In the car, the conversation seemed so easy. She’d planned how to approach the rumors and considered responses should he react strongly. Now her hands can’t sit still. Ice water trickles through her legs.
“Darcy, what’s bothering you?”
“You’ve been a great help the last week with all that’s happened.” She curses her shaking voice. “And it meant a lot that you searched for Jennifer.”
Though you drove past her at the school and left her alone in the dark.
“But?”
Darcy lifts her eyes and finds him staring. His hands curl and uncurl at his sides.
“I’m a mother first, and my only priority is the safety of my children.”
“And you’re worried about the stranger you brought into your home.” She opens her mouth to reply, and he waves her off. “I’d wonder about your parenting skills if you didn’t. If you need me to back off, it’s fine. You’re not going to hurt my feelings. I simply felt after what happened at the cove and with someone following Amy, you might want an extra set of eyes on your back.”
“It’s not that I…that we don’t welcome the help.”
“Then what is it?”
She wants to ask him how often he visits the cove, and where he’d been the night the killer dumped the woman on the beach. Darcy bites her lip and looks into the yard. Back to where shadows bleed out of the tool shed. A good place to store a body.
“I read a story on the Internet.”
Bronson glares at Darcy, body tense. As if he might leap at her.
“You checked up on me.”
“Yes.”
He leans forward with his forearms on his knees. Close enough to smell his aftershave.
“And what did you find?”
“Understand I’m not passing judgment.”
“Aren’t you?” There’s something dangerous scuttling around inside him. “You think I wanted to hurt that man, that I got my jollies breaking his arm? You don’t know how loud that was in my ears. Like a gun went off. I’d say you’ve been there, but you worked behind the scenes with the FBI. You weren’t a field grunt like the rest of us.”
Except the night Michael Rivers tried to kill me, she whispers to herself.
Bronson sits back and closes his eyes.
“I never wanted to hurt him. I suppose the article didn’t mention he had a knife.” He nods when she glances at him. “Yep. Tried to wrestle it away from him, and all the time I’m holding him down, the bastard is trying to slash the other guy. I put his arm behind his back, the one with the knife, and cuffed his wrist. But he kept fighting, trying to twist his body over and turn the knife on me. His own torque snapped his arm. All I did was keep him from hurting anyone else. Of course, his lawyer didn’t see things that way, and pretty soon every arrest I’d made over two decades went under the microscope. Soon people were coming forth left and right claiming I cuffed them too hard and permanently damaged their wrists, that the drug dealer I tackled in the park couldn’t walk without pain. At that point, it wasn’t worth defending myself, so I collected my pension and rode off into the sunset.”
Darcy sips her drink. Bronson strikes her as sincere.
“There are a lot of rumors on the Genoa Standard forum.”
“Oh, I’m aware. Like the one where I supposedly beat my wife. You saw that one, I suppose. All bullshit. She left me for the same cliched reason a lot of spouses leave cops. It’s the job. The long hours, the overtime, missed birthdays and holidays. And the constant worry that an arrest might go bad, and then the cop never comes home again. I couldn’t blame her, though if she’d held out another few years, I’d be around all day and she’d probably be sick of me. Thing is, we still get along well. She found another guy and has a cottage off the beach. Living the good life.”
“You never had kids.”
“Again, the job was always in the way.”
“Do you ever regret it?” Darcy asks. “Not having kids, I mean.”
“The decision was mutual. What’s done is done.”
“I’m sorry I pried.”
“Why would I expect less from an investigator? I’m surprised you didn’t run a background check the minute you stepped into my class.”
“Maybe I did,” she says, grinning.
“I figured. Where do we go from here?”
Darcy sets her glass down and wipes the condensation on her shirt. While she remains cautious, Bronson’s story rings true, more so than Internet forum rumors and opinions.
“Let’s take this one day at a time. You’re welcome at the house, and to be honest, we feel safer with a retired policeman on our side.”
“Even one with a history of excessive force?
“I’ll look the other way this time.”
The lightened mood doesn’t last long.
“Did Michael Rivers only kill when the moon was full?”
She steeples her fingers and thinks back to the nightmarish year Michael Rivers butchered young girls and evaded capture.
“No. Roughly one month separates each full moon, but there’s a ten-night stretch where the moon is nearly full.”
“Sure.”
“Rivers struck during that window. Why the lunar phase is important is a matter of conjecture, as he refused to allow law enforcement to interview him after his capture. Why do you ask?”
“The cove murder occurred two days after the full moon. If this killer is following the same pattern, his window of opportunity will close by the end of the week. Then what?”
Darcy leans back in her chair.
“If he’s like Rivers, he’ll vanish until the next full moon approaches. A little less than three weeks. The murders at the end of the cycle were always the most vicious. As if he wanted to ensure we would remember him.”
“It’s like he’s a werewolf.”
Bronson bares his teeth and gnarls his hands like claws. It’s meant to make Darcy laugh, but it’s disturbing.
Three more days, Darcy thinks. If she can keep Amy and her family safe until then…
Except she can’t depend on this new killer repeating Rivers’ pattern.
Inside the car, Darcy calls up the security app and checks the cameras. The pictures take a long time to view, her signal weak among the trees and buildings predominant over eastern sections of the village. She impatiently taps her fingers on the steering wheel until the data loads.
All views show an empty yard. Yet shadows in the grass catch her attention toward the rear of the ranch near Hunter’s window. Footprints? She zooms in for a closer look, but the resolution is insufficient on her phone. Closing down the app, she throws the car into gear and hurries across the village.
Nobody answers when she opens the front door and calls out. After searching the house, she finds Jennifer and Amy on the deck.
“Where’s your brother?”
“Sleeping.”
Darcy checks the time. It’s noon.
While the girls watch, she rounds the house and stops outside Hunter’s window. If there were tracks in the grass, she doesn’t see them now. Brushing it off as digital artifacts due to a poor connection, Darcy shakes her head and returns to the house. Her phone rings as she slides the deck door shut. Eric Hensel.
“What have you got, Eric?” Darcy asks, slipping inside her bedroom.
“Nothing good. I got the Chief of Police on the horn this morning. They’re not buying the serial killer angle.”
“You’re kidding. The stabbing didn’t convince them?”
“Apparently the girl they found, Krista Townsend, ran drugs out of Smith Town. The police haven’t ruled out any possibilities, but right now they’re leaning toward a drug deal gone bad.”