Page 104 of One of Us Is Guilty

Was she crying for Molly? Or crying for herself?

Harry gave her a handkerchief, and she dabbed at her eyes, reddening now from crying.

‘Dr. Morrow, what in your expert opinion was the cause of death?’

I leaned in, listening carefully.

There was only one possible answer from his point of view. The same conclusion that was in his preliminary report. He had to say that cause of death was likely unnatural, but he could not say exactly what caused her death. That was the only reasonable, professional opinion he could stipulate.

Dr. Morrow shifted his attention from Riley to the jury, and spoke directly to them when he said, ‘Probable cause of death was blunt-force trauma to the skull.’

Riley couldn’t resist shooting a smug grin in my direction.

Now we had a ball game.

42

Lake

Multitasking wasn’t Gabriel Lake’s thing.

He stared at the screen of his laptop, balanced on the wheel of his Pontiac Aztek.

Then he looked ahead, down the street, at Julian Vanderpool’s building.

No movement from the building. Father and son had been inside for a couple of days now, along with his security team, hunkered down, running interference in the media. Judging by the sheer volume of articles coming out of his newspapers, the coverage on the news programs on his network and the thousands of bots and trolls constantly running hate and conspiracy theories on social media, Vanessa Vanderpool was the most vilified woman in New York, a cold-blooded killer.

The headhunter, the trolls called her.

None of the principals he was watching had left that property in days.

He turned back to the laptop.

Now that he was ex-FBI, Lake didn’t have access to the same kind of databases as Bloch, so his online searches would be more generic.

So far, he was coming up short.

Too short.

No voter registration details for Molly Green.

No driver’s license issued by New York or any of the surrounding states.

No online presence on social media.

He was about to look up birth records when something caught his eye.

Movement from the Vanderpool home.

A huge man in a black leather jacket, gray jeans and black military boots. He looked both ways, checking for cars before he crossed the street and that’s when Lake clocked it was Dekker. Two of his goons with him. Smaller, but sharp-looking men. The last two survivors from his unit. They hustled across the street, got into a blacked-out Mercedes SUV and Lake saw the taillights firing up.

He closed his laptop, placed it on the passenger seat and used the voice control on his phone to text Eddie and Bloch.

Dekker on the move. Two men with him. I’m following.

Turning the ignition key in the Aztek, the engine coughed, then coughed again and nothing happened. The starter motor turned over and over.

Lake swore, turned off the ignition, waited a moment.