Into the Night(91)

Amelia’s hands fisted before her. “I shot him.” Her voice was weak. “He was in my room, and I—I shot him.”

“I know.” Six of her bullets had hit him. He’d died on the scene.

Amelia’s shoulders sagged. “He never talked to me about his sister. I wish...oh, God, I wish things had ended differently. If he’d told me the truth, I could have helped him! It didn’t have to end this way.”

“No,” Macey agreed with her completely. “It didn’t.”

A tear leaked from Amelia’s right eye. “What happens now? Will I go to jail?” Before Macey could continue, Amelia said, “It was self-defense, I swear! He was running at me—coming for me. He didn’t have a gun, not that I could see, but I was so scared.” A sob burst from her. “I knew what he’d done. And I didn’t want him to k-kill me.”

Macey reached across the table. A tissue box had been placed there. She offered Amelia a tissue. Amelia swiped it over her streaming eyes. Macey waited for the other woman to compose herself.

After a few moments, Amelia seemed to get her control back. “I’m sorry. It’s been a really rough twenty-four hours, you know?”

I know. Macey offered her a smile. “I know you would have helped Wesley.”

Some of the tension left Amelia’s face.

“Actually,” Macey remarked, “I think you did help him.”

“I—I don’t understand—”

“Jonah Loxley told me that someone else helped him. He knew that hikers were disappearing here in Gatlinburg, but he had no idea where their bodies were being hidden. He didn’t know that part of the puzzle, you see. The program that he’d created to find potential serials just showed him a victim pattern in the area. It didn’t show him where those victims were buried. It didn’t show him who his killer was.”

A faint line appeared between Amelia’s brows. “I don’t understand.”

“I didn’t, either, not at first, but then I remembered... You are really, really good at finding bodies.”

Amelia’s lips parted, but she didn’t speak.

Macey gave her another smile. “Let me tell you what I think happened...”

“I—I didn’t—”

“I think Wesley came to you. He came to you not as Carlisle, but as himself. He’d figured out that his sister was dead. He’d figured out that Peter Carter had murdered her, but he had no proof. So he went to someone who knew how to find bodies. He went to you.”

Amelia shook her head. “I—I—No. That never happened.”

Macey squared her shoulders and rolled up her sleeves. She caught a glimpse of her scars and, for the first time, they made her feel stronger. “Peter Carter—in his very warped and twisted way—loved Susannah. So maybe you used that as a starting point. Maybe you went to him and appealed to the emotions he’d had for her. But while you were at the museum, you happen to notice the new exhibit, didn’t you? The hate nails...and the skull.”

Amelia was staring at her with wide, shocked eyes.

“Did a little digging on you,” Macey said, inclining her head. “You’re a forensic geophysicist now, but when you were an undergrad, you were focused on forensic anthropology.”

“Y-yes...”

“That means you know your way around bones. I’m betting with just one glance, you knew you weren’t looking at some two-hundred-year-old skull. You were staring at a recent victim. You were staring at Susannah.”

Amelia’s breath came faster. She was almost panting.

“But then the problem became...where was her body? You realized that Peter was still obsessed with her, and maybe...maybe during that visit he mentioned the spot that Susannah liked to visit. Her favorite place. Her safe place. You headed out there with Wesley, because, of course, he remembered that his sister had loved that spot when they were kids, and you took your equipment with you. You found the cabin and you started searching.”

“This is crazy,” Amelia whispered. She stared at Macey in horror. “You’re crazy.”

Macey glanced down at her scars, and she smiled. “You found a lot that day. Not just Susannah...but so many more bodies. I bet you nearly went wild when you found all of those readings.”

Amelia was shaking her head—

“Did you wonder if Peter was the one who’d killed them all? Bet you did, so you went to Wesley’s contact at the FBI. You met Jonah. You shared what you knew, he shared what he knew...and you realized that you’d found the burial grounds for a serial killer.” She shrugged. “At that point, well, I’m betting Jonah just staked out the cabin, huh? Probably put up some recording devices because he sure seemed to love those.” She knew now that Jonah had been the one to put the devices in her cabin. They’d found the receivers for those devices—in the cabin he shared with Tucker. He was right under our noses the whole time. “Jonah liked to watch. He liked to find sins. So he waited and he watched and he found Curtis Zale.”

Amelia shot to her feet. “This is ridiculous! You were at that cabin! None of those bodies had been dug up! There was no way for me to know that Susannah was there—no way for me to know about—”

“You detected the bodies with your equipment. Most of them were in a nice, neat little line behind the cabin. Those were the work of Curtis Zale. Susannah was all alone, underneath her favorite tree. Her brother would have known that tree was her favorite, right?”