Hunter remembered the dinner he had at Isabella’s. She’d lied about everything to do with her life, but she did mention a dead brother. That had been a mistake, a slip-up. She was fast to cover it up with the Marine story, saying her brother died serving his country. A bullshit story, but Hunter didn’t pick it up. What he saw in her eyes that night wasn’t sadness. It was rage.
‘It was out of my hands.’ He thought about telling her how he’d tried to convince others of his opinion about her brother’s case, but there was no point now. It wouldn’t make a difference.
‘If you had run the investigation how it should’ve been run you would’ve found the real killer sooner, before my brother lost his mind, before he hanged himself. But you stopped searching.’
‘You can’t blame the police for your brother’s suicide.’
‘I’m not blaming the police. I’m blaming you.’
‘We would’ve found the real killer eventually and your brother would’ve walked free.’
‘No, you wouldn’t have.’ Her voice was angry once again. ‘How would you have found the real killer if you weren’t looking? You’d given up on the investigation because the initial, superficial evidence pointed to John and that was good enough for you and your partner. No need to find the truth. One more successful conviction for the two star detectives. You got to be praised once again and that’s all that mattered. He was convicted of murder, Robert. He was given the death penalty for something he didn’t do. No one gave him the benefit of the doubt, no one including that pathetic excuse for a jury. My brother was classed as a monster. A jealous, murderous monster.’ She paused to take a deep breath. ‘And I lost my entire family because of you, your partner and that fucking, useless, waste-of-space jury. They couldn’t see the truth if it’d danced naked in front of them.’ Her eyes burned with rage.
Hunter gave her a puzzled look.
‘Twenty days after John committed suicide my mother passed away from heart sorrow. Do you know what that is?’
Hunter didn’t answer.
‘She didn’t eat, didn’t speak, didn’t move. She simply sat in her room staring out the window with John’s picture in her hands. Tears rolling down her face until she had none left to cry. The anguish and pain in her heart eating her away from the inside until she was too weak to fight back.’
Hunter kept silent, his eyes following her as she slowly paced around the room.
‘It didn’t end there.’ Brenda’s voice was now dark and somber. ‘Thirty-five years, Robert. My parents had been married for thirty-five years. After losing his son and his wife in such a short space of time, my father started to succumb to a never-ending sadness.’
Hunter already guessed the end to this story.
‘Twenty-two days after burying my mother. After the real killer was finally caught, his depression got the best of him and my father followed my brother’s way out. I was alone… again.’ The anger in her was almost palpable.
‘So you decided to take your revenge on the jury,’ Hunter said, his voice still weak.
‘You finally figured it out,’ she replied calmly. ‘It took you long enough. Maybe the great Robert Hunter isn’t so great after all.’
‘But you didn’t go after the jurors themselves. You killed someone close to them. Someone they loved,’ Hunter continued.
‘Isn’t revenge sweet?’ she said with a frightening comfortable smile. ‘An eye for an eye, Robert. I gave them back what they’d given me. Heartache, loneliness, emptiness, sadness. I wanted them to feel a loss so great that every day would become a struggle.’
Not all the victims had been directly related to one of the jurors from John Spencer’s case, but it was easy to figure out why. Some of them were lovers. Forbidden lovers, illicit affairs, even gay lovers. Hidden relationships that were impossible to trace back to any of the jurors. A loved one nevertheless.
‘I dedicated my life to finding the right person. The one they loved the most. I took my time following them. I studied their routines. I found out everything there was to know about them. Places they liked to hang out. Secrets about their past. I even went to some filthy sex parties just to get closer to one of them. I must admit though, watching the jurors suffer with every new murder was reinvigorating.’
Hunter threw her a worried look.
‘Oh yes, I took the time to observe them after every kill,’ she explained. ‘I wanted to see them suffer. Their pain gave me strength.’ She paused for a moment. ‘Three of the jurors committed suicide, did you know that? They couldn’t take the loss. They couldn’t take the pain, just like my parents couldn’t.’ She laughed an evil laugh that darkened the room. ‘Just to prove how incompetent the police are, I left a clue with every victim, and you still couldn’t catch me,’ she continued.
‘The double-crucifix on the victims’ necks,’ Hunter confirmed.
She gave him a malicious nod.
‘Like the tattoo your brother had on the back of his neck?’
Another surprised look from Brenda.
‘I checked your brother’s records after I found out about the jurors. I remembered that on the arresting report, under identifying marks, the officer in charge had noted down several tattoos, but he never fully described them. I had to check the autopsy report to find out what they were. A double-arm crucifix to the back of the neck was one of them. You were giving every victim your brother’s mark.’
‘Aren’t you clever? I tattooed the double-crucifix on my brother’s neck myself,’ she said proudly. ‘John loved the pain.’
Hunter felt the air inside his living room go cold. As Brenda recalled putting her own brother through pain, the pleasure in her voice was chilling.
‘But why frame Mike Farloe? He had nothing to do with your brother’s case,’ Hunter asked, trying to fill in one of the gaps he still didn’t have an answer to.
‘He’d always been part of the plan,’ she shot back matter-of-factly. ‘Frame someone believable after the last kill and no one would’ve carried on snooping around. The case gets closed and everybody’s happy,’ she said grinning. ‘But unfortunately I ran into a small problem. The framing had to be put forward.’
‘The seventh victim!’ Hunter said.
‘Wow. You are quick.’ She put on an impressed face.
Mike Farloe had been arrested just after the seventh victim was found. An aspiring young lawyer, daughter to one of the jurors. The closest relation to a juror out of all the victims. With just a little more time Hunter and Wilson would surely have hit upon it, but why try to establish a link between victims when they already had a self-confessed killer in custody? With Mike’s arrest everything about the Crucifix Killer’s investigation came to a halt.
‘She was supposed to be my last victim,’ Brenda snorted. ‘But how was I to know she had a photographic memory? She recognized me from the courtroom when I first approached her. She even remembered the clothes I wore. She became an immediate threat, so I had no choice but to move her up on my list. After that I needed time to reorganize my plan. Framing somebody at the end of it all was always my intention. I found Mike Farloe preaching the gospel on the streets just after I killed that piece of shit accountant.’
The fifth victim, Hunter thought.
‘Mike was easy. A sick pedophile who idolized the Crucifix Killer. I prepped Mike for months, feeding him all the necessary information. Just enough for him to sound convincing when caught. I knew he was ready.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I wasn’t counting on him confessing though, that was just a bonus. It completely stopped the investigation dead. Just what I needed,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘But with his arrest came the opportunity for me to get to someone else on my list. One of the main protagonists of my suffering… your stupid fucking partner.’