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“Yeah, monogamy really fucked up your social life, didn’t it?”
“That’s not what I meant. You know I was never unfaithful to you.”
“Do I?”
“I’m telling you I wasn’t.”
“Just like you’re telling me you didn’t kill Trish Keller or Misty Fitzpatrick or Angie Ferris.”
“Oh Christ. They’re dead?”
Wrapping my arms tight across my chest, I fixed him with a humorless glare. He’d broken out into a sweat, and the sickly sweet aroma of fear was filling the room. Either he was afraid of what the implications of the new murders meant for him, or he was worried he was about to finally be caught. I could smell a lot of things, but the truth wasn’t really one of them. A skilled liar can smell like a lot of things. A bad liar smells like anxiety and guilt. I was having a hard time making sense of Gabriel’s particular fragrance.
“If I were to give you Mayhew’s class list and ask you to circle the names of every girl you’d slept with, how many circles would be on that list?”
“A lot,” he admitted.
“What does the name Lucy Renard mean to you?”
There was a commotion behind the one-way mirror. Gabriel wouldn’t be able to hear it, but I could get the gist of it. Someone was freaking out because the name meant nothing to their investigation. Tyler’s even voice, muffled through the glass, was saying, “Let’s see where she’s going with this.”
“Lucy? What about Lucy? No. Not Lucy too.” He looked like he was going to be sick.
“Would her name have a circle around it?”
“What? No. Look, Lucy was a gifted student, a really smart girl, that’s why she was a freshman in a third-year class. Mayhew has a lot to deal with in class, and I think sometimes the top-notch students get overlooked because he has to deal with all the groupies.”
“So you had no physical relationship with Lucy.”
“No, I was mentoring her. I wanted to help her stand out more. She has a real future in medieval studies, with the right guidance. A good grade in Mayhew’s class would go a long way. I even set up a few meetings between them privately so she could get to know him and maybe he’d give her a grad school recommendation or something. I wanted to help her.”
“How noble.”
“Is she dead?”
“I don’t know,” I confessed. “But she’s missing.”
More uproar behind the glass. There was a full-on argument going on in there. My back was to the mirror, but I couldn’t help myself. I looked over my shoulder and gave my reflection a hard, unforgiving stare. I shouldn’t be able to hear them, but they might think they were being louder than they realized. It wasn’t a top-of-the-line mirror, after all. The fighting got quieter almost instantly.
Gabriel raked his fingers through his unwashed hair, leaving the dirty blond strands standing on end. His cuffs jingled with the trembling in his hands. For the life of me, I didn’t think he was guilty. Guilty of being a world-class prick, yes. A serial killer, though? It didn’t fit.
“Did you do it?”
“No.”
We’d already had this discussion, but I needed to have it again. I needed to hear it in his voice that he was innocent and I wasn’t wasting my time helping him.
“Can you think of anyone, anyone at all, who might have set you up for this?”
He cradled his head in his hands, shaking it from side to side. “Who would want to do something like this to another person? I think Misty had a boyfriend, but murdering three girls seems like overkill for getting back at the other man, doesn’t it?” He was talking to the table, no longer able to look me in the eyes.
“Gabriel, give me your hand.”
He complied without question, holding out his palm as if he was going to take my hand in his and we’d go strolling off into the sunset. I grabbed his wrist, pressing two of my fingers into his pulse point, and I stared him in the eyes.
“Tell me once and for all you didn’t kill anyone.”
“I didn’t kill anyone,” he repeated, and his pulse never jumped. He still stank of fear, but who could blame him for that?
