“Get his boss over here,” Garrison continued. “I want to talk to the guys he works with. We need to know what he likes to do.”
“This is the first time he’s taken anyone,” Eddie pointed out. “Before, someone was always killed in their home. Why is he changing it up?”
“We thought the most recent kills were for the weapons,” Sheriff Rhodes stated. “Taking Rose Kilpatrick doesn’t have anything to do with weapons, does it?” He looked to Karl, who shook his head.
“I don’t have more than a dozen guns,” her father said. “And they’re all intact. I checked.”
“So he’s returned to killing and raping women after a fifteen-year hiatus?” the sheriff muttered.
Karl turned white.
“We don’t know that,” Truman interjected. “Taking Rose indicates a totally different goal.” He wanted to kick the sheriff in the ass for speaking like that in front of her father.
“What’s that goal?” Garrison asked, looking at the other men. “That will help us find her.”
The other men exchanged glances.
“After Rose visited the Bevins ranch yesterday,” Truman said slowly, “he might have decided she was fishing around to identify his voice from all those years ago. Since the prepper murders, we’ve been taking a hard look at the Jennifer Sanders and Gwen Vargas cases. He could be nervous that he’s about to be caught for those. So he eliminates the witness.”
“But taking Rose increases the heat,” countered Eddie.
“I didn’t say he was the sharpest tool in the shed,” said Truman.
“Rose and I talked about that attempted break-in the other day,” Mercy said.
Truman hadn’t heard her enter the room. Her eyes were red and wet. Dark shadows were smudged under them.
“She’s wondered for a long time whose voice she heard that night,” said Mercy. “I think me being in town and looking into the old murders has stirred things up.”
“You flushed out a killer?” Jeff asked.
Mercy held his gaze. “Possibly.”
Truman held his breath, wondering if she was about to tell the full story of the attacks. “You said Rose heard someone outside the house that night, right? And the two of you managed to scare him off?”
She looked at him. Indecision in her eyes. Would she tell the truth or use the old story she’d told her parents?
“Yes,” she said.
“Shoulda told the police back then,” Rhodes muttered. “Maybe we could have caught who murdered those girls.”
“Wasn’t any of our business,” Karl Kilpatrick snapped at Rhodes. “I didn’t need the police poking around in my home when nothing happened.”
“I bet you want our help now,” Rhodes shot back.
Karl leaped to his feet, sending his chair screeching across the kitchen.
Jeff slammed his hands on the table. “Knock it off! Arguing about what someone didn’t do fifteen years ago isn’t helping. Sit down!” He pointed at Karl. The man glared back but took his seat.
“We’ll find your daughter,” Jeff said in a calm voice to Karl.
Mercy’s father slumped in his chair.
Mercy stared at her father for a few seconds and walked out of the room. Truman followed her out the front door to where she leaned on the rail of the front porch. “It’s warm in there,” she said.
Truman agreed. “Where’s Levi?” he asked.
“He went home. He wanted to be there when Kaylie left for school. I think he’ll come back after that.” She turned her head toward him, a question in her eyes. “How did you know Levi was hiding something?”
“I didn’t.”
“You told him you needed to hear what he had to say when he woke me up this morning. Why?”
Truman sat on the rail next to her. “I watched everyone last night. Pearl. Your dad. Levi. He couldn’t hold still. Which isn’t cause for alarm, but something in his eyes every time he looked at your mother seemed off. He looked crushed . . . but in a guilty sort of way. I chalked it up to the stress of the situation. But when I saw him as he woke you this morning, that was the face of a man with a burden to share.”
“So you didn’t know what he’d done.”
“No. I just knew it could be ugly.”
“I have a hard time believing Craig Rafferty is a killer,” Mercy said. “I’ve known him most my life. He’s friends with my brothers.”
“I don’t know if Levi would call him a friend. Their relationship is based on mutual fear of each other.” What if I hadn’t saved Craig that day at the river? Would those girls have died? Would any of this be happening?
He looked at Mercy beside him. Would I have met her?
He would have. At some point their paths would have crossed—somehow. He knew it as firmly as he’d realized his life had changed the day he gave two FBI agents a tour of his uncle’s home.
Sometimes you meet a person you’re destined to have in your life forever.
She might not know it yet, but he did.
In the middle of murders and mourning one good thing had appeared.
Did you send her to me, Uncle Jefferson?
He’d been angry and depressed since his uncle’s death, but looking back, he saw how it’d turned around when she arrived in town. Every day he woke up and looked forward to seeing her again.