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“Where did he find you? How did he know you were desperate enough to do this?” Rachel asked, trying to find any possible connection. But what if he was lying? It came down to that as well, didn’t it?
“I-I don’t know!” the man exclaimed. “I never even met him before he approached me. I hang around the garage sometimes, maybe he saw me there?”
Under the merciless Texas sun, Rachel leaned against the hood of the car, arms crossed over her chest as she fixed a steely gaze on the driver. Sweat trickled down her temple as she adjusted her hat to shield her eyes. She could feel the heat radiating from the sun, but she refused to let it break her composure.
“Listen,” she said in a low, unyielding tone. “You’ve already admitted to helping bury something out in the oil fields. You say you didn’t know what it was, but that doesn’t change the fact that you were involved. So give me one damn good reason not to think you killed them and are coming up with some bullshit story.”
“I’m not!”
“Prove it!”
“How?”
Rachel hesitated. The victims had all been drowned. In oil. But what if… what ifnotthe oil fields? What if Jeremiah was telling the truth? He’d been given bodies in bags, or something similar, and then dropped them into the oil pits. Perhaps even in soluble sheeting that dissolved after a few hours.
But on the other hand… what if he was just bullshitting?
“Where were you Thursday night?” she said finally.
The night their first victim had gone missing.
“I… umm…” Suddenly his eyes widened. The driver’s eyes darted between Rachel and Ethan, his hands wringing together nervously. He swallowed hard. “At a club! I was at a club. And… I can prove it!”
His hand moved sharply.
“Watch it!” Ethan yelled.
Jeremiah squeaked, going still. “Just… just reaching for my phone,” he stammered.
“Slowly,” Ethan growled.
Jeremiah nodded quickly, moving his hand cautiously toward his pocket now, with much slower motions.
He pulled out his phone. “I was there from eight until two a.m.,” he said, excitedly.
He turned the phone, and Rachel scanned through the pictures with time stamps. She frowned as her finger flicked along the screen.
“Well?” Ethan said.
She hesitated, double-checking there were no gaps in the timeframe wide enough for him to have slipped away. But there weren’t. The pictures were completely indecent, but she didn’t focus on the content nearly as much as the time frame.
He hadn’t been involved in the heiress’s disappearance. Which meant… he was either telling the truth, or he had an accomplice.
She looked at the man, at his sputtering, terrified disposition.
He wasn’t a killer. She didn’t think so, at least. She had a scent for predators. How easy had it been to get him to confess?
No… he wasn’t smart enough to pull this off.
He was driving the same car he’d reported stolen, but had just repainted it.
“I believe you,” she said simply.
He looked at her wide-eyed.
“You’re just dumb enough for me to believe you,” she said, nodding pensively.
He frowned a bit.
