Dustin thought about Aaron’s corpse in the bathtub. “He’s really dead,” he said. “I’m sorry. And I’m sure you’re safe enough. You can go into your apartments. Just be aware of whoever’s around. You have plenty of dogs here to bark if any cars drive in.”
“Yeah,” Sydney told Drew. “We’ve got all the dogs.”
“We’ll still keep the rifles handy,” Drew insisted.
“Just don’t shoot each other, okay?” Olivia said, trying to smile.
“We’ll solve this thing. Really,” Dustin promised.
Sydney looked at him skeptically. “How do you solve accidents, Dustin? How do you solve accidents that happen when no one else is around?”
“Someone else was around. And we’ll figure out who. Liv, come on. We’ve got to get to the station.”
“You two take care,” Olivia told them.
Andrew nodded. “Yep. We’ll take care. And you take care of Olivia, Dustin. Agent Blake. Don’t you let anything happen to her!” he said fiercely.
“I’m going to be fine,” Olivia vowed. She let Dustin lead her to the car. He could tell that she was trembling.
“You are going to be fine,” he murmured.
He drove to the station. She sat beside him, pale and silent.
“Olivia?” he said quietly.
She turned to him. “I can’t grasp it! I can’t seem to grasp it. Aaron is really dead. I feel...numb. I should hurt more. A friend and a colleague is dead. I cared about Aaron. I just feel...numb.”
“You’ll cry in time,” he said. “Being numb right now is probably good. It’s a kind of emotional protection. We still have a ways to go until we get to the end of this case so being numb will help you get through it.”
“If I do feel anything...I’m angry.”
“Anger isn’t a bad thing, either.”
She was silent again until they arrived at the station. A deputy led them down a hall and into an observation area. It abutted an interrogation room with a one-way mirror. While Sandra could only see her own reflection, they could watch her sitting at a table. She looked lost and alone and she’d obviously been crying. For a moment, Dustin wondered if she could be involved in any way. She appeared to be stricken—with grief? Or remorse? She hadn’t been the one to kill Aaron, but did she know who had? Was Sandra’s not being at the house on purpose?
Frank Vine opened the door and came in to join them. “Hell, Dustin, do you really think this woman could’ve had anything to do with Aaron’s death? She really looks like she’s been through the wringer.”
“Just go in and talk to her, Frank. Ask her if she can imagine why anyone would want to hurt Aaron,” Dustin said.
“All right.” He sighed heavily. “You do realize that to anyone else in law enforcement, I’d look like an idiot. An old addict’s dead and a man—who was apparently alone in his house with a cop watching—electrocuted himself in a bathtub.”
“But you know that someone’s been running around with drugged darts. That’s a fact,” Dustin reminded him. “Frank, come on. First, Aaron pitches forward into a stream and nearly dies in two feet of water. Then he’s electrocuted in a bathtub?”
“The man should have stayed dirty,” Frank muttered as he left them in the observation room and went in to sit across from Sandra.
Jimmy Callahan slipped into the room with Dustin and Olivia. He nodded to both of them. “Think this’ll help?” he asked.
“We’ve got to try everything,” Dustin told him.
Then he grew silent and they all watched Sandra as the interrogation began.
Sandra almost pounced on Frank. “Frank, what am I doing in here? This is one of the worst days of my life! It is the worst day of my life. The man I loved is dead, my work is in the toilet—no, it’s already flushed away. Oh, that doesn’t matter. Aaron is dead! And you have me here, treating me like...like some kind of suspect. I need to lie down. I need to be sedated. I want to sleep. I want to forget everything that’s happened. I want to dream that it hasn’t happened.”
“Sandra, we believe you may be able to help us,” Frank said.
“How?” Sandra dragged her fingers through her hair. “Frank, I wasn’t there. I should’ve been there. But it might not have made any difference,” she added in a low voice, “because I might not have been in the bathroom with him when he did whatever he did. And then you would really have suspected me. I loved Aaron. Oh, the others cared about him, too. We’re a family. We all care about one another. But I loved him. We were going to officially announce that we were seeing each other. We were going to get married, Frank. I was going to be his wife!”
Sandra broke down in tears, sobbing hysterically. Frank pushed a box of tissues across the table to her.
“I’m sorry, Sandra. I’m very sorry for your loss. But if you loved him, you’ll want to help us.”
Sandra nodded, took a tissue and mopped her face. “How can I help in any way? I don’t know what happened!”
“Why was Aaron so determined to leave the hospital so quickly?”
Sandra waved a hand in the air. “Because he was being Aaron! He’d recovered from his near-drowning, and there was no reason for him to be in the hospital. He didn’t even have a headache, he told me. He was fine and he wanted to go home.”
“Sandra, did you let anyone know when Aaron was going home?” Frank asked.
“Yes. No. Well, kind of,” Sandra said.
“Who?”
“I called the Horse Farm to tell everyone that he was doing well and getting ready to check out.”
“Who did you talk to?”
“I left a message,” Sandra replied. “No one answered, but I know our group. They wouldn’t have been able to stay away from the farm. Our therapists would’ve gone out to check on Sydney and Drew...who might well have gone into the office.”
“Okay, Sandra. The morning you were all camping, where were you when Mariah screamed?”
“When Mariah screamed...” Sandra repeated dully.
Frank leaned forward. “Sandra, listen. First Aaron falls into the stream and nearly dies. Then he does die at home in the bathtub? Supposedly alone.”
“Stop it! Stop it, Frank! I didn’t kill him. I. Wasn’t. There!” she said, enunciating clearly.
“You didn’t answer my question. Where were you when Mariah screamed?”
“In my tent!”
“And right after?”
“Outside the tent—running around like an idiot. Watching the boys. Olivia grabbed Drew and went racing toward the sound.”
“You loved Aaron, but you didn’t notice he wasn’t at the campsite with you?”
“Frank. We were asleep. Suddenly, there’s this high-pitched scream. We jumped up. Aaron could have been peeing, for God’s sake!”
“All right, Sandra,” he said quietly. “I’m going to have a deputy take you home. I just have one more question. If you called the Horse Farm and left a message, why did you drop Aaron off and then go there?”
She sighed. “Aaron wanted me to. He asked if I’d reached anyone. I told him no, that I’d gotten voice mail. He asked if I’d go check in on Drew and Sydney, tell them he was feeling just fine and that he planned to be in the next morning. I was supposed to say we’d have a powwow so we could work on saving the Horse Farm. Not much hope of that now, huh?” she asked, and started to weep again.
When Frank rose, he placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Someone’s going to take you home right now. Or would you prefer to go to the hospital? They can fix you up with something that’ll help you sleep.”
Sandra sniffled. “Home,” she said. She looked tearfully at Frank. “Yeah, I know. I run the Horse Farm. Where we work with substance abusers. But I have a stash of sedatives at home for when I need them. I...occasionally have problems sleeping. Don’t worry. I never abuse them. I know better than that.”