Latent Danger (On the Line #2)(55)

“I almost started with her,” she said. “He started with her, you know. He drugged her first.”

“Why didn’t you start with her, then, if he started with her? Clearly you thought about it?”

He was surprised to see her falter, her cheeks turning red. “I tried, but I...”

“You?”

“I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t ready. I needed more time.”

“Time to plan?”

“Don’t answer that,” the lawyer instructed. It was a ridiculous effort to protect against any argument of premeditation, but they were so far past that, it was silly. Still, Zach supposed the man felt he needed to earn his keep.

Zach backed off. He didn’t need her to say it. She’d demonstrated already that she’d planned this out. “So, you didn’t have Sawyer to do the drugging for you with Candice. How did you do it then?”

He was circling her back, getting her to say things more than once. Locking her in.

“She thought my car was broken down and my phone was dead. I asked to borrow her phone, then I used Rohypnol. She sank right down into the seat and I did it right there. I killed her right in the front seat of my car, then drove away with her.”

“Where did you get the Rohypnol?” Zach asked, knowing this was key to showing that at least Candice’s murder was premeditated.

“There’s a guy at a school nearby. He gets people things like that. I don’t know where he gets it.”

“Tell me about Detective O’Rourke,” he said. “Why did you kidnap her?”

She sneered. “She was supposed to watch over me, the way she helped Kate when Kate went to tell you guys about Sawyer. It was perfect, making myself one of his potential victims. I thought maybe I could find out some of what was going on with the case. But instead of talking to me, Detective O’Rourke saw a picture of my uncle.”

She leaned toward Zach now. “There’s one tiny little picture of him in the whole damned house. It’s the size of a piece of bread. But she spotted it.”

“And?”

“She asked me where he was. If he lived in the area.” Liz looked shocked that Shauna would have caught her in that way.

“You could have simply lied to her,” Zach suggested.

Liz pursed her lips now in frustration. “I wasn’t expecting the question.”

“So you told her the truth?”

“No, I said he died, but she looked like she would press it. There was just something in the way she looked, but she tried to play it off like she wasn’t suspicious. We went to eat dinner and she asked about it again, asking how he died. I knew then that she wouldn’t stop, so I put the Rohypnol in her soda.”

“Rohypnol wouldn’t have had her out for long.” Zach didn’t say it, but he worried about how much she would have had to give Shauna to get her to be completely out for any period of time. But even so, that period would have been short. Too short to haul Shauna up the chimney as she did.

“Ketamine,” Liz said, that strange grin back on her face. “I would have killed her right then, but I knew someone would be coming to take over for her or to check on her, and I couldn’t kill her right away. I needed to stash her.”

“Why?”

She looked surprised that he wouldn’t know. “To question her. I needed to know how close you guys had gotten.” She stopped for a minute, as if thinking, then went on. “No, not needed. I didn’t need to know. I wasn’t worried about you catching, me, really. But I wanted to know. I wanted to hear from her what you knew and when you knew it and how far ahead I had stayed.”

By the time they wrapped up, Zach’s head was pounding and he was sick to his stomach at the sight of this twisted girl in front of him.

Shauna never needed to come into the interrogation room, but she did come out of the observation room as Liz was being led from the room. When Liz caught sight of her in the hallway, she’d raged and spit.

Zach wasn’t sure he’d gotten the full story out of Liz on Shauna. He suspected Liz honed in on Shauna when she came in with Kate and saw Shauna as a sympathetic protector of Kate. Maybe Liz was attempting to draw Shauna’s attention her way, and instead, she ended up tripping herself up. It seemed to Zach that was the kind of thing that would have drawn the sort of anger he saw in Liz as she was hauled past Shauna in the hallway.

And still, the girl’s parents hadn’t arrived. Zach shook his head at that, unable to fathom the kind of life that family lived.





Chapter Forty-three





“I wish we knew more about what happened thirty years ago.” Shauna looked around at the group. She, Zach, Ronan, and Hutch had spent the last two hours working on writing up reports, and there was still more to do. They knew the killer had been Herschel Kenworth, but Shauna wanted to know the why of every case.

They’d be prosecuting Jonathan Sawyer for the rapes of Hillary, Carrie, and Adrienne. Cal and Jarrod were dealing with the arrest of Kate Sorino. She’d been processed and surrendered to her parents, who had checked her into a psychiatric hospital to help her deal with what had happened. Personally, Shauna was hoping the case was settled with a plan for continuing psychiatric services and community service.

Zach leaned back in his chair. “I have a theory on the Marsh Killer.”