Until Dark - Mariah Stewart [22]
“But even the FBI came up cold, Kendra,” he reminded her gently. “And you know, better than I, that your stepfather’s connections ensured that the best the Bureau had had looked into her death.”
“They missed something. They all did,” she insisted. “There was no note, Adam. If my mother killed herself—put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger—she would have written a note first. To me. To her husband. But there was nothing.”
“Nothing found.”
She looked at him sharply.
“There was nothing found because there was nothing to be found. My mother was not a quitter. If you’d known her, you’d have known that taking her own life would never have been an option for her. She would have considered it cowardly. After all the terrible times she survived in her life, why, when things were so wonderful, would she have killed herself?”
“And what does your stepfather think?”
“He agrees with me completely, of course. Neither of us has ever accepted the official version. Neither of us ever will.”
“And assuming that you’re right, what are your chances of ever finding out what really happened that night?”
“Less than a snowball’s chance in hell. Philip and I both know that.” She picked at a cuticle so that she had someplace to look other than at Adam. She didn’t want to see what was in his eyes. She suspected that he believed that she—and Philip, too, most likely—was in total denial where her mother was concerned. It was a conversation she did not want to have with him.
“Why these women, Adam?” she asked, changing the subject. “Why did he choose them?”
“Well, let’s look at what we learned about them today. Mancini always says you have to study the victim to find the killer. We know that Amy Tilden had arrived late to school for Home and School night because her son had a soccer game and her youngest daughter had Brownies that afternoon. She’d watched the game, picked up her daughter, then headed home for dinner. According to the statement of the next-door neighbor, with whom she shared a driveway, Amy and the kids arrived at the house right around six-fifteen and Amy’s ex-husband, Stan, arrived shortly thereafter.”
“Ex-husband?”
“He came over to watch the kids while Amy went back to school. He said he had dinner with them and she left at seven. He was the one who called the police when she didn’t return home.”
“How’d she do that? Get everyone fed and be back out the door in less than an hour?” Kendra frowned. “He bring a pizza home with him?”
“Nope. The extremely efficient Amy Tilden apparently had put something in her slow cooker before she left for work in the morning. By the time she left her home after dinner to go back to school, she had the dishes in the dishwasher and all three kids lined up doing their homework.”
“The Amy Tildens of the world humble me with their ability to organize, to keep everyone’s life in order. Why would someone want to harm a woman like that? And not just harm her, but humiliate her by tossing her onto the road like a piece of litter? What was he trying to prove?”
“When we figure that out, we’ll be close to finding him. Though I suspect it’s tied into the manner in which he rapes. Except for Karen Meyer, he has exhibited surprisingly little violence for so violent an act. Almost as if the rapes, too, were meant to prove a point. To humiliate and shame these women, to show his power over