Ann had hired a woman to do the same for her. It made sense that people all over the country did this kind of work, but what were the chances one would place flyers near Ann’s office now? “Have you heard the name Maura Ralston?”
“No, why?”
Bryce shook his head. “Never mind. What happened?”
“She started to resent my work on this podcast, especially when I left for Knoxville to talk to Sarah Cameron. When I returned to Nashville, we started fighting immediately. At that moment I could see the end in sight.”
“But . . . ?”
Handcuffs on his wrists clinked when he rubbed his eyes. “The sex was great.”
“Did she ever spend the night in your house? Did she have access to your computers?”
“She did. She was good with computers.” He sighed.
Judy had not responded to Thompson’s earlier text, but he wondered if the cell was still active and pinging. “What can you tell me about Judy?”
“She grew up hard in a small town in West Virginia. She had a sister who vanished from a Fourth of July party. Judy was about sixteen and her sister fourteen. She admitted she liked the attention she received when the cops were looking for her sister.”
“Was the girl ever found?” Bryce asked.
“No.”
“When did Judy get interested in Elijah?”
“She said from the moment she saw his picture on some internet site. She joked she liked that he was in prison, like he was on an enclosed display shelf. Of course, she said she realized how stupid it was to write an incarcerated man. Soon after that we were in bed.”
They had been referring to this killer as he during the entire investigation. But a female killer made sense. Females were naturally leery of strange males, but those innate defenses dropped around another woman, especially if the women shared a mutual interest.
“When Sarah’s body was identified, did you consider Judy might have killed her?”
“No. Like I said, I thought it was Sarah’s boyfriend. I thought he found out Sarah and I had slept together.” Thompson studied Bryce’s face. “Do you think Judy did all this?”
“Do you think she’s capable of killing Sarah, Dana, Nena, and Edith?”
“She’s smart. Really clever. She has a love-hate relationship with technology. She knows it inside and out but doesn’t trust it. Hates the idea of being tracked.”
“What about her temperament?” Bryce asked.
“There is an element of crazy. That was the appeal initially.”
“Did you notice anything else?”
“After we broke up, my social media accounts were hacked. It took me a solid week to get that untangled. And before I was supposed to leave for Montana, my tires were slashed. My car had to be towed the morning I left for Montana.”
“Are Judy’s fingerprints or DNA in any system?”
“She’s in AFIS. She was arrested in North Carolina for repeated trespassing when she was about nineteen.”
“Okay, Mr. Thompson, thank you. I’ll look into this.”
Thompson rose as he did. “Why would she do this to me?”
“You said it yourself—she liked the idea of a guy in a box. Look where you are.”
“Shit, shit, shit.”
Bryce called the deputy, and as Thompson was led back to his cell, he hurried to the transition area and retrieved his weapon. He thanked the deputy, and as he stepped outside and crossed the parking lot, he dialed Ann’s number. It went to voicemail. He texted her. Call me.
As he sat in the jail parking lot and seconds ticked, the sense that something was wrong grew. Again, his mind went back to the professional organizers in Thompson’s and Ann’s lives. Being in someone’s home was a very intimate experience, and there was no better way to find and exploit their vulnerabilities. He remembered Ann had found Maura via flyers posted around the university.
He dialed Gideon’s number and, after the second ring, heard a groggy, “Bryce.”
He recapped what he had learned from Thompson as he started the engine. At the very least, he could drive by Ann’s house and make sure she was okay. “I’ll be at Ann’s house in twelve minutes.” Distance driving had never bothered him, but these next five miles separating him from Ann felt like a million-mile journey.
“Do you think this woman called Maura killed the other women?” In the background, Joan’s muffled voice asked what was happening.
“If this killer is Judy Monroe, she has an obsession with Paul Thompson and Elijah Weston. She murdered Fireflies who all most closely resembled Ann,” Bryce said. “She’s got Thompson locked behind bars, and if she wants to control Elijah, then her best bet is to get to Ann or Nate. He has a weakness for both.”
“Do you think Weston is pulling the strings?” Gideon asked. “He reached a lot of women while he was behind bars, and now that he’s out, there’s no telling what kind of damage he could do.”
“Go by Weston’s,” Bryce said. “I’ll go to Ann’s. I really hope that I’m overreacting, but the more I consider it, the more worried I am for Ann and Nate.”
“I’m on my way,” Gideon said.
Ann dreamed that she was drowning. As she looked up toward the sun beaming above the surface, she knew she had to reach it. But her leaden arms would not move, and she did not have the energy to kick her feet. It would be so easy to drift.
But she understood instinctively that if she did rest, she would die. Willing her limbs to move, she flutter kicked and waved her arms until, very slowly, her body began to rise. The sun grew brighter above the waves. And just like that, she broke through. She sucked in a breath, but instead of savoring fresh, cleansing air, her chest burned, and her head pounded.
She blinked and looked around the dimly lit room. It was the basement at the Beech Street house. And she was lying on the mattress Clarke had readied for her just over a year ago.
She jumped from that realization to the next. Someone was with her. Footsteps circled around her, and as she blinked, she struggled to clear her vision. “Who’s there?”
“You know who it is.”
Her mind tumbled backward to the moment it all had gone sideways. “Maura, where’s Nate?”
“He’s fine.” The footsteps circled closer. “I got to know this place pretty well when I was cleaning it. Basements are so handy, don’t you think?”
“What did you do to Nate?” Ann demanded.
“I gave him a little something to help him sleep. He’ll be out for hours, and when he wakes, all this will be finished, and he, Elijah, and I will be headed to our new life.”
“Where is my son?” Even as she whispered the words, her mind cleared, and her head spun slower.
“Sleeping in his old bedroom. I tucked him into bed like he was my little baby.”
“You and Elijah.” Of all the scenarios she had imagined, she had never placed Maura as Elijah’s helpmate. “You two are working together?”
Maura crossed her fingers. “We’re as thick as thieves. Two peas in a pod. Inseparable.”
“Where is Elijah?”
“He’ll be here soon. As soon as he figures out where we are.”