Page 86 of Corrupting Ivy

He was the key to all of this. I had this feeling deep in my gut that told me there were too many victims associated with him for him to not have the one piece of information I needed.

“Ivy. Where is she?”

His eyes bugged. “I don’t know… Wait, Ivy’s missing?”

I pulled the trigger, the bullet grazing his inner knee, the bullet lodging into the couch. It was enough to cause an intense burn, but nothing life-threatening.

“Where is she?”

Otis grabbed his leg, his hand coming back with blood as he howled.

“Tell me something, anything.”

He shook his head, his mouth gaping with his cries that had now turned silent.

“What if he really doesn’t know, Tonk?”

“He does. He just needs to use that brain of his and think.”

Otis shook his head, then raised his hand as if to stop me from taking aim again.

I launched at him, pinning him to the couch with my knee in his chest. “The next one goes in your skull, Otis. I’m done playing games.”

“Tonk?” Jake said, “Think about it for a second.”

“I have.” I wrapped my hand tighter around the pistol and pressed the warm barrel under his chin. “Last time, Otis. What did your clients say? Who were they afraid of? Did they feel as though they’d been watched? Did someone creep them out? Give me something or so help me—”

“Frank,” he held his hand up to his face. “Frank, the veterinarian, gave Sofia presents, and it made her uncomfortable. One time, it contained a lock of hair; she wasn’t sure if it was from an animal. She threw it away, and it made him mad. She disappeared shortly thereafter.”

Sophia, the most recent victim. But the killer took great pains to wash and style their hair. I couldn’t see someone who did something like that, cutting it and ruining his masterpiece.

“Who else?” I pressed the gun harder.

He shook his head as tears leaked from his eyes.

“Think hard.”

His eyelids fluttered as he tried recalling his clients' conversations. It was a long shot, but I needed this. I’d take what I could get.

“Who would you suspect, Otis?”

He held his hands in front of his face as if it would stop a bullet while tears wet his cheeks. “Please, I don’t know. I can’t think…”

I tapped the pistol to his temple.

Otis shook beneath me as he pulled ragged breaths through his teeth. “Oh,” his eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. The only thing he needed to do was yell Eureka to complete the look. “Emma Johnson, she disappeared six years back. She came in one day saying she felt as though she was going crazy. Things in her home disappeared; she’d find them in places she didn’t put it or never found them at all. She thought someone was following her, and one time thought she saw someone standing by her barn. I told her to contact the Sheriff, but I don’t think she ever did.”

This was the information I needed. It sounded exactly like the complaints Ivy had. Although she'd called it into the Sheriff, he never found anything.

“Who did she think it might be?”

“He um… It couldn’t have been him. He was recovering from a car accident and had a broken leg at the time.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Grady. The country store clerk. He always had a thing for the younger ladies. Even asked them out at times.”

A weight the size of a thousand planets fell off my shoulders. It made sense. It was him, the story could have been as though Ivy retold it.

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