Page 91 of Remember Her Name

“You were Miranda O’Malley’s best friend. Yet you fell in love with the man everyone thought killed her. Did you know Roger didn’t kill the Cooks, or did he convince you of that when you reconnected?”

Vicky leaned her hip against the edge of the sink. The light was better in here and Josie spied faint fingerprint bruises on her throat, mostly covered with foundation. “I knew he didn’t kill anyone. He was far too sweet and kind and caring to do anything like that. I mean, he was obsessed with getting Miranda out of the house.”

There was a hint of petulance in her voice when she said Miranda’s name. Her eyes lifted up and to the left, as if she was about to roll them but then she caught herself.

He was obsessed with getting Miranda out of the house.

She didn’t sound like someone who was grateful that an adult was taking charge and trying to help her best friend out of a dangerous situation. She sounded like a girlfriend who was annoyed that her man was paying attention to someone else.

Josie moved out of the doorway to the head of the table, now only a few feet from Vicky. “Were you and Roger seeing one another then?”

Vicky crumpled the paper towel in her fist. On the back of her hand was another bruise, dark and angry. “I was a minor.”

“That never stopped a man before.”

Vicky laughed and Josie could hear the undertone of bitterness. “Right. Well, it stopped Roger. He wouldn’t touch me.”

“Did he touch Miranda?”

Vicky picked at an imaginary piece of lint on her blouse. “No, but sometimes I thought he wanted to.”

“And Miranda?” Josie coaxed. “What did she think?”

Vicky’s upper lip curled in an almost-sneer. It was disconcerting considering they were talking about a girl who’d been brutally slain, a girl who was supposed to be her best friend. “She thought he was a knight in shining armor. Her savior. The day before…it happened, she told me she thought she was in love with him. He’d offered to come get her and take her to his place until she could be reunited with her parents. She didn’t say, but I thought she was going to try something once they were alone in his apartment.”

“But if Roger wouldn’t touch you because you were underage, why would he become physical with Miranda?”

Vicky shrugged and for a heartbeat, she looked like the teenage girl Josie had seen standing on the sidewalk, watching police go in and out of her best friend’s house. “I don’t know. Probably the same reason Simon was obsessed with her. All I ever wanted was Roger. I was in love with him first. I had his attention first. She knew that! She just didn’t care. All she cared about was him being her personal hero and getting him alone in his apartment.”

“You’ve always been in love with him, haven’t you?” Josie watched her face carefully. “In fact, you would do anything for him, wouldn’t you? Even try to access sealed court records.”

Vicky went very still. The corners of her mouth twitched. “I didn’t need to access court records to find Roger. He saw me on television. We did a behind-the-scenes, meet-the-producers piece. He recognized me and tracked me down.”

“And asked you to help him locate Simon?”

Vicky said nothing.

“You used Stella’s desire to do a big story on her grandfather to manipulate her into accessing Simon’s new identity.”

Vicky sighed. Something in her eyes shifted. Her face hardened. A mask slipping off to reveal something very different beneath it. “I suggested that she should start with the Cook file. I might have told her that her grandfather royally screwed up the case and got away with it, to properly motivate her. We just needed to find Simon and Roger so we could interview them. I had already found Roger, but she didn’t need to know that.”

Denton PD had gotten access to Simon Cook’s new identity but hadn’t been able to locate him. He lived in a rundown house on the outskirts of Bellewood, forty miles away, and worked under the table for a roofing company. His boss hadn’t seen him in weeks. “Did you pass Simon’s information on to Roger?”

“I couldn’t,” Vicky whispered.

Over the gurgling of the air conditioner, Josie thought she heard heavy footsteps.

“Why couldn’t you tell Roger where to find Simon?”

Vicky’s head swiveled toward the back door. Josie followed her gaze but saw nothing. The footsteps had stopped. Tension hung in the air like an electric charge. The phantom fingers of fear skittered across Josie’s scalp. Her hand went to her holster as the lizard part of her brain registered a threat before she could actually see it.

Josie heard Vicky’s next words as if from a great distance. “I couldn’t let Roger find Simon because I created a monster.”

SIXTY-SEVEN

A shadow appeared at the back door. It creaked open and a man squeezed through it. He was as tall as Turner but thick, round, and wide. A moving wall that swallowed up all the space in the room. Beady eyes glimmered from his round face, aglow with hunger. An apex predator about to pounce on its next meal. Josie recognized him from the day at the Cooks’ house and the photos from the case file that had been taken in the hospital.

Simon Cook.

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