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“No. Without the scholarship, he didn’t have the money to continue his education. By this time he was estranged from his adoptive family, too. I hung up with the father, John Statham, a few minutes ago. He said they did everything they could to help Butch, but Butch got into a fight with their son Harry and broke his jaw, and that was the end of their patience. Butch had just graduated from high school and would be eighteen within a few weeks. They felt they’d done all they could for him. He was too volatile for them. So they asked him to move out.”
Francesca knew that conversation couldn’t have been an easy one, not with someone known to be violent. “Did he go peacefully?”
“Apparently he did. He packed up and left without a word, and they haven’t heard from him since.”
“Not keeping up with previous relationships seems to be a pattern.”
“Fortunately, no one in this other family has died.”
The air-conditioning came on so she burrowed deeper under the covers while toying with the pepper spray Jonah had insisted she keep close at hand. “How did he meet the Wheelers?”
“According to the guy who owns the property adjacent to the salvage yard—”
“Whoa, whoa, wait. There’re no other houses close to the salvage yard.”
“I said ‘property.’ It’s raw farmland, but the owner works it himself, so he’s out there regularly, growing alfalfa—I found him through county records. Anyway, he said Butch answered an ad the Wheelers placed in the paper. They were looking to retire and wanted someone to run the salvage yard for them. Butch was looking for a job. I’m guessing he met Paris once they hired him.”
That made sense. Paris seemed young and rather naive, as if she’d never had the chance to experience life beyond the salvage yard, where she’d been raised. “What brought him to Prescott?”
“I can’t say. I get the feeling he was rambling around a bit, looking for the right situation. I also spoke to an old girlfriend who still lives in Phoenix,” her father went on.
Francesca smiled at his diligence. “I’m impressed. How’d you find her?”
“His football coach is still at ASU. He told me about her, said she lives down the street from him now and gave her my number. She was nice enough to call.”
“Wow. That was lucky. Was she any help?”
“Definitely. She said he has the worst temper she’s ever seen. That he’s egocentric and insensitive. She also told me he had an insatiable sexual appetite.”
Francesca had overheard Paris mention Butch’s sex addiction, but she hadn’t passed that detail along to her father. “Did she volunteer the sexual appetite information?”
“You think I asked about it?”
She laughed. “No. It’s just…not what I would’ve expected a woman to blurt out.”
“Shows you how marked that behavior really was.”
“Did she say whether he ever grew violent or tried to force her to have sex with him?”
“She said it never went that far. But he used his desire for sex as an excuse to chase other women, so she broke up with him.”
Considering his track record with Paris, Butch’s cheating didn’t surprise Francesca. “Were you able to find any connection between him and Bianca Andersen?”
“Not yet. I’m still working on that. But Dean is where it gets interesting.”
Francesca had thought it was interesting from the start. “How so?”
“He has a morbid fascination with death and violence.”
“Who told you this?”
“Several of his classmates. They said he was drawing grotesque pictures of cadavers and devils with knives and things like that from the third grade on.”
Definitely a red flag. Francesca had read enough about profiling to know that. “Did he have any friends?”
“None. He was a loner. The other kids considered him weird, maybe even dangerous. He once asked a girl at school to come over for his birthday party, said he ‘needed’ to show her to his mother. He promised to pay her if she’d agree.”
“And?”
