First Girl Gone(106)

But Todd would know what they featured. The dead body of his stepdaughter, Amber. Naked. Laid out on the beach.

“Messed up this time, huh, bud?” the detective said, hands on his hips. “Messed up bad.”

He reached for the folder of photos, hand moving quickly, snatching it up. It looked for all the world like he was going to deal them across the table like playing cards. Instead he neatened the stack, concealed the photos in the folder again, and set it down once more.

If Todd even saw the man, he showed no signs of it. He stared at nothing, same as before.

The detective probably wanted to startle Todd some with all of this. Shake him up. Get him emotional and get him talking.

Charlie couldn’t get a read on Todd’s demeanor, though. Was that a smile playing at the corners of his mouth just now? In any case, he bore little resemblance to the wild beast she’d fought a few nights ago.

Todd spoke then. Pulling her out of her thoughts.

“I did it,” he said. “That’s what you want to hear, right? I did it. I killed her.”

His voice sounded clear and strong and utterly emotionless. Vacant. Haunted.

A cold finger smeared itself up Charlie’s spine at the sound. She realized she was trembling and crossed her arms over her chest, obeying some instinct to shield herself.

The lawyer spoke up, tried to advise his client not to talk, but Todd shook his head. “Can’t undo what’s been done. Can’t deny it, either. Shoot, everyone dies at some point, right? Everyone.”

He looked up at the detective for the first time, his expression impossible to read. Was he making a joke with that last line?

The detective, frozen in place for all of this, quickly changed gears. He sat down, his body language shifting from confrontational to relaxed. Then he slid the folder of photos off the table, set it on the chair next to him, where it’d be out of Todd’s line of sight. When he spoke again, his voice was softer than before.

“Let’s, uh, start at the beginning,” he said. “Tell me how all of this started.”

Todd licked his lips, thought a moment. His eyes fell back to the middle distance.

“Amber was… I thought Amber was… coming on to me, I guess you could say. She gave me these looks, you know? Smiles. Rubbed my shoulders sometimes. For these past several years, I loved her as a daughter. Like any normal father would. But these advances, or what I thought were advances… over time, I guess they got under my skin.”

He went quiet there. Eyes flicking around. Thinking. Remembering.

“You should understand, too, that things in my marriage weren’t the best. My wife was… having an affair. A younger man. Maybe that got under my skin, too. In the end, I’m just a man, right? Just a man. A man wants to… express himself… wants to assert himself. Needs to.”

His eyes flicked up to meet the detective’s.

“I don’t say this to make excuses. Just to explain…”

Again he trailed off to silence, eyes moving, searching through memories again.

The detective waited a long time before he came in with the gentle prodding.

“So things aren’t going well with your wife. Any guy could understand that. And Amber, not even your real daughter, mind you, it sure seems like she’s interested. Then what happened?”

Todd’s eyes sped up as he talked, flicking back and forth.

“I came home early from work, and it was just Amber there in the house. Sharon had left that morning for her conference. It seemed like the perfect time to make my move. I’d been mulling it over for months, trying to work up the nerve. So I… put my arm around her. Kind of rubbed her shoulder in a way… a way where I thought she’d know what I meant, I guess. And she did.”

His gaze snapped up to stare at the detective again.

“She laughed at me. She ripped away from my touch, and she laughed at me.”

He pounded the table with the heel of his hand. A single violent stroke. Loud. It made everyone in both rooms jump.

Charlie tightened her arms against her chest. Tried to fight off that cold feeling slowly spreading over her.

Todd went on.

“And I guess something in me just… snapped. Rage like I’ve never felt before. I… strangled her. Don’t even remember it very well. The memory is mostly of heat. And a red blur. It’s like I put my hands on her, and she’s dead… just like that.”

He shook his head as he repeated it.

“Just like that.”

When he spoke again, his voice went harder, colder.

“It felt good. Killing her. It’s wrong, but when I first realized what I’d done, I felt… awake. Alive. More alive than I’d ever felt. People couldn’t just walk all over me anymore, you understand? I could control the world around me. Put my hands on it and change it.”

This time the detective didn’t wait to prod. “What happened next?”

“When the first rush passed, I panicked. Went into self-preservation mode. Kind of made up the plan as I went along. Everything was frantic, you know? Rushed and feverish. But I had to cover it up. Had to. So I took her car out. Dumped it.”

“So the footage you gave us from your doorbell cam that showed Amber’s car leaving,” the detective said, seeming to put the pieces together as he spoke. “That was you driving?”