Right Where We Belong (Silver Springs #4)(87)

Gavin’s eyebrows drew together. “Sorry in what way?”

“He doesn’t specify. Just blames me for breaking up our family, which he claims didn’t need to happen if only I’d had a little faith and remained true to him.”

“But...that’s the type of stuff he’s been saying all along, isn’t it?”

“For the most part. It’s when you take this letter and couple it with what Detective Sullivan just told me on the phone that it all gets worrisome.”

“What’d Sullivan have to say?”

The panic she’d felt when that call first came in welled up again. “He told me that the DA is thinking about dropping the charges.”

Gavin came to his feet. “What?”

“I know.” She stood, too. “I can’t believe it myself. I’ve been over here pacing another hole in this old carpet, wondering what I’m going to do.”

“Why would the district attorney ever even think about dropping the charges?”

“Remember the victim—Theresa Spinnaker—whose blood was found in our van?”

“Yes...”

“She’s admitted to having accepted a ride from him.”

“So?”

“So the district attorney feels the DNA evidence is no longer what it needs to be. Proving Theresa was in Gordon’s van doesn’t mean what it did when she was swearing up and down that she’d never met Gordon before the attack, and he was saying the same.”

“But it was her blood.”

“They don’t seem to care about that, since it was found in such small quantities. They said taking that to court might actually backfire because the defense would argue that it was negligible, that if she’d really been hurt as badly as the pictures prove she was hurt, there would be a lot more blood than a few tiny droplets.”

“What about the items in that duffel bag?”

“Bad news there, too. The lab came back with the results of all the DNA testing. There’s no genetic material on any of those items.”

“None? Isn’t that a little odd in and of itself? If Gordon handled those things—the knife, in particular—they should’ve found his DNA at least. No DNA indicates he must’ve cleaned it.”

“I asked Sullivan the same thing. He said they needed at least one item from that duffel bag to establish a firm connection to one or more of the victims, and it didn’t happen. Instead of being the strong forensic evidence we all expected, the rape kit is now as circumstantial as everything else, and circumstantial evidence isn’t what they need to get a conviction.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Gavin said.

She wiped her palms on her cutoffs as she’d been doing all evening. “I wish I was.”

“They don’t have anything else on him?”

“Meredith Caine swears she recognizes his voice from the attack, but human memory is notoriously unreliable. She can’t ID him visually, since he was wearing a mask, and the DA won’t go with voice recognition alone.”

“If the charges are dropped, he gets out, goes free, can do whatever he wants.”

She said nothing.

“This is terrible,” he said.

“That’s why he went silent after I mentioned Emma Ventnor. He knows he probably won’t need a defense, and he doesn’t want to make the mistake of saying anything that could get him in trouble on an entirely different case. No doubt he’s told Dorothy to leave me alone, too. He only sent me that letter because he couldn’t help letting me know I shouldn’t have sided against him, that he’ll soon be back in the power seat.”

“And he could think a letter through, make sure it was safe.”

“Yes.”

“Wow.” Gavin rested his hands on his lean hips.

Savanna frowned. “See what I mean?”

“Does Sullivan still want you to go to Utah?”

“I was supposed to leave tomorrow morning but just put it off by a week.”

“What for?”

“If I’m only going to have one shot at this, I need more time to prepare. I’m thinking I should send a letter or two, establish a more positive dialogue with Gordon. Maybe even put some money on his books. I’ll have the strongest hand to play if I make him feel as though I’m interested in staying together.”

Gavin didn’t look as though he particularly liked the idea. “What will that do?”

“It’ll make him feel he has something to lose if he can’t convince me that he had nothing to do with Emma Ventnor’s disappearance.”

“But you’ve already asked him about Emma.”

“I’m going to say the police have some new evidence tying him to the case. That just when I believed he was innocent, of everything, they came to me with...something. I can’t decide what.”

“You’re going to bluff.”

“Absolutely. If the police don’t come up with new evidence, everything will rest on my visit to the jail. I have to get him to say something incriminating.”

“Now that he thinks he’s getting out, it’ll be even harder. But at least he won’t find it strange that you’re suddenly coming to visit. I was worried that would work against you.” Gavin took the letter and read through it. “This opens you up to reconciliation, so when you write him back and give him some money, he might buy it,” he added when he was done.