“You’re lying,” Sheila said again, feeling dizzy. “I don’t believe you. Morris was innocent. He hasn’t done anything to hurt you, and I’ve been cooperating, haven’t I? There was no reason to kill him.”
Ethan stepped toward her. “You don’t believe me? You don’t think I’m capable?” His smile was frosty and knowing. He tilted her head up with his finger. “After all the planning I did to get you here, and after all this time keeping you here, you don’t think I can do any fucking thing I set my mind to?”
His words were nothing short of a scream. His spittle sprayed her face.
Sheila struggled to keep calm, but her insides felt like mush.
“The funeral was yesterday.” He was calm again as he took her arm and led her back toward the bed. She didn’t protest. “Remind me to bring you the obituary from the Times. They used a nice photo, the one from your office-he’s in the red plaid shirt barbecuing something? Hate to admit it, but he looked quite handsome.”
It couldn’t be real. No, please, it couldn’t be. But God help her, she was starting to believe him. Ethan’s words rang true, right down to the brand of whiskey Morris liked. He was right-why wouldn’t he have killed Morris? He hated Morris, and he’d killed before. It was all in a day’s work.
She felt her mind spin out of control.
If Morris was gone, truly gone, then she was on her own. Just as Ethan said, nobody would be looking for her, nobody would care where she’d gone. And it wouldn’t matter anyway, because a life without Morris was too horrible to contemplate.
She had nothing left to lose.
Sheila’s voice was steady despite the stream of hot tears running down her cheeks. “Ethan, make love to me.”
Ethan’s head snapped toward her in surprise. “What did you say?”
“You brought me here to get me away from Morris. And then you killed him. As much as that hurts me, and it does,” she said, pausing to lick the salty tears that had landed on her lips, “I know you’ve done this out of love. So make the hurt go away. Make what you did worth it.”
Ethan saw her heartbreak, saw her pain, saw her desire. This is what she wanted him to see. She was offering herself to him, despite the horrifying news about Morris.
It worked. He believed.
He took her in his arms. It took all of her strength to let herself melt against him, to touch him, to kiss the lips of the man who personified the word monster.
And when his urgent hands roamed her body, she closed her eyes and lay back on the bed, retreating to her happy place, where the sun was shining and Morris was waiting for her.
CHAPTER 38
T he coffee at Seattle PD’s East Precinct was bitter and strong. Jerry suspected it was because nobody ever bothered to rinse out the coffeemaker, which had been a staple in this office ever since he could remember.
Jerry sipped the awful coffee, then hit redial on his cell phone. It rang exactly five times before going to voice mail again. Morris wasn’t picking up. Had he gone to bed, or back to Lake Stevens? Jerry finally left a message and snapped his phone shut.
It had been awhile since he’d been in the precinct’s control room, but everything looked-and smelled, for that matter-exactly the same. Same beige walls, same gunmetal-gray desks, same beige linoleum. He watched the computer monitor in front of him, which displayed a clear shot of Interview Room 3.
Torrance and his partner were about to begin an interview with Abby Maddox, Ethan Wolfe’s girlfriend. Jerry wasn’t officially supposed to be here, but considering how closely he’d been working with Morris, Torrance knew better than to shut his ex-partner out.
The young woman was sitting at the table in the middle of the small room, her shoulder-length black hair sleek and shiny under the harsh fluorescent lights. Her skin was so pale and translucent, she appeared almost ghostly in the monitor. Jerry had gotten a glimpse of her as she passed him in the main hall and was struck by how beautiful she was up close-supermodel gorgeous. Not Jerry’s type exactly, but undeniably good-looking-tall, slender, with deep blue eyes and full lips. A striking contrast to the other woman in the interview room, Torrance’s new partner. The very blond and very perky Kimberley Kellogg was steadfastly staring at the interviewee with her notebook open and pen ready.
“You sure you don’t want any coffee? Soda? Water?” Torrance asked Maddox.
“I’m fine,” she answered in a husky voice, though it was obviously a lie. She was sitting up straight in the metal chair. “I just don’t understand why I’m here. Why couldn’t we have done this at my apartment? Two police officers show up at my door in the middle of the night and they wouldn’t tell me what’s going on-”
“Thank you for being so cooperative.” Torrance’s tone was pleasant. He was sitting directly across from Maddox, his smile friendly. “We need some information from you. You’re not under arrest or in any kind of trouble.”
“Do I need a lawyer?”
“Of course not,” Torrance said. “You can leave anytime you like. We just want to ask you a few questions about your boyfriend.”
“Ethan?” Maddox’s pretty face was troubled. Her gaze shifted back and forth between the two detectives. “Why, what’d he do?”
“Who says he did anything?” Kellogg said, and Torrance shot his partner a look.
“We think he might know something about the disappearance of Dr. Sheila Tao.” Torrance drummed his fingers lightly on the table. “Do you know who she is?”
Maddox’s eyes were wide and frightened. Jerry felt sorry for her. “She’s his graduate adviser. He works for her. She left town, I thought. Ethan said she was sick.”
Torrance and Kellogg said nothing.
“Oh, God.” Maddox’s hands shook and she clutched her large purse, which was sitting on the table in front of her. “Oh, God, I knew something was up. I knew it.”
Torrance glanced up at the camera. Alone in the control room, Jerry turned the volume up on the monitor.
“What can you tell us, Miss Maddox?” Torrance’s voice was soothing. He was using the tone he always did when he thought the witness might get squirrelly. “Did you suspect something?”
Maddox hung her head, her ebony hair falling over her cheekbones. “He was cheating on me with her. He didn’t think I knew, but of course I did. I’m not stupid.”
“How’d you find out?”
“I caught them once. They didn’t see me. I stopped by his office and she was sitting on the edge of his desk and his hand was up her skirt-” Maddox blinked, but the tears trickled down her face anyway. She dug into her purse for a wad of tissue and blew her nose.
“Has he been acting strange since Dr. Tao disappeared?” Kellogg asked as she scratched notes into her pad. “Anything that might indicate he knew her whereabouts?”
Maddox shook her head. “No, but he’s been gone a lot. I don’t know where he goes, he doesn’t tell me. I work the late shift at Safeway, and sometimes I get in at three, four in the morning. And he’s not home. He’s been distracted for the past few weeks. And difficult.”
“We’ve learned he spends a lot of time up in Lake Stevens.” Torrance watched her face closely. “Any idea why?”
Maddox shook her head again and wiped her eyes. “Is that where Dr. Tao lives?”
Torrance glanced up at the camera again and Jerry knew what the look meant. Abby Maddox had no idea about her boyfriend’s Lake Stevens house.
She started to sniffle, and it wasn’t long before a torrent of sobs escaped from Maddox’s slender chest. Torrance watched dispassionately, but Kellogg, the rookie, obviously felt bad.
“I should have known something was off. I should have known.” Maddox struggled to contain herself, digging into her purse for another tissue.