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“Thank you,” Veronica said to Laura. “This does make me feel a bit better. Ask your questions, Dr.Reeves. I’ll answer what I’m able.”
“Did Colton have friends?”
“Not that I knew. He talked about a few of his high school buddies, but they never gave him the time of day. One of those buddies—Brian—finally called me after Colton had seen him in a bar and bragged about how he’d ‘bagged a pretty young thing.’ Brian warned me that I’d married a pathological liar, but I wasn’t ready to hear it then. He’s an attorney, too. Helped me get a divorce when I finally was ready to admit I’d fucked up. I’ve started a new life since then, and I’m getting past Colton and his mind games.”
Pretty young thing. Sam couldn’t quite stifle his shudder. “What kind of mind games?”
“Telling me that he knew a Hollywood agent who’d make me a star. That was the big one. The one that hooked me in. I was only seventeen at the time and humiliatingly gullible. He didn’t start with the celebrity lies until after we were married. He was so good to me at the beginning, buying me things and taking me to dinner. Saying sweet things. I thought I’d met a Prince Charming, but he turned out to be far worse than anything I could have imagined—again, after we got married. Then he’d get so angry.”
“Did he hit you?” Laura asked softly.
Veronica nodded. “That’s why Brian helped me. He saw me in the grocery store one day and I hadn’t quite been able to cover the bruise with concealer and big sunglasses. He was so sad. Because I wasn’t the first wife who’d left Colton. He and his wife took me in when I finally walked away from Colton because I didn’t have anywhere else to go after I’d moved in with him. They helped me go to college. I’m working on my BSN in nursing. It’s taking me a while because I’m working full time, but I’m getting there. I’m just grateful I got away before Colton killed me.”
“He beat up his neighbor, too,” Sam said, and Veronica’s eyes widened.
“Who?”
“David Epstein.”
Veronica’s hand flew to cover her mouth. “He was so nice to me. Is he okay?”
Sam nodded. “He’s mostly recovered now, but after meeting him, I’m not surprised to hear that Colton hit you, too. But I promised I wouldn’t take much of your time. He really had no friends? No one he worked with that he was close to?”
“No. I’m sorry, but for the year I lived with him, the only people he talked to were the guys he played video games with online.” She tilted her head. “I was shocked to hear that he’d committed suicide. I didn’t think he had it in him. He whined about getting a splinter in his pinkie finger.”
Sam wasn’t going to tell her that Colton had been murdered. That would be McKittrick’s job. “Did he get splinters often?”
“Oh no. He didn’t like physical labor. I was the one who had to keep up the house, mow the lawn.”
Which explained why the lawn was so overgrown. Colton had lost his full-time laborer. “I heard that he was an IT guru a while back. I guess he was more used to working on computers.”
“Yeah, he’d talk about the time he used to work for a big company. Sometimes it was Apple and sometimes it was Microsoft. He’d say he was the one who really thought of all the technology, and the famous guys just took credit for his work and forced him out, so he started his own consulting company. He told me that he had an office in this high-rise downtown. I went to visit him once. Only once.”
“What happened?” Sam asked, although he suspected what was coming.
She laughed, but it was a bitter sound. “I asked the front desk which office was his and the receptionist told me that he worked in the mail room. I didn’t believe it, so she walked me to the mail room to show me. He turned around and saw me standing in the doorway with my mouth hanging open and he was so embarrassed.”
“How bad was it that time?” Laura asked, her normally sharp tone incredibly gentle.
“I couldn’t move for hours after he was through with me. Just curled up on the floor in my own blood.” She grimaced. “That’s when I called Brian, who helped me. He and his wife came over because Colton would always leave after he hit me. I don’t know where he went, but he was usually even madder when he came back. I didn’t want to be there when he came back, so Brian and Beth helped me pack my things and got me out of there. I’m sure Colton told everyone that it was my fault. That I’d done him wrong. That’s what he said about his other wives. He was a liar, through and through. I think he even believed the lies sometimes.”
Sam sighed. “He might have. Did you report him to the police?”
“No. Brian and Beth wanted me to, but I just wanted to be gone. I thought about it later, but I’d just freeze up, so I put it off. And now he’s dead, so it doesn’t matter.” She smiled crookedly. “Sorry. You came to ask me questions about Colton’s acquaintances and I’ve gone off about other things.”
“It’s okay,” Sam assured her. “But I would like to ask about his computers.” He thought of the hard drives that Colton’s killer had forced him to remove from his safe and wondered what he’d saved to them. “Did he have a lot of them?”
“No. Just a laptop. But he was obsessive about it. I wasn’t allowed to touch it. Not even to dust it. I did once and...” She touched her right eye. “Swelled so bad that I couldn’t see out of it for a week.”
Sam exhaled. “I’m sorry you went through that.”
She shrugged. “I know what kind of man not to fall for now. So something good came of it.”
Sam nodded, hoping that was true. He’d seen too many people—male, female, and nonbinary—who kept choosing the same kind of partners. It was a savage cycle.
“What do you mean, obsessive about his computers?” he asked.
“Oh, he was always backing his laptop up.” She rolled her eyes. “He had this stack of hard drives and they might have been gold bars for how he guarded them.”
