Noah’s face showed increasing stages of horror as Sam relayed this information.
Sam kept going. He wasn’t entirely convinced Noah was the killer, but Noah was lying about something, and Sam wanted to see if he could scare the truth out of him. "The way I figure it is that you did meet with Lynn. Maybe first you were trying to smooth-talk her out of the financing. But when that didn’t work, you had to take more drastic measures. Derek did see you that night. You snuck out of your tent and did what you had to do to protect your interests."
"No!" Noah shook his head vehemently. Glancing back at the group again, he stepped closer to Sam. "I wasn’t meeting with Lynn. But it is true that I wasn’t in my tent. Don’t tell anyone, but I—"
The radio in the Tahoe squawked noisily to life, interrupting Noah’s confession. Sam had turned his phone off just so he wouldn’t get interrupted. He’d told Reese to call only if there was a dire emergency. He went around to the driver’s-side door to grab the receiver, when Reese’s panicked voice rang out, chilling his blood. "Sam. Emergency. There’s been a dog hit down by the Pembroke Bridge."
Sam’s heart jerked. Lucy? He grabbed the mic and pressed the button. "German shepherd?"
"Sounds like it. Driver said she was still alive. You better get there fast."
Screw Noah. He would catch up with him later. Might be a good idea to let him stew on what Sam had told him, anyway. Better yet, if he told the others, the real killer might do something stupid and reveal themselves.
Right now, Sam’s quick actions might be the only thing that kept Lucy alive. He jumped into the Tahoe, flicked on the siren and lights, and screeched out of the campground toward the Pembroke Bridge.
Chapter Thirty
Sam screeched to a halt behind the old 1970s station wagon that was listing into the ditch on the side of the road with its flashers on. He jumped out of the Tahoe, bracing himself for the worst as he ran around to the front of the car.
There was no dog lying in the road.
"She just came out of nowhere!" a balding man, his belly protruding over his belt, pacing in front of his car with a worried look on his face, said. "I hope she’s not hurt badly."
"Was it a big dog? Looked like a German shepherd and mixed with something big?" Sam asked.
The man nodded and pointed to the guardrail that ran along the road just before the bridge. "She ran off over there."
Beyond the guardrail, the Sacagewassett River flowed by at a fast clip. If Lucy had fallen into the river, she was probably already gone. Sam vaulted over the guardrail and scrambled down the embankment, rocks clattering into the river as he went.
A high-pitched whine sounded to his left. Lucy was sitting next to a pile of debris that had accumulated at a bend in the river. Relief washed over him. She was sitting upright, so hopefully, she hadn’t been hurt too badly. He didn’t see any blood, but the lack of obvious external injuries didn’t mean that she didn’t have potentially fatal internal injuries. He’d better get her to the vet right away.
Sam squatted to her level. "Are you okay?"
Lucy trotted over, her brown eyes looking up at him. Sam checked her over, running his hands down her sides, her legs, and her chest. He didn’t find any injuries except a small tear in her right ear.
"What happened? Did the car clip you here?" Sam asked.
"Woof!" Lucy broke away and trotted toward the debris.
"Hey, come back. I want to take you to the vet to get you looked after."
Lucy whined. Maybe she’d been hurt more than he thought. Maybe he could bribe her into going to the vet. "If you come with me, I’ll get you one of Billie’s burgers."
Lucy trotted up to Sam, nudged his hand, and then trotted back to the debris. She wasn’t hurt. She was trying to tell him something.
Sam went over to the pile. There were empty soda bottles, cans, plastic bags, even part of a grocery cart. Sam hated to see the trash. He remembered a time when there was hardly any, but now the more people that came, the more trash there was.
Lucy was sniffing at something in the pile. It was soaking wet and filthy with dirt, but Sam could see it had once been white. The little pink bow on it was hanging by a thread. A jolt kicked his chest. Sam reached into the debris and picked it up. The maker was Plain Jane.
"Sam? What the hell are you doing?"
Sam squinted up at Jo, who was standing at the top of the rock embankment. She must’ve heard the call for the accident and rushed down. She had her sunglasses off and a quizzical look on her face. Her eyes flicked from the bra to Sam.
He turned to face her, the bra dripping from his hand.
"I think Lucy just solved the case."
Chapter Thirty-One
Jo took care of calming down the driver and sending him on his way while Sam brought Lucy to the vet. Lucy had only been grazed by the car, the tear in her ear the only injury. Sam called Reese with the good news and told her to assemble the campers in his office in two hours. He had a few things to check into first.
By the time they gathered in his office, it was just past noon. The campers sat nervously in extra chairs they’d brought in from the squad room. Lucy was out in the lobby, being fed a sumptuous meal of steak and carrots. Apparently, she preferred that to sitting in on Sam’s big reveal.
Jo sat off to the side, her notepad in her lap, the eraser end of her pencil tapping on it rhythmically.
Kevin was in the room too. He stood silently by the door in his blue police uniform, his arms crossed over his chest in an intimidating manner. The campers kept glancing at him. It all added to setting them on edge, which was exactly the way Sam wanted them to feel. He knew the more nervous they got, the more apt they were to turn on each other.
Sam came around to the front of his desk, leaning his backside on it and looking down at the campers in their seats.
"Did you find out who killed Lynn?" Derek looked around at his friends and back up at Sam. "I mean, that’s why you called us here, right?"
"That’s right," Sam said. "Some new evidence has come to light, and I think I know exactly what happened the night Lynn died."
Sam walked back behind his desk, where they had taped up all the pictures from the investigation on a giant corkboard. There were pictures of the pile of Lynn’s clothes they had found in the woods, pictures of the contents of her duffel bag and what they’d found in her tent, and even pictures of her body as they’d found it in the river, which Sam noticed the girls studiously avoided looking at.
Sam pointed to the picture of the pile of clothing. "Lynn was wearing these clothes the night she died. But, for some reason, she took them off. To go swimming in the middle of the night? We didn’t think so." He turned to face the campers. "Our theory was that she was meeting a lover. Something went wrong, and he killed her, then dragged her body down into the river and sent it downstream, hoping it would look like an accident."
"I knew it! It was that guy from the bar," Amber said.
Sam shook his head and pointed to a picture of a receipt. "No. That guy had an alibi. He was pumping gas at almost the exact time that Lynn was killed. There was no way he could’ve killed her, dragged her body to the river, and then run back to his car and driven to the gas station."
Their eyes flicked from the receipt to Sam’s face. Julie spoke up. "Well, then it must’ve been someone else at the campground."
Sam stared at her. "Really? Was there someone else there? I talked to each of you, and no one mentioned anyone else with Lynn."