers, it would have been down by now.”

“Maybe people are just being respectful. I suppose it does happen now and then.”

“Or maybe they’re concerned about him.” Sam turned toward the prison.

“Who?” She followed his gaze to the watchtower that overlooked the field. “Oh. Him.”

“I wonder why the killer wasn’t too worried about being seen the night of the murder,” he said. “We’re standing, what, fifty feet from the outer fence, and the tower is another fifty feet from the inner fence. That’s roughly one hundred feet away.”

“And the guard would have been elevated, so it would have been easy for him to see a car from that distance.”

“The killer would have had his headlights off, and probably would have turned off the interior lights as well. Still…”

Fiona nodded. “The guard should have seen something.”

“Do you have a copy of his statement?”

“No, but we can get one.”

“Maybe we should get our own statement.”

“An even better idea. I’m sure we can get his information easily enough.”

“Let’s take a walk over to the fence.” Sam motioned to her to follow him. “Let’s see how long it takes the guard up there to come to the window to see what we’re doing.”

“He already knows. John called the prison and told them we’d be out here.”

“All the same, you’d think he’d be curious.” Sam forged ahead and sure enough, before they reached the fence, they could see the guard standing and looking down at them.

“There you go, see?” He pointed upward. “He’s expecting us but he still wants to see what we’re up to. So the question is-”

“How come the guard who was on duty the night of August fifteenth didn’t bother to check out the movement he must have seen in the field?”

“Well, he could have been asleep, or drunk, or reading a really good book.”

“Any of the above would work. The problem is getting him to admit to it.”

“Sometimes you don’t need an admission to know, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” Sam stopped and nodded toward the ground, where a small, white makeshift cross was planted in the dirt. He knelt and inspected the heavy wire fence immediately behind it. “This is where the killer left Kenneth Wilke’s body. There are still traces of blood on the wire here.”

Fiona looked back over her shoulder at the distance they’d walked from the field to the fence.

“So we’re to believe that the killer carried a body from fifty feet in that field, propped it up here, then stabbed it forty or so times, and no one saw or heard anything?” She shook her head. “I’m not buying it.”

“Well, then, let’s scout up the guard who was on duty that night and see if he can explain how all this could have gone on under his nose without him knowing.”

“I’ll put in a call”-Fiona took her phone from her pocket-“and see if we can meet with him this afternoon.”

“Have you eaten here before?” Fiona asked when they’d been seated at the first restaurant they came to on their way back from the prison. Sam nodded. “A few years back, but I think it’s under new management now. Let’s hope so. It wasn’t very good.”

“So why didn’t we look for another place to eat?”

“One, because I’m starving, and two, because, like I said, new management.” Sam smiled at the waitress who brought them their menus, and the waitress smiled back as she listed the lunch specials.

“I’ll give you a minute,” she said, her eyes still on Sam.

Fiona studied the menu and pretended she hadn’t noticed. Sam did the same. Within minutes, the waitress was back.

“Have you decided?” she asked.

“I’ll have the turkey club, whole wheat toast. Iced tea. Unsweetened.” Fiona closed the menu and handed it over. “Are your tomatoes local?”

“Sure.” The waitress turned to Sam. “And for you?”

“Hamburger. Medium rare. Fried onions, Order of fries.” He slid his menu toward her. “Water’s fine.”

Fiona’s phone rang and she answered it.

“We can see the guard at two o’clock back at the prison,” she told him after she completed her call. She turned her wrist to check the time. “Which doesn’t give us too much time.”

“We’ll eat fast.”

She could feel his eyes on her, and finally asked, “What?”

“You look like someone.”

“Like who?”

“I don’t know. It will come to me, though. I guess if you’d lived in Nebraska at some time in your life, you’d have mentioned it by now.”

She smiled.

“So where are you from?” he asked.

“Kansas, originally.”

“And after that?” He tilted his head. “You said Kansas originally, which means you’re from somewhere else after that.”

“I grew up in California.”

“One of my favorite states. Which part?”