Page 133 of Sinister Legacy
“I know what you’re doing.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re looking for a motive. If I tell you we didn’t get on, you’ll want to know why and, from there, you can ‘build a case.’” I make quotation marks. “Keira did what she did because of A and Z.”
His lips lift in a barely-there smile. “You’re intelligent.”
I shrug.
“Look, I’ll level with you. The world out there will compare you to your father. You know that. I know that. But that won’t be the case here. I don’t think you’re a product of your father’s evil nature.”
“No?” I ask, looking at him directly. “You’re accusing me of murdering people, and you’re telling me you don’t believe the tendency to kill runs in my veins?”
“You tell me, Keira. What do you think?”
I breathe a mocking laugh through my nose. “It doesn’t matter what I think. Can we just cut to the fucking chase?”
“We can. After you talk to me for a bit.”
My eyes roll. “Anything I say can and will be used against me in a court of law, remember?”
“What do you remember of your father?”
Frowning, I snap my gaze to him. “My father?”
“Jimmy Hill… I only know him as Jimmy Hill, the notorious serial killer who murdered sixteen women. The real number is probably much higher. I don’t know Jimmy Hill the family man or Jimmy Hill the father. Why don’t you tell me a little bit about him? Were you close?”
There’s a thick lump in my throat now. I try to swallow past it, but it won’t dislodge. “I was seven when they arrested him and broke into our home with drawn guns and barking dogs.”
Officer Wells’s eyes soften, but he stays silent.
“Mom was in the kitchen, preparing dinner. Dad was throwing me up in the air and catching me. I knew I was getting too big for the game, but he still made an effort because he said he loved it when my giggles lit the house up from the inside.” I inhale shakily, staring down at an empty spot on the white table. My eyes blur as I think back on that day—the terror that ripped through me when the police kicked down the front door. “My father was playful. I remember that… He would read me bedtime stories and call me his princess. Adventure stories were my favorite. Peter Pan, especially. He said I was the only spot of light in his dark world.”
“It sounds to me like you had a special connection.”
I nod softly. “I thought we did, at least. After he was arrested, it all felt like a well-constructed lie. I was too young to understand when they arrested him, but I grew resentful as the years went by.”
“It makes sense. How do you feel now?”
My gaze lifts to Officer Wells’s face, and I take in the deep lines around his eyes. “I feel like I can understand him more.”
Officer Wells straightens, his interest piqued. “Understand him how?”
I’m treading on very thin ice. Slightest misstep, and it’ll crack beneath my feet. But a small part of me also wants it to crack so that I won’t hurt more people. Is that what my father felt when he was finally caught? Relief somewhere deep inside of him?
At least now, locked up behind bars, I don’t have to be a slave to the darkness anymore, but there’s a bigger picture here.
A bigger monster.
Someone who’s still out there, free to commit more murders because Officer Wells believes I killed all those people.
I wet my lips, glancing at the clock. It’s almost midnight. Officer Wells could have kept me locked up until the morning and done his interrogation then, but here we are, burning the midnight oil. The rest of the staff, except for Wells and Riveiro, have gone home to their warm beds. I hope they get paid good overtime.
“I’m Jimmy Hill’s daughter,” I respond as if that explains everything. Maybe it does. “People think one of two things when they think of me.”
“What’s that, Keira?”
I don’t like it when strangers call me by my first name. My skin crawls. “They either feel sorry for me. ‘Poor little girl. Her father was a monster.’ Or they’re afraid of me. They think I’m diseased and that it’s a matter of time until I turn into my father.”
