Chapter Twenty-Three
The pounding above her ceased, and Josie went outside, putting her hands on her hips as she squinted up at Jimmy, who was on her roof with a now-empty box of shingles.
He smiled down at her and then maneuvered his large body around, descending the ladder carefully, tool belt clanking gently with his movements.
He hopped off the bottom rung and wiped his hands.
“All done. You only had some rotting wood that needed to be replaced. I added some new shingles, and now you’re back in business.
You can put those pots and pans away.” He turned toward the ladder and began lifting it away from the house.
“I can’t thank you enough,” she said, gratitude making her chest feel tight. She wouldn’t have to—somehow—pay for a whole new roof. This man had fixed it with only minimal materials and several hours of his labor. “What do I owe you?”
“Not a dime,” he said, holding the ladder beside him as he began walking toward her back shed. “I would have been here anyway. I was glad to keep busy.”
She hurried to catch up. “All right, but I insist on paying you for the shingles and the wood.”
He entered the shed, depositing the ladder on the hooks it had originally been hanging on. “Nah, I had that stuff lying around. Glad to get it off my hands.”
“I thought you told me you were fixing up a boat.”
“I am.”
“Boats don’t have shingled roofs, Jimmy.”
“See? Totally useless to me.”
He turned and started walking toward the house.
Josie huffed out a breath. She knew he was lying.
He’d bought those shingles—the exact same ones that were already on the roof—before he’d gotten there, and she knew it.
Sunshine spread through her as she watched Jimmy amble toward her porch.
He turned toward where she’d come to a stop.
“Get inside now. I’m tasked with keeping you safe. ”
Josie laughed as she caught up to the big frog of a man with the heart of a prince.
But just as Jimmy was opening the front door, they heard a vehicle approaching and turned to watch Zach pull into her driveway. Josie’s heart did a little leap in her chest as he got out, watching as he moved with that masculine grace of his toward where they stood.
But then she frowned when she saw the troubled look on his face. Apparently Jimmy noticed his partner’s mood too because he stepped forward and asked, “Everything all right?”
Zach didn’t answer for a minute as he climbed the steps, his eyes meeting Josie’s. Oh God, something was terribly wrong. “What is it?” she managed.
“Josie, come on in the house and—”
“No. Tell me now. What is it?”
His eyes shot to Jimmy quickly and then back to her. “It’s your mother. She was found dead in her home.”
Josie reached out, grabbing the railing next to her. “What? I don’t…” She shook her head. “How?”
His eyes were trained on her so intently, she swore she could feel his gaze. “She was murdered. Strangled.”
“What?”
“Let’s go inside.”
Josie allowed Zach to guide her into the kitchen where they all took a seat at the large farmhouse table.
Josie found a divot in the surface and moved her finger over it, using the small texture in the wood to ground herself.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Strangled?” She met Zach’s eyes.
“So it’s not related to the copycat? It’s just… random?”
“No. It’s related. Casus belli was carved into her thigh. It was the only thing that appeared similar, but we’re operating on the theory that this is the same man who killed Aria Glazer and Miriam Bellanger.”
“But why?” she asked, her voice emerging on a choked whisper. “Why my mother? Why strangle her when he starved the other two women?”
“I don’t know.” He paused, and she could tell he was going to say something else he was hesitant about.
“We won’t know all the details of your mother’s death for at least a few days.
But there was something clearly visible on the body.
” He paused again. Giving her time to brace?
“Your mother was burned repeatedly by a lit cigarette before death. The burns were on her face and on her genitals. They were…extensive.”
Oh God. Josie’s throat tightened, her stomach quivering with sickness. Burned? With a cigarette?
“I’m so sorry, Josie.” Zach’s voice penetrated the thick fog that seemed to have taken hold of her brain.
She shook her head. “We…we weren’t close, you know that.” She looked up at him and saw Jimmy give him a look in her peripheral vision too. “But to know she suffered that way…” She shook her head again as though if she did it enough, she could deny that this had really happened.
“I know,” Zach said. He reached across the table.
Her gaze moved to his large hands covering her smaller ones.
They were warm and strong, his fingers slender, nails short and blunt.
She wanted to lay her cheek on those hands, get lost in the solidity of him.
The warmth. He squeezed her hands and then pulled his own away.
“I need to talk to Jimmy for a few minutes. Can I make you some tea?”
The memory of him making her tea a few days before served to clear the fog slightly. He’d clearly never made tea in his life. It’d been weak, terrible, and she’d been grateful for every sip. “No, thank you. You two go talk. I’m okay. I need to keep my hands busy.”
They both stood and, as Jimmy walked toward the door, he put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you, Jimmy. And thank you again for your help today.”
A moment later, she heard their murmured voices on the porch.
They were obviously trying to be quiet so she wouldn’t overhear what they were talking about.
In a daze, Josie made herself a cup of tea, more for something warm to wrap her hands around than that she actually wanted to drink tea right then.
She took it into the living room and sat staring out the window.
He burnt her mother with cigarettes? Why?
It’s your fault he left me, you worthless girl!
This burn you feel? It’s nothing compared to what you did to my life.
Should have thrown you out with the trash, because that’s what you are.
The memory of those words still scalded, far more than the burns ever had. The burns had scarred her flesh; the blame for simply living had scarred her heart.
A few minutes later, her front door opened and closed, she heard the lock turn, and Zach came into the room. “You okay?” he asked gently, coming to sit next to her.
“Yes. I will be. I’m just… I can’t believe this. I just saw her,” she said. “I mean, you know that. It’s just…surreal. And, Zach, I…I need to tell you something.” She felt cold, despite the warm mug held in her hands. Cold and sick and afraid.
“What is it?”
Josie set her mug down and then turned and lifted the back of her shirt so Zach could see her lower back. She felt his gaze on her ruined skin. His silence rang loudly behind her, and she refused to look back. “Who did that to you?” he asked after a moment, and his voice was strange, tight.
She lowered her shirt and turned around, still feeling exposed, though her skin was covered, as were the scars she’d only willingly shown one other person. “My mother.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw, and he reached up and ran his index finger over his bottom lip as though taking a moment to either think of what to say or temper his reaction. “You said she was a mean drunk. Are those”—he lowered his eyes and nodded to her torso—“part of what you meant?”
Josie bobbed her head. “Usually after my father left. She’d drink, blame me for him not coming back…burn me.” Her voice faded away and heat rose in her face. It wasn’t her fault, she knew that, and yet it still shamed her to her core. “Usually, she didn’t even remember the next day.”
He regarded her for several heartbeats. She detected anger in his expression but no pity, and she was grateful for that. “Do you think there’s a connection between what your mother did to you and what was done to her by whoever murdered her?”
“There has to be. I just don’t understand how.
I showed these scars to Marshall Landish in an attempt to…
I don’t know, humanize myself in his eyes, maybe, show him that I’d suffered too.
It was…complicated.” She frowned. “Or maybe it wasn’t.
I was grasping at anything I could.” Zach had to have read her case file.
He must have gone over the questions the detectives had asked her about her time spent in captivity, the things Marshall had said to her.
Most of it if not all. “I got the idea that Marshall had suffered abuse of some kind at one point or another. I hoped that showing him my scars would help him see me as an ally instead of an enemy.” She looked off to the side, staring into space, his words coming back to her.
I s-see why all those men wanted you, Josie. You think I d-don’t? You think I don’t know that you’ve gotten to me too? There’s something about y-you. Something that makes men weak, even m-me.
A chill went down Josie’s spine. She met Zach’s eyes. “Other than you, he’s the only one who’s ever seen my scars.”
Confusion transformed his expression. “And yet the same thing was done to your mother. It could be a coincidence. That the killer simply used what was available to him to inflict pain.”
“It could, but I don’t know. It…it doesn’t feel like a coincidence. Not when this guy is using Marshall Landish as a model for his crimes. Not when he cut the same words into her thigh.”
Zach sat back on the couch. “No, it doesn’t feel like a coincidence to me either,” he murmured. “But why kill your mother in a different manner than the other two victims? Why kill your mother at all?”
Why kill your mother? The words repeated in her head. Her mother was dead. God, Josie still couldn’t believe it. It didn’t feel real. “Is it possible there’s a second copycat?”
“Unlikely. We’ve kept the fact that the copycat is carving the words casus belli into the thighs of his victims under wraps.
Even if a second copycat guessed that, he’d seek to mimic the other details as well.
There’s something different about your mother’s manner of death because your mother is different than the other victims somehow. It’s almost like…”
“What?”
He met her gaze. “It’s almost like the copycat is seeking your favor. He did this in retaliation for what your mother did to you.”
She’d had the same thought skating at the edges of her mind but hadn’t voiced it because it didn’t make sense. “But how could he know that? Did Marshall tell someone? Is this guy someone who knew him?”
“Possibly, though it seemed Landish was something of a loner. I’m sure you know that.” Yes, of course she knew that. She’d followed every lead she could in looking for her son. “The only person he spoke to regularly was his sister, and the police interrogated her thoroughly.”
They were both quiet for a moment. Zach looked as though he was struggling with whether to voice whatever was on his mind at that moment. Josie waited him out. “Are you sure no one else ever saw your scars in an…intimate situation?”
Intimate situation. That’s how he’d chosen to broach the topic of sex. It almost elicited a smile. He seemed so uncomfortable, and something else too, but she wasn’t willing to try to put an emotion to it. She was already shaken up enough about Detective Zach Copeland.
“That is…if …I don’t want to assume anything.”
Ah. She realized what he was getting at.
“Do you mean was I a virgin when Marshall abducted me? The answer is no.” She looked down, focusing on her hands.
“The truth is, I’d made a lot of mistakes.
And did things that could have hurt people.
I made stupid choices that hurt myself. I…
I wasn’t a great person. I was messed up…
from my childhood. It isn’t an excuse, but… there you have it.”
When she met his eyes, she saw that Zach was regarding her intently, a small wrinkle between his brows. “I think you’ve probably always been a great person, Josie. Making mistakes doesn’t negate that. Unless you don’t learn from them.”
Her lungs felt tight. He was so kind; he really was.
And again, the sense that this strong, beautiful man was rooting for her filled her heart.
Her soul. It made her feel like she had always been a good person, despite her vast regrets.
More importantly, it made her feel like she could be a great person now.
Zach sat up. It appeared as though something might have just dawned on him.
“A man’s name came up in relation to the two other victims. I was actually on my way to his home when I got the call about your mother.
Jimmy’s going to talk to him tonight. It might turn out to be nothing, and I know it’s been a long time since you attended UC, but did you ever know a professor of English literature named Vaughn Merrick? ”
Josie felt the blood drain from her face. “Vaughn? What do you mean his name came up in relation to the other two victims?”
“You know him?”
“Knew him.” She felt slightly lightheaded as blood returned to her face in a rush. “I…we had an affair.”
Zach drew his head back and stared at her for a moment. “Shit.”
“Zach, tell me what’s happening.”
His brow furrowed as he obviously considered the situation, trying to connect some puzzle pieces. He stood suddenly, causing Josie to startle. “I’ll be right back,” he said as he headed toward the kitchen.
She heard him on the phone a second later, talking to Jimmy. He disconnected, and a moment after that, reappeared in the living room. “Jimmy’s almost to his house. I told him about your connection to him.” He sat back down. “It’s possible he was having an affair with the other two women as well.”
A rock dropped from Josie’s stomach to her feet.
Zach’s stare was intense. “Josie, do you think this guy, this professor, could be the copycat?”