“Scissors cut paper!” she cried triumphantly. Damn. Sophie almost always went with rock in the first round.
“Best two out of three?” I tried desperately, but I knew it was hopeless.
“Absolutely not. That’s it. Jason and I win.”
I muttered angrily under my breath about Sophie cheating, but I knew that I’d been beaten fair and square. What? It didn’t mean I had to be a good loser.
“So it’s settled. We’re going to confront Jonathan Cork,” Jason announced. “Are you going to come, Charlotte?”
“Of course,” she replied. “Do you really think I’m going to trust the three of you to do this alone? One of us has to be a responsible adult in case things get out of hand.”
I rolled my eyes at my sister: she might have been right, despite being the youngest of the three of us, but that didn’t mean her haughty superiority couldn’t be annoying sometimes.
Regardless of what I wanted, however, it was all settled. We were going to go confront Jonathan Cork, a probable serial killer.
Chapter 13
We agreed to meet Charlotte in Portland after her classes ended the next day, and catch Jonathan Cork as he was leaving work. After all, Sophie reasoned, after a long hard day of work he might be mentally taxed and ready to tell us anything. I wasn’t so sure a highly-paid lawyer was going to break so easily, but I supposed there was no way to know until we tried, right?
That was how we found ourselves parked in the law firm’s parking lot, sitting in the back of Sophie’s car, watching the front door to Forrester, Forrester and Cork like a handful of hawks. All of a sudden, we saw the form of Jonathan Cork coming out, and heading toward us. This was our chance.
“How do we know he’s not going to call out for help?” Sophie asked suddenly, looking at us worriedly.
“If he’s a serial killer he’s probably not going to be scared of us, he’ll just follow us and come slit our throats while we’re sleeping,” I replied.
“Great, that’s a really helpful visual, thanks Angie,” Sophie replied, and I shrugged.
“You asked the question.”
“Shut up guys, he’s coming this way. Let’s go,” Charlotte said, but I noticed that while the three of us got out of the car straight away, she stayed in it for a minute longer. I paused and looked at her questioningly, and she raised her index finger in reply. I knew what that meant; Charlotte wanted to try a spell. Unfortunately in order to use our magical abilities, Jason being around meant we had to be a little bit more subtle about it than usual. Well, that and the fact that we were in downtown Portland, with tons of people around.
I got out of the car and followed Sophie and Jason, who waited until Jonathan Cork was at his car before greeting him.
“Mr. Cork,” Jason called out, and the man looked up in surprise.
“Do I know you?” he asked in reply, a little bit cautious.
“No, you don’t. I’m Jason Black, a journalist with the Willow Bay Whistler.”
“Oh?” Jonathan Cork replied. He seemed like he half just wanted to get into his car and walk off, and half wanted to know what Jason was going to ask him about.
“I understand that Jessica Oliver worked for you,” Jason continued. I had to admit, I was impressed. By starting off with such a simple and innocent question, he had taken Jonathan Cork off his guard completely. The man relaxed visibly; I wondered what else he was hiding that made him tense up at a journalist’s name.
“Oh, yes, of course. Jessica. What an absolute tragedy. I truly hope and trust that the police will find the monster who killed such a promising young woman.”
“What I’d like to know is how you can explain a third woman that you were seeing having either disappeared or turned up dead?” Jason apparently decided to go straight for the jugular after making Cork relax slightly. Jonathan Cork suddenly resembled a fish, his mouth opening and closing over and over without saying anything.
“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” Cork finally managed to stammer out.
“Don’t play dumb with me. I’m not here to write an article or some exposé. I know that you were sleeping with all three women. Jessica Oliver, Ella Port and Laura Kasic. Kasic and now Oliver are dead, and Port disappeared a few years ago. I think we can pretty safely assume she’s dead too.”
“I’m not admitting to anything. I was Oliver and Kasic’s employer. Both were killed in unfortunate circumstances. While I can confirm that Ella Port was a client of the firm, I had no direct contact with her; her lawyer was another associate here.”
Great. He was going all lawyer talk on us.
“You were a suspect in the disappearance of Laura Kasic,” Sophie chimed in. “What do you have to say about that?”
“I have to say that the police cleared me of any wrongdoing, I am not a suspect in her murder nor was I ever arrested for it, and now I’m leaving.”
“Fine, but if you leave now, I promise you Jason will be writing an article detailing how three women you slept with have either been murdered or gone missing,” Charlotte said, and I looked over at her, shocked that she was willing to lie so blatantly.
Cork looked torn as he looked from Charlotte to Jason. His look was hard; he wasn’t about to correct her. Finally, Cork sighed.
“Fine,” he said. “I’m not admitting to any affairs. After all, I’ve been happily married for twenty years. However, it is true that two of my former employees and one former client have either been murdered, or disappeared. However, I had absolutely nothing to do with it.”
“What was your alibi for Laura Kasic’s murder?” I asked. It was the earliest murder, and the one the police cleared him for.
“I was in London.”
“Like, London, England?” Sophie asked, and Cork nodded.
“Yes. I’d flown out the day before. I showed the police my passport; immigration had stamped it right around the time Laura was murdered. There was absolutely no way I could have killed her, I was thousands of miles away by then.”
Damn. There went my theory of an alibi that could maybe be disproven. Being on another continent was a pretty solid alibi for not killing someone.
“How do we know you didn’t hire it out?” Jason asked him. Oh, yeah, I hadn’t even thought of that. Cork threw up his hands.
“The police in Chicago thought that too. Ask them. They looked over every single financial record I had. There were no strange payments, other than, well, certain gifts that I gave to Laura. For her excellent work at the firm, of course.”
“Of course,” Jason replied cooly.
“And what about the others?” I asked. “Where were you when they were killed?”
“A few days ago, when Jessica Oliver was killed, I don’t know the time of her death, but I spent that whole evening at home with my wife. When Ella disappeared, I was with my wife. She was giving birth to our third child, and had a horrendously long sixteen-hour labor. They were just about to give her a C-section when little Gemma finally popped out. From eight until noon the next day, I was at the hospital, waiting for my daughter to be born.”
I shared a glance with Sophie. This wasn’t good. It seemed like maybe Jonathan Cork wasn’t our serial killer after all.
“Fine,” I said. “Say we believe you. What reason do you think anyone could have had to kill the three women?”
Jonathan Cork thought for a moment. “For Laura, I have absolutely no idea. She was a wonderful woman in every way. She had no enemies, no one who would want her dead. Ella, well, she had the lawsuit with her old boss. He got a little bit too hands-on, and when she went to HR, he fired her. She had a case, and a good one, too. Annie, her lawyer, had come to me a few times for advice, so while I didn’t work with Ella directly, I knew some of the details of her case.”