“Still no. Why are you asking?”
“He’s our third victim. Shot with the same gun that killed Henry McAndrews and Katherine Frole.”
“When?”
“This morning.”
Wilde said nothing.
“Wilde?”
“Is he in law enforcement?”
“Unemployed. Never been a cop or fed or even a mall security guard.”
“So what’s the connection to the others?”
“None as far as the feds can tell, but they just got the ballistics back. Some are starting to speculate that this may be a serial killer unrelated to all this.”
Wilde said nothing.
“Yeah,” Oren continued, “I’m not buying that either.”
“Tell me about the Spirow murder.”
“Shot three times in his home near his front door. Probably early in the morning. His wife found him when she came home for lunch from work. It’s a fairly quiet street, but they’re checking nearby CCTV and Ring doorbells right now.”
“Shot three times.”
“Yes.”
“Just like the other victims,” Wilde said.
“Right. That’s the kind of thing that makes the feds look at a possible serial killer.”
Again, Wilde tried to put it together. The reality-TV world. Peter’s mysterious adoption. Wilde’s abandonment. Three murders whose only link was a weapon.
He still couldn’t see the overlap.
His phone buzzed again. Unusual for Wilde to be getting more than one call at a time, but this was not a usual day. “Got another call coming in,” Wilde said.
“I’ll update you if I hear anything else,” Oren said before disconnecting.
When Wilde answered the new call, Vicky Chiba was sobbing. “Oh my God.”
“Vicky—”
“Marnie lied? She made it all up?”
“Apparently. How did you hear?”
“My phone won’t stop ringing. Silas heard about it on the radio.”
“It made the radio?”
“An entertainment segment or something.” Vicky sobbed again. “Why? Why would Marnie do that?”
Wilde didn’t reply.
“Does she know what she’s done? She killed an innocent man. Murdered him in cold blood. Same as if she stabbed him in the heart with a knife. She should go to jail, Wilde.”
“Where are you?” he asked.
“I’m home.”
“I’ll come by soon and we can talk.”
“Silas will be here in a few hours.”
“He’s in town?”
“He’s making a delivery in Newark. Then he’ll sleep here before starting another job in the morning. Wilde?”
“Yes.”
“I have to tell Silas now, don’t I? About Peter being adopted.”
Wilde remembered that Silas had been a toddler when the family had moved to the middle of Pennsylvania and the mysterious baby arrived. “That’s up to you.”
“There have been too many secrets for too long. He needs to know.”
“Okay.”
“Silas thinks of you as his cousin.”
“But I’m not.”
“We can tell him that too, if you want.”
Wilde did not like her use of the term “we.”
“Would you please be here when I tell Silas the truth?”
Wilde said nothing.
“I think it would help. Having a third person here.”
Wilde still said nothing.
“I’d also…It would mean a lot to me—to us, I imagine, Silas and me—if you could tell us what really happened to Peter. The truth of all this. We shouldn’t have to just hear rumors on fan sites.”
That much was true. He owed her that.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll be there.”
“And thank you, Wilde.” Vicky started crying again. “Not just for agreeing to come tonight, but for believing in Peter. It may be too late, but at least now the world might learn what kind of a man he really was.”
When Wilde hung up, both Matthew and Sutton were staring wide-eyed at the laptop.
Matthew said, “Holy shit.”
Sutton added, “Whoa.”
“What?” Wilde asked.
“We found a Peter Bennett relative. A close one.”
Chapter
Thirty-Two
I raise the gun—yes, the same gun—and, once again, I fire three times.
I close my eyes and let the mist of blood spray my face. Some lands on my tongue. I’m not a cannibal or anything like that, but there is something about the metallic taste of her blood that arouses me. It isn’t a sexual thing. Or maybe it is. I don’t know. You hear that though, don’t you? “A taste for blood.” I get that now. I get that on so many levels.