“The way I see it, you’re not in a position to make demands.”
He smiled slightly. “If you have any doubt, any doubt, about your husband’s guilt, you’ll work with me.”
“Work with you?” She shook her head. “You mean help you prove my husband’s guilty of murdering his first wife?”
“No.” He leaned closer. “You’ll be working to prove to yourself that he didn’t.”
He knew why she was here. Of course he did.
The screen door squeaked as he swung it open; the heavy wooden door followed, swinging in like the invitation to a tomb.
She followed him inside. When Billy Ray moved to close the wooden door, she stopped him. “Leave it.”
He looked surprised. “Seriously?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head. “It’s your husband you have to fear, not me. But if that’s what you want.”
He led her through the living room to a bedroom hallway. He stopped at the only closed door, and from his ring he selected a key, then unlocked it. He stepped inside, flipped on the light.
Bailey hung back. Peered into the room. Like something out of a cop show. Dry erase board that ran the entire length of one wall. A diagram—part timeline, part spiderweb. Places and dates. Photographs. Notes, clippings.
“Come in.”
Her being here was a betrayal of her husband. It put their relationship, their future together, at risk.
But not one as great as the doubt that hung over them now.
She stepped into the room, looked him in the eyes. “You can go now.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m doing this alone. I want thirty minutes. From the moment you’re in your car.”
“My car?”
She nodded. “You take a ride. I’ll watch you go. Time starts then.”
She could tell he wanted to balk, but didn’t. Bailey waited until he had pulled out of his driveway, then hurried back to his study. Thirty minutes. She planned to be gone in twenty, before he got back. She set the timer on her cell phone and, sucking a deep, resolute breath, entered the room.
And took it all in, though it felt like it took her in. Swallowed her up. A tsunami of dates and times, notes and photos.
And her husband’s photo occupied the very center.
Bailey couldn’t take her eyes off it. Like a spider in his web, all threads radiated to and from him. Damning him.
Bailey fought to steady herself. Billy Ray had known she would react this way; he had counted on it. The more emotional she was, the less objective she would be. He had planned to be here with her, whispering in her ear, feeding her fear.
She was in control of herself and her life, she reminded herself, what she felt. What she believed in. Who she believed in.
Start at the beginning, Bailey. The first girl, one she hadn’t heard of before.
2005. Her name had been Nicole Grace. Fifteen years old. Found dead. Strangled. Billy Ray had noted that her mother had worked for the Abbotts. She had spent a good bit of time at the farm when she was young.
Billy Ray had added in a different color: “Nicole would have felt safe with Logan Abbott.”
The thought of it made Bailey’s stomach roll. She pressed on anyway, doing the math. 2005. Three years before he had married True. Logan would have been twenty-seven.
Bailey shifted her gaze to the next young woman. Trista Hook. 2010. Twenty-eight years old. According to Billy Ray’s notes, Logan and Trista had dated briefly, he in college, she still in high school. A summer romance, that ended abruptly. He had “broken” her heart.
She skipped over True, fixing her attention on twenty-one-year-old Amanda LaPier. Four years had passed between her and Trista.
Billy Ray’s note read: “Two years previous, Logan Abbott picked LaPier up; gave her a ride. LaPier had bragged to friends about riding in his Porsche.”
Both Trista and Amanda had gone missing after having been out partying. Neither arrived home after. The following day, their unlocked vehicles had been found, keys in the ignition, purses, wallets and I.D.’s in them. No sign of a struggle.
Billy Ray’s note: “Obviously the women knew and trusted their abductor. They went willingly—up to a point.”
Bailey saw where he was going with this. Logan had a connection to all the women. They would have trusted him. Enough to climb into his car. Or get close enough to be pulled in.
Bailey then focused on True. Here, Billy Ray had more information than anywhere else: photographs, notations, some looked lovingly, painstakingly written, others scribbled in a frenzy.
He’d followed True, Bailey realized. There were photos he wouldn’t have had access to otherwise. Inappropriate. Obsessive.
Hands shaking, Bailey checked her phone. Nearly twenty minutes had passed. How was that possible? She reset the timer, adding eight more minutes.
On either end of his diagram, Billy had included other information. On the one, the tragedies that had befallen the Abbott family, starting with his mother’s drowning. She read each, the scribbled notations: “Logan was on the boat that night”; “Logan was the one who came forward about his father”; “he was the one who found Roane.”
Clearly, Billy Ray was somehow convinced that Logan had orchestrated each tragedy, a dark force destroying all their lives.
Flimsy. Overreaching. Even she, untrained in investigative techniques, could see that. The musings of a man with an agenda. A man desperate to believe his own agenda.
Relief swept over her. Tears stung her eyes. Nothing, it was all … nothing. Logan had lost so much. Mother and father. Brother. His wife. Then he’d had to suffer suspicions and accusation.
Even from her. Unspoken but loud and clear anyway.
Bailey glanced at the timer, saw she had only a couple of minutes if she wanted to get out without confronting Billy Ray, and hurried to the opposite end of the diagram.