Devious - Lisa Jackson [136]
She quivered inside again and glanced over at the desk, where her notes were spread and the copies of Cammie’s diary . . . “Oh, no!”
“What?”
But she was already moving to the small nook where her desk was tucked. Across the surface, phone bills, receipts, unopened mail, and reservation slips were stacked in neat piles. The flyer for this weekend’s auction at St. Elsinore’s was still pushed into the pages of the paperback she’d been reading, but that was it.
What was very obviously missing were the copied pages of Cammie’s diary.
The scrawled, lined pages describing Cammie’s most intimate and darkly sexual thoughts were gone. With a sickening thought, she wondered what would happen if someone from the press got Cammie’s notes and printed them in one of the tabloids: CONFESSIONS OF A MURDERED NUN, with Cammie’s photograph, one of her in a dark habit with a solemn, reverent expression.
“Oh Lord.” Her eyes scoured the desk and floor, everywhere nearby, though she’d remembered leaving them on her desk. The spot was empty. “Damn it all to hell,” she muttered under her breath; then Slade walked to the desk, asking questions, and she noticed the small black device tucked into the corner of the bookcase near the desk. In the very spot she placed her coffee cup when she was working. “What in the world?”
“What?” Slade asked.
“I’m not sure.”
Barely visible, the thin electronic device was positioned in front of a picture of Cammie, taken during her senior year of high school.
Valerie felt a chill as cold as a Canadian winter.
Slade was next to her in an instant. “What is it?” he asked, his voice laden with worry as she picked it up. “A cell?”
“Uh-huh. A BlackBerry,” she said, and knowing she shouldn’t, she clicked it on. “I think it might be Camille’s.”
Within seconds, the small screen glowed and a picture appeared.
An image of Cammie in the throes of death.
“Nooooo! Holy Christ!” Valerie let out a disbelieving scream as she recognized the image.
Her blood turned to ice, and she dropped the phone as if she’d been burned. “Oh, God, no,” she squeaked as the phone hit the top of the desk, faceup, and she found herself watching a three- or four-second video of her sister, taken just moments before her death.
Cammie stared into the camera, her eyes round with a sheer, horrid terror, her lips blue, her skin white. She gasped, unable to speak, blood oozing from her throat where the garrote, what looked to be a dark-beaded rosary, was cutting off her breath, her very life.
The towel slipped to the floor as Val’s knees gave way, and she started to crumple, would have fallen to the floor except that Slade grabbed her. His strong arm surrounded her waist, and he drew her naked body close, drawing her to her feet, not allowing her to fall.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered against her ear, his hands tangling in her hair.
Tears rained from her eyes. “What kind of a monster would do this?” she asked, her voice thick, the pain of grief shredding her soul. “What kind of a sick, twisted son of a bitch would do this?” She was clinging to Slade with one hand, pummeling his shoulder with the other. “It’s just not right, just not right.”
“Shhh. I know,” he said, but didn’t try to stop her as she struck him in frustration. “I know.”
“It’s so damned wrong!” She squeezed her eyes shut and wilted against him. For once in her life, she couldn’t be strong, wouldn’t try to fight the pain, but just give in to it. Was it her fault? Had she been too hard on Cammie? Thrown her out when she’d thought—believed—that her sister and her husband were having an affair?
It seemed so petty now. A ridiculous bit of history. I’m sorry, she silently sobbed. Oh, Cammie, I’m so, so sorry. She was older; she’d always thought she could protect her baby sister, and she’d failed. Oh, God, how she’d failed.
“Come on,” Slade said, and guided her to the bedroom. “We’ll go out another time.”
“You . . . you expect me to sleep?”
“I just think you need some time to work through this,” he countered.
She wanted to fight him,