Chapter seven #3
My heart explodes in my chest, and really, truly, I think I might be having a heart attack.
“Ex-client,” I whisper. I don’t mean to whisper, to show how affected I am, but the truth of the matter is that I’m just trying not to hyperventilate.
I swallow and force myself into the courtroom medley I made up years ago—the song in my head that drowns out the bad and leaves the logical and nothing else. “How long ago were they killed?” I ask.
“Two in the past week,” he says. “In case you need help with the math, that makes two since your client was acquitted.”
“Ex-client,” I correct again, barely able to breathe for the guilt assailing me.
“Right.” He smirks. “Your ex-client. Either way, any insight into the suspect would be helpful. Oliver assures me I can trust you to keep this whole thing under wraps. We don’t want a public panic on our hands.”
“You did your job, Ember,” Oliver consoles, clearly reading my discomfort. How could he not? I might as well be laid out on a stretcher in total cardiac arrest. “He’s damn good at covering his tracks.”
If I look at Oliver right now, I’m pretty sure that I’ll lose my cool, so I focus on the file in Ryker’s hand, trying to hear that medley and detach myself emotionally from the murders.
The file is thick, and I know—I just know—it’s filled with the kind of horrors that nightmares are made of—the kind my visions are made of.
“He was good at covering it up,” I murmur softly.
“Then Oliver’s right,” Ryker assumes. “You changed your mind about him after the acquittal.”
My gaze shoots to Oliver, and his chin lowers, his body angling toward me and me alone. “It was obvious when we were standing beside the ambulance. Something happened to change your mind.”
“What happened?” Ryker pushes. “Did he admit the murders after the acquittal?”
My gaze lifts to his, and I wait for a jolt of evil to overcome me, but it does not, which is why I attempt a reasonable answer.
Did he admit his crimes? I guess he did, but not in a way admissible in court, so I settle on, “Nothing you can use,” reaching for what works in this situation.
“It was a feeling. The way he changed. Like he was a different person, no longer meek and sensitive. He let me see that person, but only for a few moments.”
“I see,” Ryker says, though he can’t see. No one can see from my eyes. He offers the file to me. “I thought you could review the cases. See if anything stands out that might help us bring him in.”
The very idea of touching that folder nauseates me.
Oliver was wrong when he said, or rather, implied, that I’m not responsible for what I would discover inside.
I got Jeremy off. I allowed him to kill again.
And I have to help put him away. This is the opportunity that I need—that I was looking for.
I reach for the file, and I don’t even try to hide how my hand shakes when it touches my skin.
I never lose my composure like this, and Oliver notices. “You okay, Ember?” he asks gently.
No, I am not okay, I think, but I cast him a reassuring, appreciative look. “Just peachy.”
I set the file on my lap and close my eyes. I can do this, I have to do this. Several seconds pass, and I open the file to find myself staring at a picture of Jeremy. My stomach retches, and I flip over the photo, unable to bear looking at him. What follows is worse.
It’s an image of a woman, a beautiful young woman, who is dead, her body posed on a bed. Perhaps to erase her image from my line of sight, I eye the date of her death, and my gaze jerks to Oliver’s. “She died the day of the verdict.”
He offers a sharp confirmation nod, his expression grim.
I inhale and force my attention back to the file, to the photos of another woman lying naked in a field, her body bruised and bloody but still posed.
I’ve seen these images of Jeremy’s victims before, in the deep recesses of my mind.
These are the women in my nightmares. One by one, I force myself to study their faces and read the reports.
“You’ll note the similarities to the victims he was accused of raping and killing in his trial,” Ryker comments. “It’s the absolute same crime scene, down to the strange symbol carved in the women’s backs.”
Noted and noticed, I think. “A symbol that no expert could decode,” I point out, just to fill the space, to say something, but I don’t look at him or Oliver.
My mind is tracking back to the images I’d studied during the trial prep, scrolling through them for clues, for something that could be looked for in these new crimes that might help.
If I were still his attorney, still his champion, I’d tell Ryker the killer is playing him. I’d tell him Jeremy is innocent. Instead, I ask, “What actual evidence do you have linking Jeremy to these crimes?” and do so hoping for DNA, or anything consequential, for that matter.
“The crime scenes alone connect him.”
My lips twist sardonically. “In other words, you have nothing. No DNA. No hard facts. Just another weak connection to him, and a lot of speculation any good attorney will attack and use to get him off.” Anger curls inside me.
Yet again, Jeremy would get away if this was what was used to charge him.
I shut the file and hold it out for retrieval by either one of them, quickly, I hope.
I’m fairly certain I’m going to throw up at any moment. “Take it.”
“Ms. Thorne—” Ryker begins.
“Has seen enough,” Oliver snaps, moving to kneel by my chair. His hand settles on my leg. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so shaken.”
My lips are as dry as my throat, and I wet them. “I let him go free, Oliver. How am I supposed to live with that?”
“No,” he corrects. “My office let him go free. We counted on circumstantial evidence last time around. This time will be different.” We’d carefully avoided case discussion during the trial, but I knew Oliver’s opinion of the current district attorney was no better than mine.
“We’re going to make it different, or we wouldn’t be here.
We’re leaving no stone unturned.” Right.
He’s making sense. The past is done. Over.
I can’t save those who were lost, but I can stop Jeremy before others die.
I open the file again and begin to read.
I’m not sure how long I sit there or how long the two men watch me in a silence so thick you could have heard a pin drop, but I don’t allow myself to be rushed by their presence.
“Keys,” I murmur when, in my mind’s eye, a memory surfaces from the vision back in the courtroom.
Jeremy was holding a set of keys with a pink charm on the chain that read JB.
I’d felt his pleasure at possessing them, too.
They were a prize meant to remind him of his victim.
I’d seen the woman’s face and a mailbox with her name on it.
Joyce Bean. That was her name. My stomach lurches.
Could this be an undiscovered victim with a family still hoping she is alive somewhere?
Swallowing against the bile in my throat, I glance up to realize Oliver is back on the couch, sitting next to Ryker, but I’d never felt him move.
“I…” My sentence falters as I struggle to figure out how to tell them what I know—no, what I think I know—without sounding crazy, without the timing being way off.
“There was this incident I blew off. Jeremy was carrying a keychain with a pink charm on it that read ‘JB.’ I jokingly commented about him liking pink. He said the charm belonged to an old girlfriend named Joyce.” I want to scream out her full name, but it doesn’t seem logical that he would offer that to me in my false version of the truth.
“There’s no known girlfriend for Jeremy,” Oliver states. “Ever.”