Leigh felt relieved when he walked over to the couch.
“It doesn’t make sense, Harleigh.” Andrew’s tone went soft as he took his place on the couch. “I always assume I’m on camera. Not just at a bar. At an ATM. On the streets. At the dealership. People have cameras in their driveways, on their doorbells. They’re everywhere. Always watching. Always recording everything you’re doing. It defies logic that you could hurt someone—anyone—without a camera catching you in the act.”
Leigh had picked the wrong time to look him in the eye. Andrew held her directly in his sights. His expression changed right in front of her, the left corner of his mouth twitching into a smirk. In seconds he transformed himself from hapless innocent to the suave psychopath who had kissed Tammy Karlsen, then followed her car, waiting for her to pass out so that he could kidnap and rape her.
“Harleigh,” he said, his voice almost a whisper. “Think about what they’re saying I did.”
Kidnap. Rape. Aggravated assault. Aggravated sodomy. Aggravated sexual battery.
“You’ve known me longer than anybody but Mom,” Andrew said. “Could I do that?”
Leigh didn’t need to look at the laptop to see the rape-kit photos flashing in front of her eyes. Open wounds, gouges, bites, scratches, all caused by the animal who was now staring at her like fresh prey.
“Think about how clever I would have to be,” Andrew said. “Avoid the cameras. Avoid witnesses. Avoid leaving any clues.”
She felt her throat catch as she tried to swallow.
“I wonder, Harleigh, if you were going to commit a terrible crime, a crime that would destroy another person’s life, would you know how to get away with it?” He had moved to the edge of the couch. His body was tensed. His hands clenched. “It’s not like when we were kids. You could get away with cold-blooded murder back then. Couldn’t you, Harleigh?”
Leigh felt herself slipping back in time. She was eighteen, packing for college even though it was a month away. She was picking up the phone in her mother’s kitchen. She was listening to Callie say that Buddy was dead. She was in her car. She was in Trevor’s room. She was in the kitchen. She was telling Callie what to do, how to clean up the blood, where to drop the pieces of broken video camera, how to dispose of the body, what to do with the money, what to say to the cops, how they were going to get away with this because she had thought of everything.
Almost everything.
Slowly, she turned toward Reggie. He was clueless, absently typing on his phone.
“Did—” The word caught in her throat. “The attacker used a knife on Karlsen. Did the police find the knife?”
“That’s a negative.” Reggie kept typing. “But from the wound size and depth, they think the blade was serrated, maybe five inches long. Probably a cheap kitchen knife.”
Cracked wooden handle. Bent blade. Sharp, serrated teeth.
Reggie finished typing. “You’ll see it in the files when I put them on your server. Cops say the same knife was used on the three other victims. They all had the same wound in the same place.”
“Wound?” Leigh heard her own voice echo in her ears. “What wound?”
“Left thigh, a few inches south of the groin.” Reggie shrugged. “They got lucky. Any deeper, and he would’ve cut open the femoral artery.”
3
Leigh barely made it more than a mile from Reggie’s office before her stomach turned inside out. Horns blared as she swerved her car over to the side of the road. She lunged across the passenger seat. The door flew open. Torrents of bile shot out of her mouth. Even when there was nothing left, she couldn’t stop gagging. Daggers stabbed into her abdomen. She hung her head so low that her face almost touched the ground. The smell made her gag again. She started to dry-heave. Tears poured from her eyes. Sweat beaded across her face.
They think the blade was serrated.
She hacked so hard that stars burst against her eyelids. She gripped the door to keep from falling. Her body was wracked by a series of agonizing spasms. Slowly, painfully, the heaving subsided. Still, she waited, hanging out of the car, eyes squeezed closed, begging her body to stop shaking.
Maybe five inches long.
Leigh opened her eyes. A thin line of saliva fell from her mouth, pooled into the flattened grass. She gulped down a breath. She let her eyes close again. She kept waiting for more, but nothing came.
Probably a cheap kitchen knife.
She tested herself, gently moving into an upright position. She wiped her mouth. She closed the door. She stared at the steering wheel. Her ribs ached where she’d stretched across the console between the two seats. The car shook as a truck whizzed past.