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“What secret have you kept for Lori?”
The sudden change of subject took him by surprise. “What?”
“You told your ex-wife you’ve kept her secret all these years. What did that mean?”
He felt his mood shift, grow darker, despite all the effort he’d put into shoring it up. “Nothing.”
“You’re still going to keep it.”
“Why not? Running my mouth won’t improve the situation.”
Francesca obviously wasn’t satisfied with that answer. But she didn’t press him. A Chevron station came up at the very edge of town, and she pulled into it. “We’d better fill up.”
“I’ll get it,” he said.
He pumped the gas, then went into the Mini Mart to pick up a couple of cold drinks. He wanted some iced tea. But as he stood in line at the checkout, his gaze landed on a rack of condoms.
“Will that be all?” the clerk asked as he set the two bottles near the register.
“Yeah.” He had no need for condoms. He wasn’t even dating anyone. But after he put down a twenty, he threw a box on the counter, anyway.
“Wait, you want those, too?” the clerk asked.
Jonah glanced through the front window of the store, where he could see Francesca waiting for him in the car. “Those, too,” he said. “And give me a sack.”
* * *
During the rest of the ride to Chandler, the thought of the panties she’d taken from Butch’s house—and still had in the pocket of the pants she’d worn last night—burned in Francesca’s mind. If she told Jonah about them, would he stay in Arizona? Did she want him to? She didn’t need him in order to continue the investigation.
But if she didn’t push ahead with what she believed to be true regarding Butch, what would she do about them? She couldn’t discard evidence or hang on to it indefinitely.
She should’ve mentioned those panties to Finch and Hunsacker. But she was so angry about the investigators’ reaction to last night, she’d shied away from admitting what she’d done. She wasn’t convinced they’d see it as helpful. They’d just use her actions as more proof of “typical P.I. behavior.”
Considering Hunsacker’s friendship with Butch, she wasn’t even sure the investigators would have those panties analyzed, not unless and until they had other evidence, irrefutable evidence, that he was their man. She could easily imagine Hunsacker saying, “Why spend the state’s money on such a long shot?” She’d told them what Paris had said about that Julia person, hadn’t she? And they’d blown it off. She doubted they’d do any more to find Julia than they’d already done by checking their list of missing persons.
On the other hand, what if no other evidence surfaced? What if those panties were indeed a conclusive piece of the puzzle? Then Finch and Hunsacker had to know about them.
“April is dead, and Kelly’s alive,” she said to Jonah. “If Butch is guilty, why would he kill one and not the other?”
“There could be a lot of reasons,” he said. “Maybe the women who give him what he wants live, and the others die. Murder to cover for rape would be nothing new in the criminal world.”
In the case of April Bonner, Francesca could picture that exact scenario….
“Or it could come down to the specific personalities involved,” he said. “Do you remember hearing about that guy who was kidnapping women from shopping malls as he traveled across America?”
Francesca shook her head. Although she paid attention to most major crimes, this one didn’t sound familiar.
“He brutally tortured and raped each one for days before killing her,” Jonah explained. “But his last victim he treated differently. Somehow she managed to develop a relationship with him. He stopped torturing her and let her live. And just before he was caught, when he knew the end was imminent, he gave her money and set her free.”
“There are so many variables,” she muttered. “Nothing’s absolute.”
“That’s what makes serial murder so difficult.”
The beginnings of a headache made Francesca wish she’d let Jonah drive. Her arm hurt, too, but at least it wasn’t broken. The doctor in the emergency room had told her she was lucky Demon hadn’t chomped right through the bone.
“You okay?” he asked when she rubbed her eyes.
She sighed. “Just getting sleepy.”
