Page 74 of The 1 Lawyer

I knew Rue’s secret. Rue Holmes possessed incredible drive. Compared to her, I looked like a slacker.

It was time to pull Jenny into our current project. “Jenny, Rue and I have been analyzing the facts of those two cases we talked about last year, the murders of two of Daniel Caro’s patients, Aurora Gates and Desiree Whitman. You recall the circumstances around the death of the second woman, don’t you? Mason said you and he had a meeting with her husband. He was a deckhand on a shrimp boat.”

Jenny gave Rue an inquiring look. “So you’re familiar with those cases, Rue?”

“Oh, yeah. People in my community haven’t forgotten Desiree and Aurora,” Rue said. “Stafford Lee gave me reports. I took that information and made a chart.”

Rue leaned over my desk, located a folder, pulled a document from it, and handed it to Jenny. “See how it lines up? Check out the personal characteristics of the victims. You can see that I share those characteristics too, right? So does my sister, Alicia. The chart also sets forth the details of the attacks. I know I’m not a forensic expert, but on the face of it, it looks like the same guy did both crimes.” She shivered, although the office wasn’t that cool. “It creeps me out to know I’m scrubbing down that dude’s shower stall every week. Does that seem bizarre to y’all?”

I expected Jenny to devour the information contained in Rue’s chart. After all, Jenny had been the first one to connect the deaths of Desiree Whitman and Aurora Gates. But she didn’t even glance at the page; she just rested it on her knee.

Jenny said, “Here’s something else that’s bizarre. There is a third murder.”

“What?” I was so shocked, I almost sputtered. I couldn’t even frame a follow-up question.

She looked over and focused on me, her face tense, waiting to see how I’d react. “It’s a cold case. I stumbled onto it almost by accident.”

“Another patient of Caro’s? In Biloxi or Gulfport? How did I miss that?” I could barely believe it. It was true that over the past year and a half, I’d been consumed with my personal loss and the subsequent fallout. But I’d still had access to the local press.

“Not a Caro patient. This particular murder happened about a decade ago. And it wasn’t in Mississippi.”

I didn’t see the connection. Apparently, neither did Rue. She said, “So what’s that got to do with Caro?”

At that point, Jenny looked down at Rue’s chart. A moment later, she passed the paper back to her. “It’s the MO that’s distinctive. Every characteristic and element you’ve identified about the two women in Harrison County also appear in the unsolved case. Including the strangulation evidence. That’s a signature. I think all three cases need to be evaluated together.”

Rue picked up the chart she had meticulously created and tore the page in half. “Looks like we need to start over. What do you say, Stafford Lee? Are you in? Because I know I am.”

“Sure,” I said.

Rue’s face was stony. “Whether it’s Caro or somebody else, he’s killing Black women, and law enforcement isn’t catching it.”

“I can’t believe they’ve overlooked this pattern,” Jenny said.

Rue’s eyebrows rose. “Really? Doesn’t surprise me at all.”

CHAPTER 57

JENNY GLASER pulled into the nearly empty lot behind Boulevard Baptist Church in downtown Biloxi. A black Honda SUV was parked close to the back door.

The unlocked church building had the same deserted feeling as the lot; her footsteps echoed on the tile floor. She walked down the hall to an office where a man leaned against a tidy metal desk. Pastor Gates met her eyes with a smile.

“Good afternoon, Jenny. Thanks for coming by.” He waved his arm at a doorway to a second, smaller office. “Come on in and have a seat.”

Jenny settled into a chair that faced a desk; she observed that Pastor Gates locked the office door after shutting it. As he crossed the room, she said, “Wow. You weren’t kidding when you said this would be a private meeting.”

He looked somber as he sank into a worn leather chair. “I told the church secretary to take an extra hour for lunch today. I don’t want anyone walking in on our conversation because I need your expert opinion as a private detective.”

Jenny edged forward in her seat. “You’ve certainly got my attention, Pastor Gates.”

An aged air-conditioning unit rattled the window at Gates’s back, but when the preacher spoke, his voice drowned out the background noise. “I received some information in this week’s mail. Sent to me here at the church office.”

The statement sparked Jenny’s curiosity. “Was it a letter?”

He regarded her speculatively, as if he was still trying to determine whether she was trustworthy. When the silence stretched out, she pressed him. “What did it contain?”

The preacher opened a desk drawer and pulled out a manila envelope. “There wasn’t any letter, just pictures. Copies of pictures, that is.”

“Who sent them?”

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