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“Even after she helped you, worked with you to orchestrate the kidnapping?” Amanda asked.
“She really went batshit after I shot that girl.”
“Leah Bernard.” She had to say her name, even if trying to humanize her to this man was a waste of breath. He was past compassion.
“So you shot Lynnette Johnson,” Trent said. “How did you persuade her to drive the Mercedes out to where you shot her?”
“She did anything I said.”
“Because you scared her,” Trent barked.
Rodney bobbed his brows as if that was quite an accomplishment. He then shrugged. “I convinced her we needed to ditch the car. She was stupid enough to go along.” He laughed. “Even though the car was to be her compensation.”
“Just because she changed the plates, it wouldn’t protect her from being found with a stolen Mercedes,” Amanda said. “Eventually she would have been caught because the registration wouldn’t match.”
“She changed what now?”
It would seem Rodney had been left in the dark about the plates. Lynnette must have seen it as a way to lead the police to them. She wanted out even before Leah Bernard was shot. It also explained why she detoured the few minutes to Lorton and picked the marina with its surveillance. Amanda’s turn to smile. “Lynnette Johnson is why we found you. She left clues.” In hindsight Amanda suspected the chalk, paperbacks, and bar receipt were breadcrumbs too. After all, the plan to abduct Katherine had been in the works for months. Lynnette may have even suggested the school as a place to take her. The cigarette butt with pink lipstick was a match to Lynnette’s DNA.
“Not much of a surprise. Teaches me for partnering with a bitch.”
Trent stepped forward, but Amanda held out an arm to stop him, no matter how tempting it was to let him kick the shit out of the guy.
“Why not kill Katherine?” This question was at the forefront of her mind.
“Oh, I would have gotten there, but I was having fun in the meantime.”
Torture was fun to this monster. “How did you even know where to find her?”
“Let’s call it fate. As part of my community service, I had to clean out a hoarder’s house. The guy had paper subscriptions from all over. I found one from Prince Willam Times and the headline caught my eye. I started reading, and there she was. All I had to do was get myself to Prince William County. It didn’t take long to find her from there.”
They had run the plates on the van, and it came back to a Rueben Christian from New York City. He was a friend of Rodney’s. Rueben was interrogated in depth, and swore that he had no idea about Rodney’s intentions, or he never would have let him borrow his van. Apparently, Rodney had fed him a bullshit story about needing to get away for a few months.
“I know you think Katherine is some saint, but she’s a liar and she ruined my life.”
“You sent her typewritten threats,” Amanda volleyed.
“I did. You can’t say she wasn’t warned this day was coming.”
Amanda should leave it alone, not prod the words of a madman, but she did anyway. “How is she a liar?”
“She lied under oath at Dad’s trial,” Rodney spat out. “I know it for a fact.”
One article had stated that Katherine’s testimony had sealed Stokes’s fate. Amanda’s next breath held in her chest. “She’d have no reason. Your father beat her mother.”
“She claimed to be in the room when he shot her, but she wasn’t.”
The back of her neck tightened. “And you would know that how?”
“I was watching her that night, when my dad supposedly murdered her mother. She was with her friend, that ADA lady, sipping wine in a window seat at some fancy restaurant in SoHo.”
A batch of lies to make himself look better? But they didn’t. “You were stalking her even then?”
“All my life. I wanted to know what was so special about her that Dad chose to live with her over me. He left me when I was twelve. My life would have been so different if it wasn’t for her and her mother. I blame Katherine for everything wrong in my life. She is a liar,” he repeated.
“I don’t know why we’d believe you,” she countered.
“Me either,” Trent chimed in.
