Free The Tempest by James Lilliefors Page A

Markos. Where are they from? Can we run checks on all of them?”
    â€œ ’course.” Fischer was writing.
    â€œI’d like to pull security tapes, too, anything we can find for the past week.”
    â€œM’kay.” Where Tanner would’ve asked “Why? What’re you thinking?” Fischer just listened and jotted notes.
    Hunter told him then about the necklace she’d discovered on the beach. “It’s possible she was fighting with someone and, in the process, the perp ripped off her necklace. There seemed to be scrapes on Susan’s neck and upper right arm. I didn’t have a chance to ask her husband about the necklace, but I will. In the meantime, let’s see if it turns up in any surveillance pictures.”
    â€œM’kay.”
    Afterward, Hunter sat at her desk, trying for some time to fit the details of Susan Champlain’s death into some kind of pattern that made sense. She couldn’t. She printed out a photo of Susan, the only one she’d found online: taken four years ago, at a fund-­raiser, with her new husband, “Philadelphia developer Nicholas Champlain.” Hunter cut Nick Champlain from the picture and tacked the image to her corkboard. She printed a second one to take home. Something maybe to replace the one in her head—­Susan Champlain’s body contorted on the beach, in front of a gallery of onlookers, before the partition went up.
    She was driving out of the parking lot at last when Henry Moore’s number came up on her phone.
    â€œWow,” she said. “Surprised you’re calling so late.”
    â€œI wouldn’t be, except I just saw you leave the building.”
    â€œOh. You’re still there?”
    â€œGetting ready to leave.” That was odd.
    â€œWhy so late?”
    Moore sounded tired. He was a brusque man with a soft center, who often skipped over the niceties. “I was talking with Dunn. I’m told we’re not getting directly involved in this one. They’re going to push that it was an accident.”
    Hunter felt her heart begin to beat faster. “Not surprising, I guess.”
    â€œNot surprising.” She suspected Moore had talked, too, with State’s Attorney Wendell Stamps; Stamps was the silent arbiter in Tidewater County, where too many competing agencies worked the same turf. “Except,” he said, “I think we probably should be involved.”
    â€œI do too,” Hunter said. Good . She listened to him breathing. There was a saying she’d heard years ago: homicide investigation is God’s work. It came back to her at times like this. “Why, what are you hearing?”
    â€œNothing specific. I think there’s another shoe that’s going to drop.”
    â€œLiterally,” she said.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI mean, there’s literally another shoe,” Hunter said. “They only found one of Susan Champlain’s sandals.”
    â€œOh. Yeah.” Hank Moore chuckled. “I was thinking figuratively.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œIt’s late. Let’s talk in the morning.”
    â€œAll right.”
    L OOKING UP FROM his laptop, Luke followed the thin white line of surf that traced the shoreline down to Widow’s Point, where it suddenly vanished into darkness. The early-­morning air was cool and unsettlingly quiet, the moon veiled by drifting clouds. Unable to sleep, Luke had come out onto the back deck to sip a glass of bourbon and to ponder his Sunday sermon. Falling was no longer a feasible topic.
    Yesterday, Susan Champlain had come to him asking for help. Luke had advised her to rely on faith, to surrender her fears and troubles to God. Ask and he will reveal himself to you . He’d prayed with her, and for her, and quoted lines from Psalm 37, the psalm of patience. The next evening, Susan Champlain was dead.
    Luke knew he wasn’t supposed to explain that. Tragedies happened every