I Will Find You(54)
“He was shocked.”
“What did he say, Rachel?”
“He thinks it’s Matthew.”
Cheryl’s face turned red. “Of course he does. If you throw a drowning man an anvil, he’ll mistake it for a life preserver.”
“If David killed Matthew,” Rachel said, “you’d think he’d know it was an anvil, right?”
Cheryl just shook her head.
“It never made sense, Cheryl. David killing Matthew. Come on. You know that. Even in a fugue state or whatever. And the whole ‘buried weapon’ thing. Why would David have done that? He’d know better. And that witness. Hilde Winslow. She changed her name and moved away. Why would she do that?”
“My God.” Cheryl stared at her sister. “You believe this nonsense?”
“I don’t know. That’s all I’m saying.”
“How can you not know? Or maybe you’re desperate too, Rachel.”
“What?”
“For a story.”
“Are you serious?”
“For redemption. For another chance. I mean, if my son is alive, this would be huge, right? Networks, front pages—”
“You can’t—”
“And if it’s not Matthew, if it’s just a kid who has a passing resemblance to him, all of this—David’s escaping, David finally talking to someone after all this time—well, it’s still a big story.”
“Cheryl.”
“My murdered son could be your ticket back.”
Rachel reeled back as though she’d been slapped.
“I didn’t mean that,” Cheryl said quickly, her voice softer now.
Rachel didn’t reply.
“Listen to me,” Cheryl continued. “Matthew is dead. And so is Catherine Tullo.”
“This has nothing to do with her.”
“It’s not your fault she’s dead, Rachel.”
“Of course it’s my fault.”
Cheryl shook her head and put her hands on her sister’s shoulders. “I didn’t mean what I said before.”
“You meant it,” Rachel said.
“I didn’t. I swear.”
“And maybe it’s true. I feel sorry for myself, for what I lost. But I pushed too hard, and now Catherine Tullo is dead. She is dead because of me. I got what I deserved.”
Cheryl shook her head. “That’s not true. You were just…”
“Just what?”
“Too close to it,” Cheryl said. “You think I forgot?”
Rachel didn’t know what to say.
“Halloween Night. Your freshman year.”
Rachel turned away. She closed her eyes and wished the memories away.
“Rach?”
“Maybe you’re right,” Rachel told her sister. She stared down at the photograph. “Maybe I am seeing what I want to see. Maybe David is too. Probably, in fact. But there’s a chance, right? He’s got nothing. David—he’s as bad as you imagine. Worse. So let him search. It can’t hurt him. It can’t make him worse. That’s why I didn’t show you the pic. If it’s nothing—and yeah, sure, the odds it’s nothing are pretty strong—then it goes nowhere. No harm, no foul. We end up where we began. You’d have never found out. But if it is Matthew—”
“It’s not.”
“Either way,” Rachel persisted. “Let David and I see it through.”
*
“Here’s the footage from Rachel Anderson’s first prison visit,” Sarah told Max. “As I told you before, this was Burroughs’s first visitor since he arrived at Briggs five years ago.”
The surveillance van was a modified Ford. The back van windows appeared tinted, but they were painted black for complete privacy. Your only view of the outside world—and it was a good one—came from hidden cameras strategically placed around the van. Max and Sarah sat side by side in reclining and ergonomic seats at a workstation with three computer monitors. It was more comfortable than you’d think, what with agents spending hours at a time back here. Two agents sat in the driver’s cabin. One was the tech expert, but Sarah knew her way around the system as well as anybody.
“Can you turn up the volume?”
“There is no volume, Max.”
He frowned. “Why not?”
“There was a lawsuit a few years ago,” Sarah said. “Something about privacy being violated.”
“But privacy isn’t being violated with the CCTV?”
“Once Briggs lost the right to use audio in court, they claimed the video was a matter of security and didn’t infringe on privacy.”
“The courts bought that?”
“They did.”
Max shrugged. “So what did you want me to see?”
“Look here.”
Sarah started playing the video. The camera must have been placed on the ceiling somewhere behind David Burroughs’s shoulder. They had a face-on shot of Rachel, who took a seat on the other side of the plexiglass. Sarah hit the fast-forward button, and the two figures moved jerkily. When on-screen Rachel pulled out what looked like a manila envelope, Sarah stopped the fast forward and hit the play button. The speed returned to normal. Max frowned and watched. On the screen, Rachel looked down as though she were trying to muster strength. Then she took something out of the envelope and pressed it flat against the glass.