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Sam’s throat tightened with emotion. “Thank you.”
Laura’s smile was sad. “Like you said this morning, I owe you. Tell us what you did, Maureen. And what you know.”
Maureen was looking between him and Laura, then her mother, who nodded.
“You’ve been troubled by something for weeks, honey. I thought it was just what happened to Dad. Tell them, and we can get past this.”
“I was so mad at him. Driscoll. He hurt my dad. My dad is a good person and that man... he hurt him. I wanted him to go to jail, but they gave him probation and sent him to a shrink.”
Sam managed not to react to that. He’d been appalled as well at the slap on Colton’s wrist. He could only imagine how furious this girl must have been.
“What did you do?” he asked gently.
“I wanted to catch him doing something. Something the cops would actually put him away for.” She looked down at the tissues in her hand. “So I put cameras in his house.”
Gemma gasped once again. “Maureen!”
Cameras. In Colton’s house. Sam had to remember to breathe. This could be huge. “What did you see, honey?”
“A man in black. He wore a mask. It was one of those ones that goes over the head with only space for the eyes, so I didn’t see his face.”
“A balaclava,” Laura supplied.
Maureen shrugged. “I guess. I put four cameras in Driscoll’s living room. One pointed at the wall with the door to the garage and one pointed at the kitchen. The other two were on the other two walls, so I got a view of everything going on in the living room. The man dragged Driscoll into his house and made him show him his safe.”
The partner. Of course, they still couldn’t ID his face, but it was more than he’d had. More than McKittrick had, too, because Maureen hadn’t told her about this.
“What did he say to Driscoll?” Sam asked.
“I don’t know. It was an old security system with no audio. I bought it off a kid at school. The man pointed a gun at Driscoll’s head and Driscoll opened his safe.”
Sam hadn’t heard that Colton had a safe. But it wasn’t like McKittrick had shared much with him, after all. “What was in the safe?”
“Not exactly sure. They looked like external hard drives. Maybe ten of them? The block ones that hold, like, a terabyte. Then the man made Driscoll go past the kitchen, to the back of his house. I think it was to his bedroom, because a few minutes later they came back and Driscoll had changed his clothes. He’d been wearing all black, but he’d changed into a jacket and pants.”
“That’s odd,” Sam said. “Then what?”
“He kept holding the gun at Driscoll’s head and made him take some pills. Then waited until he went to sleep. He cleaned out all of Driscoll’s DVDs and took his DVD player and laptop and put them all in a box. Took it to the garage. Took his safe, too. It wasn’t bolted down. I think that surprised him because he gave it a yank, then stumbled back when the safe just... came at him. He took the safe to the garage, then emptied his kitchen drawers. He took a bag into the bedroom and didn’t have the bag when he came out.” She grimaced. “I didn’t put cameras in his bedroom, so I don’t know what he did with the bag. Sorry.”
“That’s fine,” Sam said, still on one knee in front of her. He was afraid to move, afraid she’d stop talking. “What happened then?”
“He, um...” She blew out a breath. “He had a rope. Two ropes, actually. He tied one into a noose and brought a stepladder in from the garage. He set it by the front door and climbed it. The angle wasn’t right to show what he was doing, but the noose dropped down for a minute before he pulled it up and out of the picture. Then he made kind of a sling with the second rope. Used it to pull Driscoll up higher. I couldn’t see Driscoll’s face anymore, but his legs...” She closed her eyes. “They... dangled. Swinging.”
Driscoll’s killer had used the second rope to lift him into the noose because Driscoll was too sedated at that point to climb up himself. McKittrick and Constantine had asked about sleeping pills the night they’d talked in Sam’s RAV4. This was why.
“Oh, baby,” Gemma breathed, pulling her daughter closer.
At least Maureen hadn’t seen Driscoll’s face as he’d died. Small comfort.
“Then what, Maureen?” Laura asked. “Just finish it.”
“He took the second rope away and then he changed Driscoll’s shoes. Then took the second rope and the stepladder into the garage. He came back in and did a final sweep, I guess.” Maureen shuddered. “That’s when he found my cameras.”
Her mother made a sound between a gasp and a moan. “Mo.”
Maureen was so pale that Sam almost urged her to put her head between her knees again, but the teenager squared her shoulders. “He pulled the first camera from in between the books on the shelf where I’d hidden it and he looked straight into the camera. Then he found the others and the videos all ended. I thought maybe the man was someone else Driscoll had hurt.” She looked away, ashamed. “I was kind of glad he was dead. Then I found out that he’d killed all those girls, and I thought the man might be one of their parents. But when the detectives came, I was afraid to tell. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, honey,” Sam murmured. “Anyone would be afraid.”
