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Natalie should have guessed Margo knew about the prenuptial agreement. “You know everything that goes on in this town.”
Margo grinned. “I suppose maybe I do.” Another customer entered the diner and drew Margo’s attention away, leaving Natalie to drink her coffee in silence.
So, J. D. Cooper wanted to know if she was married. Why hadn’t he just asked her directly?
J.D. WASN’T SURPRISED to see his brother Gabe waiting in the Millbridge Police Department when he arrived. “I drove down last night and stayed at Alicia’s,” Gabe explained, shaking his brother’s hand. “Dad’s taking my fishing clients this morning.”
“You didn’t have to come,” J.D. said, although he was glad Gabe was there. The drive from Terrebonne had seemed to fly by, not giving him nearly enough time to prepare himself to see Dyson.
“I came for my girl, not for you,” Gabe said with a grin. “But while I’m here—”
J.D. squeezed his brother’s shoulder. “Any word from the university about her dissertation?”
Gabe’s grin widened. “The last revision passed and she has her oral defense in three weeks.” Alicia’s dissertation on the psychology of serial-killer pairs had included her personal notes on Marlon Dyson and Victor Logan. “Her advisor thinks she’ll do a bang-up job on the defense. In a month, I’ll be dating a doctor.”
“Mom will be so proud,” J.D. murmured.
A man about Gabe’s age with wavy dark hair and brown eyes emerged from a door down the hall and walked toward them. He smiled at Gabe and extended his hand. “I thought you were back home at the lake.”
“I thought I’d drive down to see Alicia.” Gabe shook the man’s hand. “Tony, this is my brother J.D. J.D., this is Tony Evans, Alicia’s friend.”
“I like to think I’m your friend, too, Cooper.” Tony shook J.D.’s hand. “I’ve got Dyson cooling his heels in an interview room down the hall. I figured you wouldn’t want to do this at the jail. I’ll have to stay with you, and there’ll be two guards there, too. Plus, he’s cuffed to the table. You ready for this?”
J.D. nodded. “Let’s do it.”
His stomach knotting with tension, he followed Tony to the interview room.
Chapter Four
J.D. recognized Marlon Dyson’s boyish face from the photograph that had run in the Millbridge paper the day after his arrest. Tony Evans had emailed Alicia a copy of the article the day it ran, and she’d shared it with J.D. for his case files.
But the last four weeks hadn’t been kind to Dyson. His cheeks were leaner, and his eyes warier, as he watched J.D. and Tony enter the interview room. He’d been shot by accident while struggling with Alicia. Lost a lot of blood—probably explained his paleness as well.
“Mr. Dyson, this is J. D. Cooper.” Tony sat in one of the two seats across the table from Dyson. J.D. took the other chair.
“The widower.” Dyson smiled. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“From Alex?” J.D. asked, disturbed by Dyson’s hungry gaze. Dyson seemed to feed off the tension filling the interview room.
“Alex?” Dyson replied innocently.
“The man you worked with. The man who killed those coeds here in Millbridge. And the women in Mississippi and Louisiana.”
“That was Victor Logan, wasn’t it?” Dyson asked, still smiling. “That’s what I heard. Good thing he died, huh? Saves taxpayers the cost of keeping him in jail the rest of his life.”
“You rigged a gas explosion to save taxpayer money?”
Tony had asked the question, but Dyson’s gaze never left J.D.’s face. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Who is Alex?” J.D. pressed.
“I don’t know.” Dyson’s hard face softened until he looked like an overgrown, scared kid. “How would I? I just made a stupid mistake. I let my feelings for a coworker push me to do stupid, terrible things. That’s all. I swear.”
“Stupid things like killing a janitor who got in your way?”
“It was an accident!”
“You shot him in the head.”
“The gun just went off,” Marlon moaned, starting to rock back and forth. “I didn’t mean for it to happen! I don’t know much about guns—I should never have had it with me—”
J.D. stared at him in growing horror as he realized the sociopath was actually on the verge of tears. Tony made a low groaning sound beside him, but the sound barely registered over the buzz of rage filling J.D.’s ears. It could really happen, he realized as Marlon stared back at him, blinking back what looked to all the world like tears of fear.
Put this guy before a gullible jury, let him turn on the little boy lost act and he might get away with a minimal sentence for killing the janitor and trying to kill Alicia Solano in the bowels of the Mill Valley University’s Behavioral Sciences building.
J.D. bit back a growl of frustration and pushed away from the table. “This guy’s small potatoes. He probably doesn’t even know Alex’s real name anyway.”
Dyson’s smug gaze faltered for a second.
“The guy who killed those women doesn’t make stupid mistakes. Alex wouldn’t trust a half-wit like Marlon here with his name.”
“You can’t trick me into telling you his real name.” Dyson’s chin came up defiantly.
“So you do know it?” Tony asked.
Dyson clamped his mouth shut.
He didn’t, J.D. realized. Dyson truly didn’t know the killer’s real name, for exactly the reason J.D. had said. A guy who’d gotten away with murder for over a decade wouldn’t chance revealing his true identity to someone who could testify against him later.
J.D. was back to square one.
BESIDES A HANDFUL OF bed-and-breakfasts, the only place for travelers to stay in Terrebonne was the Bay View Inn, a twenty-unit motel that, despite its name, was at least a mile from the water. On a clear day, from a second-floor room, it was theoretically possible to see the bay from the motel, Natalie supposed; but from J. D. Cooper’s ground-floor room all she could see was the parking lot.
It hadn’t been hard to beat the lock on the motel room door, which probably explained why she had found almost nothing of value in J.D.’s room after nearly a half hour of searching. He’d be foolish to leave money or anything of worth in a place like this. Not out in the open, anyway.
She stopped in the middle of the room and looked around, trying to clear her mind of distractions. Such as the distinctive masculine scent that seemed to permeate every corner of the motel room, a blend of soap, aftershave and—she took another quick sniff—gun oil. So he was carrying a weapon? She hadn’t found one anywhere in the room, so he probably had it on him. And if he’d been carrying a concealed weapon, the deputies who’d picked him up last night would have already checked his CCW permit. He’d clearly passed muster, or he’d still be cooling his heels in jail.
She forced her gaze around the room one more time. If she were going to hide something in a motel room, something she didn’t want anyone else to find, where would she hide it?
Her eyes gravitated toward the bed. The bedcovers were neatly in place, the pillows symmetrically positioned. Shipshape, even. What were the odds the giggling teens Bay View Inn employed as housekeeping staff could make a bed so neatly?
After checking out the window to make sure nobody was heading toward the room, Natalie pulled back the bedcovers. The pillows sat side by side, positioned perfectly across the bed. But there was something odd-looking about the pillow closest to her. She grabbed it and discovered it was heavier than a pillow should be.
She opened the case and looked inside. Below the fluffy foam-filled pillow lay a thick file folder full of papers.
She pulled out the folder and opened it. The papers inside were photocopies of police reports, crime-scene photos, witness testimony transcripts, autopsy reports, even newspaper clippings—a treasure trove of information about a series of murders dating back over a decade. The deeper she delved, the more her stomach tightened, nausea rising up her throat in cold waves.
There was no photo of her sister’s crime scene in this folder, though the top-most sheet of paper was a photocopy of the article about the murder that had run in the Terrebonne Banner the day after. But Natalie didn’t need a photo; she’d been the person who’d found Carrie’s body. She remembered exactly how she had looked—lying on her back, as if she were merely sleeping, with her hands flat to the floor next to her. A series of knife wounds across her abdomen had spilled blood onto the pale yellow blouse she’d worn that day, turning it crimson.
Every woman’s body in this file could have been Carrie’s. The position was the same. The women were curvy brunettes like her sister, and, in the handful of photos where the victim’s eyes were open, their eyes were brown like Carrie’s.
No wonder J. D. Cooper thought Carrie’s death was connected.
Forgetting all about covering her tracks, Natalie pulled out all of the photos in the file and laid them across the motel bed, beginning to tremble as she saw the sheer number of photos involved. Sixteen women, once alive, now dead at the hands of what clearly was a serial killer.
Or two killers, if J.D.’s theory was correct.
The rattle of the doorknob made her jump. Her first instinct was to scramble to return the photos to the folder, but she quickly realized she’d never put things back the way he’d left them. She left the photos where they were and pulled her Glock from the holster at her waist. If it was J.D., she’d explain herself and hope he understood the desperation that drove her. And if it was an intruder, she was armed.
It wasn’t an intruder. It was J. D. Cooper, carrying a newspaper in one hand and a dark gray gun case in the other.
He jerked to a stop in the doorway, instantly focused on the Glock in her hand. His eyes widened a notch.
She put her weapon away. “Sorry.”
J.D.’s gaze swept over the scene, taking in the haphazardly placed pillows, the turned back bedcover and the photos laid out across the bed. His eyes blazed with anger. “What the hell do you think you’re doing in here?”
“Trying to find out if you’re for real,” she answered, keeping her voice steady, although inside, she was cringing with shame at being caught breaking and entering. What on earth had she been thinking?
“Do you have a warrant?”
She licked her lips. “No.”
“Then get the hell out of my room.”
She couldn’t get out of the motel room without moving past him, and right now, he was filling the doorway completely, blocking her exit. But she couldn’t just stand where she was, so she started forward, her knees trembling as the full impact of her foolish decision hit her.
It wasn’t enough that she’d broken the law by picking the lock and tossing his room. She’d done so without any thought of what would happen if he caught her. What did she know about him, really? He’d told her some sob story about his dead wife, and he’d talked up Margo, the town gossip, but how much of what he’d told either of them was the truth?
He made no attempt to move out of her way. She faltered to a stop in front of him, drawing herself up to her full five feet nine inches, and he was still several inches taller than she was.
“You couldn’t look me up on your computers at the station?”
She lifted her chin. “I’m on administrative leave.”
“For breaking and entering?” he shot drily.
She supposed she deserved that. “Because apparently the department-ordered psychologist thinks I’m a danger to myself, my fellow deputies and the public.”
“Are you?”
“No.” Though she couldn’t muster much conviction in the denial, considering he’d just caught her snooping in his motel room without permission.
His lips curved, as if he could read her mind. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
She glanced over at the photos on the bed. “Maybe more than I was looking for.”
“Your sister looked like those women.” He wasn’t asking a question, just making an observation. Carrie’s picture had been included in the Banner article. He must have seen the similarities between her and the victims in those photos. It was probably what had drawn him here in the first place.
“I found her body,” she confessed in a reed-thin voice, wishing in vain that she could be stronger and more professional at this moment. “She was lying on the kitchen floor at Annabelle’s. Stretched out straight. On her back, with her arms by her sides. Palms down. You’d have thought she was asleep.”
“Except for the blood.”
Her gaze snapped up to find him looking at her, his expression soft with sympathy. “Except for the blood,” she agreed. “Twelve puncture wounds. Deep. Tore up her insides.”
“He twists the knife.” J.D.’s words came out in a growl.
Her chest ached in response. “Yes.”
J.D. finally moved out of the way, crossing to the bed. Setting the newspaper and gun case on the bedside table, he silently gathered the photographs and returned them to the folder. He put them back in correct order—the way she’d found them before she had spread the photos out on the bed—apparently, he knew the folder contents by heart. He tucked it against his chest, holding it with one arm as he might hold a child.
The door in front of her was open. There was no reason she shouldn’t leave while she had the chance. But a question that had nagged at her since the day before wouldn’t remain unasked. “How did you know to come here?”
His head snapped up, as if he had forgotten she was still there. “You mean to Terrebonne?”
She nodded. “What made you think Carrie’s murder matched the others you’ve been looking into?”
“She looks like Brenda.”
“Your wife?”
“Your sister looks more like her, in some ways, than any of the other victims.” His faraway gaze focused on Natalie. “Not much like you, though.”
“Carrie looked like my mother,” Natalie explained. “I take after my father.”
“Brenda was from here. She grew up right here in Terrebonne.” He set the folder on the bedside table and sat on the unmade bed, one hand smoothing the wrinkles she’d left. “Her parents still live here—George and Lois Teague—”
“No wonder Carrie looks like your wife. She’s a distant cousin. Her mother and mine, I think—we didn’t really socialize much.” Natalie felt strange just standing in the open doorway, so she closed the door behind her and crossed to the chair by the bed. She paused before sitting, silently requesting permission. She took his slight nod as an invitation and dropped into the chair, her wobbly knees grateful for the respite.
J.D. glanced toward the file folder he’d laid by the bed. “What did you think?”
“I think those murders definitely seem to be connected.”
“And your sister’s murder?”
“Body position was similar. She fits the profile. But—”
“But you already have a suspect—your brother-in-law.”
She knew everyone in town thought she was crazy. Or jealous of her sister’s marriage. Or both. But Hamilton Gray was not the grieving widower he portrayed. He didn’t even try hard to pretend with Natalie, as if he enjoyed toying with her, making her seem a fool in front of her family and colleagues.
“Have you ever known, in your gut, that you were right? Even if everybody else in the world said otherwise?” she asked.
“That’s exactly how I feel right now. I know in my gut that the same guy who murdered my wife also murdered your sister.”
“Then I guess we’ll just have to disagree. Because I know Hamilton killed Carrie. He may not have done it with his own hands, but he was involved.” Natalie leveled her gaze with his, making sure he understood her meaning. “Nothing’s going to stop me from proving it. Not the sheriff, not Hamilton—”
“Not me?” When she didn’t answer immediately, he added, “You called the police on me yesterday, didn’t you?”
