Page 28 of Unhallowed Murder
“I read you your rights, and I’m sure they did so again when they booked you. Do you understand them?”
“Yes, and I still don’t understand why I’m here!”
An absolute lie, but she decided not to point it out.
“Where were you on the night of October thirtieth?”
“The church held a Fall Festival on the thirty-first, and I manned the pumpkin trebuchet. Our youth built three of them, and then competed to see who could get their pumpkins the farthest. The night before, I was at the church helping them with the final touches on their trebuchets.”
“How late were you there?”
“I believe I arrived home around ten. Wendy was supposed to help with the cotton candy machine the next night, but she totally skipped out on us without so much as a phone call.” He sighed. “I was so mad, I didn’t even call to check on her, and then I felt guilty about being mad at her once I found out she’d been killed.”
Another lie, but it wasn’t time to call him on it just yet.
“So, you left the church before ten o’clock on the thirtieth. Did you go to Wendy’s house? Or did she come to your house? Had ya’ll had sex? I bet you werepissedwhen you found out she’d screwed someone else.”
He stared at his hands, and Ronnie kept going. “Not only that, but she had the evil,pervertedkind of sex with him, when she was supposed to be clean, foryou! It was like she pissed all over everything the two of you had!”
He shook his head and kept staring at his hands. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Another lie, but Ronnie could almost smell the outburst just under his skin.
“All those nights you were so hard youhurt, but you held off, and she goes and gives it up for astranger, andthen has the nerve to cry and act like she’s the victim, and not you!”
“I was going to ask her to marry me! She’d done penance for her sins, for having sex out of wedlock when she was younger, but she’d been celibate for over two years! And then she lay with someone else! She was unclean!”
“So you had tohelpher get clean, didn’t you!”
“I did! The bible says a woman should be stoned to death, but I figured bullets are the modern-day equivalent, and…” He sighed. “Where would I have even found stones big enough, that late at night?”
Ronnie glanced at the camera, and Corey knew what she was thinking. “Commander Frost is on the phone about the warrant, Lieutenant.” Ronnie wanted to look over the list of items before it was submitted, but she had to trust her people.
“So, walk me through this,” she told the murdering bastard across the table. “Did you drop by her house? Find her crying?”
He must’ve realized he’d just screwed himself, because he shut down. “I need my lawyer.”
“Yes, sir. I believe you’re right about that.”
Ronnie stood and walked out of the room without looking back. Looked like she was going to get to help create that list, after all.
She sat with her team, worked on the list of items they were looking for, and then called everyone into the conference room. Perry had returned after visiting twomore churches, and Carter was back after talking to the ex-wife.
Commander Frost had the assistant DA stop by, and she told them, “We can’t prosecute him for a crime in Cancun. If you want to try to track down every person he left the country with, we can probably make that happen with the FBI’s help, but it sounds as if he only dated people with no family, until Wendy, anyway. There aren’t going to be missing person’s reports. No family or friends looking for closure.”
“So you’re saying there’s no reason to find them?” Ronnie sighed. From the standpoint of what the department could do with limited funds, she had a point, but it stung. It was like saying those women didn’t matter. However, spending resources on a crime they couldn’t prosecute wasn’t going to go over well with the brass.
She looked at her Commander. “I think we should follow the churches back, on the chance we find another murder that may have happenedhere.”
“We’re going to put him away for murder without doing that, Ronnie.” He used her name, which meant this was a conversation and not him making an edict as Commander.
“Yes, Sir, we are. I’d still like to make sure there isn’t something important we’re missing. Wemightsolve a cold case while we’re at it — someone with family, before he learned to find people no one cared about.”
He sighed. “Send your junior detectives out. I want your core team focused on making sure we have him dead to rights onthismurder.”
“Thank you, Commander.”
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