Page 95 of Water's Edge

“Where to first?” Ronnie asks.

We’re sitting in my car and I’m debating if I should take her with me. I could have her take the video home and go through it. That would be a better use of her time and skills. But she’s like a kitten. If you feed it, it’ll follow you home. I’ll let her work all of this with me. I feel like I should at least let her do this. If it turns up nothing, that will be a good lesson too. Investigations are a lot of legwork with little reward sometimes.

“First tell me what Marley had for us.”

“He didn’t get a match with Boyd on any of the cases.”

Hallelujah.

“What did he get?”

“He said the rape kit on Karynn Eades was a match with Dina Knowles and Leann Truitt’s unknown DNA. We have a connection between three of the murders now.”

I drive out of the Sheriff’s Office parking lot and head north.

“Adelma Beach is our first stop. We’re going right past there on our way to Crane, where Margie’s last known address was. I want to get a look at the area where Dina was dumped. Have you got the pictures?”

Ronnie pulls out three photos that provide the best view of the scene. They were taken from three angles away from the body.

“We won’t need them if you want to know the exact location of her body,” she says. “I have the GPS coordinates.”

She can use her magic phone and get us right to the spot. It would be nice to see this symbol that Clay said was carved into a fallen tree trunk.

“I don’t suppose you have all the addresses for Dina and Margie?”

“Of course,” she says. “I put them in last night while I was waiting for Marley.”

The way she says his name told me there might be romance on the horizon.

“You like him, don’t you?”

I don’t know why I asked. Yes I do. I need her to keep a connection with him. He wasn’t my type, and although I’d do most anything to get information, I don’t want to go out with Marley.

“He kissed me last night,” she says suddenly, and gives me a worried look. “That won’t get me fired, will it?”

I laugh out loud, and she sits back with a pouty look plastered on her face.

“If that would get you fired, we’d lose half of the department.”

“But Marley said to keep it between us. I probably shouldn’t have told you.”

“No. You should have told me. I’ll keep your secret until you’re ready to tell.”

She smiles. “You’re a good friend, Megan.”

Yeah. Then why do I feel like such a bitch for pushing them together for my own totally selfish reasons? But who knows, maybe they would have gotten together anyway. Marley? I can’t believe he’ll want to keep Ronnie a secret. He isn’t a bad-looking guy, but I can’t see him scoring with a beauty like Ronnie.

“I’ve got directions to Dina’s scene.”

She touches the phone and a disembodied female voice starts giving turn-by-turn directions. I turn at Four Corners Road and soon we’re at Adelma Beach, driving along South Discovery Road at Discovery Bay. Much of the bay shoreline is seeded with everything from log cabins to multimillion-dollar estates. The GPS leads us to a deserted stretch that’s so rocky, it doesn’t qualify for a beach. We make our way on foot to the coordinates, trying not to break an ankle.

The phone announces we’ve arrived.

I’m standing in a sandy area no bigger than my bedroom. The tree trunk is easy to find. It’s three feet in diameter and twenty feet in length. It was carried by high tide onto this little section of beach and its thick roots are buried in the sand and act as an anchor. The far end of the trunk disappears into the water. I climb over it and find the carving. It’s been gouged into the wood with a sharp blade and is the size of the mouth of a coffee mug.

The all-seeing eye.

Ronnie snaps a close-up of it with her phone. I climb back across and look out into the bay. She says what I’m thinking.

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