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A sinking feeling started in his stomach; Jonathon could guess where this was heading, and a glance at his partner confirmed she was on the same page. “Christina is your daughter?”
She swallowed noticeably, “Yes.”
“How old is Christina?”
“She’s seven.”
“What did your daughter tell you, Mrs. Ellis?” he asked gently.
The woman broke down. Tears filled her brown eyes and quickly flooded out down her cheeks. “She said he’d touched her, made her do things she didn’t like, she said it hurt her; she said he’d told her not to tell anyone, that it was their secret. I didn’t know. I didn’t know that he would do that. He had always been so sweet—he was quiet, shy, but he was always thoughtful and caring. He seemed to love me and my children. I was planning a life with him. I let him around my babies. I left him alone with them. How could I not have seen that something was wrong with him?”
“Some people are good at hiding their true self. And as soon as you found out what was going on you put a stop to it,” Jonathon consoled.
Sarah nodded but didn’t look convinced.
“Did you file a police report?” he was surprised that this hadn’t shown up when they first ran a background check on Thomas Karl.
“No,” she wept miserably. “I took her to a doctor and I got her counseling, but I didn’t want her to have to go through a trial and relive everything in front of so many people. Is that why you're here? Did he do the same thing to someone else? Do you want to talk to Christina?” Panic filled her face.
As much as he didn’t want to, talking to the little girl would confirm her mother’s story and help to definitively count Sarah out as Thomas’ partner. If Sarah had broken up with him because he molested her daughter, then it seemed extremely unlikely she would then work with him to abduct, abuse, and murder other children. “We may need to ask her a couple of questions,” he informed her. “But that’s not why we’re here.”
“Oh.” Sarah looked both horrified at the prospect of them talking to her daughter and confused as to what it was they wanted from her. “Thomas is dead, though?”
“Yes.”
“Then what do you want from me? Did another child make allegations against him?”
“He assaulted another child, but this little girl turned up dead.” He broke the news as gently as he could.
“Tommy killed someone?” Sarah looked shocked.
“What do you know about Thomas’ past?” Allina asked.
“He was kidnapped as a little boy by the Doll Killers . . . oh,” Sarah paused as she realized what it was they wanted to talk to her about. “Those murders started up again. Are you sayingTommywas doing it? It was Clara he carjacked, wasn't it?”
“Do you know Clara?”
“I know of her, but we’ve never met. Tommy would talk about her a lot; I always thought it was a bit of an unrequited love thing. Tommy didn’t have a lot of friends, so I think that’s why he never told Clara how he felt about her. He was scared of losing the one really good friend he had.”
“How much did he tell you about the abduction?” Since Clara didn’t remember anything, maybe Thomas had said something to his ex-girlfriend that could help them find out who the original killers were.
“Not much. He only told me when I broke up with him because of what he did to Christina. He told me like it excused his behavior.” Sarah looked disgusted.
That was an interesting development. Jonathon wondered whether it had been the boys who had been sexually abused and not the girls. There was no way to prove that, though. And even if Thomas had been abused while he’d been missing, it didnotexcuse what he’d done to Christina Ellis.
“He said he wanted answers,” Sarah continued.
“To what?” Allina asked.
“From when he was missing. He said he wanted to go searching for answers. But I didn’t care. I just wanted to get him as far away from me and my daughter as I could.” She gave a repulsed shudder.
“Did you know that Thomas had been seeing a psychiatrist, but he then started skipping sessions and stopped taking his medication?”
She paled, “No. If I’d known he was struggling, and that he was supposed to be on medication but wasn't, I wouldn’t have left him alone with my kids.”
“Did you see him again after you ended things?”
“No. I told him to go, and he did. Then I packed up his things and left them in boxes in the front yard. He came and got them one night, and that was it.”
