Page 130 of The Graveyard Girls (Detective Ellie Reeves #11)

ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-NINE

Ellie’s phone call to the DA went exactly as she’d hoped. He would not press charges against Ida and Hetty and was happy they’d solved the teenage murder cases.

She hurried and told Ida, Kat and Hetty and they had a tearful reunion.

“I want to see Carrie Ann,” Kat said. “I have to, Mama.”

“Just be warned, Kat, that she and her mother may not take it well,” Ida said.

Kat nodded. “I know. But it’s the right thing to do.”

Ida agreed, and Ellie arranged for Deputy Landrum to drive them to Ida’s to retrieve her car and take Hetty home as well.

Then she went to meet with Derrick. He stood, raking photographs and notes into a stack and said, “ERT found two bodies on the premises of the house where Joe grew up. Laney already identified them as Ruth Higgins and Joe’s mother.”

Ellie’s stomach clenched. She wasn’t surprised but dreaded telling Tilly.

“Let’s interrogate that animal,” Derrick said. “We can use the evidence to pressure him into telling us where the other victims are.”

“Hopefully that will work,” Ellie said. “Then we can put this one to rest. But we have to tell Tilly.”

Derrick’s jaw tightened. “I’ll handle that. I know you have to deal with McClain.”

His words sucked the wind from her, but he was right.

She walked to the third interrogation room while Derrick retrieved Joe from the holding cell. He looked rough around the edges, pissed, and smelled like sweat and dirt.

Joe grunted as Derrick pushed him into a chair and handcuffed him to the metal table in the middle of the room. Ellie seated herself opposite him while Derrick stood, towering over the short squatty man.

“We have you dead to rights,” Derrick said matter-of-factly. “So don’t bother to deny anything. We caught you red-handed after dumping Carrie Ann Parker in that pond.”

Joe’s chubby cheeks reddened, and he stretched out his legs as if to indicate he wasn’t worried.

Fool. He damned well should be worried.

“We also have collected numerous pieces of evidence with your DNA and prints which puts you at the murder sites and chronicled your delivery schedule to locations where other victims were abducted.”

“Joe,” Ellie interjected. “We also have the scarves you used to strangle your victims and the shoes you collected.”

Derrick spread photographs of the items across the table.

“In addition, your fingerprints and DNA were all over the closet where your mother locked you as a child.” Derrick leaned forward. “That would have been when you were forced to watch her entertain her johns, wasn’t it?”

He added photos of the closet and the lab results in front of Joe, then a photo of Joe’s mother. Joe squirmed and averted his eyes but a myriad of emotions streaked his face.

“We also found your mother’s body and Ruth Higgins’ remains on your property.”

Joe groaned as his gaze moved from his mother’s picture to Ruth’s. “I loved Ruth,” he admitted. “But she wouldn’t have anything to do with me.”

His gaze traveled to the shoes they believed belonged to his mother.

And Ellie knew they had him.

The son of a bitch’s face twisted into a smile. “They all got what they deserved just like she did.”

“Then you admit to killing your mother and Ruth and the other girls we recovered,” Derrick said between gritted teeth.

Joe traced his finger over the photograph of his mother’s red stilettos. “That bitch was a monster.”

And she’d raised another one, Ellie thought.

“What we need is for you to tell us who these other shoes belonged to,” Derrick said as he tapped the photos of the shoes they’d yet to identify.

Joe clenched his beefy hands on the table, the handcuffs rattling. “What’s in it for me?”

Derrick and Ellie exchanged a conspiratorial look, then Derrick responded. “We’ll see if we can take the death penalty off the table.”

Joe stared at the blunt ends of his dirty fingernails, then smiled when he looked up as if he was in control. “All right.”

Derrick shoved a pen and pad in front of him. “We also want names, locations or drawings of where their bodies are buried, and for you to match each one with one of these shoes from your collection.”

Joe bared his teeth in another evil smile then picked up the pen and got to work.