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McKinney nodded, his face slack with worry.“Well, thank you for now. Am I… am I okay to return to work?”
“Absolutely,” Rachel said.
“And please,” Jack added, “don’t hesitate to call the police if you eventhinkyou sense something amiss. A patient that seems a bit off, the feeling that you’re being followed. Anything like that.”
It was a somber note for McKinney to head out on, but he left the room with curt, little nods of thanks. Rachel and Jack remained in the room for a moment, looking at one another without saying a single word for several moments. After a while, Jack finally broke it.
“This doesn’t mean you werewrong,”he pointed out. “McKinney may have been a target but just lower down on the killer’s list.”
“So the question remains… how long is his list? And who’s next?”
“Can I see the pictures you took at his house?”
Rachel nodded, handing her phone over as her mind looped back around to the thought she’d had as they came into Solace Pain Management. McKinney had not been an obvious choice; it had taken her a bit of thinking and deciphering to decide he might be a likely target. So what else had she missed? Had there been an obvious answer sitting right in front of their faces that she may have overlooked because they’d been so certain about other things?
She remained convinced that she was right about the killer being Dickerson. And they’d already been proven correct in that her hunch about him being terminal was absolutely true. But was there anything else in his life that may have contributed to his anger thatwasn’tpart of his cancer diagnosis? Had there been some other ticking time bomb within him just waiting to explode, coming out whenever he felt the need to enact his revenge?
She closed her eyes and thought about Dickerson’s home… the closet, the folders, the tidy bedroom, the…
Rachel sat up rigidly and stared downatJack.“The ex-wife.”
“What about her?”
“What if she was the start of it all? Look at those divorce papers I snapped pictures of. The date those papers are signed are pretty close to the date of the discovery of his tumor.”
As Jack scrolled through the pictures, he said,“You think he left her because he knew he was going to die? That he had no intentions of trying to treat it?”
“Or the other way around. Either way… losing a spouse over something like this,during a timelike this…”
She stopped here, recalling the issues she and Peter had when she’d at first decided not to undergo any invasive treatments that were only going to extend what she then saw as what would be a miserable life.
If this hunch is correct,she thought,maybe I’m more like this monster than I want to admit.
As she thought about those conversations with Peter, she felt an unexpected and profound sadness creep up into her. He’d been so unwilling to see things her way, to understand that maybe she didn’t want to go through the hell of chemo just tomaybeget another year. Of course, things had changed now. She wasn’t sure what had happened to make her understand how Paige needed her, how every day she had available to be a mother was a blessing. And now there was Jack to consider, too.
But she didn’t let her mind wander too far in that direction. No… she clung to how Peter had responded, to her refusal to even think about treatment at the start of it. It had ended their marriage and maybe even laid the groundwork for Peter’s murder at the hands of Alex Lynch.
“We need to find her,” Rachel said. “For all we know, she could have been where the anger all started.”
Jack pointed to Rachel’s phone and said, “The only address I see for her in these pictures is the River’s Gate address. Let me make a call for an address request.”
He did just that as they finally got up and left the conference room. Jack was already speaking to someone as they made their way out of the building. And as they hurried to the car, that feeling of being rejected continued to cling to Rachel. She knew how it had felt—to have been dealt such terrible news and not have anyone understand her side of it. Going after the ex-wife, Pamela Dickerson could be a long shot in the end, but as Rachel got into the passenger seat of the car as Jack finished up his call, she started to feel a deep certainty inside of her.
And as it was nearing two o’clock in the afternoon, she was also very aware that she was running out of time. If she expected to play any part in the final steps to bringing this killer to justice, they were going to have to really speed things up.
“We’ve got an address,” Jack said. “It’s Chesterfield. And I don’t know about you coming. The stress… the time… you have to think about Paige, right?”
“I do. But I’ve come this far. And given that I’ll be starting chemo sometime soon, I think it’s safe to say this will be my l…”
Tears stung her eyes, and a lump formed in her throat, so large she thought words wouldn’t be able to find their way out. Eventually, she managed to get out: “…my last case.”
“Rachel…”
“Come on,” she said, nodding to the road beyond the business center parking lot. “Let’s go get this guy. I’ve got to at least try.”
Jack looked somber and sad as he started the car and pulled through the lot. And when he didn’t say anything for a while, Rachel was pretty sure he had his own lump in his throat and was unable to speak.
CHAPTERTWENTYSIX
