Page 16 of Long Road Home

“You’ll go to prison for the rest of your life,” she added. “I’ll head out on the road to another case and another set ofvictims who need justice. I doubt I’ll think of you, except as a stray thought. You’ll barely be a memory.”

“Ask me why I did it.”

“I don’t care.”

Marion didn’t like that. “Ask me why I chosethoseones.”

Kenna shrugged.No big deal, right?She hoped her expression indicated as such, anyway.

Marion seemed to want to get a rise out of her. What she didn’t know was that it would take more than this to get her to go beyond speaking without thinking. Did Marion want her to get angry, or threaten her?

Kenna did want answers—everyone who had lost someone wanted to knowwhy. Before she found the perpetrator, she often told herself she didn’t care. Sometimes even after. Occasionally, she viewed that need to know as a weakness.

Now that Marion was in cuffs, if she wanted to confess and offer up information that Kenna would be able to pass to the families, that was one thing. It might help in some small way to give them a semblance of peace. But all the closure in the world wouldn’t bring back what they’d lost.

Finding out that Forrest’s husband and son had indeed been murdered wouldn’t make them any less dead. She would still have to live with the loss.

Maybe that was why Forrest didn’t want to deal with the note and what it meant.

“Ask me!” Marion screamed.

Kenna waited until she’d taken a breath. “Where are they? That’s all I want to know.” They weren’t building a rapport or getting to know each other so Marion would tell her everything. All she cared about was the location of the burial site.

“You’ll never know!” Marion laughed like a horror movie villain. “They’ll be mine forever!”

No, they wouldn’t. “The latest one isn’t. What was her name?”

“Riley.”

“She’s back with her parents. They say she’ll make a full recovery.” Physically, at least. The rest was up to Riley’s strength and the support she was given. Like Maizie, there would be days when things seemed good, days when it was too fresh in her mind still, and baby steps of forward progress in between. “She’s not yours anymore.”

“Good riddance!”

“Marion, the screaming is getting old.” Kenna slumped into the chair at the table like she was over it all. “Calm down, okay? Quit screeching.” She let out an overly loud sigh. “Just tell me where to find the rest. You have no leverage with me. You only want to jerk me around, the same way you’re jerking around the police. Get a clue, Marion. It’s done. You’ve been caught. You’re going to jail, and your reign of terror is over. For Riley, and for everyone else.”

She hadn’t had much time to get to know Marion after she figured out who had taken those girls, and Maizie found the evidence in Marion’s online purchases. But what she did know of this woman said Marion wanted to feel superior because she got away with it for so long.

“So you wanted someone to cook and clean for you. The kids at the school often included one you thought was malleable.” Kenna’s stomach flipped. “So you kept each one for what—a year or two? Maybe longer. Then you ordered IV bags of poison from overseas, and let the drug do the dirty work.”

Maizie had found the transactions on a credit card in an anagram of Marion’s name.

“After all, why face the consequences of what you did yourself and look them in the eyes while you take their life?” Kenna said. All she needed to know was where the police could find the victim’s bodies. “What convenient method of disposal did you use?”

She was honestly surprised Marion hadn’t found someone else to dispose of the bodies. But a co-conspirator hadn’t come up in the investigation. Marion had been alone for decades, with few friends and no discernable life outside her job as librarian at the school.

“I gave them dignity,” Marion replied.

Kenna stared at her, wondering if she actually believed that or if it was part of the delusion she’d been living under. “Because you knew it was wrong, and at least a tiny part of you thought it was a way to redeem yourself.”

If Marion admitted she knew her actions were wrong, there was no way an insanity plea would hold weight. She might try to argue she wasn’t mentally fit for trial, but Kenna would write to the judge herself if it helped. Marion needed to be tried and convicted of her crimes. The justice system wasn’t perfect, but it was a whole lot better than it was in many other countries.

“Where are they, Marion?”

“Backforth Trail. Mile marker fourteen. Behind the oak.”

Kenna pushed her chair back.

“You can’t leave.”

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