Sam hung from the side of the bridge by one precarious hand for a long second before she managed to get a grip with the other. The sound of the Impala's engine faded and cut off; she stayed right where she was for as long as she could, but eventually the strain built up to the point that she had to pull herself up or fall. She hauled herself back up and over the railing by main force, blessing as she did the broad shoulders that made it so hard to find shirts that fit; like most women the majority of her strength was in her legs, but it was possible to design a workout to counter that tendency and natural talent helped a lot.
For a second she just sat on the tarmac, breathing hard. Then Sam realized she had no idea where her sister was, and got to her feet. She leaned over the railing again, yelling Deanne's name.
After a second she caught movement. "Dee!" she called, as Deanne pulled herself out of the water, only half upright. Deanne sat down hard and turned her face up. In the uncertain light from the bridge Sam couldn't tell much, but at least Deanne seemed to be moving normally.
"What?" she demanded. She sounded annoyed, and out of breath, but not pained.
"Are you all right?"
Deanne waved one hand in a gesture Sam could barely make out. "I'm super," she said, and Sam laughed in relief.
Once Deanne had clambered back up to the road level, the first thing she did was insist on checking the Impala for damage. Sam decided that discretion was the better part of not being snapped at and said nothing while Deanne popped the hood and poked around under it for a few minutes, muttering to herself all the while.
Finally she slammed it shut again and turned to lean on it, still irritated but Sam could detect hints of relief. "Is your car all right?" she asked.
"Yeah," Deanne said. "Whatever she did, it seems to be all right now. What a bitch. Screwing with my car, that's not right."
"She doesn't want us digging around, that's for sure," Sam said. "So, where's the job go from here, genius?" She leaned on the hood next to Deanne, who gave her a look that was purely disgusted and threw her arms out in a theatrical shrug. A few bits of mud spattered to the ground, and Deanne's expression soured further.
This close Sam could smell the mud. "You stink," she said.
"I know," Deanne said glumly.
*.*
They pulled the emergency tarp out of the trunk to cover the driver's seat so Deanne wouldn't get gunk all over the upholstery and went looking for a motel. It was near dawn when they found one; the bonus was that Deanne was nearly dry. Since she was the one with the credit card, she got to deal with the desk clerk, too, which Sam was sure didn't make her any happier. Sam hung back a bit, paying little attention until she heard the desk clerk ask, "So, what, are you having a family reunion or something?"
"What do you mean?" Sam asked, before Deanne could draw breath for it.
"Aframian, that's a pretty recognizable name. That other lady, Connie? Paid for the whole month."
Deanne shot Sam a look and then turned back to the clerk, giving him her best smile; from the look on his face it was working even through the remaining dirt. He told them the room number with no trouble, but claimed to be unable to give them a key.
So when they got to the room, Deanne stood guard while Sam picked the lock. She'd always had a talent for it, and weirdly it wasn't something she had to hide at school; a surprising number of her acquaintances could pick at least basic locks.
The cheap lock yielded quickly. Sam pocketed her lock picks and stepped through the door, then reached back out to pull Deanne in after her.
The walls were covered with clippings, maps, pictures and post-its. There were books on the table, the kind of books Sam was all too familiar with: thick, leather-bound, with heavy handmade paper and archaic typefaces. Sam looked down and, sure enough, Mom had laid a line of salt across the door. "Hoo boy," Sam said. She knelt and picked up a pinch of the salt, rubbing it between her fingers.
Deanne flicked on the bedside lamp and picked up the half-eaten hamburger that lay on the table next to it. She sniffed it and recoiled. "I'm gonna say she hasn't been here for a couple days at least," Deanne said, dropping the burger back onto the paper bag it had been sitting on.
"Salt, cats'-eye...Mom was worried, Dee. Trying to keep something out." Deanne murmured agreement, studying one wall's worth of information. "What've you got?" Sam asked.
"Looks like Centennial Highway victims."
Sam nodded and got back to her feet. She joined her sister within reading distance of the wall as Deanne continued, "I don't get it; there's no pattern. Different guys, different jobs, ages, ethnicities. There's always a connection. What do these guys have in common?"
Sam shook her head and turned to look over the other walls. There were articles and notes on any number of topics; their mother's usual approach to research was to grab anything even roughly related and see what stuck once the evidence came in. But one item caught her eye: a printout of the article from the Jericho Herald about Constance Welch. There was a note stuck to it in Mom's square, neat handwriting that said "Woman in white". Sam felt herself nodding.
"Mom figured it out," she said, and Deanne turned to look. Sam tapped the printout with a finger. "She found the same article we did. It's Constance Welch. She's a woman in white."
Deanne turned back to the photos of the victims and smiled at them, but it wasn't a happy or friendly look at all. "You sly dogs," she said. "OK, well, if we're dealing with a woman in white Mom would have found the corpse."
"She might have another weakness," Sam said, though of course destroying the bones was usually the best way to deal with ghosts.
"Mom would want to make sure." Deanne came back to stand next to her and studied the wall. "She'd dig her up. Does it say where she's buried?"
Sam shook her head and said, "No, not that I can tell. If I were Mom, though, I'd go ask her husband." She checked the date on the article and did the math in her head; Joseph Welch had been thirty in 1981, which would make him sixty-four now. "If he's still alive." Not that sixty-four was ancient or anything, but stuff happened, and anyway Constance might have caught up with him.
"Sure," Deanne said. "Why don't you see if you can find an address. I'm gonna get cleaned up." She headed for the door, and Sam turned away from the wall.
"Dee," she said. Deanne stopped. "What I said earlier, about Mom and Dad. I'm sorry."
Deanne held up a hand, making a theatrical warding motion. "No chick-flick moments," she said. Sam couldn't help laughing. "Fine," she said. "Jerk."
"Bitch," Deanne replied, and turned away again, heading to the car for fresh clothes. Sam chuckled. She was going to go back to studying the wall, but as she turned her head something caught her attention. There was a picture stuck into the frame of the large mirror that faced the room's bed. She stepped closer, and sure enough it was the shot of the three of them, sitting on the hood of the Impala. Sam had a very vague memory of the day that picture had been taken, sitting on her mother's lap, both of them sweating in the heat. Deanne, sitting next to them, had been wearing a Cubs cap that had disappeared a few years later. Her mother had smiled for the camera and all three of them were squinting against the sun.
She reached out for the picture and couldn't quite bring herself to touch it.
*.*
It took a while, but clean clothes and a long shower later Deanne felt more like a human being. She wasn't the kind of person who needed to be squeaky clean all the time; she just didn't like active grossness on her skin, and a bunch of the stuff she'd scrubbed off had been pretty gross. She leaned into the mirror to brush her short hair into something resembling order with her fingers but didn't bother much beyond that; the pixie cut she kept it in needed little maintenance and she liked it that way. It would dry soon.
When she came out of the bathroom Sam was pacing, her phone to her ear. Deanne would have bet money it was voicemail from the boyfriend-who, in all fairness, was seriously hot. She grabbed her jacket from the chair where she'd draped it to dry and looked over at her sister. "Hey, babe, I'm starving. I'm gonna get something to eat at that diner down the street. You want anything?"
"No," Sam said absently, her attention clearly still on the phone.
"You sure?" Deanne asked. She raised her eyebrows significantly. "Rosa's buying." This time Sam just shook her head.
Deanne hesitated for a second; she only had Sam for a few more hours, and the way her sister was concentrating on the phone made it clear that her head was already mostly back in her safe little apple-pie life. It didn't make Deanne happy, exactly, but when it came down to it she'd rather have Sam happy and safe without her. There was a reason she'd stayed away from Stanford for two years. But hey, the ice was broken now; they could at least talk. So she just headed for the door.
She shrugged her jacket on as she crossed the parking lot towards the Impala. The movement changed her line of sight and she caught a glimpse of the desk clerk, who was standing next to...oh crap, a cop car. He was half leaning over to talk to the cop behind the wheel, who she thought was the guy from the bridge the day before. And he pointed her way.
Crap.
She turned a bit, patting her pockets as if she'd forgotten something, and used the movement as cover to pull out her phone. Sam's number was on the speed dial. She bit her lower lip as it rang, but at last Sam picked up. Deanne started walking, hearing feet on the pavement behind her. There was no hope of getting away, but she could buy a few seconds.
"Five-oh, babe, take off," Deanne said quietly as soon as Sam answered.
"What about you?" Sam asked.
"Too late, they spotted me," Deanne said. "Go find Mom." She snapped the phone closed and turned to meet the oncoming police. "Problem, officers?" she said, with her most charming smile-which was pretty charming, if she did say so herself.
It was the head cop from the bridge all right, Jaffe. He said, "Where's your partner?" The charming smile didn't seem to be working, sadly. Some people didn't appreciate her.
"Partner? What partner?"
Jaffe jerked a thumb at the motel room and his lackey headed in that direction. Deanne saw no movement, so hopefully Sam was already on her way out. Jaffe turned his attention back to her and gave her a once-over that was intended to be insulting. "So," he said. "Fake US Marshal. Fake credit card. You got anything that's real?"
Deanne looked down at herself, back up, and felt the smile turn into a grin. "My boobs," she said. Jaffe's expression froze and his hand came down on her shoulder. She eyed it, but getting into a fight with this guy was perhaps not the way to go right now. He marched her over to the cop car and switched his grip to the collar of her jacket.
She restrained a sigh-she hated this part. He pushed her into the side of the cop car front-first and grabbed her wrist, flicking a handcuff around it as he began to recite. "You have the right to remain silent-"