“Not that much, really.” Margo blushed under a layer of makeup, and Natalie got the feeling she’d done most of the talking. She did love to gossip. “He asked if you were married.”
Natalie arched an eyebrow. “Is that so?”
“I wouldn’t think much of it. He’s married.”
“Actually, he’s a widower,” Natalie corrected, though she wasn’t sure why she bothered. Margo would probably latch on to that piece of information and turn it into a big deal. She didn’t give Margo time to ask any more questions. “Did he ask anything about Carrie’s murder?”
“You know, he did. He wanted to know if I thought Hamilton Gray could have killed her.”
Interesting. So he was open to her theory of what happened to Carrie. “What did you tell him?”
Margo blushed again. “I know you think it’s Hamilton, honey, but I just can’t see why he’d do it. It’s not like your sister would get any of his money if they just divorced. And he’s not going to inherit anything from her because of that prenup.”
Natalie should have guessed Margo knew about the prenuptial agreement. “You know everything that goes on in this town.”
Margo grinned. “I suppose maybe I do.” Another customer entered the diner and drew Margo’s attention away, leaving Natalie to drink her coffee in silence.
So, J. D. Cooper wanted to know if she was married. Why hadn’t he just asked her directly?
J.D. WASN’T SURPRISED to see his brother Gabe waiting in the Millbridge Police Department when he arrived. “I drove down last night and stayed at Alicia’s,” Gabe explained, shaking his brother’s hand. “Dad’s taking my fishing clients this morning.”
“You didn’t have to come,” J.D. said, although he was glad Gabe was there. The drive from Terrebonne had seemed to fly by, not giving him nearly enough time to prepare himself to see Dyson.
“I came for my girl, not for you,” Gabe said with a grin. “But while I’m here—”
J.D. squeezed his brother’s shoulder. “Any word from the university about her dissertation?”
Gabe’s grin widened. “The last revision passed and she has her oral defense in three weeks.” Alicia’s dissertation on the psychology of serial-killer pairs had included her personal notes on Marlon Dyson and Victor Logan. “Her advisor thinks she’ll do a bang-up job on the defense. In a month, I’ll be dating a doctor.”
“Mom will be so proud,” J.D. murmured.
A man about Gabe’s age with wavy dark hair and brown eyes emerged from a door down the hall and walked toward them. He smiled at Gabe and extended his hand. “I thought you were back home at the lake.”
“I thought I’d drive down to see Alicia.” Gabe shook the man’s hand. “Tony, this is my brother J.D. J.D., this is Tony Evans, Alicia’s friend.”
“I like to think I’m your friend, too, Cooper.” Tony shook J.D.’s hand. “I’ve got Dyson cooling his heels in an interview room down the hall. I figured you wouldn’t want to do this at the jail. I’ll have to stay with you, and there’ll be two guards there, too. Plus, he’s cuffed to the table. You ready for this?”
J.D. nodded. “Let’s do it.”
His stomach knotting with tension, he followed Tony to the interview room.
Chapter Four
J.D. recognized Marlon Dyson’s boyish face from the photograph that had run in the Millbridge paper the day after his arrest. Tony Evans had emailed Alicia a copy of the article the day it ran, and she’d shared it with J.D. for his case files.
But the last four weeks hadn’t been kind to Dyson. His cheeks were leaner, and his eyes warier, as he watched J.D. and Tony enter the interview room. He’d been shot by accident while struggling with Alicia. Lost a lot of blood—probably explained his paleness as well.
“Mr. Dyson, this is J. D. Cooper.” Tony sat in one of the two seats across the table from Dyson. J.D. took the other chair.
“The widower.” Dyson smiled. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“From Alex?” J.D. asked, disturbed by Dyson’s hungry gaze. Dyson seemed to feed off the tension filling the interview room.
“Alex?” Dyson replied innocently.
“The man you worked with. The man who killed those coeds here in Millbridge. And the women in Mississippi and Louisiana.”
“That was Victor Logan, wasn’t it?” Dyson asked, still smiling. “That’s what I heard. Good thing he died, huh? Saves taxpayers the cost of keeping him in jail the rest of his life.”
“You rigged a gas explosion to save taxpayer money?”
Tony had asked the question, but Dyson’s gaze never left J.D.’s face. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Who is Alex?” J.D. pressed.
“I don’t know.” Dyson’s hard face softened until he looked like an overgrown, scared kid. “How would I? I just made a stupid mistake. I let my feelings for a coworker push me to do stupid, terrible things. That’s all. I swear.”
“Stupid things like killing a janitor who got in your way?”
“It was an accident!”
“You shot him in the head.”
“The gun just went off,” Marlon moaned, starting to rock back and forth. “I didn’t mean for it to happen! I don’t know much about guns—I should never have had it with me—”
J.D. stared at him in growing horror as he realized the sociopath was actually on the verge of tears. Tony made a low groaning sound beside him, but the sound barely registered over the buzz of rage filling J.D.’s ears. It could really happen, he realized as Marlon stared back at him, blinking back what looked to all the world like tears of fear.
Put this guy before a gullible jury, let him turn on the little boy lost act and he might get away with a minimal sentence for killing the janitor and trying to kill Alicia Solano in the bowels of the Mill Valley University’s Behavioral Sciences building.
J.D. bit back a growl of frustration and pushed away from the table. “This guy’s small potatoes. He probably doesn’t even know Alex’s real name anyway.”
Dyson’s smug gaze faltered for a second.
“The guy who killed those women doesn’t make stupid mistakes. Alex wouldn’t trust a half-wit like Marlon here with his name.”
“You can’t trick me into telling you his real name.” Dyson’s chin came up defiantly.
“So you do know it?” Tony asked.
Dyson clamped his mouth shut.
He didn’t, J.D. realized. Dyson truly didn’t know the killer’s real name, for exactly the reason J.D. had said. A guy who’d gotten away with murder for over a decade wouldn’t chance revealing his true identity to someone who could testify against him later.
J.D. was back to square one.
BESIDES A HANDFUL OF bed-and-breakfasts, the only place for travelers to stay in Terrebonne was the Bay View Inn, a twenty-unit motel that, despite its name, was at least a mile from the water. On a clear day, from a second-floor room, it was theoretically possible to see the bay from the motel, Natalie supposed; but from J. D. Cooper’s ground-floor room all she could see was the parking lot.
It hadn’t been hard to beat the lock on the motel