CHAPTER FIFTEEN
"It checks out," Moore said. "Natalie Greene was committed to an institution when she was fourteen, and she still lives there. She’s in a mostly catatonic state from what they told me on the phone, but she does come around at times and then just rants and raves, and can become physical before she tires herself out.
Martin Greene was her legal guardian up until the time of his death, and with no children, it looks like guardianship of Natalie will pass to the state.
Diana was telling the truth about that."
"Does it give us anything?" Alison asked.
"We have a connection between all four victims. They were all a part of the Hartman case.
We don't have another case that they all worked on together.
At least at the moment. So, if we add this in, does it move the needle in any direction, or is it just background noise? "
"It has to be background noise," Moore said. "Judge Greene wasn’t killed because of his sister. He was going to be exposed by Diana Shepherd, perhaps, but that’s not a reason for him to be killed. So, we come back to the trial, and Diana is our killer. You heard it in there. She might have gone after Hartman if he were still alive. He escapes being sent to jail, and then he serves five years? That’s nothing.
And when he’s released, presumably with a clean bill of health, he tries to kill another family and is shot.
That’s the narrative that Diana Shepherd sees.
The system fails her again and again, and she’s forced to take matters into her own hands. "
"Yeah," Alison sighed.
"You still don't think it was her?" Moore asked.
"It does fit, I’ll admit that," Alison said. "I’ve just not seen anything when we first talked with her or when we spoke to her with her lawyer present to suggest she’s withholding anything from us.
And why go to all of that trouble to publish the article, knowing she had something about Judge Greene that the world didn't know, only to go and kill him right before? "
"To concoct an alibi," Moore suggested. "If she’s slipping in and out of that split personality thing, then maybe she wasn’t thinking straight when she went to kill him or publish that article, and the version of her that we see is the logical, rational one."
"It doesn't make sense to plan this out so well only to fail to concoct an alibi," Alison pointed out.
"I mean, why does the article give her a shaky, at best, alibi for Judge Greene, but not for any of the others?
The killer might be in a frenzy when killing, but they're not always.
If the killer was going to concoct an alibi for the four victims, they would've done so before killing the first two victims, and if they didn't create an alibi because they didn't think they would be caught, then why publish the article on the same night?
If anything, it makes her look more suspicious with the timing. "
"Yeah, I get all that, but you’ve also admitted that you’re not thinking straight right now with everything else that’s going on in your life. Is it possible that you’re wrong?"
Alison tightened her mouth, pressing her lips together. She’d been trying her best not to think about Howard Mills so she wouldn't drive herself crazy, but she’d been seeing his face in people, and now, her partner was bringing it up.
"You’re right," Alison said, deliberately and slowly. "I’m not thinking as clearly as I normally do, so I might miss things. I’m conveying to you what the information tells me, and you can do with that what you want, okay?"
"I’m not having a go at you," Moore said, holding her hands up. "I trust you. I just want to make sure we are on the right track. If anyone else were going through what you’re going through, they would have taken a leave of absence by now. Just…be sure that you’re right.
Diana fits with everything we know about the killer. "
"Yeah, she does," Alison admitted. "She does." Alison rubbed her head. She’d made mistakes before, but she’d always been confident in the conclusions she came to. She was confident that Diana wasn’t the killer. It was also confirmed that her hints couldn’t be completely trusted, with Howard Mills still out there.
No matter what she believed, she had to defer to Moore.
"Okay, what else do we have? Autopsy reports? "
"We have a timeline," Moore said. "Langford was killed first. Sometime in the late evening, probably around ten pm.
Holland was killed around midnight. With the more recent pairing, Judge Greene was killed around the same time as Langford, at ten pm, and Nathan Cross was killed during the night at his home, the initial estimate is around three am. "
"The Cross crime scene gives us something different again," Alison said. "When police responded to the house after a neighbor couldn’t get a hold of him, they found the front and back doors locked from the inside. The killer couldn’t have left and locked the door on their way out.
However, they did find an open window that they believe the killer entered and edited through. "
"What does that tell us?" Moore asked. "The killer went there knowing there would be an open window?"
"Maybe," Alison admitted. "Perhaps we find that Cross always left a window open, or the killer went there after killing Green and hoped to find a way in. Perhaps they meant to ring the doorbell and hoped he answered the door, but saw the open window when they got there. I’m not sure that matters.
What does matter is they found another note, handwritten, talking about lies, and the victim was stabbed to death. "
"Stabbed?" Moore asked. "Multiple times? Slashed? Cut in two?"
"Stabbed like Langford," Alison said. "Except Cross was in his bed when it happened. And from the cuts through the duvet covering him, the killer likely stabbed him while he was sleeping after sneaking up into his room."
"That sounds a lot like what happened to Diana’s family," Moore pointed out.
"Except they were awake and it was during the day." Alison held her hands up. "I’m not trying to debate you—we just need to get the facts right."
"I’m with you," Moore said. "Okay, so we have a timeline on the murders, and we also have something of a timeline on Judge Greene. We looked at his phone records again, and he was called by someone at 4 pm on the day he was killed. So far, we haven’t been able to trace the call, but it appears to have come from a burner phone. The number goes straight to voicemail when called. A few hours after that, around seven, according to a neighbor, he left his house. So, it’s a fairly good bet that whoever killed him called him that afternoon and got him down to the courthouse, where they then killed him.
That doesn’t help us understand who the caller was. "
"I’m not out to prove Diana is innocent, and this won't necessarily prove anything, but if we can contact the carrier and find out which cell phone tower the call came from, we’ll have a rough location of the call.
We know Diana was at work with others at that time.
If the call didn't come from around her work, that gives some doubt. "
"If the call came from the killer," Moore said.
"If the call came from the killer," Alison parroted.
***
The killer paced back and forth. They were in a cell, locked in with no thought of escape.
At least, that was how it felt. They picked up the red pen from the floor and went straight to the torn picture of Judge Green that had been taped back to the wall. The killer drew a large red ‘X’ on his face and then scribbled the pen back and forth across the tear down the middle of his face.
"That’s—" they started.
Their hand came to the side of their head again, and they hit their palm against their temple a few times before rubbing the same spot vigorously.
"What happened to the picture?" they demanded. They looked around the room at the others, noting that none of them were ripped in half. "I should rip you in half just like your likeness." The killer rubbed their forehead now. "No, no, no, no, the X is through you. I did that already, didn't I?"
A lot had happened over the past few days, and it was hard to keep track of it all.
They moved around the room to the picture of Nathan Cross and drew a large ‘X’ across his face.
"A cross for Mr. Cross."
The killer began laughing and found it hard to stop.
"You were fast asleep, and now, you won't ever wake up."
Images flashed through the killer’s mind as they laughed at what they had done.
"Yes, yes, yes, yes," the killer spluttered.
They reached into their pocket and pulled out a short stack of photographs. Langford, Holland, Greene, and Cross. All of them dead, all of them bloodied, all of them taken care of.
"Look at you all now," the killer hissed.
"You never even saw it coming. None of you expected to pay for what you did, but you have all paid the ultimate price, and at my hand.
" The killer thumbed through the four photos a few times, finding comfort in them.
"Yes, I did this. No one else is capable of this but me. "
They looked up at the ceiling, but it was not the painted drywall they focused on; it was what lay far above, beyond the physical.
"It’s for you. They failed you. They killed you. I won't let them do that to anyone else."
The killer spun around and around, looking up at the ceiling until they felt dizzy and dropped the photos. They quickly scrambled to the floor and scooped them up, bringing the photo of Martin Greene to the top. They ran around the room to his photo, now with the red pen scribbled down the middle.
"Yes! Look at you! I did that to you. I killed you and ripped you in two, and then I tore your photograph in two." The killer beat the side of their head again. "No, no, no. It was the other way around."
They stuffed the photos back into their pocket, left the room, surrounded by photographs and other files, and entered the bathroom.
The knife lay in the sink, stained slightly from the recent kills.
The killer didn't worry about it for now and ran the cold water, letting it get nice and cool before they splashed some on their face.
They did so a second time before keeping their hands under the running water for thirty seconds before pressing their palms to their face.
The cold seeped into them, slowing their thoughts until they could think straight again.
It felt as if everything had been moving, and it all stilled at the same time.
They took a deep breath and looked themselves in the eyes.
Their red, blood-like eyes. The eyes that had seen into the past and the future and understood what must be done in the present.
"I can't forget," they panted. "I can't forget one moment of it." They panted heavily as their head began to pound. "But you are forgetting it, aren’t you? You’re forgetting everything. Did you even remember it in the first place?"
The killer looked at themselves in the mirror and tugged at their hair, then pulled photos from their pocket, slamming them into the glass with a thud.
"Do you see that? I remember what I need to remember!"
"No, you remember a memory of what happened. What happens when you fail completely, and you can't go on? Will that be justice? You should just give up now."
"No, not yet, not now! One more. I can manage one more before I can't think. I have to do one more."
"Yes, but who?"
"You know who."
"Him," the killer hissed.
"Him," the reflection hissed back.