He nodded, his expression one of determination. “True, but detective work is a marathon, not a sprint.”
“That sounds like something my father would say.”
He sent her a wry smile. “It’s something every cop says,” he told her. “A lot.”
Her gaze drifted toward the stacks of manila folders that took up the entire length of her coffee table. Last night, they’d skimmed through the mounds of interviews from the various witnesses, setting aside a handful Ash intended to track down and ask follow-up questions. “I can’t believe these are just your private files.” She gave a shake of her head, unable to imagine how many boxes must be stored at the police station.
“Interviewing hundreds of potential witnesses is part of the marathon.”
She wrinkled her nose, recalling how many times she’d been exasperated with her father when he was late for a school event or missed dinner yet again. In her juvenile mind, she’d leaped to the conclusion that he preferred being with his buddies rather than spending time with her.
“I have a new appreciation for the hours my father spent away from home.”
“It’s a demanding job.”
“But important.”
Ash gave a slow nod, his expression grim. “Especially now.”
She jerked back her gaze toward the stacks of folders, refusing to dwell on Ash’s belief the Butcher was now obsessed with her. She wasn’t sticking her head in the sand. Not entirely. It was simply the realization that she couldn’t concentrate on finding the killer if she was crippled with fear.
“When did you and my father first realize there was a serial killer?”
He leaned back into the couch, absently drinking his wine. She could sense he was dragging up memories he’d kept buried. She didn’t blame him. Being a detective no doubt meant you had to keep all the bad things locked away just to stay sane.
“It was shortly after I became your father’s partner,” he said. “A woman was found in her home with her throat slit. Our first thought was that her husband was responsible. Or a lover. Statistically, that’s the most likely explanation. Then your father noticed the mark on her breast and realized that he’d seen the same mark on an autopsy photo the year before.”
Remi was confused. The Butcher’s carving on the breast was small, but it was unique. It was hard to believe that the detectives had dismissed it as a random cut. “No one had noticed it before?”
Frustration tightened Ash’s features. “The sad truth is that we have too many murders and too few detectives. It wasn’t until we began searching through the old case files that we realized there’d been three other women with the exact same mark.”
“And you never found any connection between the women?”
“They were all young with dark hair.” He deliberately allowed his gaze to skim over her. A silent reminder of the danger that stalked her. “And they were all killed in their homes.”
Remi lifted a hand to touch her temple, reminded of the memories that remained trapped in her mind. Would it have made a difference if the cops had realized from the start that they were dealing with a serial killer? Impossible to know for sure.
“Nothing else?” she asked.
A muscle twitched at the base of Ash’s jaw, and Remi realized she wasn’t the only one recalling her encounter with the Butcher. Hastily, she lowered her hand.
“Not that we could find,” he admitted. “None of the victims appeared to know one another, they had various careers, they shopped at different stores. And none of them chose risky lifestyles.”
She nodded. She’d watched her father pacing the floor at night, his brow furrowed as he tried to piece together the puzzle. Then she was struck by a sudden thought. “Could any of them have answered an ad to become an actress?”
“That’s possible.” Ash’s lack of astonishment at her cleverness proved he’d already considered the notion the Butcher had used the same tricks to lure his victims in the past. “What young man or woman doesn’t dream of becoming a star, no matter what their economic status or career? And for the killer, it would be easy to put an ad in the paper asking for a specific age and physical appearance. A perfect trap.” He deliberately paused. “But it doesn’t include you, unless you went to an audition you didn’t tell me about?”
“No.” She set aside the wineglass, using the motion to hide her expression. “I assumed I was chosen because my father was the lead detective investigating the case.”
“Or because of me,” he breathed, his voice edged with the same awful regret that filled her.
She didn’t blame him. Or her father. She blamed herself.
A brittle silence threatened to settle around them, but with an effort, Remi cleared her throat and motioned toward the folders. The past was done. The future was all that mattered.
“We’ve gone through the witness files,” she said, pointing to the two files Ash had separated from the rest. “What are those?”
Ash leaned forward and set aside his own glass, as if he was as anxious as she to put the dark memories behind them.
“Suspect files.”
She picked up the folders with a lift of her brows. “There weren’t very many suspects.”
“Actually, there were dozens, but those files are still at the precinct.”
“Why didn’t you include these?”
“They were . . .” He hesitated, searching for the right word. “Sensitive.”
“Sensitive?”
He tugged the top file from her fingers, flipping it open. “This one was on Steve Davis.”
“I don’t recognize the name.”
“His family owns a chain of discount tobacco shops.” He shuffled through the papers in the pile, reading the notes he’d made over five years before. “They have the sort of money that could have quashed any investigation. We had to keep it off the books.”
“Why did you suspect him?”
“One of the victims worked as a receptionist at the Davis Tobacco headquarters,” he said, offering her an abbreviated version of his thick stack of notes. “After she was fired, she accused Steve of sexual harassment. She’d even hired an attorney. The night before she was murdered, Steve was heard boasting in a bar that he would kill the bitch before he gave her one penny.”
She made a small sound of disgust. Steve Davis sounded like a pig. “Did you bring him in for questioning?”
“No. Before we got to that point, we discovered he was left-handed.”
“And the killer is right-handed?”
“Yep.”
That seemed like a lame excuse to dismiss a potential suspect. “Couldn’t he have used his right hand to throw off the cops?” she asked.
“The medical examiner was convinced he would know if the killer had tried that particular trick. Plus, we couldn’t find any connection between Davis and the other women.” He closed the file and tossed it back onto the coffee table. “He stayed a suspect, but he moved down the list.”
She opened the file she held in her hand. “What about this one?” She read the label out loud. “R.H.”
“Robert Hutton.” His lips twisted with dislike. “He worked in the district attorney’s office.”