Brian Freeman: Immoral

Stride didn't need to say anything.

The plus-sized agent emerged from the office with a walkie-talkie at her ear. "Your car just came in, honey. One of my boys is driving it over here."

Stride felt his insides seize with tension. "What's the routine when a car comes back? Vacuum the interior? Wash the mats?"

"You got it," she said.

"Trunk, too?"

She shrugged. "If someone barfs in it. Which happens, honey."

"And you're sure this is the first rental since it came back last weekend? No one else had it in between?"

"Nobody."

An attendant parked the Cavalier near the rental building a few minutes later, leaving the driver's door open and the engine running. Stride and Serena both put on gloves and went outside. He carried a halogen flashlight from Serena's car, which he directed into the backseat of the Cavalier.

It was clean, no trash, no stray papers. Stride got down on his knees and shined the flashlight carefully under both seats, examining the floor. Then he and Serena spent half an hour studying the fabric on the rear seats, going square inch by square inch, finding nothing.

Stride straightened up. "Let's do the trunk."

"She was probably wrapped in a blanket," Serena reminded him. "It was missing from the bed."

"Blankets leave tracks," Stride said.

It didn't take them long. When they popped the trunk, Stride lit up the interior, and almost immediately he zeroed in on a dime-sized brownish stain on the carpeted fringe. He kept the light on the stain while Serena leaned in and took a closer look.

"Could be blood," she said quietly. Then she added, "I've got something more here."

He watched her reach into a pocket and slide out a tweezers. She extracted something trapped in the metal edge of the trunk, then backed out and held the tweezers in the beam of the flashlight. Stride leaned closer and saw a wispy strand of blonde hair that spiraled down to a jet black root.

"It might be nothing," Serena said. "Lots of dye jobs in this town."

But they both knew what it meant.

"I have to go back," Stride said.

The rental agent waved her clipboard at them from the doorway. "Hey, officers, what's the word? Am I getting my tan Cav back? Otherwise, I need to find another car, or someone's going to be walking, know what I mean?"

Stride and Serena exchanged a long, sober look. It was her call, but Stride knew there was only one decision she could make. Impound it, call for forensics, bag the evidence, and bring his whole world crashing down.

Serena tore her eyes away. She slammed the trunk and waved at the agent.

"Take it," she said.

He found Andrea secluded in her office on the second floor, grading papers amid the tomblike silence of the school. Her door was open. She had her head down, deep in concentration, not having heard his footsteps on the stairs.

He couldn't help but think of the first time he had met her here. They had both been so wounded then, two people suddenly alone after they had envisioned a lifetime with someone else. He had really believed then that he could wash away her hurt, but her bitterness never seemed to fade, no matter how much time they spent together, even after they stumbled into marriage. They had made a mistake. He never imagined how costly that mistake would prove to be.

"Hello, Andrea," he said.

She looked up from the papers on her desk. He wasn't sure what he expected to see in her eyes: fear maybe, or anger, or sadness. Instead, he saw almost nothing, as if in this short time she had become a stranger to him.

"Welcome back," Andrea said evenly. "I didn't expect to see you so soon."

She looked older, although it may have been the lack of makeup on her face. She wore a gray college sweatshirt she had owned for years. Her blonde hair was pinned back away from her face, and she wore half-glasses, pushed down her nose.

"Did you find out?" Andrea asked, a cold edge rising in her voice. "Was it worth it?"

Stride could feel the blame spitting out of her, as if it were his own fault.

He entered the office and sat down heavily in the wooden chair opposite her desk. He hated to tell her.

"He's dead, Andrea."

She sucked in her breath and pushed back sharply from the desk. She stripped off her glasses, and he could see her terrified eyes.

She was waiting for him to say it.

Stride nodded. "Robin."

He almost wanted her to lie, to paste a look of shock on her face at the idea that Robin, her ex-husband, was Rachel's lover.

But there was no surprise. Andrea closed her eyes. "That stupid bastard," she whispered. "How did it happen?"

Stride explained briefly what happened in the trailer. Andrea didn't break down, but a single tear worked its way out of her eye and slid in a streak down her face. He let her grieve in silence for a few seconds before his anger caught up with him. "You knew," he said. "Goddamn it, you knew, and you didn't tell me. You let me go down there, knowing what I'd find."

"I told you not to do it," Andrea retorted, wiping her cheek. "You were the one who couldn't let it go."

"Because that's my job!" Stride said. He got up, pacing, and slammed the office door. He confronted her again. "How long? How long have you known? Did you know back then? We were running around in circles, and you knew Robin had run off with Rachel."

"No, I didn't know!" Andrea insisted. "He left me months before Rachel disappeared. Don't you see? That was how she wanted it. No connection. It was all her, all part of her plan. She told him to come back for her in the fall."

"Then when did you find out? How?"

Andrea stared down at her desk. "He sent me a letter last month."

"And he told you about Rachel?"

"Are you kidding?" Her mouth twitched as if she had bitten into something vile. "Everything was Rachel, Rachel, Rachel. How she seduced him. How she dumped him. The pathetic shit was obsessed with her."

"Where's the letter?"

Andrea hesitated. "I burned it."

"Why?" Stride asked. "Why would you do that?" He suspected he could open her desk drawer and find it there.

"I don't know why, I just did it. I wanted to erase him. I wanted to forget what he did to me."

Stride shook his head. "Now you're lying. Don't lie to me. Robin was obsessed? My God, what about you? He threw you away for a seventeen-year-old, and you still love him."

She didn't deny it He saw her jaw jutting out in defiance.

"Explain it to me, Andrea," Stride insisted. "He writes you a letter and grinds his affair into you like broken glass. And what do you do? You run to him. You go crawling to him in Vegas and try to get him back."

Now he saw fear.

"I didn't-" she began.

Stride cut her off. "Don't insult me. Do you think I'm stupid? First you beg me not to go, and when I do go, I find your ex-husband drinking himself to death in a trailer. What's my first thought, Andrea? You. I went to the airport. I called the credit card company. I know you flew from your sister's in Miami to Las Vegas last weekend."

"It's not what you think," Andrea told him. "I didn't want him back. But I was scared. His letter talked about suicide. I couldn't sit here and do nothing. That's why I went-to talk to him."

"I don't care about that" he interrupted. "This isn't about you and Robin."

The sudden silence between them was pregnant with anxiety.

"I want to know what happened between you and Rachel," Stride said.

He studied her as if she were a suspect watching for every flicker of a muscle in her face. He saw what he expected to see.

Guilt.

"I want to know why you killed her."

Andrea was calm. "Do I need a lawyer?"

"You think I'm going to turn you in? You don't know me at all. As far as the police in Las Vegas are concerned, a drifter named Jerky Bob killed Rachel. Case closed."