Hairpin Bridge by Taylor Adams

Author:Taylor Adams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: William Morrow
Published: 2021-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Lena

“What happened next, Ray?”

“I was still catching up behind her. I didn’t see it happen.”

“You didn’t see what happen?”

He licked his lips. “We need to go back to the beginning. To what happened before June sixth. You wanted the truth? Congratulations. Here it is.”

She kept an eye on the semitruck still parked on Hairpin Bridge’s opposite lane, the driver still inside on his radio with emergency services, as Raycevic took a shaky breath and whispered, “Cambry was my girlfriend.”

“Excuse me?”

He repeated: “She was my girlfriend.”

“Uh, wow. No.”

“Yes.”

“Try harder.”

“I was having an affair with her.” He forced an ill smile. “My wife got fat, you know?”

“You’re lying.”

“I was lying. Until now. I misdirected the investigation into her death. I kept my romantic involvement with Cambry under wraps, because I have a marriage and a career to protect.”

Romantic involvement. The words went straight for Lena’s gut, as heavy as a roiling mass of maggots. Squirming, shivery revulsion.

“Think about it. Just please, hear me out, and think about what I’m telling you. Think about all the lost time in Cambry’s path, between when she robbed Blake in Florida and June, when she died on this bridge. That’s four months unaccounted for. She lived nomadically, stealing, using, paying with cash, and giving her name to no one. What does someone do with all that time?”

“She drew. She read. She smoked. She enjoyed the solitude.”

“For four months?”

“She was traveling.”

“No, Lena, she was traveling until March. But I promise you: April, May, June, she lingered in the greater Howard County area. Black Lake. Rattlesnake Canyon. Magma Springs. The investigation didn’t conclude this, because I scrubbed the evidence.”

I scrubbed the evidence. Uttered so casually.

She couldn’t believe it. He had to be lying. She felt herself getting flustered, her tongue thick in her mouth. Her thoughts refusing to fire.

“Why would I lie about this, Lena?”

None of these new pieces fit together. Cambry’s Corolla had been minimalist and sparse, yes, but so was her sterile bedroom all throughout Lena’s childhood. Her stuffed animals were ignored. Her Barbies were turned faceless. Cambry didn’t collect objects. She collected sights and sounds.

She forced herself to speak. “You . . . you admit, right there, that you destroyed evidence.”

He nodded. “Anything that connected her to me, and to this region. Receipts. Her knife. Her stolen gun. My number in her flip phone. Her—” He stopped himself.

Her drawings. Her heart squeezed with rage.

Still, it didn’t make sense. A big question: “How did she die, then?”

“I told you. She jumped—”

“Bullshit, Ray. My sister would never talk to you. She sure as hell wasn’t your girlfriend.”

“I’ll prove it, Lena.”

“Yeah? This’ll be good.”

“I can.” Twisting his cuffed wrists, he slipped his fingers into his back pocket. “Right now. I’ll show you a photo I have of Cambry and me fishing on Black Lake, taken the day before she—”

“I’m supposed to believe you keep a photo of a dead woman in your wallet?”

“It’s all I have left.”

His voice wavered with something that sounded like heartbreak. It was the best acting she’d seen from him all day.

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