Vicky nodded. “Do you want to hear something odd?”
Wilde waited.
“Having Peter was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. After all the horror and abuse and cruelty, at the end for me, there was this perfect little baby boy—a golden child too good for this world. Nothing I told you about him was a lie. Peter was special.”
Wilde pushed ahead. “Did Peter reach out to Boomerang, or was that you?”
“We both did. Peter still thought I was his sister back then. And he was devastated by what happened with Marnie and Jenn and the whole Love Is a Battlefield world. He was obsessed with proving his innocence. So when he saw that DogLufegnev account claiming he had more pics, worse ones, he wanted to know more. I pushed him to let Boomerang help us. Then one day, maybe a month later, someone from Boomerang emails me that our case had been rejected. I wrote back as Peter, saying how devastated I was and how we still needed their help. Eventually the person from Boomerang told me her name was Katherine Frole. She started going on about how big a Battler she was, how she loved Peter’s season, all that. She said she still wanted to help.”
“Katherine Frole gave you Henry McAndrews’s name?”
“Yes, I got it out of her. But it was too late.”
“What do you mean, too late?”
“Peter was already gone.”
“So you went to McAndrews’s house anyway.”
“Yes.”
“And you killed him.”
She nodded. “I thought that would be the end of it.”
“When I found McAndrews’s body, when his murder went public, did Katherine Frole contact you?”
“Yes.”
“She suspected you or Peter had something to do with it.”
“We set up a meeting in her office at a time she knew no one would be there. I said Peter and I would explain everything.”
“Were you afraid she’d talk?”
“That was what I told myself,” Vicky said. “And I think she would have eventually. But Katherine Frole had a lot to lose too. She was an FBI agent working for an illegal vigilante group. I’m not going to go into detail on this part because it’s not really important. But after shooting McAndrews, I realized—I know how this will sound—that I liked killing.” She smiled again, but now that smile raised hackles. “You could chalk it up to my childhood, the trauma of rape, though that’s a terrible cliché, isn’t it? Or maybe it’s an illness or some other life event or more likely just a chemical imbalance in my brain. Do you want to know my own theory, Wilde?”
He said nothing.
“A lot of people are potential serial killers. Not one in a million, like you read about it. I’d say more like one in twenty, maybe one in ten. But if you never do it, if you never kill for the first time, you don’t ever get to experience that addictive high. Many of us could be, say, heroin addicts, but if we never try it, if we never get a taste for it…”
“And that explains Martin Spirow.”
Vicky nodded. “There are so many terrible people, Wilde. Did you see what Martin Spirow put on that poor dead girl’s obituary space? I got a Boomerang list of names from Katherine Frole—a list of people who were so pathetic and appalling that the only way they got through their day was saying cruel and vile and hurtful things anonymously to people they didn’t know. I mean, think about it. Martin Spirow woke up one day and saw a heartbroken family grieving over the death of their young daughter, and what does he do? He writes, ‘It’s sad when hot pussy goes to waste.’ What sort of awful life choices has a person made to end up doing something like that?” She shook her head in disgust. “I did the world a favor.”
“So where is Peter?” Wilde asked.
“I told you the first time we met.” She smiled. “You know, Wilde. You’ve always known. My son, my beautiful son, got his affairs in order. He bought a ticket and flew to that island. He went through passport control and checked into that hotel, and the next morning he checked out. He took a taxi to the path where you hike to the top of the cliff. He left a message for me on one of those apps that automatically deletes itself two minutes after you listen. He told me goodbye. I could hear the surf in the background. And then my son jumped to his death.”
Wilde said nothing.
“You know how he was harassed and bullied, how he was shamed and disgraced, how no one would forgive him for something he didn’t do. You know how he lost his wife, the supposed love of his life, and his career, and, yes, his celebrity. All of that and no one would believe him. Step into his shoes for a moment. The whole world believes you roofied your own sister-in-law and not even your own wife defends you. Everything you had is taken away from you. But don’t stop there, Wilde. Add into that the fact that the person Peter loved the longest, the one who really raised him and took care of him and, as Silas pointed out, favored him above all else, the person he trusted most in the entire world, had lied to him his whole life, that in reality she wasn’t his sister but his mother, that he was the product of a rape. Are you thinking about that, Wilde? Are you teetering yet? Good. Because now, after your call today, I can add one more. Peter was so cryptic toward the end, so suddenly quiet and sad. Now I know why. He’d figured it out. He’d figured it out that Jenn had set this all up. He loved that woman, Wilde. Imagine that pain. That final blow. So you tell me. Who do you blame? Was it Marnie? Was it reality TV? McAndrews? The cruel fans? Was it my fault? You tell me, Wilde. Who killed my boy?”