Cause to Kill

“I need your help,” she admitted.

“And I need something from you, Avery.”

His small brown eyes opened wide with passionate intensity, and he leaned forward as far as he could go and repeated: “I need something from you.”

“What do you need?” she asked.

Randall’s entire persona changed. Hands slapped on the table and he leaned forward and practically yelled in her face with intense, rapid-fire words.

“Father,” he said, “Grover Black. Alcoholic. Rapist. Beater. Molester. Murderer.”

The words, like shots to her heart, launched Avery back to the past and she was there again, with her father and mother in that house in Ohio.

“No,” she declared.

“Mother. Layla Black. Alcoholic. Drug addict. Insane!”

Avery had been to therapists, lots of therapists, after the incident with Randall, but it was nothing like this. She’d been guarded then, in control the whole time. Now, Randall had reduced her to a six-year-old child with only a few words and incredible passion.

Tears came, the instinctual tears of a young girl that wanted to save her mother from a gun-toting father that knew no bounds.

“Father! Alcoholic. Shamer. Murderer!”

Desperate, out of her head, Avery stood up and banged on the door.

“Let me out,” she called.

Randall closed his mouth. He leaned back and raised a brow.

“Your killer is an artist, yes?” he said. “The bodies are positioned like lovers? He’s an introvert, a dreamer. Not someone that would pick girls randomly off the street. He has to find them, watch them, know them from somewhere. Think, Avery. Think…”

The guard opened the door.

Avery rushed out.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Avery sat hunched over the wheel of her car, still in the prison parking lot, destroyed, a mess, a husk, tears streaming down her face. Horrible sobs broke free from her throat. At one point, she jerked up and screamed and slammed the wheel.

Words.

Every time she heard one of his words, she cried harder.

Molester. Alcoholic. Murderer.

“No, no, no.”

She banged her head to get the images out: her father in the woods, gun in hand. The body behind him. Varicose veins. Gray hair. That green dress.

“Get out, get, out, get out,” Avery begged.

She’d almost forgotten until then. So many years had been spent trying to forget the past, to get out of Ohio and wipe away her terrible history. In only a few words, Howard Randall had brought it all back.

You’re just like them, she cried in misery.

Murderer.

Alcoholic.

Just like them…just like them.

No! She mentally rallied. You’re nothing like them! You’re no murderer or drug addict. You’re not sick in the head. You do your best every day. Mistakes? Sure, but you try your hardest, all the time.

Get him out of my head.

Get him out of my head.

Fists rubbed away her tears.

Sobs were stifled.

Pull yourself together, she commanded.

Tears came again, only this time, they were softer, gentler – not about her old, painful past, but her new life, her lonely, tormented existence.

She hit the wheel.

“Pull it together!”

A detailed clarity came to her in that moment. Everything felt sharp and focused: the border of the windshield, her arm, the cars parked around her, the sky. Not exactly herself but fully in control, Avery picked up her phone to call Finley.

“Yo, yo,” he answered.

“Finley,” she said, “where are you?”

“I’m in the office working my ass off. Where the hell are you? I should get a raise for this, you know? Aren’t I supposed to get the day off for finding a psycho? I just had one of the greatest chases of my life and now I’m stuck in an office. I should be out there having a beer.”

His entire monologue had come out like a single word.

Avery rubbed her eyes.

“Finley, slow down. What have you found so far?”

“Why are people always telling me to slow down?” he complained as if he were truly upset. “I talk just fine. Everyone in my crew understands me perfectly. Maybe other people are the problem, ever think about that? My mother used to say.”

“Finley! The update.”

“The body is with the coroner,” he said, calmer and slower. “Crime scene wrapped up. They found some fibers but it looks like they’re the same ones from Jenkins: cat hair, a few dabs of plant extract on her clothes. Last few hours I’ve been looking for connections, like you asked. Different majors: economics and accounting. One a junior, one a senior. Different sororities, no family connections at all. Blah, blah, blah. Talked to Ramirez. He said Cindy’s parents mentioned an art class she took in Cambridge last semester. Place called Art for Life. Located on Cambridge Street and Seventh. Called Tabitha’s friends for a connection. Waiting to hear back.”