CHAPTER SIXTEEN
"Detective Moore! Detective Moore."
Moore got up from her desk and exited the small office to see who was shouting at her. Alison followed her out of the door.
Diana’s lawyer was striding toward them. "I need to speak to you."
Moore walked to meet him halfway and then brought him back to the office. He looked eager to talk, the hint of a smile on his face for the first time since he’d arrived. Alison wondered whether Diana had confessed and whether he was bringing her confession.
The lawyer didn’t sit down when he entered the office, and began speaking. "My client had a tracker installed on her car when she bought it. It’s under the front wheel well. All you have to do is download the data, and you’ll find that her car has been parked outside her workplace all night."
"Okay," Moore said slowly. "Even if that’s the case, what’s to stop her from ordering a cab or a ride service. She could have hired a car previously. Maybe she’s working with someone else. That doesn’t prove that she didn't leave her place of work."
"Detective Moore, my client is trying to work with you.
You can't prove that she was at the crime scene, or you would have arrested her by now. My client is trying to work with you, and she’s willing to be completely open and transparent.
You can look into her finances, check her home, her place of work, anything you want.
But you can't hold my client indefinitely.
So, do what you need to do, but the clock is ticking, and she will be leaving here in approximately forty-six hours, if not before. "
"Okay," Moore said, and nothing else. She waited until the lawyer had left the office before looking at Alison with a look that said, "Are you right?"
"It’s good that she’s willing to cooperate with us," Alison told the detective. "We check the data from the tracker, triangulate the call, and we can search her home and office. We’ll look at her bank accounts and anything else that will prove or disprove that she’s the killer.
We don't know fully what we’re dealing with, but there must be evidence somewhere.
If Diana is the killer, she can't have killed two people and disposed of all the evidence already, suspecting that she would be picked up this morning.
The killer is killing quickly and shows no sign of stopping. "
"Then we cover our bases," Moore said. "I’ll talk to Special Agent Sullivan and have him look into Diana.
See if he can find anything. In the meantime, we continue as if the killer is still out there until we hear otherwise.
We look at anyone connected to the trial that might want revenge.
And we make sure everyone connected to the trial is accounted for and safe. "
"Not only the trial," Alison pointed out. "That wasn’t the end of Hartman’s story.
He was treated, and he was released, and according to Diana, he tried to kill again and was shot by a cop.
If someone is assigning blame for what Hartman did, they don't stop at the trial. They also target those who treated him and let him go free. It’s not bad enough that they didn't send him to prison; they deemed him well enough to be let back out onto the streets.
The killer will go after those people, too. "
***
Howard Mills walked along the embankment on the side of the dirt road.
He had the gun tucked into his pants, and he could feel it against his stomach.
A burning sensation came from the gun. He knew he shouldn’t be carrying it, but he couldn’t leave it behind.
It could be the only thing that kept him alive.
A noise came from behind, a deep growling in the distance.
Howard turned and saw the dust being kicked up far down the road.
A truck was coming. What he wouldn’t give to be in an air-conditioned vehicle and on the road instead of on his feet.
He’d never appreciated his work van as much as he did in that moment.
He couldn’t take the risk. His picture would be plastered all over the news outlets by now, especially after he’d shot a cop.
He’d thought about handing himself in after that, but he couldn’t show his face anywhere.
He wasn’t confident they wouldn’t shoot him on sight.
Howard was afraid of going to jail, but he was terrified of death.
It was the very thing he’d bought to five women, and so easily.
He’d snuffed out their lives in an instant, and it had been mundanely routine.
It had brought relief but no immediate joy.
Yet, now that he had come to the end of what he knew as his life, he couldn’t face death.
He didn't want to find out what was waiting for him there.
So, he quickly got off the road, heading down the embankment toward a clump of bushes, but he underestimated the slope and went down.
Howard hit the ground like a sack of potatoes and was stationary for a moment before he rolled a few feet, tumbling over himself, the pain shooting through him from multiple angles like he was being shot after a dozen archers had surrounded him.
A bullet had hit his shoulder back at the warehouse, passing straight through.
From the little he knew about bullet wounds, this was a good thing.
He’d done his best to wrap his shoulder with makeshift bandages after buying some cotton t-shirts from a thrift store and tearing them apart, but they hurt more and more.
He’d picked up some ibuprofen from a pharmacy, but it did little to dull the pain.
Howard crawled over the grass to the bushes, both arms and his ribs hurting.
His head had taken a few knocks over the past couple of weeks, and there was a permanent dull ache.
His knee was in agony now that it was bent to crawl.
Then only part of him that didn't hurt was his ankle, now that he was off it.
Every time he took a step, a weird pain shot up his calf.
He made it to the bushes and collapsed onto his back behind them, breathing heavily. He turned his head but couldn’t see the truck as it passed. He did hear it and see the cloud of dust rising above. The driver hadn’t seen him, or if they had, they didn't stop to see if he needed help.
Howard needed help, but he wouldn’t get it.
You don't get much sympathy when you kill people, especially cops. He’d seen the op in the warehouse go down when he’d shot him at near point-blank range, and there had been a second cop outside the warehouse when he’d fallen from the window.
Howard remembered firing blindly as he’d fallen, only meaning to make his escape, not meaning to kill anyone.
He’d meant to kill the five women, but not the cops.
Howard waited. There was not much left in the tank now. He was exhausted, and what little sleep he’d had over the past few days had been outside and uncomfortable. He had cash in his wallet, but he couldn’t risk getting a hotel room. He would be recognized and possibly trapped.
He pushed himself to his feet and hopped when the pain shot up his right calf.
Then, he hobbled back up toward the main road.
He looked both ways, far into the distance, but didn't see any other vehicles. He knew he’d lost a lot of blood from the wound in his shoulder, and every so often, he would get lightheaded.
When he did, he made sure to find a hiding place in case he was caught.
It had taken him a long time to shake the feeling that there were sirens in the distance.
His mind played tricks on him, and he was sure he could hear the police coming for him at all times.
He’d become so used to the imagined noise in his mind that he wouldn’t notice if there really was a police vehicle coming.
I need to keep going. If I keep moving forward, I stay alive.
He knew he couldn’t run. He’d tried to run, and it had ended badly. He had to return to the only place that had welcomed him with open arms. There were no open arms anymore, but it was all he knew, and if he were coming to the end of his life, then what better place to do it than in Oakland.
There was a symmetry to his thinking. He hadn’t picked Emma Payne for any other reason than he knew she liked to jog home alone after her swimming practice. He remembered watching her at the pool a couple of times, impressed by how graceful she was in the water.
Howard walked on the edge of the dirt road again, heading for Oakland.
It was why he’d posed her after death. When he’d killed her, the relief had come, and with it had come some clarity in his thinking.
She didn't look right in regular clothes.
She was far more graceful in her swimsuit, and he owed it to the woman who had given up her life to look her best in death.
So, he had undressed her with no intention of anything other than redressing her, and then left her to be found.
He didn't know it at the time, but that was where it had started. When he walked away from the kill, he didn't believe he would ever do it again. He was satisfied with what he’d done, but as the years passed, he became restless, and he knew he had to do it again.
Emma Payne was the catalyst. She had led him to this very moment in his life, and now, he was heading home. That would be the end if he did, and it was only right that he spent his final moments with her sister, with the woman who had been looking for him her entire adult life.
Howard didn't feel the need to kill, but that feeling had been within him before.
Perhaps that feeling would return when he got to Oakland.
Emma Payne had been his first, and it only felt right that Alison Payne should be his last. He was a dead man walking, but that didn't mean he couldn’t engage in one final act of satisfaction. He would die without regret.