Page 57 of Closer Than You Know

“No problem.” Teresa took a breath. The vibrant blue sweater she wore highlighted the lighter blue of her eyes. “I suppose we should get straight to the point.”

Vera twisted the top from her water bottle. “Never helps anyone to beat around the bush,” she agreed.Especially if the bush is on fire.

“Norton Gates.” Russ stared at the latte in her stoneware mug. “How he wound up in that cave just kept haunting me.”

The bastard had haunted far too many people even before he was murdered.

“Meaning,” Vera prompted, her stomach twisted into one big, writhing knot.

“I couldn’t get right with the idea that someone might be wondering what had happened to Gates. Obviously he was someone’s son, perhaps a brother or father or husband.”

Vera wanted to feel sympathy, but she just couldn’t work it up, so she said nothing, waited for Russ to continue.

“I started digging.”

Those three words unsettled Vera inordinately.

“Of course, he had been all those things—except for the father part,” Russ went on. “His parents had passed away, and his wife had divorced him years before he disappeared. The ex-wife basically made it clear that she hated him and was glad he was dead.” Russ shook her head. “He had no real friends that I could find. No colleagues who appeared to care one way or the other.”

A new kind of anticipation started to build inside Vera. Still, she kept her mouth shut and let the other woman talk.

“What I did find,” the savvy PI said then, “was more than a dozen women who had been abused by Norton Gates.”

Vera’s heart bumped hard against her sternum. “Really?”

Anyone who actually looked would have found the same thing. The trouble was, for all those years that the bastard took advantage of his position as a professor at a respected college, no one wanted to talk about it. Either the victims refused to go to the authorities, or those who threatened to do so were scared off with a warning of dire consequences. Typical bullshit assholes like Gates had gotten away with it all through history.

“He used his position,” Russ went on, “to prod sexual favors from his students. If the college had known, he would have been fired immediately. But no one ever dared to tell. Not even the two colleagues I believe, based on my interviews with them, suspected his predilection.”

Happened all the time. It was disgusting and despicable. “That’s terrible,” Vera commented. “Just terrible.”

Russ waited, as if she expected Vera to say more, but she knew better.Never say more than necessarywas her motto. It was sure to come back and bite you in the ass.

“But one student fought back.”

Vera went completely still inside. Her thought processes, even the need to breathe, seemed to pause.

“I think you know her,” Russ said with a pointed look at Vera. “Suri Khatri. She lives in Fayetteville. She’s a mortician, like your sister Eve. In fact, they’re friends.”

Vera said nothing. Russ already knew. No point confirming.

“Like the others,” Russ said, her fingers turning the half-empty mug, “Suri had let the incidents with Gates go. She had gotten through the two required classes he taught for her certification and moved on.” Her head angled toward her shoulder as her gaze connected fully with Vera’s. “But then he found her again. You see, the last few years of his life, he’d come face to face with the MeToo movement. Women were no longer allowing him to pressure them into sex. I suppose that’s why he jumped at the opportunity to go after Suri again. He had her pegged as an easy mark.”

Vera forced down a sip of water. “Sounds like your story has a happy ending.”

“I spoke to Suri this morning. That was the meeting I mentioned.”

Apprehension wound its way through Vera. Obviously Eve did not know about this.

“I had tried to talk to her several times, but she avoided me. This time she didn’t. We met at the funeral home where she works, and she told me everything.”

The silence went on for five or so seconds.

“Which was?” Vera prompted. She certainly wasn’t going to offer any scenarios, least of all the one she knew to be the truth.

“Suri told me that she killed Gates when he showed up at her house and tried to rape her.”

Holy shit.Vera blinked ... kept her lips pressed tightly together.

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