Jocelyn gasped. Her stomach felt light and hollow.
Knox’s voice revealed no surprise or shock though surely he was every bit as sickened as Jocelyn. Then again, every breath had become a loud, heavy huff with an underlying high-pitched wheeze. “The Cytotec?”
“Very clever of your P.I. by the way. How did she know?”
“She . . . went through your medicine cabinet.”
“I admire her ruthlessness. She thought Cash did it, but he’s not that smart. Even if he were, he doesn’t have it in him to hurt someone else—not like that.”
“So you say.” He paused for breath. “Didn’t it hurt? Inducing miscarriages?”
“Of course. But that pain was temporary. The effect on Cash lasted months. He became my servant, my slave, my whipping boy. Have you ever had someone like that in your life? Someone who feels so badly for you that they will do anything you ask? They’ll wait on you, lavish you with gifts, be nice to you even when you’re cruel to them. Even when they hate you, they’ll still fawn all over you. It is the best feeling.”
“Can’t say I’ve experienced that.”
No normal person would even want that experience, Jocelyn thought. No normal person would harm themselves, kill their own future children, and manipulate others for a few months of extra attention and sympathy. For a split second, Jocelyn wondered if Francine had Munchausen’s, a syndrome where a person made themselves ill for attention. But it couldn’t be that. Francine’s issues were far more wide-reaching. She talked about Becky Wu’s death with the same degree of emotion she might express if a restaurant got her order wrong.
She was monstrous.
“Is that . . . is that why Cash confessed to killing Sydney? He feels sorry for you?”
Every side street seemed suddenly clogged with slow drivers. Jocelyn drove as aggressively as she could, but there was simply no fighting Philadelphia’s crowded, impossibly narrow streets. Even after eleven in the evening, the traffic was just as heavy as it was during the morning rush hour. Or maybe it just seemed that way because she was in such a hurry.
“Cash owes me,” Francine said, sounding almost bored. “He’s been a supremely shitty and inadequate husband.”
“But you . . . you set it up that way,” Knox countered.
“Oh please. Unchecked, he would have been on the sex offender registry eighteen years ago.”
“You’ve been grooming him,” Knox said. “All these years. Fucking . . . with his head. In—indoctrinating him.”
“Puh. Call it what you will. He’s in jail and I’m not.”
“How did you . . .” He paused and took several short breaths. “How did you know he wouldn’t throw you under the bus once he got downtown?”
She laughed again. “Oh, please. Even if he tried, who would believe him?”
We would, Jocelyn thought. She and Knox had both suspected.
“How would he prove it? I’m just the poor, sad wife whose cheating, murderous husband duped her. Now that I found the evidence he hid in our home and turned him in, I’ll be a hero. No one would believe I did it. There’s no evidence that I did. I couldn’t possibly have killed her. I was at the Home and School meeting the entire night.”
Francine was right. There was no physical evidence to tie her to the crime. Her alibi was airtight.
“How . . . then?” Knox asked.
“Really, must I tell you everything? Where is the fun in that? You can’t figure some of it out on your own?”
“You kept . . . the jewelry,” Knox gasped. “What about . . . the gun?”
“Wait here.” There was the screech of a chair on the tile, footsteps, silence, then more footsteps. “See?” she said. “I keep it in my closet with my wedding dress. Cash would never search there.”
The sound coming from Knox’s scourged lungs was a death rattle. His voice was a croak. “So you . . . poison your husband to keep him home so he has no . . . no alibi. You have Sydney k-killed and k-keep the jewelry to plant later.”
Finally, Jocelyn was there. She pulled all the way up onto the Rigos’ perfectly manicured front lawn and threw the Explorer into park. She leapt out of the vehicle and took off in a dead run toward the door, phone still pressed to her ear.
“You make it sound so simple,” Francine said. “I assure you it was not.”
“Your g-g-gun, it’s n-n-not—”
Jocelyn had her hand on the doorknob when she heard the clatter. She jammed her phone into her jeans pocket, pulled her gun from its holster, and burst through the door. “Knox!”
Chapter 39
November 17, 2014
Jocelyn rushed into the kitchen and trained her gun on Francine. For a moment, it was as though Francine didn’t even see Jocelyn. Her eyes were glued to Knox, who lay on the floor next to an overturned chair, faceup and unmoving. His oxygen cart was undisturbed, but his nasal cannula hung from one cheek. His eyes were glazed, his breathing shallow. All the color had leached from his skin.
“Knox!” Jocelyn cried. She kept her gun pointed at Francine as she knelt beside him, trying to fix his cannula with her free hand.
Francine snapped out of her trance. “What are you doing here?”
Jocelyn took a second to take in the woman’s face. She was smiling, cheeks bright red. She was having trouble looking away from Knox’s crumpled form. She had the look of exhilaration children get after sledding in the snow—or the look adults get after sex. Pleasure, excitement, thrill.
She’s enjoying this.
With her free hand, Jocelyn pulled out her cell phone and held it up. “Knox called me.”
Confusion creased Francine’s face, but her smile didn’t diminish. “What? How? We were here the whole time, talking. When did he call you?”
Jocelyn stared at her. She watched Francine’s glowing smile fall apart, replaced by a look of bafflement. “How long were you listening?”
“Long enough. I’m calling 911.”
“No,” Francine said. She walked slowly toward Jocelyn, a gun in her hand. She pointed it at Jocelyn, but her finger wasn’t on the trigger.
Jocelyn put her cell phone down next to Knox and stood, wrapping both palms around the handgrip of her Glock. She sighted in on Francine’s chest. “Put the gun down,” Jocelyn ordered.
Francine’s grin returned. “Oh, I don’t think so.”
Jocelyn’s hands and arms were steady. So steady. She felt a strange sense of calm descend on her. She was surprised by it. On the inside, her anxiety raged. An image of Olivia’s face appeared, front and center, in her mind. She thought of the times she’d almost been stabbed or had her throat slashed while she was on the job. Not to mention last year’s attack. She had left all of that behind so she could be there for Olivia.
Yet here she was facing off with a monster who had a gun pointed at her head.
Olivia.
“You don’t want to do this with me,” Jocelyn told Francine.
The look on Francine’s face could only be described as delight. “Why? Because you used to be a cop?”
No, because I have a kid.
“Because, Francine, if only one of us is walking out of this house, it’s going to be me.”
“You broke into my house uninvited. I have every right to shoot you, but if you shoot me, you’ll go to prison. While I’m sure you’d survive just fine—you seem pretty tough—I don’t think your daughter would like that very much, would she? You did say you have a daughter, didn’t you?”