Chapter Forty-Seven
The city was still in an uproar. The Charles Hartsman case was the top story in both local and national news, and the search for the now infamous serial killer continued.
At the moment, though, they had zero leads.
It was as if the man had simply vanished into thin air, which was terrifying and perplexing, considering he had only ever held down low-paying jobs.
Which begged the question, how would he fund a life on the lam? It ate at Zach.
They’d discovered that Charles Hartsman’s most recent low-paying job had been as a janitor at the University of Cincinnati.
No one seemed to be able to describe the meek man other than to say he was quiet, often wore a ball cap, and kept his head down.
He’d played yet another role, a man who was virtually invisible, but who had obviously watched the professor, learning of his most recent affairs.
He’d killed those women, Zach thought, not only because in his mind they carried blame, but he’d planned the timing of the discovery of their bodies, intended the police to eventually be led straight to Professor Merrick.
He hadn’t been “lying low” for eight years.
He’d murdered more of those who were to blame when the opportunity presented.
But mostly, he’d schemed and strategized for the complete ruination of the man he’d considered ultimately responsible for his pain and suffering.
Zach thought of the professor, cringing at the picture that still came to mind when his thoughts returned to that dark basement where he had been carved up, left to live and not to die.
It had been Charles Hartsman’s final battle.
And he’d won, at least, Zach supposed, in Charles’s own mind.
The professor’s career was over, he’d left the university disgraced, his family was gone, and for the rest of his life, people would cringe when they looked at his scarred and mutilated face.
“There’s someone at the front desk asking to speak with you, Cope,” another detective said as he walked to his own desk.
Zach rubbed a hand over his stubbly jaw. Media, most likely. Damn, he was tired. He’d been stretched thin for weeks, living on caffeine and adrenaline, trying his damnedest to give Josie the space she’d asked for.
Josie.
Fuck, but he missed her.
He made his way to the front desk where an attractive woman, who looked to be in her thirties, stood next to another attractive woman a few decades older.
They were both dressed conservatively, understated, yet obviously expensive jewelry flashed at him from both women’s ears and fingers.
Designer purses were slung over their shoulders.
Definitely not reporters. Curiosity spiked.
“Detective Copeland?” the younger woman asked, stepping forward.
“Yes,” he said, offering his hand to both women.
“My name is Darla Broderick, and this is my mother Harriet Arenstein. Is there somewhere we may speak?”
Zach ushered them into an office nearby and offered them a seat. “No, thank you,” the younger woman said. “This won’t take long.” She glanced at her mother. “That man on the news? Charles Hartsman?”
“Yes?” Zach asked, frowning, leaning back against the desk behind him.
“My mother just confessed to me that she’d been seeing him for a few years now.”
Seeing him? Mrs. Arenstein’s cheeks heated. Ah. “He told me he was an Italian immigrant who’d left a life of poverty in his home country to live here in America. He’d arrived with little else than the shirt on his back.” Her flush deepened. “He was very convincing.”
Darla Broderick cleared her throat. “Get to the point, Mother.”
“Well, he…ah, that is—”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Her daughter stepped forward. “He hoodwinked her. Stole from her and then disappeared.”
“Stole from her?” Zach asked.
“Yes,” Mrs. Arenstein said, her expression filled with shame. “Two million dollars.”
Zach looked between mother and daughter, a certainty taking over.
Charles Hartsman was long gone. And he had a strong feeling other women would come forward with similar stories.
Those eight years had not only been spent planning and strategizing for the downfall of Professor Merrick, but for his own escape.
We won’t be seeing each other again, he’d told Josie.
The final battle has ended.
The war is over.
Later, Zach sat at his desk as the sun began lowering in the sky. A quiet buzz still surrounded him as the other detectives in the room worked, attempting to bring justice and closure to the citizens of Cincinnati.
And yet justice had been denied to Josie, her mother, Marshall Landish, and the women Charles had tortured and killed, making them all unwitting players in the war waged inside a sick and twisted mind.
Perhaps, Zach mused, a war waged inside them all. A struggle that could either trap you in the past or allow you to move freely into the future. He thought of Josie’s struggles. He thought of his own.
That protective streak, that deep-seated need to make right what the world got so wrong.
He knew where it had originated. Admitted where it’d come from.
It’d been born from his own guilt at living when his little brother had not.
It should have been Zach, the outsider—though no one had ever made him feel that way—not Aaron, the one who was rightly there.
It was warped thinking; he knew that. Irrational, even.
But God, how the things you believed about yourself, irrational or not, could rule your choices.
Your fears. Your insecurities and the blame you assigned yourself.
And, if that was far too painful, you cast it off on others.
As Charles Hartsman had done.
Casus belli.
Zach straightened his desk quickly before heading for the door. It’d been another twelve-hour day, and he was bone weary.
He stepped outside into the warm summer evening, the sky awash in shades of pink and orange, beauty cast over a broken world. As he walked to his truck, he heard the low strains of…country music? His pulse jumped, and he looked up. Josie.
She stood leaning against her car, the passenger door open as country music played from her radio, set at a low volume. She was wearing jean shorts and a cowgirl hat.
“I heard I might find a cowboy here,” she said, a smile gracing her lips, nervousness in her eyes.
Zach moved closer, his heart clenching. She was so goddamned beautiful. He tipped his chin. “Looking for a cowboy, are you?” the line came out scratchy and raw.
She breathed out a laugh, glancing away and then back. Shy. “Hi, Zach.” She pushed off the car. “How are you?”
“Good. I’m good. How are you?”
“I’m good too.” Zach’s gaze moved over her features.
She looked good, damn good. A…peace in her eyes that surprised the hell out of him.
Once again, Josie’s strength knocked him on his ass.
“Thanks for, you know, giving me a little time. Things have just been”—she shrugged, letting out another breathy laugh, though a flash of pain came and went in her eyes—“intense. You know?”
Intense.
Yeah, that was a good word.
“What you did, Josie,” he said, shaking his head at the memory of those few minutes in the lawyer’s office, the sacrifice she’d made for her boy, “for Reed. It was so incredibly brave.”
Grief passed over her face, but she managed a smile anyway.
“If you want to talk about it sometime…” He felt awkward suddenly, as if by bringing the painful topic up, he might have pushed her away when he was so damn happy—relieved—she was standing in front of him.
But she looked in his eyes and nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “I would like that. Maybe we could do dinner.”
His heart soared. He couldn’t contain the smile. “Dinner. Yeah. I’d love that.”
Their smiles dwindled, vulnerability filling her expression. “Do you think about her sometimes?” she asked softly. “Your birth mother?”
He studied her, saw her heart right in her eyes. Oh, Josie. “Yeah. Yeah, I do. I think about how grateful I am to her. How deeply grateful.”
She nodded, her expression still so raw. Was it enough, he wondered? Would it feel like enough to Josie?
For a minute, an awkward silence ensued before Josie spoke.
“Archie came by a few days ago,” she said, and Zach’s muscles bunched.
He started to say something, to verify that the police were still sitting vigil outside her house, but before he could, Josie went on.
“He wanted to make me one more offer. Wondered if after everything I’d been through recently, I might have changed my mind.
He figured I probably wanted to hide away somewhere.
” Something glittered in her gaze. Amusement?
“I told him to go fuck himself…nicely, of course.”
Zach laughed, and it felt so damn good, he laughed again. “Not too nicely, I hope.”
“He got the message. My shotgun helped make the point.”
“You got a shotgun?”
“Yup. Learned how to use it too.”
He stared at her, marveling. It was a wonder Josie Stratton was still standing. Yet here she was, having picked herself up yet again. And he had no doubt that whatever she had to do to stay on her feet, that’s what she would do.
God, he’d missed her. He’d missed her so much. And yet he didn’t know where to pick up.
“We started out kind of backward, didn’t we?
” he blurted. He didn’t want to skirt around the issue anymore.
He wanted her, wanted them, didn’t want just one dinner, but a million dinners, a million breakfasts and lunches and everything between, and life was too damn short—too damn unpredictable—to waffle around.
“Yeah, I guess we did.” She glanced to the side. “What I told you about being broken when it comes to love, I…I don’t think that’s true.”
“I don’t either,” he said. He stepped closer. He could smell her. The delicate scent of her shampoo, her skin. Her.
“But I’m still practicing how not to be.”
“Then we’ll practice together.”
She let out a breath, her gaze so filled with hope.
“I want to date you, Josie. Court you. Bring you flowers and take you to meet my parents and all that sappy shit. Let’s do this right.”
She laughed, a happy sound as tears filled her eyes.
“I love you,” he told her.
Joy flashed in her expression. “That’s still sort of backward, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he said, stepping right up to her, tossing her hat in the car, so he could take her face in his hands.
“But I can’t help that. I love you,” he repeated.
“Every imperfect, flawed part of you. Every heroic, selfless part of you. The part that’s fallen, and the part that’s gotten back up, over and over and over. You.”
A tear spilled from her eye and tracked down her cheek. “I love you too,” she whispered.
He brought his lips to hers and kissed her as the stars began blinking to life, one by one in a darkening sky.