Page 95 of The Couple's Secret
Another tear slid down his face. “Yeah,” he said huskily. “Everything went wrong.”
“Tell me.”
She waited, not moving or breathing, to see if he’d take the reins and spill everything. To confirm that all of her instincts had been correct.
“The plan was to kill him and then roll him—inside his car—into the river. Cora said it had to be really far away. Hol was going to Denton all the time so a couple of times I went with him and had a look around. Found a good spot.”
“But you’d need a second car,” Josie said.
“Yeah. We talked about planting one there but then the invite to Karl’s party came and it just seemed like the best opportunity we were going to have. I knew that Bruce would cover for me, especially after Cora brought him my mom’s purse. I knew he’d feel guilty enough to look the other way.”
He had. Bruce had told her that he had no direct knowledge of the murders. There was never any discussion between him and Jackson about it. He admitted to knowing on some level that Jackson had been involved but taking care to never examine that thought too closely. Of course, Josie had no proof that Bruce hadn’t played a much larger part in the whole thing, but she believed him. He hadn’t even suspected that Cora was involved.
“Was Cora going to dinner with Tobias part of your plan?” asked Josie.
“No, actually. I always intended to use Karl’s party as my alibi but we just figured we’d get Dad alone somehow on the night of. Then he wanted to take her out to dinner and we thought it was perfect.”
Josie had known from the start that there was no way the murders were carried out by one person. Once she realized it was Jackson and not Hollis or Dalton or someone else, she thought Olsen was his partner. It made so much sense. Not only did Olsen have a soft spot for Jackson but he’d been given proof in the form of Rachel’s purse that Tobias was not what he seemed. It hadn’t occurred to Josie that Cora was the accomplice. Not until she read the infamous last text about Captain Whiskers. In all the news reports and interviews, the message was described simply as Cora asking Jackson to let the cat into the house.
When Josie pulled up the records from Fanning’s case file, it was quite a different thing.
Hey, do you think you could let Captain Whiskers inside? If she doesn’t come in right away, she’ll be wound up in high gear, ready to give me hell when I get home.
“You and Cora agreed that she would send you a text when they left the restaurant,” Josie said. “So you’d know when to leave the party. But it had to be something that if read by anyone else, would seem insignificant. Normal. Asking you to let Captain Whiskers inside wasn’t abnormal—not if you played it off as her sending the message to the wrong brother.”
“Yeah,” Jackson agreed. “She was insane about that kind of stuff. I guess from being with Dalton all those years and having to be so careful so he didn’t beat her.”
“‘If she doesn’t come in right away’ meant come right away, didn’t it?” she asked.
“Yeah. Well, it was supposed to mean they were in the car. Once they started driving, there was a limited timeframe to get him before he went home.”
“‘Wound up in high gear. Gear. Like Geerling Road, just spelled differently. Had you scouted that location out beforehand?”
“I had, yeah. Cora’s job was just to get him to take that way home instead of the other way.”
“‘Ready to give me hell’ was her way of saying she was ready to kill Tobias?”
“Yeah. I got to the clearing first and stood out in the road. He stopped right away when he saw me. I told him I broke down. He never even questioned it. Pulled right into the clearing. Then I pulled the gun on him, we tied him up, threw him into the trunk of his car and drove to Denton. Cora took his car and I took Bruce’s.”
“Where did you get the gun?”
“It was my dad’s,” Jackson explained. “He never used it. Cora snuck it out and then once everything was over, I put it back in the safe after Riley and Zane called me to come to the house. They never even noticed.”
The entire thing was diabolical. “Once you got to Denton, things didn’t go so well, did they?”
More tears fell. “I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t look him in the eye and kill him.”
“He came after you.”
“It wasn’t even this big epic struggle. He was still tied up, hands and feet, standing and trying to keep his own balance. I was pointing the gun at him. Cora was off to the side. He just kind of plowed into me hard enough for the gun to swing toward her and it just… it went off.”
Josie waited as he cried quietly into his hands.
“She was dead. Bled out in my arms. After that, it wasn’t hard at all to look into his eyes when I killed him. I sat there, in the dark, crying for a long time. Holding Cora. I couldn’t take her back or call the police ’cause then they’d know what we did so I went with the original plan to push the car into the river, just with her in it as well.”
“You took her necklace and engagement ring before you got her back into the car, didn’t you?” asked Josie.
Tears gave way to violent sobs. Chest heaving, his words came out like a jagged wail. The sound of it sent an eerie prickle of disquiet, like pins and needles, over her skin. In the back of her mind, a dark curtain lifted, and the final piece of the puzzle slotted into place.
