by Torre, A. R.
“And who killed John?”
Robert’s eyebrow twitched, and now was the moment. I could just tell Saxe, right now. He was armed, he could protect me. Arrest Robert and take him away. That was my civic duty, right? Instead, I pinched my facial features in a confused look. “I thought you told me that he killed himself. Stabbed himself in the gut.”
“I did . . . ,” he said slowly. “But now we know more. There’s a lot more reasons for someone to want him dead.” He regarded Robert. “Take Mr. Kavin, for instance. Your son was his sixth victim. I’m sure, if we put a knife in any of the parents’ hands, they would have done the deed. Would you agree?”
If I was sweating, Robert was as cool as ice. “I’d have gutted him like a fish,” he said without hesitation.
Detective Saxe chuckled. Chuckled. I guess I wasn’t the only one unable to tell a killer when he was standing right in front of me. The cop returned his attention to me. “So, you think suicide is still consistent with his mentality?”
“He was hopelessly in love with his wife. If he broke and actually hurt her—killed her? Yes. Absolutely. Killing himself would have been very plausible, if not expected.” Since no one else was seated, I gripped the arms of the chair and stood.
“Okay.” The detective nodded. “I’ll be back in touch with any more questions. Kavin, looks like you caught a break with your client.”
“I wouldn’t call it a break,” Robert said. “Thompson’s life has been ruined.”
“Well, sue Scott Harden, not the police department.” He tucked his tablet into his breast pocket. “Stay in town, Dr. Moore. We’ll probably be back for that file.”
“Sure,” I said tartly, and I didn’t even feel a little guilty at letting him believe that John had killed himself.
As the detective left, Robert stayed in the foyer. He turned to face me, and there was a moment of silence as we stood just a few feet apart.
“Don’t feel guilty about Brooke’s death,” he said gruffly. “She was as much a monster as him. While he was dying, he told me everything.” He closed his eyes and sucked in a pained breath. “It was bad, Gwen. He was physical with the boys, but she was emotionally cruel. It was a sexual and emotional game between them, with the boys as pawns. She deserved to die, and in a lot worse way than she went.”
I hugged my arms over my chest. “I’ll try not to, but the guilt is still there. Now in about a hundred new ways.”
From the street, the detective’s car rumbled to life. Robert twisted the knob and pulled open the front door. “Goodbye, Gwen.”
I stepped forward. “Wait. Robert.”
He ignored me, moving onto the porch and pulling the door shut, quick enough that it almost hit me. I jerked back and watched him through the thin panes of glass. He stepped into the dark yard and didn’t look back. A few seconds later, car lights illuminated at the curb, then pulled away.
I flipped the dead bolt, then moved to the kitchen and repeated the action at the side door, irritated with myself for leaving it unlocked. Returning to my office, I took my chair and picked up the knife that he’d left behind. It was one of the ones from his collection, one he hadn’t shared a story on. I turned it over in my hands, then placed it in my desk drawer and let out a sigh, looking over the papers spread out before me.
An hour ago, I was frantic to look at John’s file and find the clues I might have missed. Now, it was the last thing I wanted to do. And did it really matter? At some point, the file would be confiscated by the cops or the courts. My work would be a news story, a Wikipedia entry, and a cocktail-party conversation piece. I would become famous as the most inept psychiatrist of all time. Randall Thompson would be released. Scott Harden . . . I frowned, unsure what would become of him. Obstruction of justice, surely. Was that in my future, too?
I didn’t care. I had spent the last month paralyzed with guilt over a woman’s murder, and she had turned out to be a monster. I now had the blood of two teenagers on my conscience and would spend the next couple of decades microanalyzing every conversation I’d ever had with John Abbott.
Just a week ago, I’d been bristling with excitement over the chance to speak to Randall Thompson. I’d considered it a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, to sit across from the Bloody Heart Killer. Now, I knew that I’d had a year of interactions. I’d doodled in the margins of my notebook while Los Angeles’s reigning killer had spoken.
I had failed, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever forgive myself for it.
CHAPTER 42
ONE MONTH LATER
Scott Harden stood in the tall grass and watched Randall Thompson through the window. He sat at a table, his chair pulled close, his belly snug to the edge, and scooped forkfuls of pasta toward his face. His gaze was fixed and unmoving on the screen in his hand. The faint sounds of voices came through the window, a sitcom playing on the device.
In Scott’s hand was the knife. The same knife Brooke had given him that morning, when she had snuck him outside, their plan in motion the moment John’s car pulled out of the drive. “Just in case,” she had said, then pressed a kiss on his forehead. They hadn’t discussed what just in case covered, but killing Randall Thompson was as good a reason as any, one that would have made Brooke proud. One that, if John Abbott had really loved his wife, he would have taken care of himself.
But he hadn’t, and now this asshole was suing Scott, and his parents, and the police department, and was going to collect ten million dollars, according to their attorneys.
That wasn’t how this was supposed to happen. That wasn’t what Brooke had wanted. She was the one who’d risked everything and snuck into her rapist’s house, putting the box of souvenirs under his bed. She was the one who had planned out everything so that this sack of shit would finally get what he deserved. She was the one who had trusted her teacher and had her innocence stripped in return.
The science teacher had raped Brooke. Raped her without a condom, and when she’d missed her period, she’d had to tell her mother, who had still refused to believe it was him, but marched her down to the clinic and berated her during the entire termination process.
Brooke had told Scott how no one had believed her. The girls at school had called her a slut. Everyone had dismissed her claims, even her parents. She’d had to stay in Randall’s class, in a front-row seat, and feel the heat of his gaze on her for the entire semester.
He had done that to her, and to others, and never been forced to pay for his actions—not until now. Scott eased around the edge of the house and toward the back door. From inside, Randall laughed. Beside Scott, an air conditioner clattered to life.
Scott thought of Brooke, her soft hair falling in his face as her lips brushed his. He moved down the skinny side porch and reached for the doorknob.
“Scott.”
He jumped and turned, raising his fists in self-defense. Pausing, he peered into the dark yard. A small figure in a blue velour jumpsuit stepped closer, and his hands dropped. “Mom. What are you doing here?” he hissed.
“Give me that knife.” She climbed the steps onto the saggy wooden porch and jerked forward, snatching the knife from his hand before he had the chance to hold on to it. “We’re going home.”
“No.” He reached for it, and she stepped back, her expression stern and brokering no room for arguments. “You don’t know what he—”
“Tell me about it on the car ride home, and then we’ll find a solution—together. But going into a man’s home with a knife is only going to end badly, and I am NOT LOSING YOU AGAIN.” Her soft voice shook with emotion, and he couldn’t do this, couldn’t handle the tears that were welling in her eyes.
Tinny laughter came faintly through the windows, and he glanced back inside, where Randall continued to eat, oblivious of the conversation happening on his porch.
“Come on,” she ordered, gripping his forearm and pulling it with the strength of a woman twice her size. “Let’s get in the car and you can tell me all about it.”
He di
dn’t want to tell her all about it. He wanted Brooke, and he wanted the life they had planned, and he couldn’t take another minute of the horrible things his mom was constantly saying about her. She hated Brooke, and she didn’t even know her. Didn’t understand that Brooke had been protecting him, caring for him. That Brooke loved him.
Whenever he tried to explain it, his mom just looked at him as if he were crazy.
She pulled on his arm and he resisted, glancing back at the window, where Randall Thompson was twisting the cap off a fresh beer. For one final moment, he considered ripping away and kicking down the door. Wrapping his hands around that thick old neck. Squeezing until his face turned purple and spit bubbled between his lips.
He considered it, savored it, then he followed his mother toward their vehicles.
CHAPTER 43
TWO MONTHS LATER
A text message alert pinged in the middle of Lela Grant’s long and uninteresting recap of last night’s Netflix session. I glanced at my cell, didn’t recognize the number on the display, and returned my attention to her.
“So, the kicker is, the guy is actually her stepfather, but you don’t realize that until the very last scene, when he pulls out his gun and shoots her in the face!” Her eyes widened enough for me to see her shimmery purple eyeliner.
“Interesting,” I mused. “So, you’d recommend the movie?” I drew a decorative border around the film’s title on my notepad.
“Well, no. Now that you know everything that happens.” She looked crestfallen, then perked back up. “I saw that the LAPD is finally investigating Randall Thompson for molesting his students.”
“Yes, I heard that.”
“I think it’s pretty cool, how all the moms of the Bloody Heart victims got together and created a victims’ advocacy foundation. And they’re, like, investigating old crimes?” She fixed her eyes on me.
Unsure of the correct answer, I nodded. “Yes. It’s very nice.”
And it was. I had watched the press coverage closely and could see the powerful and positive impact the nonprofit group was already having—not just with victims, but among themselves. They had felt helpless during their sons’ abductions, then grieving and alone after their children’s bodies had been found. But now they were united in a common goal—helping those without a voice find justice. They were formidable, well funded, and had embraced the ignored accusers of Randall Thompson as their first pro bono clients.
“You know, Sarah went to Beverly High.”
Ah yes, Sarah. The horrible sister-in-law, worthy of killing.
“We’ve been watching the updates of the case together on social media.”
I waited for a comment about Lela torturing Sarah for information, or plotting to wrap a laptop’s extension cord around her neck, but she stayed silent.
“That’s nice,” I managed. “Together? Or—”
“Oh no.” She shook her head. “I mean, she lives way out in Pasadena. But we’ve been texting about it. She wants to come to the first hearing with me. She didn’t have him for a teacher, but she was a student there and saw him in the halls, like, every day. Plus, she knew Jamie Horace—who was one of his victims—like, personally. They were cheerleaders together, practically best friends.” She beamed. “I requested to be Jamie’s friend on Facebook, and because I was a mutual friend with Sarah, and not some random stalker, she accepted me.” She twisted a lock of her hair with one finger. “So it’s cool, because she has that connection, and I have my whole connection with you . . . so we’re both, like, really invested in the case.”
I digested that sugarcoated pile of garbage and managed not to react. “So, you’re getting along with Sarah?”
“Yeah. I think I’m over the ‘killing her’ thing.” She frowned. “I mean, not that I want to stop sessions or anything. I have other problems if that’s—”
I held up my hand. “I’m happy to be here for you, without the need for violence. We can talk about anything you want to talk about in your sessions.”
“Oh, good.” She bounced a little in her seat, and I fought the urge to smile. She was, however ridiculous, a pleasant burst of innocence in days now full of darkness. My professional reputation, which I had considered doomed, had actually grown in the months following the Bloody Heart unveiling. I had appeared on a dozen interview spots, turned down two book deals, and had a waiting list of clients, all anxious to speak about their inner aggressions. It was refreshing to sit here with Lela and talk about movies and celebrity gossip and her daughter’s improvements. Maggie was now in regular sessions with a therapist and progressing nicely.
A few minutes later, I walked Lela to the door and waved goodbye, passing her off to Jacob, who deserved a gold medal in ass-kissing. Returning to my desk, I picked up my phone and checked my messages. The text from the unknown number was short.
It’s been a while. Hope you’re well. —Robert
I stared at the message, unsure how to respond. After he’d left my house that fateful afternoon, he’d disappeared. No texts, no phone calls, and—when I checked the internet—his profile was off the firm’s site. When my curiosity got the best of me, I drove over to his office in Beverly Hills and rode the elevator up to his floor. Stepping off, I was surprised to see that his name had been removed from the sleek glass doors, a woman now visible through the open door to his old office.
I hadn’t driven by his house. I had gone too far already by snooping around his office. I had accepted that if Robert Kavin wanted to talk to me, he could call me. And now he had. Sort of.
I placed my cell on the desk and nudged it away from me. I didn’t know how to respond to the text, and the swarm of butterflies stealing through my chest was definitely not a good thing. The man had come to my house to kill me. Granted, he hadn’t—but what if I hadn’t convinced him of my innocence?
Sane individuals didn’t turn to murder. Then again, the death of a child could cause anyone to lose their mind. I didn’t blame him for killing John Abbott, and I didn’t blame him for turning his anger and hatred on me when he thought I had willingly let his son die.
In the last three months, an investigation had thoroughly dissected every moment in John and Brooke’s gruesome history. I’d turned over my files, as useless as I believed them to be, and sat through hours of questioning. Thankfully, the state believed my story and didn’t pursue any charges for obstruction of justice, their focus quickly shifting back to the growing horrors of John and Brooke Abbott.
The Bloody Heart killings weren’t their first crimes. The first had been a high school classmate of John’s who—if I had to guess—had sexually abused John Abbott. An audit into John’s pharmacy unveiled a massive number of misfiled and appropriated prescriptions, along with a connection among the victims. At least four of the six teenagers had had ongoing prescriptions filled at Breyer’s Pharmacy.
Picking up my cell, I considered responding. What harm was one simple text?
I’m good.
There. No one could call that flirtatious. I dropped my cell in my purse and rolled closer to my desk, vowing to return all my outstanding emails before I looked at my phone again. A slight buzz came from inside my purse.
Okay, four new emails. I clicked on one, read the first paragraph of it twice, then gave up and retrieved my phone. Settling back in my chair, I opened the new text.
We should have a drink and catch up.
A drink. It sounded so simple, so innocent. I typed a response before I could second-guess myself.
Sure. When?
CHAPTER 44
We met two days later in a candlelit bar off South Beverly Drive that had a Bugatti parked out front and a hostess with more diamonds and plastic surgery than sense. He was already there, seated at a gold stool at the bar, and I paused before approaching, not certain that it was him.
In three months, Robert Kavin had become a different man. His short-cropped beard was now thick and paired nicely with a rough brush of salt-and-pepper hair. He was tan,
and his eyes held a new glow of life that they hadn’t had before. He wore a collared golf shirt and dark-blue shorts with small whales embroidered on them.
“Wow.” I paused next to his stool. “You look . . . beachy.” I glanced down at my outfit. I was still in the navy suit and nude heels I’d worn at the office. “I probably should have suggested a more casual place. And changed.”
He stood and leaned in, brushing my cheek with a kiss. His beard felt foreign against my skin, and he smelled like coconuts and soap. “I like you like this. Though . . .” He gestured to the open stool beside him. “I’d love to see you let down your hair. Literally and figuratively.” He tugged on my low bun, and I batted his hand away, annoyed to see that he’d stolen a bobby pin.
“I’d like to see you with less hair.” I scowled at him. “What’s with the caveman look?”
He smiled. “I threw away my razor when I got rid of my suits.” He tugged on the side of his short beard. “You don’t like it?”
“It’s okay,” I said grudgingly and picked up the bar menu. In truth, he looked good. Really good. Melt-your-panties-off good. “How do the clients like it?”
“I wouldn’t know. I left the office and moved to Venice Beach. I found a fixer-upper on the water and am renovating.” He reached for my hand, and I pulled it away. “You were wrong, you know.”
“There’s a shocker,” I deadpanned. “In what way?”
“My goldfish is still alive.”
I laughed. “You brought him home?”
“Yep. Gave him the guest bedroom. He’s helping me with design choices. He seems to like living at the beach.”
“You seem like you do, too.” He seemed lighter, the cloak of intensity gone.
“Oh, I love Venice. I always told myself I’d retire on an island in the Caribbean, but . . .” He shrugged.
“No extradition?” I asked dryly.
He laughed. “Well, no, but my reluctance to leave was a little more noble than that.”
I caught the eye of the bartender and ordered a vodka tonic. “Yeah?”