Chapter 12: Edwards - Hunter or Hunted

Something didn’t add up.

It was like an AI picture, almost too perfect. Everything was accounted for. Everything looked exactly as it should.

Except for one thing.

Edwards stared down at the photos on the desk, head in his hand. His brain throbbed from the furrow of his brow, pain pulsing from the center of his neck down his traps and through his shoulders. Sandpaper lined the backs of his eyelids. No amount of blinking could ease the aching dryness.

His eyes had been glued to these photos for at least an hour. Maybe longer. He had spread them across the old mahogany desk just after her death, and he hadn’t moved them since.

Because something didn’t add up.

In the far left corner lay the photo of Delilah. Hanging. He didn’t look at that one often. Her blue face, the snow gathering on her hair, the crystals of ice dangling off her pink fingernails⁠—

Edwards just couldn’t bring himself to look at that for very long.

Besides, he didn’t have that feeling when he looked at the photo of her hanging. His stomach hurt, his eyes burned, his chest tightened, but he’d realized instantly what didn’t add up about that photo. The shoes. The moment he saw it—the moment he saw her hanging there—he had questioned the shoes.

The other photos, ones of her footsteps in the snow, of the path from the road to the tree, looked right. It was only about a twenty-foot run from the site of the vehicle to her hanging body. A short pathway. Snow-dusted trees. Snow-dusted bushes. No blood. No other footsteps.

Just big footprints, from big shoes. Delilah was only five-two. But the shoes were a men’s size ten.

Why?

Why had Delilah worn a pair of two-hundred-dollar sneakers, a few sizes too big, to hang herself in the woods? Only days after heavy snowfall as well. Why not a pair of boots?

Rhiannon couldn’t provide an answer, either. According to the inventory log at the community closet inside the ranch, Delilah had taken two pairs of shoes from their communal closet. Blue snow boots, brand unspecified, and white off-brand sneakers from a department store chain.

Edwards asked Rhiannon if she remembered the shoes Delilah had worn on her way in. A pair of slippers, Rhiannon confirmed with confidence.

“She literally ran out the door in the middle of the night, Edwards,” Rhiannon had told him. “She didn’t have time to pack a bag. Since she’s been here, she hasn’t made enough money to go buy an expensive pair of shoes either. I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but please keep looking into that. She died wearing shoes that weren’t hers.”

So Edwards continued looking into it. And he still had nothing.

Cause of death? Asphyxiation by instrument. As in, a thin rope wrapped around her neck and suspending her nearly three feet off the ground. No sign of foul play, according to the autopsy.

His superior insisted Edwards was reaching. She could have borrowed the shoes from another girl at the ranch. She could have grabbed them at a thrift store. Both would explain why they didn’t fit.

Neither would explain why she wore them instead of boots when the snow was knee-high.

Edwards’s stomach dropped.

The snow wasn’t knee-high. Not on that path from the car to the tree. It had been cleared—at least enough for Delilah to have walked from the car to the tree. Little streaks of orange ran through the white tracks of snow.

It was so obvious. Why hadn’t he thought of it before?

Edwards grabbed two photos from his desk. One, shot from the road, highlighting the path. The other, of a plastic black shovel recovered from the ground beneath Delilah’s feet.

His heart drummed a little faster, a little harder, as his slow steps morphed into a steady jog. He rounded the bend outside his office door, then another at the end of the hall. There, on his right, glinted a golden plaque.

Detective Mitchell.

Edwards tapped a few times on the glass pane. The cheap plastic mini blinds rattled with each rap.

“Come on in,” Mitchell called.

Edwards spun the knob and poked his head inside. “You got a minute, sir?”

Mitchell stood in the corner of his room, in front of a closet door. He only glanced at Edwards over his shoulder, reaching inside for his jacket. “Just a minute. Cheryl’s already pissed. We’re supposed to be at her parents’ in thirty minutes, and it’s an hour drive.”

“Sorry. I’ll make this quick.” Edwards stepped inside and clicked the door shut behind him. “I was just looking at these photos from the scene of D—Allison’s suicide, and I noticed something.”

Wrapping a red plaid scarf around his neck, Mitchell arched a brow at Edwards. “Yeah? What’s that?”

“There’s a pathway.” Edwards spun the photo around and gestured to the final steps Delilah had taken. “From the car to the tree. She cleared a pathway.”

“Well, pretty sure she would’ve had to.” Mitchell shrugged on the expensive fabric coat. “There was more than two feet on the ground that night.”

“Right. Yeah, but doesn’t that strike you as odd?” Edwards rubbed his temples. “I mean, she brought a shovel. She really planned it. But if she really planned it, why didn’t she wear boots?”

“She didn’t bring it, exactly.” Mitchell leaned against the edge of his desk. “When we found the shovel, it piqued my interest too. So I talked to Eve—who Allison borrowed the car from—and she confirmed that she keeps a shovel in the back seat during the winter. Apparently she’s gotten snowed in at work a few times too many.”

Okay. Fine. The shovel made sense then. But⁠—

“I guess, yeah. The shovel was just there, and she figured, why not make her trek to the tree a little bit easier.” Edwards lifted the photo again. “The shovel we found, though—it’s plastic, right? Wouldn’t it have broken lifting that much snow? And look at this.”

Mitchell glanced at the photo. “What am I looking at?”

“These.” Edwards dragged his finger along the lines the shovel had left in the snow. “Do you see that little bit of orange?”

“It looks more like brown to me. Which is common when you’re shoveling. Shovel hits the mud, you drag a little bit of dirt through the snow.” Squinting, Mitchell cocked his head to the side. “Do you see something I don’t?”

Edwards slid the next photo out and held it beside the first. “I just—It looks like rust to me. When you shove a rusty shovel through snow, it leaves orange specks behind. I could be wrong, and I’m not sure it answers any real questions right now, but if I am—if she used a different shovel—why did we find this one at the scene?”

Mitchell raised a shoulder. “It looks like dirt to me, man.”

That still didn’t explain why a shovel so small, so lightweight, could lift that much snow without breaking. Or without leaving marks on Delilah’s hands. Wouldn’t they have at least been red with inflammation? Or callused, if she did it often?

“Well, did forensics take any samples?” Edwards asked. “Maybe they could test them. See if there was rust in the snow, and if there was⁠—”

Mitchell’s snort cut him off. “We can do DNA, we can do fingerprints. But we don’t have the money for forensics like that. Even if we did, there was no reason to take any samples. It got warm for a day or two, so anything on top of that snow probably melted by now. We can’t go back and get samples anyway.”

A black hole opened in the center of Edwards’s chest. “Alright. Rust aside, who really thinks to bring a shovel to the place where they’re getting ready to kill themselves? If they’re thinking about the height of the snow, if they’re concerned with their comfort on their way to end their lives, why wouldn’t she have worn snow boots?”

Mitchell’s shoulders fell, a deep breath escaping his nostrils. “You and these damn shoes.”

“I know, I know. There are plenty of reasons she could’ve been wearing them, but⁠—”

“Look, can I level with you, kid?” Frowning, Mitchell’s brown eyes grew sympathetic.

Sympathy was better than apathy. Edwards nodded.

“Suicides never make sense,” Mitchell said. “They do to psychologists, maybe to a few family members and close friends. But for us? They don’t make sense. We’re out here every day trying to keep people from getting hurt. So seeing someone do it themselves—it gets you all mixed up. You start looking for pictures in the clouds and Jesus’s face on a piece of toast, because it doesn’t have clear-cut explanations. Not the kind that makes sense to us. Is this the first suicide you’ve seen?”

Second, counting Sarah. And Edwards had never been sure if that was suicide either. Sebastian had never seemed to believe so.

“First I’ve worked on, yeah,” Edwards said. “And I hear you, sir. Maybe it has taken a little bit of a toll on me. But something just isn’t adding up here.” He licked his dry lips. “Have we looked into her ex? Evan?”

“I did, and he’s got a solid alibi.” Mitchell shrugged. “Lives all the way in Missouri. No recent flights, and he clocked in and out of work the day before, the day of, and the day after. No way he got all the way up here, killed her, then all the way back down in time to get to his nine-to-five.”

Edwards’ shoulders slumped. Maybe Mitchell was right. Maybe Edwards was looking too deeply into all of this because of Gwen. Because of Sarah.

Maybe Delilah had killed herself.

“Right,” Edwards murmured. “You’re probably right. Just wish there was something I could do, you know? Some way to fix it. Nothing’s gonna bring her back, but if something were to come out later, and I hadn’t done everything in my power to make sure it really was a suicide—Well, I don’t know how I would sleep at night.”

“Hey, I get it. And I don’t mind if you keep looking at it.” Mitchell straightened and headed toward Edwards. He pressed a consoling hand to the young officer’s shoulder. After a gentle squeeze, Mitchell continued past him. “If you find something that looks like more than writing in the clouds, let me know. If we have any reason to believe that this is something other than a suicide, we’ll investigate and prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.”

“I appreciate that, sir,” Edwards said, following behind him. His eyes stayed on the photo. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Mitchell said. “And happy holidays.”