Page 76 of Cold as Hell

I hesitate. Then I say, “I have one, and I’m being especially careful because…” I inhale. “It feels like a long shot. Eric is friendly with this person. We both are. And they don’t match the profile of someone who commits a murder like this, if we’re looking at a serial killer.”

“A what?”

I back up to tell her about my talk with Mathias.

“I understand the logic,” she says, “but I think you’re going to need to look more closely at this being a case of horrible revenge. The checks we perform are so thorough that I cannot imagine we’ve let in a serial killer. If my investigator findsanyhistory of violence, they stop immediately and that person is removed from consideration.”

“What if there’s never been any recorded history?”

“How often does that happen, Casey? That a serial killer turns out to have no red flags in their past? Never been investigated, charged, or even disciplined in school for violence?”

“The chances are extremely slim. But I’m having a very hard time seeing this as a vengeance killing. Lynn did work in the justice system, and she was sure to have pissed people off, even without the whistleblowing. Let’s say they reopened that expert’s cases and some guy’s not-guilty verdict is being questioned. Would that make him put a bomb in her car? Maybe. Would it make him somehow manage to track her down to Haven’s Rock—despite all our precautions and security measures—sneak into town, find her, lure her out, and horribly murder her? No.”

“Agreed. This isn’t about vengeance for something she did down south. Now just tell me who you want to know about.”

I take a deep breath. “Marlon.”

“Marlon?”

At her tone, I wrap the hotel bathrobe as far as it’ll stretch around my belly. “I know. He’s a very unlikely suspect, which is why I’m being careful about saying anything in front of Eric. I like Marlon. We all do. I cannot imagine him doing something like this.”

“But…”

“He was our only eyewitness. He says he saw Lynn being escorted by someone he believed to be Sebastian. He based his ID of Lynn on her scarf, which someone else has pointed out—correctly—that she wore inside her jacket. This other eyewitness says there was a greater height differential between the two figures—significant enough that they automatically identified it as a man and a woman, unlike Marlon’s description.”

I take a deep breath. “However, none of that means Marlon lied. If Lynn were in a hurry, she might have wrapped her scarf on the outside. The larger figure may have been hunched into the wind, making them look closer to Lynn’s height when Marlon spotted them. And the second witness didn’t see anything to identify the smaller figure as Lynn, which is why they didn’t come forward—they thought they may have seen someone else.”

“Yet now that the question has been raised, you need to investigate.”

“Yes.”

“Because you’re a detective, Casey. And a damn good one who chases answers even when it’s uncomfortable and inconvenient. All right then. I think I might be able to put your fears to rest easily, given Marlon’s service record. He served nearlytwo decades in the military, only leaving it recently, and the majority of that time was spent overseas. I won’t specify which branch he worked in or what he did, but it wasn’t frontline. He worked in a support capacity. I don’t know whether that makes a difference to your profiling—the fact he had a desk job.”

“Was he traveling, though?” I ask. “That’d make it easy to hide a pattern of violence. Or a trail of victims.”

“No, he was stationed in only a few places, and his records in all of them were spotless. He never married, but he did have a few long-term relationships, with no hints of trouble. I will still run deeper checks on the places he was stationed, looking for unsolved murders, but I would expect, if he were a serial killer, he would have requested more travel, which he did not. He preferred to settle into an area for as long as possible.”

“What about the non-serial-killer option? Can we check for overlap between him and Lynn? When he was back home, did they live in the same region? Work in the same field? Is there any chance that he was connected to her job—as someone affected by her work. Could they have been here together by coincidence and he recognized her? Is thereanythingthat might have brought them into contact?”

Clicking sounds across the line, as if she’s typing. “At this stage in recruitment, we’re actively avoiding residents from the same region. Of course, if we had two critical cases from the same area, I’d allow it, particularly if their trouble hadn’t been newsworthy. But both Lynn’s and Marlon’s situations received local media coverage, which means I would have flagged a potential privacy issue. I am double-checking, though.… No, they lived nearly on opposite coasts. There’s no overlap in employment. I will dig deeper, of course, and have my investigator do the same. But I think it might also help to know Marlon’s story. I know you didn’t want that.”

I check my watch. Dalton will be back any moment. “If it will help, go ahead.”

“I think it will, and I think it will also explain why I’m expressing significant doubt at the thought of him killing Lynn, certainly in such a way. Marlon had become involved with a woman. It was, in his words, a casual relationship. They met at work. This woman had recently left another relationship with a man who… While there was no clear history of abuse, her partner was known to be violent in general.”

“Ah.”

“He had a lengthy police record. When he discovered his ex-girlfriend was involved with Marlon, he went after Marlon. There were several encounters, one of which required police involvement, but the reports make it clear that Marlon did no more than defend himself. By this point, Marlon was no longer even seeing the woman. Yet the attacks continued. Then he was kidnapped at gunpoint by two men. He managed to escape. The ex-boyfriend had an alibi, and so he couldn’t be charged, though my investigator says even the police have no doubt he ordered the kidnapping, which was likely a hired hit. Luckily, the men the ex-boyfriend hired were less than competent.”

“They usually are.”

“At that point, though, Marlon didn’t want to rely on ineptitude to keep him safe. He reached out for help through another organization, which is where we found him.”

“And the fact that he was the victim suggests he’s not my killer,” I say. “I’d agree with that assessment. I can’t imagine someone coming up here to escape persecution that they could have resolved, which they could if they were a violent killer themselves.”

“Yes. While Marlon was in the military, and he’s certainlyphysically capable of defending himself, he did only that. He defended himself when attacked. He escaped when kidnapped. But he did not seek to eliminate the threat, which I presume your killer would have.”

A sound at the door, as if Dalton is there with his key card.

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