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photo showed Allison sitting on a park bench. On her right was a man who looked a few years younger than she was. He was wearing a baseball cap pulled down low and had his hands tucked deep into the pockets of his baggy pants. On Allison’s left was an older woman with stringy blond hair and heavy makeup. Her jeans were skintight. There was a hardness to her eyes. She could have been thirty or threehundred. All three of them sat close together. The boy had his arm around Allison Spooner’s shoulders.
    Lena showed Frank the picture. He asked, “Family?”
    She studied the photo, concentrating on the background. “Looks like this was taken on campus.” She showed Frank. “See the white building in the back? I think that’s the student center.”
    “That girl don’t look like a college student to me.”
    He meant the older blonde. “She looks local.” She had the unmistakably trashy, bleach-blond air of a town-bred girl. Fake wallet aside, Allison Spooner appeared to be several rungs up on the social ladder. It didn’t jibe that the two would be friends. “Maybe Spooner had a drug problem?” Lena guessed. Nothing crossed class lines like methamphetamine.
    They’d finally made it to the main road. The back wheels of the car gave one final spin in the mud as Frank pulled onto asphalt. “Who called it in?”
    Lena shook her head. “The 911 call was made from a cell phone. The number was blocked. Female voice, but she wouldn’t leave her name.”
    “What’d she say?”
    Lena carefully thumbed back through her notebook so the damp pages would not tear. She found the transcription and read aloud, “ ‘Female voice: My friend has been missing since this afternoon. I think she killed herself. 911 Operator: What makes you think she killed herself? Female voice: She got into a fight last night with her boyfriend. She said she was going to drown herself up by Lover’s Point.’ The operator tried to keep her on the line, but she hung up after that.”
    Frank was quiet. She saw his throat work. His shoulders were slumped so low that he looked like a gangbanger holding on to the steering wheel. He’d been fighting the possibility that this was a murder since Lena got into the car.
    She asked, “What do you think?”
    “Lover’s Point,” Frank repeated. “Only a townie would call it that.”
    Lena held the notebook in front of the heating vents, trying to dry the pages. “The boyfriend is probably the kid in the picture.”
    Frank didn’t pick up on her train of thought. “So, the 911 call came in, and Brad drove out to the lake and found what?”
    “The note was under one of the shoes. Allison’s ring and watch were inside.” Lena bent down again to the plastic evidence bags buried in the deep pockets of her parka. She shifted through the victim’s belongings and found the note, which she showed to Frank. “ ‘I want it over.’ ”
    He stared at the writing so long she was worried he wasn’t minding the road.
    “Frank?”
    One of the wheels grazed the edge of the asphalt. Frank jerked the steering wheel. Lena held on to the dash. She knew better than to say anything about his driving. Frank wasn’t the type of man who liked to be corrected, especially by a woman. Especially by Lena.
    She said, “Strange note for a suicide. Even a fake suicide.”
    “Short and to the point.” Frank kept one hand on the wheel as he searched his coat pocket. He slid on his reading glasses and stared at the smeared ink. “She didn’t sign it.”
    Lena checked the road. He was riding the white line again. “No.”
    Frank glanced up and steered back toward the center line. “Does this look like a woman’s handwriting to you?”
    Lena hadn’t considered the possibility. She studied the single sentence, which was written in a wide, round print. “It looks neat, but I couldn’t say if a man or woman wrote it. We could get a handwriting expert. Allison’s a student, so there are probably notes she took from