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  She exited at Riverside and scanned both sides of the street as she drove past familiar office buildings—the Florida Times-Union, Haskell, Fidelity—until the structures along the road grew residential. Under a canopy of old oak trees, she passed the stately, historic homes that lined both sides, looking for cameras.

  Nothing.

  Eventually she hit Riverside Park, the neighborhood growing progressively more upscale, but still she saw no obvious cameras.

  Until she happened on something that gave her hope.

  A speed warning. YOU ARE GOING 35 MPH, the digital sign read. SPEED PATROLLED BY AUTOMATIC CAMERA.

  Her heart rose with excitement. It would have definitely caught whoever had passed by two days before.

  A couple of hours later, Carrie was back at the office, in the fourth-floor video station, reviewing the tapes. She’d gotten the speed-warning video from a friend who worked at the Transportation Authority. She began, frame by frame, with the tape from the Exxon station near where Martinez was killed.

  The camera was focused on the comings and goings at the station, but it also took in the first two lanes of Lakeshore Drive heading west.

  This was the best she had.

  Carrie fast-forwarded to 10:06 A.M., the approximate time of the Martinez shooting. She sighed that it would have made this process a whole lot easier if Martinez had just had an in-dash camera in his car like a lot of the patrol cars now had.

  She rolled the film forward, estimating that it was approximately two miles to the highway from the crime scene, and taking into account the traffic flow, which was steady, the blue car would have had to have passed by the station sometime between 10:09 and 10:11.

  If it hadn’t turned off sooner.

  And if Steadman wasn’t lying.

  She watched the footage closely. It was going to be difficult to read the full license plate, especially on a car driving in the outer two lanes, because the camera angle wasn’t exactly positioned to capture that view. Steadman had said the car was a domestic make. A dark blue. Which wouldn’t exactly be helpful since the film was black-and-white.

  10:07 . . . Just a steady stream of traffic passing by. Nothing yet.

  Carrie advanced the frames. 10:08 . . . At the slower film speed, she studied every car she could. In real time, they had driven by in a flash, the camera picking them up for only a split second.

  It was impossible to make out the car color, so she focused on the plates. South Carolina. ADJ-4 . . .

  10:09:23 . . . Still nada. She was thinking a car might have already passed by this time. This was starting to feel like a giant waste of—

  Something flashed by her on the screen.

  A midshade sedan switching lanes. The camera picked it up for only a second. Carrie stopped the tape, rolled back, was able to zoom in. It was a Mazda. Not what Steadman had said, but he’d also said he wasn’t sure.

  At the higher magnification the resolution grew even grainier. But she was able to make out numbers—at least some of them, though only on the right-hand side of the license plate: 392. The left side was completely obscured.

  On the bottom of the plate she could make out a word that made her heart sputter:

  Carolina.

  Not South or North. The left side wasn’t clear.

  Just Carolina.

  It wouldn’t be hard to figure out which Carolina; however, she didn’t know state license-plate colors by heart.

  And the plate also wasn’t ADJ-4, like Steadman insisted. Nor was it a Ford or a Mercury, whatever he thought it was. The only thing that stood out was the state.

  10:09:46. Driving by at a high rate of speed. She wondered if that could be it. She made a note of the time and license numbers and continued forwarding the frames, just in case.

  A minute later, another car passed by. This one she recognized immediately. It was Steadman’s white Cadillac STS. Carrie even verified the plate numbers.

  He was clearly in pursuit, like he said, chasing the car that had gone before him.

  She reversed the tape and replayed the first car over again. There was nothing, nothing even remotely suspicious about it. The plate didn’t match up, though she couldn’t make it out completely. The make was different. If she brought this information to Akers, or one of the detectives, as if it proved something, they’d look at her like she was crazy.

  Shit, if she brought it to Raef, even he’d probably look at her like she was crazy.

  Carrie sighed, filled with frustration. What the hell are you doing? she asked herself. This proved zero. She took the Exxon tape out of the player, marking down the one car that had caught her attention.

  Then she put in the tape from the speed warning on Riverside Avenue.

  Dinofrio had been alive at 10:15, when his wife left to go to her Pilates class. His killing had to have occurred before Steadman arrived, which, according to the cabbie was, 11:02. Accounting for the time it took for him drive back to the scene, escape the police, ditch the car, walk to the Clarion Inn, find the cab, and drive there.

  Calculating the probable time it would take someone to get to Dinofrio’s house on Turnberry Terrace, she started with 10:30 A.M.

  Carrie started advancing the tape. This one was a whole lot easier. While it was also black-and-white, the camera focused directly on an oncoming car’s front grille and license plate.

  It was a speed trap.

  But the work was still slow. There was no exact way to know precisely what time anyone would have passed there. Or, it occurred to Carrie, if they had even come by this route. Who could be sure?

  Dozens and dozens of vehicles went by. With no matches.

  10:35. Carrie started to grow disheartened. Give it up, said a voice inside her. Sometimes people who do bad things don’t fit the part. Look at Ted Bundy. He didn’t look the part. He could charm the pants off a—

  10:40. Twenty minutes or so until Steadman would have passed by in the cab.

  Still nothing.

  Then suddenly it came into view. Her heart lurched to a stop.

  Oh my God.

  10:41:06. There it was. The very same Mazda. 392. This time with South Carolina plates. Perfectly clear.

  And this time, Carrie saw all the numbers.

  Her eyes doubled in size.

  ADJ-4, the license plate read. Followed by what she had seen before. On Lakeview.

  392.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  It took to the end of the day, but I did get a text message back from Marv. “Do you have a laptop handy?”

  “Yes,” I wrote back from a Home Depot parking lot, trying to stay out of sight. “My iPad.”

  “Check your e-mail.”

  I found a document there, from the South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles. I opened the attachment and ran my eyes over it like a starving man looking at a steak. There were names, addresses. All with plates beginning with ADJ-4.

  Twelve of them.

  Many were from towns I’d never heard of. Edgefield. Moncks Corner. I’d been in South Carolina only twice in my life. Once to Charleston, one of my favorite places, and once to Kiawah Island to play some golf with a bunch of doctor buddies.

  Twelve . . . I eagerly scanned the list of names because possibly one of them was the killer I was looking for.

  “How did you get these?” I called Marv back.

  “Does it matter? I know someone. There’s a hundred ways to obtain things like this today. How much do you think a state employee actually makes for a living? But I’m hoping you’re simply planning on handing these over to the police after you turn yourself in. I want to repeat, Henry, what you’re doing is crazy. I know it seems like you’re alone. I know you think this is your only option. But it’s not. I did what I said I’d do; now it’s up to you. All you’re going to do is get yourself killed.”

  I thought for a second about walking into a police station with my hands in the air and handing them this list. My gut reaction was that the cops would never even
stoop to pick it up off the floor.

  “I want to thank you for all this, Marv. I mean it. I’ll be back with you when I know something.”

  “My little speech didn’t exactly move the needle, did it?”

  “I wish I could tell you why I can’t, Marv. But the needle’s already moved. It’s way too late to dial it back.”

  We hung up and I opened the document again, running my eyes down the columns. Names from all over the state. Four of them were women. Grace Kittridge, in Manning. Sally Ann Jennings in Edgarfield. A Betty Smith. Moncks Corner. Just to narrow it, I chose to cross them off for the moment.

  Two of the plates on the list had expired. One in the past year and the other in ’06. Maybe they were just never turned in. Which didn’t really matter. They could have been stolen. Just like mine. Hell, for all I knew, the blue car I was searching might be stolen too.

  Still, the remote chance that one of these names led to that car was the best chance I had.

  I went into the Home Depot and bought a few things with cash. The first two were more throwaway cell phones, and the other was scissors.

  I went into the men’s room toilet stall and started chopping my hair. Each lock of my long brown hair falling into the toilet was like a part of my life that might never come back. I had something I needed to do right now. I had someone who needed me more than I needed my old life. I was no longer someone who had been falsely accused of two murders. I was a dad, a dad who was trying to save the person he loved most in the world. I took one more glance at my old life floating there in the basin—and then I flushed.

  I found a cash machine in the store and punched in my account number and password. I requested three hundred dollars. I knew it would likely trigger a response, probably just as it was happening.

  Hell, there might even be a police team scrambling as I stood here now.

  I didn’t care.

  I wouldn’t be around long . . . and where I was heading, it wouldn’t matter.

  I left, found another ATM at a bank nearby, and took out another three hundred. I stuffed the cash in my pocket, pulled down my cap, and jumped back into the car.

  I-95 was only a short drive away. I turned on Sirius radio and found the Bridge. A bunch of oldies I knew.

  I called Liz from one of the phones I had bought. I didn’t care about the risk. “I want you to know, I have a list. Of twelve cars, whose license plates begin with the number I saw. One of them has our daughter.”

  “How, Henry?” she asked, surprised, but uplifted.

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  The next stop was getting my daughter back. You just hang on, Hallie. I’m coming.

  Next stop, South Carolina.

  Part III

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The next morning Carrie knocked on Bill Akers’s door.

  “Carrie, come on in,” her boss said, moving some papers around. “There’s been some news.”

  “I’ve got something as well,” she said, pushing back the flutter in her stomach and taking a seat across from him. She placed the folder, which contained photos she had put together of the blue Mazda at both crimes scenes, on her lap.

  Akers’s walls were lined with framed criminology degrees, citations for merit, as well as photos of himself with prominent officials, including the mayor, and a former head of Homeland Security. Which only made what Carrie was about to share with him even harder to do.

  She knew she had no greater supporter in the department than Bill. Truth was the community outreach effort had been one of his own personal initiatives. She also knew she’d need every bit of that support when it came to the budgetary cutbacks she’d heard were coming. She’d worn her most flattering suit, black pants and jacket, and a light blue tee. She wanted to look as proper and businesslike as she could for when the shit would hit the fan later.

  “How about I go first?” Carrie said. She took in a breath. “I have an admission to make, Bill. I want to show you something . . .” She put the folder on his desk.

  She had struggled all night over showing this to him. She knew what she had done would get her into a lot of hot water: withholding key evidence from the investigation, a murder investigation; and going around on her own obtaining confidential security tapes using a JSO ID.

  Not to mention, how she was probably the only person here who harbored any doubts about Steadman’s guilt, which she knew, politically, wasn’t exactly a home run. She’d pretty much tossed and turned the whole night.

  But in the morning, she’d awoken, sure in her heart that she was doing the right thing.

  Carrie swallowed. “Look, Bill . . .” she began, trying to ignore the photo of Akers with the new Chief Hall directly in her line of sight, “I’ve had some thoughts . . . about what Steadman was saying the other day . . . How certain things just weren’t adding up. Like why would he have shot Martinez in the first place? I know the others said he was being belligerent and argumentative, but by the time they all left, things had calmed down considerably, and Martinez was only writing up a warning and about to let him go . . .”

  Akers nodded obligingly. Carrie judged his gaze as disappointed.

  “Not to mention where any possible weapon would have come from. I mean, he’d just come off a plane, right? And how there’s nothing in the guy’s past to suggest he had these kinds of tendencies . . .”

  Akers took off his reading glasses. “Carrie . . .”

  A look of skepticism came over her boss’s face, and she found herself suddenly rushing things, not giving him the chance to interrupt. “Then it kind of seemed crazy Steadman would kill his own friend? Who he knew from college. More likely he was going there because he had nowhere else to go—he told us he only ran from the scene in the first place because the police fired on him. I mean, he did place a call to 911 . . . So I asked around . . . He’d also placed two calls to Dinofrio, minutes after he ran from the crime scene, so it seems possible, doesn’t it, Bill, that he only headed there because Dinofrio was the only person he knew in town, not to mention an attorney, which kind of backs up his assertion that he only went there in the first place to turn himself in. And the second murder scene showed no sign of any struggle or altercation—”

  “I didn’t realize he had said he was only going there to turn himself in.” Akers looked at her inquisitively. “You certainly sound like you’ve been following this case closely, Carrie.”

  “I’m only pointing out that there are inconsistencies, Bill. You know how Steadman kept going on and on the other day about us looking for that blue car? With South Carolina plates?” She opened up the file. “I started thinking—”

  “Look, Carrie.” Akers pushed himself back in his chair. “I appreciate all your thought on this, but have you given any thought to the possibility that maybe Steadman intended all along to kill his friend?”

  “What? Why in the world would he want to do that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe there was some history between them that will come out. And given what has come out, the other night, about his time in college, you may well be wrong about any predating ‘violent tendencies.’ And it’s entirely possibly he could have planted the gun somewhere. Off the airport grounds. Maybe on a previous visit.”

  “A previous visit?”

  “Why not? That would give him a perfect alibi, right? To come up here to play golf with him . . . Then he stashed the gun somewhere when he ran from the scene. Or left it near Dinofrio’s house. People are searching the areas now. And what if Martinez somehow found something? What if Steadman somehow felt Martinez was interfering with his plan?”

  “He was up here to give a speech at a doctors’ conference, Bill! Look, there’s something you need to see.” Carrie blew out a breath, knowing there was no holding back now, and took out the first photo, the one of the blue Mazda racing from Martinez’s murder scene. Here goes the career, she thought.

  Akers put up his hand. “No, Carrie, I think you’re the one who needs to see somet
hing . . .” He reached to the side of his desk and pushed a piece of paper across to her. “This came in just an hour ago.”

  Carrie picked it up. It was an invoice of some kind. From something called Bud’s Guns in Mount Holly, North Carolina.

  An invoice for a Heckler & Koch 9mm handgun.

  She saw whom the bill was made out to, and her stomach fell like a ten-ton weight hurled off a cliff.

  Henry Steadman

  3110 Palmetto Way

  Palm Beach, Florida

  Steadman’s address.

  An H&K 9mm, the same kind of gun that had killed both Dinofrio and Martinez. It was bought at a gun show, in Tracy, which made it perfectly legal to avoid providing certain IDs and background checks.

  The invoice was dated March 2. Just three weeks ago!

  Steadman had lied. He said he’d never even owned a gun. Her breath felt cut in half. Carrie was afraid to lift her eyes.

  “So what exactly do you have in there that’s so important for me to see?” Akers asked her with a sharpness in his voice. Acting more like a superior officer than a colleague.

  “Nothing . . .” Carrie swallowed, her mouth completely dry. She closed the file. “This makes it all pretty clear.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I had just about made it through Georgia when I heard the news.

  I’d spent the night in Hinesville, a few miles south of Savannah. I pulled off the highway in need of a night’s sleep and, even more, a shower, and drove until I found a motel that looked even sleepier than me. The woman who checked me in seemed as anxious to get back to the tea she was brewing as I was to avoid her direct sight. Ten minutes later I was bathed and gone to the world, a King of Queens rerun on the TV. Glad to just be in a bed after two nights. When I woke up, the housekeeper was knocking on the door. It was close to ten. The news was on, Libyan Rebels Advancing on the Capital of Tripoli. I closed my eyes again, wondering if I’d hear an update about me.

  What came on almost sent me into cardiac arrest.

  “Florida double homicide suspect purchased a nine-millimeter murder handgun at North Carolina gun show.”