Save Her Soul (Detective Josie Quinn #9)(96)
“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.”
Sirens sounded outside. Marisol collapsed onto the bed, weeping. Noah brushed past Connie and out of the room to meet the cavalry outside. Josie felt for Kurt Dutton’s pulse again, but it was gone.
Forty-Seven
One Week Later
Josie sat at her desk at the Denton PD stationhouse, flipping through pages of records recovered from Vera’s apartment. She felt a presence behind her and looked over her shoulder to see Chief Chitwood lingering. “You still on that Urban thing, Quinn?”
“We never found evidence that Kurt Dutton was supporting Vera Urban financially. I asked Marisol’s attorney if we could have the Duttons’ financial records, and he said he’d look into it, which means I’m never going to see a single record.”