Page 62 of The Murder Between Us
Sheriff Clarke tipped his head, nodded to Cole, and strode out.
“How did I miss this, Cole? What else did I miss six years ago? How did Garrett slip through my fingers?”
“That’s not the question to ask.” Cole reached for him. His hand brushed over Noah’s. “How did Garrett cover this up so well he was able to join the Marines? And then join the Boone County Sheriff’s Office? Work with Monica Venneslund’s father? Was joining the sheriff’s a way for Garrett to feel superior? Was he trying to revictimize his victims’ families? Was this all about power to him?”
Noah frowned. “I got the feeling he really wanted to leave the past buried. That’s when he broke down, when we brought up Monica and the others.”
“Then why did he start killing again? Why now, if he wanted to leave it all behind him?” Cole paced away from him.
“Didn’t you say there’s no answer to why?” Noah’s gaze slid down Cole’s long legs. “What if he was killing the whole time he was in the Marines? What if he never truly stopped?”
Cole leaned against the far wall. “I’ll work with Sheriff Clarke and his team and dig into Garrett’s past. I’ll work up a new profile on him, all the way back to his childhood. You’ll have more to work with for the next time you go at him.”
Noah nodded. “Jacob and I will work on the physical evidence. Find out what happened at each crime scene, especially Jessie’s and at John’s house. We know he was there. We can put him with the victims on both nights of the murders.”
“We need to look at Kimberly again.” Cole frowned. “There’s still a lot of unanswered questions here, and a lot of them start with Kimberly and her father.”
19
Andy Garrett fit Cole’sprofile like a key sliding into a lock.
White male, early thirties. Above-average intelligence. Garrett had been on the honor roll in high school and had qualified for a scholarship to the University of South Dakota. He’d transferred to Iowa State with an even better scholarship award thanks to his grades.
“Why did he transfer? Why was he on the move?” Noah stared at Garrett’s photo, tacked to the center of the whiteboard, as if he could pull the man’s secrets from the still image.
The pictures of the six murdered girls surrounded Garrett, each waiting for Noah and the task force to draw the direct line intersecting Garrett with their lives. On a separate whiteboard, Garrett’s photo sat in the center of a two-pronged, partially constructed web, the branches running from him to Jessie Olson and Molly Hayes. Beneath Garrett’s photo lay Kimberly’s and a stretch of unbroken white space, unmarred or unblemished by any connecting lines.
“Escaping from what he’d done? Running from law enforcement?” Sheriff Clarke jerked his chin at Garrett’s photo as he crossed his arms. “Criminals always run.”
“Except,” Noah said, his hand coming down on a small stack of old manila folders, “South Dakota wasn’t investigating him. They had no idea who had killed Brittany Dodge. His name doesn’t appear anywhere in the investigation files. Not once. He had no reason to run.”
“That doesn’t mean he didn’t. And he wouldn’t have known if they were on to him or not, necessarily,” Sheriff Clarke’s task force teammate, Officer Estrada, said.
“Holy shit.” Jacob, buried in stacks and stacks of files at the end of the conference table, spoke up. He was the best man Noah had ever met for plowing through records. Jacob could demolish a warehouse full of bankers boxes in a single day. When the records from Iowa State and University of South Dakota arrived, Jacob hadn’t even asked. He’d grabbed the first box and settled in at the conference table, cup of coffee at his elbow and a deep furrow on his brow.
“What is it?” Noah asked. Jacob stood, grabbing a dry-erase marker and a printout from the folder he’d been reading.
Jacob drew a thick line between Garrett and Monica Venneslund. He taped the printout below the connecting line. “Monica attended a seminar at USD the fall semester when Garrett was there. It was a criminology seminar, put on by the honors society. Forensic Advancements of the Past Decade. Guess who helped organize it?”
“Garrett.” Cole, at the other end of the conference table, said. His face was pinched, his eyes tired, but to Noah, he still looked like perfection.
Jacob tapped the whiteboard, the printout. “And he signed her in personally. This is how they met.”
“There’s the connection, finally.” They hadn’t found anything that connected Monica to Garrett other than the torn-up photo in his apartment. No common classes, nothing other than that they were both students at Iowa State. But now this. “That’s what brought him to Iowa State. He must have transferred to follow her,” Noah said.
“He had her in his sights the whole time.” Sheriff Clarke shook his head, disgusted.
“The other girls—they were, what, practice?” Noah arched his eyebrows, questioning, at Cole. “Why kill four girls before Monica?”
“Displacement.” Cole leaned back, stretching. Noah’s eyes wandered down, over Cole’s chest and the taut fabric. His gaze snapped back up. What was he doing? “She was his fixation,” Cole said. “Everything built up inside of him, focused on her. His fantasies, his dreams, his aspirations. He probably built an elaborate fantasy world that the two of them inhabited.”
“Sick fuck,” Jacob grunted. “He was obsessed.”
Cole nodded. “Obsession is a hallmark of the psychopathic serial killer. It operates in cyclical phases. Early on, the need builds inside them, and no matter how much the killer tries to displace that need through fantasy or other outlets—sexual sadism, masturbation, cruelty to animals—the need continues to build until he feels he’s going to explode. Then he hunts, captures, and kills his victim. Immediately, he discovers the compulsion he felt, that need, is both assuaged and left unfulfilled. Fantasy never matches reality, after all.”
Except with you.Cole was everything Noah dreamed of. More, in fact. Beyond a kind and handsome man—someone who showed him the ropes, as it were, with patience and benevolence—he was intelligent, and funny, and so damn sexy Noah could barely control himself. Jesus, was he in a cycle, too? Cycling through his need for Cole, from the buildup to the need for consummation and then the simultaneously crushing and exhilarating afterglow? Questions ravaged him: Where would they go from here? When could he kiss Cole again?
Noah swallowed hard and shook his head.Focus.
