The sound of his name announced like that, official and damning, jarred him a bit. He stood, and the jailer pointed for Gavin to walk up to a podium in front of the judge’s bench.

“Sir, please state your name for the record,” the judge said.

“My name is Gavin Spencer.” The words slogged through the muck of his slur, causing the judge to pause as though she needed a second to understand—even though the file with his name on it lay right in front of her.

The judge then said, “And for the State?”

No answer came.

Gavin looked over his shoulder at the young woman he’d been trying to place. She now stood at the counsel table, her face pale, her fingers wrapped tightly around the edges of that file, her eyes locked on Gavin.

“For the State?” the judge repeated.

The young woman began to breathe heavily. And still no words came out of her mouth.

“Ms. Nash, are you okay?” the judge said.

Nash? Gavin looked closer at her face and chin and eyes, but it was the name that triggered the memory. In a flash, it all came flooding back with the chill of an April lake. It couldn’t be.

Another prosecutor, a polished Black woman with a cold confidence, stood and took over the hearing. “Andrea Fitch for the State, Your Honor.”

Gavin turned to look at the judge, but all he could see was the face of a ghost, a woman he’d met only once, eight years ago in the backseat of a car.

Chapter 23

Lila had read and reread Gavin Spencer’s bail study, looking for arguments that Spencer might make to keep bail low. He might point out that he had no criminal history and had lived in Minnesota all of his life, with the exception of three years when he attended a private high school in Indiana. Lila would counter with the fact that Spencer was facing serious time in prison and had enough money to take flight. She went one step further, though, and prepared rebuttals for arguments that didn’t jump out as obvious, such as medical concerns, turning in his passport, or a request for home confinement.

Lila had come away from her meeting with the detectives seeing that Gavin was both smart and careful. The lack of physical evidence meant that Sadie Vauk’s abduction had been meticulously planned. And if she hadn’t been a champion swimmer, she would have been just as dead as the other three women pulled from the river. More than any other defendant in her stack of files, Gavin Spencer seemed to be playing a game. And although he chose to appear without an attorney that morning, Lila had vowed not to underestimate him.

As she had waited for court to start, the creak of the courtroom door pulled Lila’s attention to the back of the room, where Frank Dovey was walking in. He carried no files, no briefcase. He looked at Lila, locking his gaze on her for an uncomfortable few seconds before taking a seat in the back row of pews.