Chapter Ten #2
“Mm-hmm?” She leans into him as she fastens his buttons, taking great care not to sound too invested.
“Whoever did it to her had…” He’s shaking his head. He takes another deep drag on the cigarette. “Whoever did it had tattooed something on her knuckles.”
She fumbles the top button, forces herself to stay calm. “Tattooed?”
“He’d etched something into her hands.”
She’s got him in a weakened state, soft from the shower and the sex. She knows he shouldn’t be telling her this. “What did the tattoos say?”
He pushes her away gently and fastens the remaining button. “Love and hate,” he says reluctantly. “One on each hand.”
“Like some Hells Angels thing?”
“We don’t know. We’re still puzzling it out.”
“Why would someone do that?”
“Like I said”—he exhales through his nose—“we don’t know. The motive’s abnormal.”
“ ‘Abnormal’?”
“We can’t explain it yet.”
“So you don’t think it’s someone close to her, then? Isn’t it usually a boyfriend?”
“Bev”—he shakes his head—“don’t.”
“Please,” she says softly, rubs his neck.
“I don’t think it’s family, okay?”
“Why not?”
He sucks his teeth, but she knows he’ll answer.
“Men like this, they don’t kill family.”
“ ‘Men like this’?”
“I’ve met plenty of killers before who think they’re saints because they never harmed their family.”
Beverley frowns. “But it’s okay to kill strangers?”
He holds his hands up as if he can’t explain it.
“One guy even quoted the Bible at me. ‘Behold!’ ” He adopts a Southern drawl. “ ‘Children are a heritage from the Lord.’ ” He pauses, straightens, as if realizing he is getting carried away.
Beverley moves her hand to his knee, gently traces the skin, coaxing him.
“This isn’t some domestic-violence situation”—he shifts his leg away from her—“not some jealous husband, or someone who got rejected. Those crimes, where victims know their killers, they’re intimate, messy—facial lacerations, black eyes.
It’s almost like…with this guy, the victims don’t matter. It’s more about the way he does it.”
“So, is it easy to get onto the golf course?”
“All right, no.” His demeanor quickly hardens. “No more talking about this. It’s not right.”
“I’m just…” She pauses. “I’m just trying to figure something out, okay?”
She feels Roger shoot her a warning glance.
“Don’t you think there’s a chance that this is linked to the Herrera case?”
He seems alarmed. “Beverley!”
“You said she was a prostitute.”
Roger is shaking his head, but these murders did not take place that far away from each other, and neither of them follows the rules of your “standard” killings.
Roger said it himself—they don’t seem like crimes of passion or relationship disputes.
The arrow, the tattoos—there has to be meaning to those.
This could be the same killer trying to send some sort of warped message.
“What about prints? Have you found fingerprints on anything?”
He glares, and she knows she is overstepping. Of course they checked for prints.
“Why are you doing this, Bev? What are you trying to prove?”
She pulls away from him.
He seems to weigh up the right words. “With the scrapbook, the sudden interest in these cases, is it just something you’re doing to try and handle your own feelings of guilt?”
She inhales sharply, turns away.
“Misplaced guilt.” He pulls her back by the shoulder, and she dodges his kiss. “You know what I meant.”
“If they’re linked, people need to know,” she argues. “It could be the same killer. There could be someone dangerous out there.”
“No, they don’t need to know,” Roger replies sternly. “It’ll cause unnecessary panic.”
“Is panic really unnecessary when women are being killed?”
“They’re not linked, Beverley.”
“Roger…”
“The methods of killing are totally different,” he argues. “And that Jane Doe, Herrera—she’s Hispanic. They don’t even have the same skin color. But you know who is Hispanic? The Kings.”
“Different skin color doesn’t mean—”
“It’s a nice story, Bev, but women go missing all the time. Women get killed.”
“And that’s okay with you?”
“That’s a cheap shot.”
She pulls her dressing gown tighter around her and smooths down her hair. He will never take her seriously, just like everybody else. She will always be just the woman who was married to Henry Lightfoot, the wife who didn’t know what her husband was doing.
“Beverley”—he moves his palm to her cheek—“I wish I could stop asshole husbands and boyfriends from killing their wives and their girlfriends. I really do.”
“Isn’t it literally your job to try to stop that?”
Roger exhales frustratedly, moves away from her and stubs out his cigarette.
“What if, even if the chances are slim, the cases are linked?” she asks. “What if this is a mass killer? He could do it again.”
He shakes his head. “Cornwell’s plowing a lot of money into surveilling the Kings. New audio technology. Covert officers. It’s his project, okay? He’s being hot on this. And these guys? They are not good guys, Bev. People like you shouldn’t be trying—”
“People like me?” She raises an eyebrow. “Women?”
Roger rolls his eyes. “No, Bev. Civilians.”
She huffs.
“It gets in our way and, more importantly, it can be dangerous.” He reaches for her. “If you’d seen the things I’ve seen, if you knew what people were really capable of—”
She shoots him a glance and he pauses.
“I just want you to be safe.”
She softens a little. She believes him. She knows he would do anything to protect her. She also knows that, deep down, that’s one reason she was so drawn to him in the first place.
“I’m not talking about hanging around in dark alleys,” she counters, “but surely we can find a link between these victims.”
“It’s not that easy…”
“We won’t know until we try.”
“Beverley.”
She flinches at his sudden change of tone.
“No,” he warns, his body stiffening. “Leave it alone. You’ll be interfering with an investigation. Tell me you’re not going to take this any further.”
She drops her eyes to the floor. “Sure, Roger,” she replies evenly, shrugging off his arm and crossing to the window.
“I don’t know what came over me.” She moves the curtain slightly to the side and gazes at the dark, neat street.
Then she allows the fabric to fall. Something has its hooks in her, she knows, and she has no intention of letting it go.