Page 119 of The Whispering Girls

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 criminaltypes. “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 apolice 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?”