Chapter Twenty-Two Her

Chapter Twenty-Two Her

Present Day

Finding the bat and knowing what to do with it were two different things. I should have thought this through. My cellphone

buzzed in my pocket, and I ignored it. Hiding evidence came first. Make that destroying evidence. Burning the evidence might

be a possibility.

My mind raced with solutions and warnings. I’m not sure how long I stood on the bench, but my cell buzzed twice more. Now

wasn’t the time for alarm companies or scam calls. I needed to think.

The weight of the bat felt familiar. The brown splashes and dots on it were new.

Think.

The answer came in a flash. Rinse off the bat, scrub off any stains, then hide it in a place, not at the house, where one

might find a bat. A Little League baseball field came to mind. There were a thousand of them in the area.

If a kid found it, though... Enough people had been traumatized by Richmond. I didn’t want to add anyone else, especially

not an innocent child.

Then there was the other problem. The police or Kathryn or even Kathryn with the police’s help could be watching. Leading them straight to what seemed to be the murder weapon was not a great plan. Not that I had another one.

I jumped down. As soon as my feet hit the floor I saw movement outside. People in my yard. More unwanted company. The worst

unwanted company—Elias and Detective Sessions.

“Is there no other crime in this town?”

They stood at the back of the house. They looked up. They looked around. They stared at the greenhouse. The damn door was

open. Could they see me from that far away? Could they see the bat in my hand? I hid it behind my back as if that would help.

Holy shit.

When they started walking toward me, they weren’t rushing. But they weren’t going away either.

Clean. Clean. Clean.

I raced to the sink, trying to duck and stay out of sight, which was not an easy task in a building made of glass. My heartbeat

thundered in my ears. Panicked, my brain started to shut down. That could not happen. I did a mental kick start as I reached

into the cabinets and dragged out a bucket. A bottle tipped over and a can of bug spray rolled around, making more noise than

I wanted, but I kept moving.

The men marched at a steady pace. I never appreciated the size of the three-acre property as much as I did right now. Fingers

crossed that the greenhouse was too far from them to get a good look at my scrambling inside.

My breathing grew labored, almost staccato, as I alternated between reading labels on the bottles and cans under the sink

and peeking behind me to see how close I was to being arrested. Insecticide. Liquid dish soap. A disinfectant with bleach. The last one. That should work. Actually, I had no idea if it would work. They didn’t teach me how to destroy DNA in that one community college English class I took.

I stood up, taking the bottle with me and dunked the stained end of the bat in the bucket. Cold water rushed over my hands

as I poured a healthy portion of the hoped-for DNA killer over the bat then rinsed. The slight sting on my skin didn’t stop

me from sloshing the mix of water and disinfectant around and wiping down the bat. But I still held the damn thing, which

meant fingerprints. I scanned the sink and immediate area for the sponge or towel. No luck.

My T-shirt. The only choice. Without taking my sweater off, I slipped my arms out of the sleeves and then out of the shirt

underneath and ripped the tee over my head. As an awkward preteen, I’d perfected the technique for removing a bra from under

my clothes. The skill worked here, too.

The voices drew closer. I couldn’t hear the actual words. Only the low rumble of men locked in a discussion.

I soaked the T-shirt and rubbed it over the bat. Scrubbing, cleaning, and possibly erasing. The burning sensation from the

disinfectant made my hands ache and the air catch in my throat. Another pour of the liquid and I’d rubbed down the entire

bat.

The harsh stench of disinfectant filled the greenhouse. There was no way to hide that smell or the damp bat. The goal was

to minimize the damage.

Elias laughed over something the detective said. The topic sounded sports related. I didn’t have time to stop and listen. Rinsing then wringing out the T-shirt as well as I could, I slipped it back on under my sweater and tucked the soaked edges into my yoga pants. Getting dressed was harder than undressing. Arms flailed. My sweater nearly strangled me.

“Oh, shit.” The cold wet shirt stuck to bare skin, knocking the breath right out of me. My internal temperature took a nosedive.

A scalding shower could happen later... unless I was in jail.

I ran around in circles, or it felt that way. I’d seen a television show, one of those FBI dramas, about collecting evidence

from pipes, so I splashed the disinfectant in the sink and poured some down the drain. Maybe that would kill any hope for

DNA recovery.

Now for a cover story. I dropped the bucket on the closest bench. Water spilled over the rim and onto the wood. The renewed

smell of chlorine hit like a punch. On the bench. On my sweater. On my skin. In my hair.

The plan was to pretend I was cleaning. Using the underside of my sweater, I wiped the bat down, getting it as dry as possible,

then threw it under the sink. Forget removing it from the property. There wasn’t even time to hide it now.

A last-minute kick and the cabinet door slammed shut just as the detective stepped inside the greenhouse.