Page 56 of The Whispering Girls (Detective Katie Scott #14)

FIFTY-TWO

“Jack,” Katie managed to say, trying not to show her surprise.

“Just as I planned,” he said with a broad smile, swinging the shotgun slightly.

Katie took a step forward.

“Not so fast,” he said, aiming the gun at her.

She stopped. She hoped John and Cisco remained quiet and hidden.

“You found your friend, I see.”

“No thanks to you.”

“How did you find him?”

“Just luck.”

“I’m sure you used your K9. Amazing animals they are.”

Katie contemplated her shrinking options.

“Hmmm. Where is he?” Jack said.

“He’s dead,” she said flatly.

“I figured.” He chuckled.

Now it was Katie’s domain. She knew how to deal with unhinged criminal types. “You drugged us. Why?”

“Why not? I had to lay out the plan.”

“What plan is that?” Katie wanted to keep him talking and his personality type seemed to like to talk—killers usually did—and listen to the sound of his own voice.

He chuckled. “As intelligent as you are, you haven’t worked out anything about what’s going on.”

“Try me.” Katie could feel the anger growing in her body. She despised this man.

“I bet you’re thinking I’m responsible for the homicides.”

“No. But you have killed.”

That seemed to surprise him. Jack’s smile vanished and he stared at her with disdain.

“That’s right. You think we thought you were the serial killer,” she said, testing her theory. “But we know.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean is…you killed Chief Cooper’s wife.”

He stayed quiet.

“Your own sister. Now that’s truly despicable. You hated her that much?”

“I loved my sister.”

“You have a funny way of showing it.” Katie took one more step. She had a weapon in each of her holsters: hip and ankle.

“You wouldn’t understand. I did it for her own good and the overall better good.

She married that idiot and she was going to try to steal my share of the property.

That was part of the deal, we had to be married to inherit.

Everything changed when she married Cooper.

Everything. I couldn’t let that happen and I would do everything to protect myself. ”

Katie could see how this one fact of not wanting his sister to take half of the warehouse and other property had festered inside of him, for years, and built up to the point of being homicidal. This was an example of a killer being made over a period of time.

“All this time, you watched the chief mourn and become a police officer to find his wife’s killer.

And yet you passed yourself off as the friendly town vet with a really nice lodge.

You didn’t think the chief would figure it out—but when he eventually did, and when he tried to tell me, you made sure he would never tell anyone again…

He’s probably out here somewhere, presumably dead.

” Katie didn’t want to alert Jack that they had already found Cooper and he was still alive.

“That’s why you had to clean up loose ends.

The hospital explosion was a nice touch, but it didn’t take care of the job, did it?

” She wasn’t sure who had set the explosion until now.

But Jack’s confidence in killing had kept growing; it was as if he were drunk on the power of it.

“Bravo, Detective.”

“You can’t kill all of us to keep your secret safe. And many more know. There’s plenty of evidence…back at your office. How you drugged us. It’ll be simple to put together. Was it all your idea?”

“No one will be able to put the pieces together.”

“Did you kill your nieces as well?”

“What?”

“Oh, you didn’t know? Theresa and TJ, the first two victims, were Carol Ann’s girls. She gave them up before marrying Cooper. Must not have been very close if you didn’t know that she had children.”

Jack became agitated and Katie wasn’t sure whether or not he would open fire. What she had told him seemed to scramble his mind. Her instinct told her that there was something else, something big that upset him.

He fidgeted and made low comments as if he were arguing with himself. His words scattered. “No, it’s not true, everything was for her, nothing was ever for me…She didn’t deserve… You’re lying,” he finally said.

“Afraid not. DNA and birth records don’t lie.” Katie eyed the weapon, trying to figure out how to take his attention away from it so she could make her move. Risky, but there wasn’t much choice. She moved closer.

Jack fired a round near Katie. It blasted close to her ear, making it ring.

“Back up. You’re going to join your friend.”

Katie took another step. She thought she had heard her name whispered behind her. Katie . It made her take a step to her right. Cold shivers traveled down her spine.

“For such a good detective, you’re not very smart.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

Just as Katie finished her sentence, a gunshot rang out and pierced Jack’s chest, causing blood to splatter, much of it striking Katie. She instantly dropped to the ground and scrambled for cover, feeling the heat of Jack’s blood on her face.

Jack’s body had crumbled to the ground, still holding his shotgun, with a surprised expression frozen upon his face.

Katie thought somehow John had fired at Jack, but the shot had come from the south area, quite some distance away. If she hadn’t moved to the right, she would have been in the bullet’s path as well.

The echo of the blast still wafted through the trees. Everything became clear to her now. She knew who the serial killer was and why.

Another shot blasted and then another, which glanced off a tree just behind her. The killer was clocking her trail. She had gone from the hunter to being the hunted.