“Oh,” Connie said. “I don’t—well, I might have one from a long time ago. I don’t know if it would still work, but I can—”
“Could you get it for us?” Josie asked, cutting her short.
“Um, sure, I guess. Wait here.”
Josie could see Noah’s outline on the Duttons’ front steps from where she stood. It took Connie thirteen minutes to find the key. She left her dog in the house and walked to the Duttons’ with Josie. “This is so strange,” Connie said. “Maybe they just didn’t want to pay the fines.”
Josie was deciding whether or not to tell Connie that Dutton wasn’t going to the police station to work out the fines the Chief had levied against him for the supplies Quail Hollow had taken illegally, when a concussive boom shook the air around them. Both women froze. Josie looked toward the Dutton house where Noah was already kicking the front door. Josie left Connie behind and ran toward Noah, unsnapping her holster as she ran. By the time Josie reached him, the door had broken away from its frame. Noah took out his pistol and pushed inside. Behind him, Josie was ready, gun in hand, following him as he cleared each room on the first floor. Finding no one, he pointed toward the ceiling and Josie nodded. She let Noah lead as they padded up the steps.
Behind the second door in the upstairs hall, Marisol slumped on the floor at the foot of a king-sized bed. Her hair was greasy and unkempt. Blood trickled from a split in her bottom lip. When she looked up at them, Josie saw that her nose had been smashed in, and her left eye was black and swollen.
“Gun,” Josie said quietly to Noah.
“I see it,” he said, advancing on Marisol. He pointed to the Glock on the floor beside her. “Mrs. Dutton, I need you to move away from the weapon.”
Josie went in the opposite direction, where Kurt Dutton lay in a heap on the floor near a large walk-in closet. A gunshot wound in his chest pulsed blood. Josie checked him for weapons but saw none. Dropping to her knees, she took off her jacket and used it to put pressure on the wound. With one hand she felt for a pulse. It was weak and thready. “Noah,” she said. “He’s not going to make it. We need an ambulance now.”
Noah had helped Marisol onto the side of the bed. He took out his phone and made the call.
“Marisol, what happened here?”
Noah and Josie looked toward the bedroom doorway where Connie stood, face pale, eyes wide, taking in the destruction in the large room. Overturned furniture, broken lamps, blood stains in the carpet.
Josie said, “Connie, stay where you are. Don’t come any closer.”
Connie seemed not to hear her, eyes still glued to Marisol, but she didn’t step inside the room. “Mar?” she said.
Tears streamed down Marisol’s face. She hugged her middle, flinching, and looked over at Josie. “Is he dead?”
“No,” Josie said. “But he’s lost a lot of blood.”
“Ask him what he did,” Marisol said.
Noah hung up his phone and put it back into his pocket. He holstered his weapon and went over to Marisol. “Are you wounded?” he asked.
“He hit me,” Marisol replied. “He came after me. He was crazy.”
“No gunshot wounds, though,” Noah said.
She shook her head. “I shot him,” she said.
Connie gasped and covered her mouth with one hand.
“I shouldn’t say that,” Marisol said. “I know. I should wait for an attorney. You don’t know what he did. Ask him what he did.”
Josie looked at Noah and gave a slight shake of the head. Beneath her hands, the life was bleeding out of Kurt Dutton. He was barely breathing. There was no way he could hold a conversation.
Noah said, “He’s not in a position to talk right now, Mrs. Dutton. Why don’t you and I go downstairs and wait—”
Marisol sprang off the bed only to flinch, the movement obviously causing her pain. She put her right hand over the left side of her rib cage. “He’s a monster. He killed them both. Vera and Beverly—and Beverly’s baby. Did you know that he knocked Beverly up before he killed her?”
Noah said, “Mrs. Dutton, you’re in shock right now. We can take a statement once you’ve been checked out by a medic.”
He reached for her arm, but she swatted him away. “I saw her once, you know. She came to the theater to see him, but I was there that day. I never forgot that. He told me last night that he had to go to the police station today. I asked him why, and he said it was about the city flood supplies. But then he called our lawyer, and I knew he was lying. All night I asked him what was really going on until he hit me. I asked him if it had to do with Beverly Urban’s body being found. He told me. He admitted it. He killed her all those years ago, and he killed Vera because she wouldn’t keep his secret any longer. She was going to tell the police the truth.”
Connie gasped again but said nothing.
Marisol continued, “I asked him what the truth was, and he said that he and Beverly were having an affair. When she was in high school! I knew he was telling the truth because of the girls.”
“Oh, Mar,” Connie whispered.
“What girls?” Josie asked. She checked for Kurt’s pulse again. It was barely there.
“My husband liked young girls,” Marisol spat. “When we first got married, it was just college-aged girls. Interns. Unpaid interns. He’d hire them from Denton University and then romp around town with them. Like I wasn’t going to find out.”
Josie looked at Connie. “You knew about this?”
Connie nodded. “My husband saw him with college girls a few times. It was obvious that he was… involved with them, but they were adults, so we never said anything.”
“But they weren’t all adults,” Marisol said. “Beverly Urban was sixteen when they started their affair. I asked him if that was why he killed her—because if anyone found out he was having a sexual relationship with a minor, it would have ruined his life. He would have faced prison. He said he never meant to kill her, only to scare her because she was pregnant with his baby, and she was threatening to keep it. She invited him to her house when she thought her mom was out and told him. They had a big fight about it. Vera showed up. Things got worse. He was going to pay her, pay them both, to take care of it, but Beverly refused. He said he took out his gun to scare her, to scare them both into doing what he wanted, but things got out of hand and he shot her.”
Josie knew this to be a lie. There was no scenario that she could imagine in which Kurt Dutton had shot Beverly in the back of the head by accident or in the heat of the moment. From Dr. Feist’s findings, Kurt would have had to be standing behind her, a few feet away, with her walking away from him when he pulled the trigger. But they were getting Dutton’s confession second-hand.
Noah said, “Why didn’t Vera go to the police?”
Marisol said, “I don’t know. He said he offered to pay her as long as she disappeared and never talked about it. He told her if she ever went to the police, he would tell them how she dealt drugs to his wife and her friends for years. He would ruin her. I asked him why, if he’d already killed Beverly sixteen years ago, he didn’t just kill Vera, too, and he said he wasn’t thinking straight and hadn’t meant to kill Beverly. Vera was so freaked out that she just did what he said. They made some kind of deal. I don’t know what it was or how it worked—just that he paid her, and she kept quiet. But he said Vera came back after Beverly’s body was found. She begged him to go to the police, explain it had been a mistake, and said she would go herself if he wouldn’t. He couldn’t risk it—especially not now, with the mayoral race going on—and so he killed her. He knew where she was staying so he followed her and killed her. I slept in that day. I just assumed he was here all that time, but he wasn’t. I was his alibi and I didn’t even know it. Then he said he would kill me too if I told. I tried to get to my phone, and he started to beat me.”