Page 55 of Secret Stalker

Chapter Seventeen

Bex stared at Max in disbelief. “Don’t give me the usual cop platitudes of self-defense and yada yada yada. I’m telling you it doesn’t matter. No one would believe me any more today than they would have back then. They’re going to put me in prison, so I might as well get used to the idea.”

“I’m not giving you platitudes. You didn’t kill Bobby.”

She frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“When you left the cabin, I promise you, Caldwell was very much alive.”

“But...the police found his body a couple of hours later, when his father and brother went looking for him.”

“Yes. But the most you did was knock him out for a few minutes. That wasn’t what killed him. Bobby died from internal bleeding, a ruptured spleen.”

“I don’t...understand. How is that possible? When I hit him, he fell so hard that his spleen ruptured?”

He shook his head. “No. That wouldn’t have done it. Someone beat him. They took a baseball bat or something like that and hit him across the lower back and abdomen. The coroner counted at least a dozen blows. They beat him, left him there to die. And then they took his ring. His father reported it as missing in the police report, said Bobby never went anywhere without it. That means that after you left, someone else went inside that cabin and killed him. There’s no other explanation.”

“I didn’t kill him,” she said, in wonder.

“No. You didn’t.” His smile faded. “But right now all we have is your word. And, unfortunately, if you tell anyone else what you just told me, it only corroborates that you were at the murder scene.”

She blew out a frustrated breath. “No telling what physical evidence your boss has that ties me to that cabin. I imagine he found my missing button. There had to be hair, too, and fibers from my clothes that he tore.”

“No. There isn’t. That’s one of the reasons that Thornton never could get a judge to sign a search warrant for your home. That cabin was pristine. Like someone had scrubbed it down top to bottom that night. There was no blue wine bottle. No button, no hair or fibers. And no note, either.”

“Why? Why would someone do that? Do you think they saw me go into the cabin and wanted to...what, protect me from being blamed?”

“Possible. More likely whoever killed him just wanted to clean every inch of the place in case any trace evidence could be used against them. I think they took advantage of the fact that you’d knocked Bobby woozy and they decided to finish him off. Then cleaned up afterward so no one would know they were the one who’d killed him.”

Her earlier elation faded. “So I did kill him after all. I left him there, semiconscious, unable to defend himself.”

“Don’t start feeling guilty over his death now. You said it yourself earlier. Bobby Caldwell was a bad person. He was the worst kind of scum, someone who preyed on women. The only person Bobby can blame for what happened is Bobby.”

His words made sense. She’d accepted long ago that she’d killed him, and didn’t feel guilty for that. But now, knowing that she’d left him injured, easy pickings for someone else to kill him, she did feel guilty. It was an odd feeling, to finally have compassion for a man she’d hated all of her adult life.

“What do we do now?” she asked.

“We go over your story again, from beginning to end.”

“What? Why?”

“I need to know every single detail that you can remember. Someone out there, whether it’s Bobby’s father or someone else, believes you killed him. And they’re determined to get you to confess. If there’s anything else that you can remember about that night that I can use to help your case, and put the true murderer away, then going over and over your story will be worth the pain.”

He grilled her about every single detail that day. He even made her recount as much as she could remember about the week leading up to Bobby’s death, looking for anything that might give them a clue about who else might want Bobby dead. He took mercy on her well past the lunch hour when her stomach started rumbling. But after they wolfed down ham and cheese sandwiches and potato chips, he was back at it.

“What about after Thornton released you from jail?”

Bex was lying on the couch now, her head propped on a throw pillow and one arm thrown over her face. Mad Max, as she was beginning to label him in her thoughts, was currently perched on the edge of the coffee table beside her, pen scribbling after every question he asked her.

She wanted to grab that pen and snap it in two.

“What about when I got out of jail?” she asked wearily without moving her arm.

“You were in town for two weeks, rumors swirling around, people saying terrible things. And all the while, Bobby’s family was making things really difficult for you, demanding the chief arrest you.”

“No, not his whole family,” she said. “Just his parents.” She lowered her arm and rolled her head on the pillow to look at him. “I never did hear how the father ended up in a wheelchair. And I haven’t seen Mrs. Caldwell in town since I got here. Were they in a car accident or something?”

“Worse. She died of breast cancer earlier this year. A few months later, he was diagnosed with late-stage bone cancer. His bones are so brittle he was walking down the sidewalk one day and his hip just snapped. That’s why he’s in the wheelchair. They say he doesn’t have long to live, maybe a few months, best case.” He straightened and frowned off into the distance.

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