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She nodded. “What happened once they bundled me into the ambulance?”
“Woods drugged Mrs. Visniky with something and wheeled her out into the shed, then locked her inside. She was gagged and bound but never knew it. She slept through everything—woke up in the hospital. The last thing she remembers is making tea in her kitchen for the ‘lovely woman who delivers my groceries.’” He put finger quotes around the phrase.
Jo shot him a bemused look. “Well. That answers how Woods got access to her, at least.”
“We also sent a team to check out Lacey Bernard’s house before we allowed her to return. Found three incendiary devices, one in her dryer vent and the others on either side of her house amid stacks of leaves.”
“Damn. I’ve been meaning to clean out my dryer vent.” Jo sped up slightly, growing accustomed to the stabs of pain. “Is that how she lit up Arnett’s and his neighbors’ houses?”
“That’s my guess. They’re still analyzing the scene.” Goran pointed around a corner.
“The room with the officer stationed outside?” Jo said.
“You just may make detective yet,” Goran deadpanned.
CHAPTERSIXTY-SEVEN
Jo peered into the room as she pulled open the door, intrigued to see, in person for the first time, the woman who’d managed to wreak such havoc. Jennifer Woods was remarkably unremarkable: white, five-ten with a lean, muscular build. Medium brown eyes peered out from under disheveled medium-brown hair. She sat propped up on her bed, the leg shot by Arnett bulging higher under the blankets than her other, looking impossibly harmless.
She turned as Jo strode into the room. “Detective Fournier. I can’t tell you how relieved I am you were wearing a bullet-proof vest. I wish shooting you hadn’t been necessary, but I needed Detective Arnett to show himself before we ran out of time.”
Jo bit back a sarcastic remark about her marksmanship. “I have a few questions I need to ask you.”
Woods nodded.
Goran pulled out his cell phone. When he signaled he was ready, Jo recited the Miranda warning. “Do you understand the rights I’ve explained to you?”
“Yes,” Woods said.
“With these rights in mind, do you wish to speak with me?”
“Yes.” Woods nodded. “But I have something else I’d like to say before you ask your questions.”
Jo hadn’t been expecting that. “We’d love to hear whatever you’d like to tell us.”
Woods took a deep breath. “You know that just over sixteen years ago Cooper Ossokov raped me, and another woman named Tasha Quintana. You also know that the district attorney’s office decided to abandon our case to prosecute him for Zara Richards’ murder.”
Jo nodded.
“Here’s what you don’t know. As Grace Bandara escorted me out of the building the day she informed me of that decision, someone pulled her aside. She asked me to wait, and as I did, I overheard someone talking about Cooper Ossokov. I’m not ashamed to admit I put my ear to the door. Sandra Ashville’s, according to the nameplate.”
Jo tensed, and momentarily considered telling Goran to turn off the recording. But no—whatever Woods had to say, everyone needed to hear it.
“She was angry, and her voice rose, and I’ll never forget what she said. ‘We need a win on this. I’m sick of our hands being tied and I’m sick of these assholes slithering through technicalities and plea deals. Do whatever you have to do to make it airtight, Murphy. Whatever. You. Have. To. Do.’ She stressed those last words, hard.”
Jo nodded and kept her face neutral.
“I tried to tell myself it was a standard pep talk.” She laughed, and it came out like an anemic hiccup. “And I knew I should tell someone in case it wasn’t. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it, because if somehow that caused some technicality that put him back out on the street, I couldn’t be responsible for that.”
Woods stopped abruptly and stared into space. Just as Jo was about to speak, she looked into Jo’s eyes, searching.
“I couldn’t be responsible for letting him do that to another woman. Because before they locked him up? I couldn’t eat. I could barely sleep, and when I did, I woke up screaming. I’d have flashbacks, all the time, feeling him on me, pushing into me, his disgusting, wet breath burning into my skin.”
“PTSD.” Jo nodded.
“Even on my best days I felt like a water balloon filled so full I’d explode at the slightest contact.” Twin tears overflowed her eyes, and slid slowly down her cheeks.
As Jo watched, Jennifer’s hands clenched at the bedspread, and her face shifted, and suddenly she was a scared, lost little girl with no idea how to find her way home. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that,” she said, and meant it.
