Off the Deep End (63)

“I’m sorry.” He shakes his head like that will help clear it. “That was just the last thing I was expecting this morning, and it threw me off.” He shakes his head again. “This pretty much changes everything.”

“Does it?” I’m not sure I agree. “How so?”

“We’ve developed an entire profile on him based on the information we received from Billy. None of that’s true, so we’re back at square one, which means we have no insight into his patterns. No idea who he might be.” He snorts. “He might even be a she.”

“Now wouldn’t that be something,” I respond with a smile even though we both know how unlikely that is. Female serial killers are extremely rare, and the ones that exist have very different motives than their male counterparts. Females almost always kill for profit or revenge, and they kill those closest to them. He knows this as well as I do since he’s taken the same psychopathology courses as me. Of course, there are always exceptions.

Every theory has exceptions.





EIGHTEEN


AMBER GREER


Mark grabbed me by the arm and whispered in my ear, “Come with me.” He said it like I had a choice, but his fingernails dug into me. I quickly followed him up the stairs and into our bedroom. He shut the door behind us, putting his finger up to his lips. He motioned for me to follow him into the bathroom. Once inside, he turned on the shower and both of the faucets in the sinks and left them running full blast.

Last night, this morning even, I would’ve thought he was being paranoid, but there was no mistaking there’d been a shift in the way the investigative team was treating us. The silence was the most obvious change. It’d been almost nonstop constant chatter for the last eleven days. They were never quiet. But today? Ever since we’d come downstairs, that was all there’d been except for when Detective Hawkins pulled everyone together to tell us about Billy. Nobody took phone calls inside the house anymore. They all stepped outside to take their calls, and none of the usual meetings were happening around us either.

I still hadn’t told Mark that I’d seen what he’d done last night. We’d been circling around each other all day. Me watching him. Trying to reconcile the man I married with the one who would . . . what? What exactly had he been doing last night? Covering up evidence? Being extra cautious? I still didn’t know, and I was too afraid to ask.

“You have to keep your voice down even with this.” He motioned to the water rushing out of every faucet. It was going to create an astronomical bill. Normally, that would’ve bothered me. Today I couldn’t care less.

He was scaring me, and I didn’t want to be scared of my husband. I shouldn’t be scared of my husband. There’s no fear in a love relationship—that’s what the therapist had said in our marital counseling before the wedding. But there was fear everywhere. It was so thick I could taste it in my mouth when I breathed.

Who was this man in front of me?

“They think we have something to do with this,” he blurted out.

“With what? Isaac’s disappearance?” I asked because there was no way they could think we were killers. That was ridiculous. Almost as absurd as thinking we played any role in whatever was happening now. Except I was the only one who could say that. I wasn’t sure about Mark.

“Yes.” He nodded vigorously. “We’re not on the same team anymore.”

“So, we’re hiding our son somewhere and making it look like he was kidnapped? Why would we possibly do anything like that?” I wasn’t in denial about them being suspicious toward us. He was definitely right about that, but Detective Hawkins couldn’t actually think we’d fake Isaac’s kidnapping, could he? He’d been in our house for almost two weeks. He had to know us better than that.

“Same reason as Billy,” Mark said matter-of-factly.

“Attention? We faked our son’s kidnapping to get attention?” I scoffed. That might be a motive for some people, but it couldn’t be further removed from my personality. Isaac and I were alike in lots of ways, but our main similarity was how we preferred to be alone or with just a few people. “Why would I put myself in the center of attention when I absolutely hate being there? Don’t they know that not everybody on the planet is obsessed with people liking them and being on camera? I post on social media like three times a year. Seriously. I’ve never even gone live,” I shrieked, even though I was supposed to be quiet. “And then what? After we got our attention, what exactly were we going to do then?” He motioned for me to keep my voice down, but I shook my head. My anger growing stronger the more I talked. “It’s a stupid theory. There’s no way they can actually think that because what happens after fourteen days? We’re the ones to kill him? Or we somehow keep him hidden forever? I mean, come on, there’s just no way we did this. It’s too ridiculous.”

“Or they think we helped Isaac set things up to look like he’d been kidnapped. There’s that too.” He didn’t say it mean and angry like me. As if he were appalled at the idea and there was no way it could be true. He said it like there was some truth to it, like he was suggesting it as a real possibility.

“Why would we do that? And for what?” He refused to make eye contact. He shifted back and forth on his feet. “Mark, why would we do that? What are you talking about?” All my fears rushed up to meet me, leaving me weak and dizzy.