“The search started with people on foot,” she said. “None of them saw the stash, which makes sense if it was behind an offshoot of the beech tree. The most anyone would do would be duck under the tree and move on, yes?”
“Yes,” Jonah said. “I’m happy with that.”
“But at five P.M., they brought in dogs from Southampton,” she said, handing him an old report from the investigating officer at Lyndhurst. “They were primed for Aurora’s scent, and they’d all been trained on suspicious substances. So how did all of them fail to find a place that we know she had visited before, and which must have reeked of Dexedrine?”
Jonah frowned. He took the report and read over it. He had a hazy memory of the dogs arriving at the scene. But on that first day, he’d been moved to the door-to-door search with his sergeant. They’d spent the evening knocking and questioning.
“You’re right. I don’t…”
He thought of Jojo’s confession. Of how they had caved the entrance in.
“Jojo Magos is coming in tomorrow,” he said slowly. “She wants to make a statement to the effect that she and Brett Parker caved in the entrance to the stash. Caving it in would make it a lot harder for the dogs to pick up the scent, but if Aurora had been in there beforehand, there should have been a trail leading right to it.”
Hanson nodded, her cheeks gaining a slight flush of excitement. “If they covered it up, that makes sense of some of the weird statements from the following day. They were trying to cover up two of them hiding it…Yeah, look.”
She had stuck tiny fluorescent tabs to some of the pages in a stack of statements, and she pulled one open to show him. “Topaz said Brett went toward the main road to search, and Jojo stayed at the camp. But Connor said Brett had gone to wade in the river and that Jojo had gone looking toward the road. Brett agreed that he’d been wading, but the one slightly canny bit of interviewing involved him being asked why he hadn’t been at all wet when the police arrived. He’s on tape as saying he removed his trousers before going in, but they’ve indicated a pause in the transcript. Here.”
Jonah couldn’t help smiling at the thoroughness. It was a refreshing feature in a new recruit. It was usually just Lightman who went for the meticulous approach.
He glanced over the statements. Nodded. “Good work, Juliette.”
“So do we think that’s all they were hiding?” she asked. “Was it just that they’d gone to hide the drugs, or was there something else? Were some of them deliberately laying a false trail for the dogs, either to hide the drugs or because they knew she was there? And if so, how did they know how to do it? The talk we had from the guy at Vice said it’s really hard to do.”
“You’re right,” Jonah said thoughtfully. “I had that talk, too. That stuff about how they smell in the same way we see. Not just one thing at a time.”
“So whoever did it probably had a good working knowledge of narcotics,” Hanson agreed.
“Yup. Benners.”
“Or Jojo Magos, through her brother.”
Jonah nodded. He found himself thinking again of Jojo hiding the stash.
“You should definitely go home now, Juliette,” he said. “I’m heading off in the next thirty seconds. And thank you. That’s significant information.” He started to walk away, and then turned back. “How did everything else go? Anything specific on Connor?”
“Oh, no,” Hanson said, slightly flustered. “I was looking into Connor when I realized about the dogs….”
Jonah nodded. “In the morning, please. And if you get stuck, Facebook and LinkedIn are a good bet.”
Hanson nodded. “Sure.” Her face was a little pink, her nodding a little overeager.
Jonah felt sorry for her. He was genuinely pleased with her work. But he also knew that the little things could be as crucial to an investigation as the inspired leads and analysis. And he needed orders followed as well as instincts. He’d learned the hard way how much devastation could be caused by officers who didn’t listen.
22
Aurora
Saturday, July 23, 1983, 12:50 A.M.
The images in her head were as confused as the trees whipping past her. Topaz kissing Coralie. Connor’s iron grip on her. Brett so caught up in them that it was like watching someone hypnotized.
And threading through all that, sharper and more painful, the memory of twilight, and the ice that had gone through her after she’d followed Mr. Mackenzie. After she’d crept, dripping, through the trees and seen him—her Mr. Mackenzie, Andrew—put his arms round a little brunette woman and kiss her.
She had so many questions that she wanted to fire at him. So many things she badly wanted an answer to. How he could do that to her. How he could hide it from her. How he could turn his back on everything they had.
And there was a creeping voice inside her that said, Maybe he didn’t think you really had anything. Maybe he’s never really cared about you. Maybe it was all in your head.
There was nowhere for her thoughts to go that didn’t wrench at her insides, and she felt sick as it was. Sick and hot and dizzy.
The nausea stepped up in a rush, and she bent down and retched. Liquid poured out of her mouth and her nose, and kept coming. She couldn’t keep her balance, and was afraid of falling in it, so she moved sideways and thudded onto her hip, her legs pressing into twigs and stones.
She had never felt more alone.
23
Jonah did not sleep well. He spent too long reading the case files, time passing him by without being noticed until his phone buzzed at almost one, and startled him.
It was a one-line message from a number he didn’t recognize.
We’re going to the wall again on Thursday. You should get some shoes and come along.
After a second or two, he found himself laughing. He sent a reply.
That’s a kind offer. You know I didn’t actually give you my card for sporting invitations, though, right?
He closed down his machine, and another message arrived shortly afterward.
Doesn’t mean it isn’t a good idea, though, Copper Sheens. Night.
He decided not to reply, though it was tempting to get involved in some banter when he was feeling weighed down with the past. But if his phone records ended up in court one day, he wanted no record to suggest that he hadn’t done his job properly.
Once he’d finally got into bed and dozed off, he had a series of disconcerting dreams about camping with Jojo and Benners and Topaz and Connor, sometimes with the others there and sometimes not. In every dream, he suddenly became aware that Aurora was missing, and that something terrible had happened to her. But in each dream, he couldn’t get the others to worry. They kept on drinking and dancing and laughing while he ran between the trees desperate to find her. At some confused point it was a baby he was looking for, and Michelle was there, too. It was a wakeful night.