Her Last Word(80)

Adler came around the side of the car. Another cop might have hesitated to help Logan stand, but he had no reservations. They were a team, and he knew Logan would have done the same for him if the situation were reversed. He grabbed Logan by the arm and helped him to his feet.

“Thanks.” Logan righted himself and gripped his cane.

Adler let Logan go first up the sidewalk, and he slowed his pace. Logan leaned heavily on a wrought iron railing and climbed the three steps.

“Not bad,” Adler said.

“Give me a week and I’ll be doing backflips.” He rang the bell. “I called ahead, and he seemed happy to meet with us.”

“Good.”

The front door opened to a lean, midsize man with short-cropped hair. He sported glasses and wore a blue collared shirt and jeans. “Detective Logan?”

Logan shifted and tightened his grip on his cane. “That’s right. Thanks for seeing us.”

Adler leaned in, his hand extended. “I’m Detective Adler. I understand you’re the expert on the Gina Mason case.”

Marcus grinned. “I don’t know about that, but I spent a good deal of time on it. A case gets under your skin, and it’s hard to let go. You two must understand that.”

Logan’s shoulders relaxed a fraction. “I hear you. Sorry to bother you. You must be pretty busy.”

“Nothing I can’t handle. Please, come in. I’m afraid the house is a bit of a mess. My wife is out of town, and I’m letting the place go to hell. Figured I’d do something about the mess right before she comes home.”

A half-dozen different newspapers were spread across a long worn couch set up in front of a wide-screen television that played a muted twenty-four-hour news station.

“I’m a bit of a news junkie,” Marcus said. “I can’t help but follow everything.” He scooped the newspapers off the couch and carried them into a nearby kitchen. “Can I get you two coffee?”

“No, thanks,” Logan said, leaning on his cane. “We don’t want to hold you up too long.”

Over a small fireplace were ten different awards Marcus had won a decade ago. “You left your job with the newspaper,” Adler said.

“Cutbacks,” Marcus said, returning to the room. “I wasn’t crazy about losing the steady paycheck, but I’m excited to do my own thing. I’ve already started a new website.” He motioned for them to both sit. Each took one of the easy chairs that faced the couch.

“I looked it up online,” Logan said. “Your site is dedicated to finding lost people.”

“Like I said, Gina got under my skin. I want to carry on the work.”

“Did you interview any of the girls who were with Gina the night she vanished?”

“I talked to Jennifer Ralston about six months after it all went down. She was just back from college. She said her first semester of college had been a nightmare and as long as she lived she’d never forget Gina. She was too upset to talk to me.”

“What about Erika Crowley?” Logan asked.

“As a matter of fact, I reconnected with her over the winter. I ran into her in a coffee shop. She still looks the same, so I introduced myself. She was open to talking, and we started meeting on a weekly basis. I think talking was like therapy to her.”

“What did she say?” Adler asked.

“She started off admitting she’d been afraid to leave her house the last few years, but she was trying to get better. We just chatted that first time. The next visit, she was annoyed with her husband. She said he was having an affair with a woman in his office. She was trying to figure out what a divorce would cost her.”

“What about Kaitlin?” Adler asked.

“We spoke on the phone and set up a meeting for Saturday. She’s interested in some kind of collaboration down the road. We both want the same thing, so it makes sense.” He shook his head. “I feel for all these women. They were young girls who were having fun, got a little drunk, and then Kaitlin and Gina happened onto trouble.”

“You must have theories about who did this,” Logan said.

“It’s pretty obvious. It was Hayward.” He shifted and leaned forward a fraction. “A lot of what he did before Gina vanished was kept off the record by his parents, but I’m not afraid to bend a few rules, and I found out a few things.”

“Such as?”

“When he was fifteen and a camp counselor at a coed camp, he had sex with a fourteen-year-old girl. She told the camp director, and his parents were contacted. They paid off the girl and her family, so it went away. A year later it was almost the same scenario at an out-of-state computer camp. After that there were no more complaints, but I think he just got more careful. Say what you want, but he is smart as hell. But no amount of smarts changed the fact he was a time bomb ready to go off.”

“You’ve heard about Jennifer Ralston and Erika Crowley?” Logan asked.

“I still can’t get over that they’re dead. And it’s not lost on me that they were with Gina that last night.”

Logan adjusted his grip on his cane and shifted his prosthetic leg. “Any theories?”

“Derek Blackstone. He looked after Hayward like he was his kid brother. It’s why he defended him in the robbery case four years ago and why he stepped up to defend him in that recent stabbing. I caught up to Blackstone fourteen years ago when the spotlight turned on Hayward. He said he, Crowley, and Hayward had sworn an oath of loyalty and they’d never turn their backs on each other.” Marcus shrugged. “Say what you want about them, but they stuck to their word on that promise, and nothing you say or do will change it.”