Page 64 of Dead Man's Alibi

“Will you get it?”

“Yeah, just… give me a second.”He started to move back toward the kitchen, but when Aly took a step toward him, he stopped, held up a hand.

“Nope.Have a seat.I’ve got dinner.”

“Landon, I can handle—”

“You’ll handle sitting.”

She was about to argue again, but Landon nodded toward Sam.A silent kind ofwatch her.Aly wasn’t sure he believed he was doing that out of any concern forSam, but she supposed he was right that dealing with Sam’s strange request and angry demeanor was more important than rushing to deal with the dinner she’d slept through preparing.

Sam paced.Energy pumped off her.Not unusual, but it left Aly feeling uneasy.

Aly set the broom aside and lowered herself back into the chair.“What’s going on, Sam?”

“I went by the house to pick up a few more things,” Sam said, still pacing, though she stopped at the window for a moment and looked out, before resuming the harsh strides from one side of the room to another.“Jake appeared at the door, all ready to convince me I’m wrong about Nate.”

Aly nearly shrieked.She’d kind of liked Jake Hayes, sometimes.Even if he was a little abrasive.She thought he was a bit like Cal and Nate.Troubled.Maybe some old trauma haunted him.

But this?This was beyond any kind oftroubledbehavior.“What?Like he’s stalking you?”

Sam paused for a second, and Aly could see Sam hadn’t considered that part of it.

Her eyebrows drew together.“Stalking,” she echoed.“I just stopped by for ten, fifteen minutes tops.How would he know to come to the door?Why was he on my street in the first place?”

“That isn’t right.You should lodge a complaint against him.It’s harassment.”

Sam nodded.“Maybe.Maybe I will.But first I want to figure out what he let slip.”

Landon returned with the old laptop.“Pasta is done, just have to mix it with the sauce or whatever.Here.”He handed the laptop to Sam.“It’s still thinking, but the document should pop up once it’s done.Now, what is this about?”

Sam took the laptop, plopped on the couch.“Jake came to my house when I was picking up some things.Talking about how there was evidence and I needed to face it and blah, blah, blah.Then he tells me that one piece of evidence they recovered at the scene is a Bennet pocketknife.”

Landon frowned.“And Nate is missing his?”

Sam glared up at Landon.“No.It wasn’t Nate’s.Nate’s was at home on the hook where it always is.He keeps an extra set of keys on it.He doesn’t carry it around, so this piece of evidence is wrong.And I want to know how this random knife got there and whose it is.”

“I have mine in a box with my dad’s, Landon’s, and some of Benjamin’s things,” Aly said, wringing her hands together.“I put them all there after last year.I’m pretty sure Cal has his.”

“It’s no one in the family,” Sam said.“I’m just about sure of that.”The document must have popped up because she leaned in, nose practically pressed to the screen.“I don’t think this is a real connection to anyone we know, but we need to figure out how it got there.How.All of these people had them when they were questioning Benjamin last year, right?”

“Yes.Dad claimed he had his.We’ve never found it though, so I always assumed the one the police recovered from the creek was his.”

Sam’s head whipped up.“The one Nate found in the creek that they took for evidence?The one that never connected to anyone?”

“Yeah, that one,” Landon agreed.

“And what happened to that knife?Where did it end up?”Sam demanded.

They all looked at each other, thinking back to last spring when Sam had first brought Nate back to Marietta.When they’d all begun to uncover the truth about Benjamin Bennet.

“No one ever claimed it,” Aly said.“At least no one around here.And if it was Benjamin’s, he was in jail, so he wouldn’t have been able to claim it.So as far as we know… the police would still have it.”

“Which means it should still be at that police station,” Landon said.

Sam’s hands clenched into fists.“And someone from that police station planted it at the murder scene.”

Landon looked at her uneasily.“Look, Sam—”