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Ellie pressed the accelerator. “I’m on my way.”
FIVE
HAYES STATE PRISON
Special Agent Derrick Fox stared at Dominique Radcliff as he sat across the metal table in the prison interrogation room. The press had given Radcliff the title the Southside Slasher because he’d slashed his victims’ throats, then left them naked and exposed to the elements near Springer Mountain, the southernmost terminus of the Appalachian Trail.
Radcliff had been arrested in early 2013 and was currently on death row for three heinous murders and was scheduled for lethal injection in four weeks.
The balding man was short and beefy, with ham-hock-sized muscles. Even in solitary, he must have been working out. His dark-brown eyes were set close together with an intensity that held a menacing evil.
Derrick pushed a can of soda and a candy bar toward him. “How’s solitary?” Derrick asked. Some prisoners went insane in isolation, confined with only a mattress on the floor and an hour out of the hole daily.
“Suits me,” Radcliff said, his voice cool. “Gives me time to think. To remember.”
Derrick struggled not to react. Radcliff was baiting him. He enjoyed reliving the sadistic murders he’d committed.
Another minute stretched between them, then Radcliff finally opened the soda, ripped the wrapper off the candy bar and took a bite. Then he had the audacity to smile. “If you think candy and a Coke will sway me into telling you what you want to know, you’re dumber than I thought. I’m not five years old.”
No, he was thirty and a sociopath who’d exhibited no remorse over his crimes and zero empathy for his victims.
“You admitted to murdering three women in court,” Derrick said, his tone neutral as he spread photographs on the table. “The first 2008, the second 2009, the third 2010. In early 2013, two more coeds, who fit the profile of your victims, were reported missing, Haley Worth and Judy Zane. Did you kill them?”
Radcliff cut his eyes toward the pictures, a twinkle in his icy eyes. “Pretty, aren’t they?”
Derrick breathed slowly to keep his emotions in check. “Your victims were found with their throats slashed, their hair hacked off and their lips painted in a ghoulish smile with their own blood.” Derrick folded his arms. “That’s your MO. Though we haven’t found Haley or Judy’s bodies, a ghoulish smile was painted on their bedroom walls.”
Radcliff crushed the candy wrapper then took a long sip of his soda. “What can I say? I’m famous.”
“Police withheld the detail about the bloody lips from the press so how would a copycat know?”
“Maybe someone from the police leaked the information.”
Derrick had considered that but they hadn’t found evidence to substantiate it. “You’re going to die, Radcliff, that’s a given. So why not put the families at peace and tell us where you left their bodies so they can give the girls a proper burial?”
“Those two bitches got what they deserved,” he said calmly. “But I didn’t kill them.”
Derrick’s jaw hardened. Radcliff had insisted the same ever since his arrest. But why confess to three murders and not these two?
Was he playing a cat and mouse game, reveling in taking his secrets with him to his grave? Or was it possible he hadn’t killed these two, that he had a conspirator?
If that was the case, that monster was still on the loose…
SIX
SOMEWHERE ON THE AT
Demons dogged Cord McClain every day. As hard as he tried to forget, he couldn’t.
Hehadto remember.
Tormented by memories, he’d been hiking for days, losing himself in the wilderness and reminding himself where he’d come from.
From nothing.
As a kid, he’d been tossed from one foster home to another. The last one, he’d lived above a mortuary. That animal had been psychotic. Escaping had meant living on his own and had made him the man he was.
But it had come at a cost.
