CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
Jason Mannix was surprised.
“Are you sure?” he checked even though he knew that asking questions wasn’t in his best interest.
The detective nodded as he led him from the interrogation room down the hallway to the lobby of Central Station.
“Yes,” said the detective, whose name was Hernandez. “I just spoke to Ms. Hunt and Agent Webb. They confirmed Rebecca Sullivan’s alibi. She’s not our killer.”
“I’ve got to say—I thought it might be her. She was pretty obsessed with me back then. It didn’t seem like a stretch to think she might still be.”
Detective Hernandez didn’t look convinced.
“I’m not sure she was obsessed as much as she was pissed by you betraying your marital vows within weeks of saying ‘I do.’ That seems to be an ongoing issue for you, Mr. Mannix.”
Jason’s heart sank at hearing that. Not because of the dig, but because of the memories that flooded back into his head.
Three out of the four women he loved, whether he was officially married to them or not, were dead.
And somehow, it was all connected to him.
Jason wasn’t big on guilt, but there was no way he could avoid it right now. He tried to push the feeling away.
“If you guys are letting me go, then you obviously don’t think I’m responsible either,” he said.
“I think you’re responsible for a lot of things, Mr. Mannix,” Detective Hernandez said as they reached the station lobby.
“But my colleagues say that you’re not going to be charged with the four murders they’re investigating, so I guess you can look at that as a win.
How responsible you feel? That’s for you to work out.
My job is to tell you that the crime scene folks have finished their work and officially cleared your house. ”
The detective turned and started to walk away.
“So, what do I do now?” Jason asked.
“You’re free to go home,” Detective Hernandez said. “That’s what I would do.”
*
And that’s exactly what Jason did.
As he made the last turn onto his street, he tried to focus on the positive. He wasn’t being charged with murder. That was a good thing. He always knew that the police would eventually come to the realization that he wasn’t involved. He was just glad that they did so before he had to hire a lawyer.
But that was where the good news ended. The reality was that he was approaching a home where someone he loved had been murdered. Not only that, but two other women he cared for deeply were gone too. And the one who had survived, Ally, wouldn’t return his calls.
There was also the concern about what he might eventually be charged with. He didn’t know the ins and outs of whether he’d formally committed crimes, but some kind of fraud charge didn’t seem out of the question.
And then there was work. He hadn’t watched the news while he was at the station, but he knew there had been a press conference where his name, and his behavior, was mentioned.
His employers would almost certainly have thoughts about that.
The fact that he hadn’t yet gotten a call from them about all this was probably a bad sign.
And all that was before dealing with the dirty little secret he’d kept from the police, but which was sure to come out soon. While he had been honest when he told Jessie Hunt that he’d only falsely married four women, that wasn’t the whole story.
The truth was that there were nearly a dozen other women that he’d wooed over the last few years. There wasn’t the same level of connection—or commitment—with any of them as with the four he’d fake-wed, but he still had great affection for them.
Admittedly, some had fallen by the wayside over the years, either because of logistical hurdles or because they just got too needy.
But he counted five wonderful women that he still met up with on the regular when he travelled to their areas.
They lived in locations as varied as Eureka in the far north, Palm Springs and Riverside in the Inland Empire, as well as Sacramento and Stockton.
If none of them had yet called in to the hotline that had been set up during the press conference, they surely would at some point. That meant potential legal and romantic complications that he wasn’t ready for. It could get very messy.
But as he pulled into his driveway, he tried to set all that aside.
This was the home where his first true “wife,” the one he felt closest to, had died.
As uncomfortable as it would be to go inside, he owed it to Lauren to find a way to honor her.
Maybe he’d light a candle and say some kind of prayer.
Maybe he’d cook her favorite meal and leave a plate out for her.
The house might be empty now. But his heart, though broken, was still full of love.