“So, John killed Brooke?” Saxe asked.
“I’m pretty damn sure. Like I said, I’d run the tox screen.”
“And who killed John?”
Robert’s eyebrow twitched, and now was the moment. I could just tell Saxe, right now. He was armed, he could protect me. Arrest Robert and take him away. That was my civic duty, right? Instead, I pinched my facial features in a confused look. “I thought you told me that he killed himself. Stabbed himself in the gut.”
“I did . . . ,” he said slowly. “But now we know more. There’s a lot more reasons for someone to want him dead.” He regarded Robert. “Take Mr. Kavin, for instance. Your son was his sixth victim. I’m sure, if we put a knife in any of the parents’ hands, they would have done the deed. Would you agree?”
If I was sweating, Robert was as cool as ice. “I’d have gutted him like a fish,” he said without hesitation.
Detective Saxe chuckled. Chuckled. I guess I wasn’t the only one unable to tell a killer when he was standing right in front of me. The cop returned his attention to me. “So, you think suicide is still consistent with his mentality?”
“He was hopelessly in love with his wife. If he broke and actually hurt her—killed her? Yes. Absolutely. Killing himself would have been very plausible, if not expected.” Since no one else was seated, I gripped the arms of the chair and stood.
“Okay.” The detective nodded. “I’ll be back in touch with any more questions. Kavin, looks like you caught a break with your client.”
“I wouldn’t call it a break,” Robert said. “Thompson’s life has been ruined.”
“Well, sue Scott Harden, not the police department.” He tucked his tablet into his breast pocket. “Stay in town, Dr. Moore. We’ll probably be back for that file.”
“Sure,” I said tartly, and I didn’t even feel a little guilty at letting him believe that John had killed himself.
As the detective left, Robert stayed in the foyer. He turned to face me, and there was a moment of silence as we stood just a few feet apart.
“Don’t feel guilty about Brooke’s death,” he said gruffly. “She was as much a monster as him. While he was dying, he told me everything.” He closed his eyes and sucked in a pained breath. “It was bad, Gwen. He was physical with the boys, but she was emotionally cruel. It was a sexual and emotional game between them, with the boys as pawns. She deserved to die, and in a lot worse way than she went.”
I hugged my arms over my chest. “I’ll try not to, but the guilt is still there. Now in about a hundred new ways.”
From the street, the detective’s car rumbled to life. Robert twisted the knob and pulled open the front door. “Goodbye, Gwen.”
I stepped forward. “Wait. Robert.”
He ignored me, moving onto the porch and pulling the door shut, quick enough that it almost hit me. I jerked back and watched him through the thin panes of glass. He stepped into the dark yard and didn’t look back. A few seconds later, car lights illuminated at the curb, then pulled away.
I flipped the dead bolt, then moved to the kitchen and repeated the action at the side door, irritated with myself for leaving it unlocked. Returning to my office, I took my chair and picked up the knife that he’d left behind. It was one of the ones from his collection, one he hadn’t shared a story on. I turned it over in my hands, then placed it in my desk drawer and let out a sigh, looking over the papers spread out before me.
An hour ago, I was frantic to look at John’s file and find the clues I might have missed. Now, it was the last thing I wanted to do. And did it really matter? At some point, the file would be confiscated by the cops or the courts. My work would be a news story, a Wikipedia entry, and a cocktail-party conversation piece. I would become famous as the most inept psychiatrist of all time. Randall Thompson would be released. Scott Harden . . . I frowned, unsure what would become of him. Obstruction of justice, surely. Was that in my future, too?
I didn’t care. I had spent the last month paralyzed with guilt over a woman’s murder, and she had turned out to be a monster. I now had the blood of two teenagers on my conscience and would spend the next couple of decades microanalyzing every conversation I’d ever had with John Abbott.
Just a week ago, I’d been bristling with excitement over the chance to speak to Randall Thompson. I’d considered it a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, to sit across from the Bloody Heart Killer. Now, I knew that I’d had a year of interactions. I’d doodled in the margins of my notebook while Los Angeles’s reigning killer had spoken.
I had failed, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever forgive myself for it.
CHAPTER 42
ONE MONTH LATER
Scott Harden stood in the tall grass and watched Randall Thompson through the window. He sat at a table, his chair pulled close, his belly snug to the edge, and scooped forkfuls of pasta toward his face. His gaze was fixed and unmoving on the screen in his hand. The faint sounds of voices came through the window, a sitcom playing on the device.
In Scott’s hand was the knife. The same knife Brooke had given him that morning, when she had snuck him outside, their plan in motion the moment John’s car pulled out of the drive. “Just in case,” she had said, then pressed a kiss on his forehead. They hadn’t discussed what just in case covered, but killing Randall Thompson was as good a reason as any, one that would have made Brooke proud. One that, if John Abbott had really loved his wife, he would have taken care of himself.
But he hadn’t, and now this asshole was suing Scott, and his parents, and the police department, and was going to collect ten million dollars, according to their attorneys.
That wasn’t how this was supposed to happen. That wasn’t what Brooke had wanted. She was the one who’d risked everything and snuck into her rapist’s house, putting the box of souvenirs under his bed. She was the one who had planned out everything so that this sack of shit would finally get what he deserved. She was the one who had trusted her teacher and had her innocence stripped in return.
The science teacher had raped Brooke. Raped her without a condom, and when she’d missed her period, she’d had to tell her mother, who had still refused to believe it was him, but marched her down to the clinic and berated her during the entire termination process.
Brooke had told Scott how no one had believed her. The girls at school had called her a slut. Everyone had dismissed her claims, even her parents. She’d had to stay in Randall’s class, in a front-row seat, and feel the heat of his gaze on her for the entire semester.
He had done that to her, and to others, and never been forced to pay for his actions—not until now. Scott eased around the edge of the house and toward the back door. From inside, Randall laughed. Beside Scott, an air conditioner clattered to life.
Scott thought of Brooke, her soft hair falling in his face as her lips brushed his. He moved down the skinny side porch and reached for the doorknob.
“Scott.”
He jumped and turned, raising his fists in self-defense. Pausing, he peered into the dark yard. A small figure in a blue velour jumpsuit stepped closer, and his hands dropped. “Mom. What are you doing here?” he hissed.
“Give me that knife.” She climbed the steps onto the saggy wooden porch and jerked forward, snatching the knife from his hand before he had the chance to hold on to it. “We’re going home.”