Page 171 of Secrets Along the Shore

“James didn’t do anything.” Matty eyes well up. “I took the tarp from his garage months earlier, for some painting I never got to. It was still sitting there in my trunk.” His gaze shifts, absorbed in something I can’t see. “I can’t go to prison, Soph. I’ll die in there.”

“You’re not going to die. I told you, we’ll figure this out.”

“No, we won’t.”

“You need to put the gun down, Matty. You need to let me go.”

“I didn’t mean to kill her,” he says, ignoring me. “It was an accident.”

“Okay…” A pulsing throb keeps time behind my eyes as I work to speak. “So…let’s tell them that. That’s something they can understand.”

“She wouldn’t listen.” Matthew presses on with his story like he doesn’t hear me. “I met her at a club in Birmingham—I don’t even remember which one now. It’s out on the fringes, where no one would recognize me. One night she was there and offered me some stuff. It made all the stress, all the disappointment of my going-nowhere life disappear for a few hours. It’s not easy following James’s act, Soph.”

Matthew paces the floor, nervous energy emanating from him like seismic waves. “I’ve never measured up. James gets the praise, the political office, our father’s support…the girl. The stuff she gave me made it go away—or at least made me not care.”

“You’re talking about Kamden?”

Matthew nods, still pacing. “I met up with her again and she made it all disappear again. So I kept on with it. We’d hang out, party…suddenly, life was bearable. I never knew she figured out who I was. I used a different name, but she found my driver’s license and Googled me.” Matthew clutches his forehead with his free hand and claws it like he’s trying to rub out the stain of that memory.

“Did she blackmail you?”

He nods. “Said if I didn’t pay, she would put the story out there—she’d go online, call the TV stations…She totally blindsided me. I really liked her, Soph. I thought she liked me. I was taking her on a trip. That night, we were headed to Nashville for the weekend—or at least I thought we were.”

He smacks the side of his head, and I jump an inch in my seat. “I’m so stupid! We were fifteen minutes outside of Birmingham when she asked to stop at this club to handle some business. I should have known something was up. She never did business when I was around. But, you know, we were going out of town—so I thought she had some loose ends to take care of. She gets back in the car, and we drive off, and a couple of minutes later she’s threatening to tell the world about me.”

“There’s a video of the two of you.”

Matthew blinks and tilts his head.

“Of you with Kamden at the club.”

“No.” He shakes his head. “You’re lying. I didn’t go inside.”

“Not inside. It’s of the two of you in the parking lot.” I don’t mention that the video only shows him from the back. The more he thinks we’ve got him locked down for this, the more likely he is to surrender.

The more likely he is to let me live.

He sniffs. “Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out.”

“I don’t, Matty. I really don’t. Tell me.”

He stares at me, but unlike Kurt Fogerty, Matt’s eyes aren’t soulless. His eyes are windows to a tormented soul.

“She wanted a million dollars.” He’s stopped moving now, sagging on his frame, as if the memory sapped his life-force. “I told her she was making a mistake, that she shouldn’t be doing this, but she just kept on. When I said I didn’t have access to that kind of cash, she said my family was rich and to ask my father for it.”

A tear trickles down his cheek. “I couldn’t do that. I’m already second best. Not as successful. Always messing up. You have no idea…and James is the golden child. Perfect. The idea of having to go to Dad for money for this…to have messed up so badly, to have to beg him to cover up another mistake, to be even less in his eyes…in James’s eyes…it sent me over the edge. I didn’t mean to kill her. It just…happened.”

Matt begins pacing again, swinging the muzzle of the pistol back and forth.

“So, we tell them that,” I say, choosing my words carefully. “We explain what happened. Those are mitigating circumstances, Matty. Anyone can see how that would affect a person, drive them to do something?—”

“You don’t understand,” he interrupts, twisting toward me mid-pace. “That doesn’t explain the other one.”

Horror ripples through me. “What?”

“The other one. It doesn’t explain her.”

I’m not just looking at a killer. I’m looking at a serial killer.