Chapter 6 #2
Winslow’s gaze hardened. He was obviously done pretending to be compassionate. “You called me at 12:28 a.m. How long had you been away from the trailer park?”
“I… don’t know.”
“Think, please. It’s important.”
She tried, even though it hurt her head. “Half an hour before maybe. I checked the car then I went to the park and thought about what I was gonna do for a while before I called you.”
He scribbled that down in his notebook. The sound of pen on paper was like fingernails scratching wood. “Which,” Winslow said, “places you outside of the trailer for over an hour. From midnight to one a.m. when we found the body. Does that sound accurate?”
“Maybe? Yes?” Her skull was being cleaved in two by his questions, by the implications of it all. “Why? Why would he do all this?”
Winslow dropped the pen. “Claire, I think Dillon could be targeting women who look like you. Like some sort of revenge fantasy.”
“That’s ridiculous. I’m telling you, he’s been a lazy, selfish sack to me, but he’s never been violent.”
“Only with your walls, right?”
Claire winced.
She’d heard stories about how someone could live with a man her whole life, marry him, have children with him, and never know he’d been a serial killer the whole time.
A real Ted Bundy type. But Claire couldn’t wrap her head around it.
To be frank, Dillon didn’t seem smart enough, tactful enough.
How could he have slipped out after she left, do all that to Kelsey, and still have time to drop her body off on the street?
Then again, Kelsey’s body was found close to the trailer park.
What she couldn’t wrap her head around was why. A revenge fantasy, Winslow had said. Things with Dillon hadn’t been perfect in a long time, but she didn’t think he even cared about her enough to hate her that much.
And as disgusted as he made her, why did it still hurt worse than any other betrayal?
“I don’t know what you’re saying to me,” she stammered. “You’re telling me my boyfriend wants to kill me so he’s been murdering other women instead? That’s insane. You're wrong.”
He had to be wrong.
Because if he wasn’t, then those girls were dead because of her. Because of Dillon’s apparent rage toward her.
The stench of Kelsey’s blood. Her glass eyes.
Claire was gonna be sick again.
“It's still just a theory,” Winslow said. “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it has nothing to do with you. I can’t definitively tell you anything right now.
But we have Dillon in custody. He assaulted an officer.
He’s now been connected to two of the victims. Even without your official statement, it’s enough for a warrant. And we got one.”
“To search his car?”
“Yes. And to search his place.”
“That’s my place too.”
“I know.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing, like he wasn’t the one conducting the damn orchestra. He pulled a piece of paper from a manila folder and slid it toward her.
Claire glanced over the wall of text. She’d never seen a police warrant before, and the letters all jumped off the page, scrambling.
“You have the right to be there,” Winslow said.
She couldn’t bring herself to look at him as she tossed the paper back on the table. “Then why the hell are we still here?”
Having a slew of cops raid her home in the dead of night was not where Claire thought this day would end, but here she was. By the time they were finishing up, this place had never felt less like a home.
She stood by the entryway, fuming as she waited for it to be over. When Winslow had sent Officer Amy Pereira into the bedroom, Claire had been nothing short of mortified. She had private things in there.
Officer Pereira, of course, did not find a murder weapon in her shoe box of sex toys. Thank God she’d been the only one to check, because Claire might’ve passed out cold if any of the others—men she’d known her whole life—had taken a damn peek.
Winslow and the last of the officers were trickling out of the trailer, some of them with awkward expressions as they nodded at her and left.
“Ya’ll about done here, or you wanna take another look at my panty drawer?” Claire hugged her arms firm over her chest. She didn’t care how bitter she sounded.
“Looks like we’ve got everything we need,” Winslow said.
“Didn’t find shit, did you?”
“We found refills for a similar utility knife in the shed, plus the dime bag in Dillon's car. Is there another spot where Dillon might store things?”
“I have no goddamn idea.”
Winslow lingered behind while the last officer slipped into the night and let the screen door close. Claire refused to look at him as they stood face-to-face in the narrow hallway. His height loomed over her, and she could tell he had that guilty expression on his face.
Here she was again, too close to this man, close enough to feel the heat from his body. She hated to admit it, but this whole thing would be easier if he didn’t look the way he did.
“Claire—”
She held up a hand to silence him, holding back tears. “This has been one of the worst days of my life, Detective, and believe me, I’ve had some bad days. Just get out of here. Please.”
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry it went down this way.” He took out his phone. Claire glanced at the screen as he showed it to her, with his call history and her number at the top. He deleted it from the log. “No one has to know.”
With her throat tight, her anger slightly diffused, she nodded. Maybe she could still convince her dad she was innocent.
And it wasn’t like she didn’t understand why the cops had to do this.
If Dillon did kill those girls, he had to be stopped. But despite the apparent evidence piling up, she still couldn’t believe he did.
Maybe that was her defensive brain trying to write reality for her, like it always did.
“Someone will contact you tomorrow about the next steps,” Winslow said, turning toward the screen door. “Goodnight. And be careful, please.”
With Winslow gone, Claire shut the door and locked it behind her. Finally alone, her emotions smothered her. She pressed her back to the door and crammed her palms into her eyes, then sank to the floor. Her chest retched as she sobbed.
None of it felt real. Her whole world had been knocked off-axis. She hadn’t been lying—this was one of the worst days of her life.
But tomorrow, once her dad woke up and heard the news, would undoubtedly be worse.