CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

BECCA

We arrive at the pizza joint seconds apart; on the way, I made sure that Ben made the same lights behind me. When we walk in together, a hostess—a young thing, no doubt a student at the local university, like most of the staff—greets us.

“Two?” she asks cheerfully. Her name tag reads Kandee. Definitely a local. Parents in this area love using “creative” spellings, though hers isn’t nearly as weird as some I’ve seen.

“Yes,” Ben and I say at the same time.

She consults the floor plan of tables on the podium before her and grabs a dry-erase marker, but before she can assign us a table, Ben chimes in.

“Could we sit somewhere private? Say, this booth?” He points at the floor plan; he’s done this before. I’m guessing he’s talked to a lot of sources here. But I’m not a source. I’ll confirm that lunch is off the record just as soon as we’re settled.

“Sure thing,” Kandee says. She circles a different table, pushes a button, and grabs two menus. “This way.”

She leads us to a corner booth, where Ben and I sort of end up sitting beside each other, sort of across. Our server appears quickly. Her tag says EmmaLeigh, but she introduces herself without a pause, so it sounds like Emily. Ben’s taking a drink of water right then and nearly does a spit take.

“EmmaLeigh,” I repeat, feigning interest. “Interesting spelling. Where are you from?”

“Oh, I grew up just a few minutes north of here. Born and raised in Red Grove.”

I catch Ben hiding a smile behind his hand; the fact that we have the same sense of humor about this local quirk is like water on parched ground. I relax into the booth’s padding and order a small personal pizza with a side salad.

When we’re alone again, Ben shifts so he’s facing me a bit more, and I do the same. “Tell me about Jenn.”

My face must give away my concern about my being a source and this being an interview because he quickly jumps in. “Only if you want to. Shoot. It’s hard to take off the reporter hat. I swear this isn’t a trick. I’m not Ben Winsley the journalist right now. This conversation isn’t official. It’s off the record. All of that. Promise.”

I needed that assurance—how much, I didn’t know until I got it. “It’s all good,” I say and stroke my thumb along the fog of my water glass. “About Jenn . . .” I shrug and finally settle with something that probably sounds cliché but is one hundred percent true. “Jenn was the best friend you could ever have. We were more than close. We were practically sisters. Neither of us has family, so we became each other’s family.”

“Wow. Losing her is an even bigger loss to you, then,” Ben says. He shakes his head as if he put his foot into his mouth. “Sorry. That probably sounded like a hollow platitude—”

“I know you mean it,” I assure him, putting a hand on his arm resting on the table. “So thanks. Really. There’s not exactly a good Hallmark card for something like this. There are no right words.”

Neither of us says anything for a moment, and I appreciate that he’s giving me space to think and feel. EmmaLeigh returns with our food, asks if we need anything else, then leaves, throwing a smile and waving in our direction. We’re back to companionable silence as we take our first bites.

“I’m still trying to grasp that she’s really gone, you know?” I say. “Even though I have her ashes in my car. Even though I’m taking care of her baby—even though I found her body. I know she’s gone. But . . . this isn’t how it’s supposed to be.” I stare at a crouton in my salad for a few seconds and wonder just how much Ben knows about the circumstances surrounding Jenn’s death.

As far as I can tell, no one but the police and I know about Rick’s history. Now I can’t help but worry. If the press—someone like Ben—were to reveal Rick’s past as part of their coverage, would it help keep Rick behind bars? I have no idea, but I think it could help. Ben could do more research. He’d know how to find the kinds of thing Jenn did, and probably a lot more.

If that information gets to the press, I have to remain secret as the source. Detective Andrus would need to think it could have been someone on his team who talked to the press, or maybe that Ben’s a great reporter who dug into Rick’s past and figured things out.

I reach for my purse and withdraw my phone. After unlocking it, I glance at Ben. “I, uh, learned some things about Jenn and Rick—mostly about Rick—after.”

Ben raises his eyebrows, looking both curious and cautious. “What kinds of things?”

Here goes nothing.

“If I share some of them with you, promise me you’ll keep them off the record unless I give the go-ahead to use them.”

“You got it,” Ben said. “I promise.”

“And if I give you permission to use them—big if—you can’t name me as the source.”

He immediately straightens. The idea of a confidential informant has piqued his interest. “Have you shared”—he gestures toward my phone—“it with the police?”

“The majority is stuff Jenn found herself. Public information.”

He visibly relaxes a bit and leans in, intrigued. “Go on.”

“I’ve given most of it to the authorities. Everything but a couple of private recordings.” I look up from my phone, which holds the recording from the pen. I made a copy before handing everything over to Andrus. “Is it legal to record someone without them knowing it?”

“This is a one-party state,” Ben says with a nod. When I gave him a look that shows my confusion, he clarifies. “Only one of the two parties on a recording needs to be aware of it, not both. Some states are two-party states, meaning—”

“That both parties need to know they’re being recorded,” I say with a nod. “Got it.”

“Did you record someone?” Ben points at my phone.

“No. Jenn did.” I pull up the conversation she recorded at the restaurant. “A lot of what she found points the finger very much at Rick.”

“Hold that thought.” He reaches into a pocket and pulls out a pair of wireless earbuds. “To avoid eavesdroppers,” he says.

“Smart,” I say and quickly pair my phone with his earbuds. When we each have one in, I hit play.

I’ve heard the recording several times, but every time is a gut punch, starting with hearing Jenn’s voice again. The progression of emotions on Ben’s face must be like mine the first time—confusion shifting to disbelief that makes way for shock and horror.

Just as it ends, EmmaLeigh appears suddenly and asks how things taste and if we need anything.

“Everything’s great,” Ben says, and I smile my agreement, nodding. We wait until she’s out of earshot before speaking, and then we lower our volume.

Ben takes out his earbud. “Wow.”

“Yeah,” I say, taking out mine as well. “She did a ton of research about him and his past before and after this recording. His parents’ deaths, his previous wife’s death—” Ben’s mouth opens in question, so I clarify.

“Wives, plural,” I say. “She found another one. They all died by drowning . . .”

“That’s . . . stunning.”

“And disturbing,” I say. “The police have all of it, but I made copies. If you’re interested.”

“I absolutely am,” he says, then adds “Wow” again, shaking his head.

Showing some of the documents I’ve taken pictures of, I give a Reader’s Digest version of what Jenn found, along with my conclusion that Rick is responsible for all of the suspicious drownings in his life.

“He’s definitely a serial killer,” Ben says, still under his breath. He leans back on the padded vinyl. “I’ve never covered a story so potentially huge. Do you want this story out? Or do you want everything to remain quiet?”

“I do want it out the right way at the right time,” I say. “Maybe after the trial—assuming he’s convicted. Someone from one of the other cases might see it and realize there’s evidence that can be used to charge Rick with the other deaths. Everyone who has lost a loved one because of him deserves to know what happened and who is responsible.”

“His victims deserve justice too,” Ben adds. “If the story comes out sooner, and charges are filed in the other cases, that might help get a guilty verdict in Jenn’s case. Well, assuming the judge allows any of that to be mentioned during the trial. That’s a gamble.”

“I’ll email you everything I have.”

“That would be fantastic.”

We take a break from the conversation to eat a little. As I pick at my salad, I ask, “Why do you think he did it when he did? I mean, aside from being tied down by a wife and a kid. You haven’t read all of the information, but still—any ideas?”

“Why that specific day, at home, rather than a week later in a lake or something?”

“Especially when they were already planning a boat trip that afternoon.”

“They were?” Ben asks, his voice hitting a new level of tension, something that makes me aware of how weird that piece of information looks. And that it’s not part of public knowledge.

Also that it doesn’t fit the picture. The more I think through it, the more I’m unsure what to make of it. My thoughts spin like a dog chasing its tail, not quite able to grab it.

“Okay, let’s back up,” I say, as much for my sake as for Ben’s. “Jenn didn’t want to go on the boating trip. She felt uneasy about having a baby on a boat, and it was still so cold.”

“A month and a half later, it’s still pretty cold for a boating trip,” Ben says. He takes a sip of his drink. “Do you think that’s when he was going to do it?”

“That would make sense,” I say. “Jenn probably thought he’d do her in on the trip, and that’s why she didn’t want to go. Could he have changed his mind at the last minute to do it at home? Why not go through with it the way he’d planned?”

Ben tilts his head in thought. “Maybe Jenn refused to go on the trip after all, but Rick was determined to get it done that day no matter what, so he did it at home.”

“Still by drowning, but do it at home,” I say. “Like his first wife. Then he goes to work, giving him an alibi—though no one at the firm can corroborate that he was there, and the fact that someone else found the body is significant. Andrus told me that killers try to get someone else to find their victims to throw off suspicion.”

EmmaLeigh shows up to top off our soft drinks, and we thank her with smiles before Ben continues, his voice lowered even more, though now that our server has left, no one is nearby.

“If he was already planning to kill her on the boat, why change the plan the day of? He spent tens of thousands of dollars on that boat. Why not force her on the trip—he could have bound her with zip ties or something. Or even killed her at the house but dumped her body in a lake. It doesn’t make sense.”

“You’re right,” I say.

The pepperoni feels heavy in my stomach. My mind feels as if tumblers inside it are rotating, first in one direction and then the other. One falls into place, followed by another until the answers slowly unlock to me. The truth is showing itself. I can almost make out the picture.

Rick’s past says he’s a serial killer who has done away with multiple wives, all by drowning. He likely killed his parents by drowning as well—or at the very least, when they died, he realized that drowning was a great way to get rid of people. My guess about them is that they’d been drinking, and when they fell asleep, he heaved them overboard. However it happened, their deaths seem to have sparked in Rick a desire to kill—or to keep killing.

When Jenn died of drowning, the police had plenty of probable cause to arrest Rick based only on the evidence they’ve already made public: Rick’s fingerprints and DNA on the glass that held the antifreeze found in Jenn’s system. Her DNA was on the glass, but not her fingerprints. All of that fits with the theory that he force-fed her antifreeze.

Then there’s his alibi. He has no clear one for the hour before she was found—he claims he had a secret meeting, but no one saw him in the building, and even he admits that it was over about the time I found her. Plus, his smartwatch has GPS movements and steps around the house at the time of her death, meaning he might not have been at the firm that morning at all. I’m sure there are more things Detective Andrus hasn’t told me or released to the public, but even the little I know is damning.

And yet. As Ben says, the way she died doesn’t make sense with the boat trip planned for later that day. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing that definitively puts Rick at the scene the moment Jenn died.

What if he didn’t kill her, and it wasn’t a home invasion gone wrong?

What if, thanks to everything she’d figured out, Jenn knew he planned to kill her and Ivy at the reservoir? In that case, she’d do whatever it took to stop Rick. She’d become a mother bear: do anything to protect her baby.

The final tumbler falls into place. I understand it all now, and I wonder how I didn’t see it before. I think back on the tear-filled night Rick came over looking for comfort. I thought he was telling the truth then. I later figured he’d been lying, but maybe his frantic claims of innocence were real. When I visited the jail, he was practically manic in his insistence that he was innocent. That he didn’t kill Jenn.

What if he didn’t kill Jenn? Not because he didn’t plan to but because she beat him to the punch and made sure he’d be blamed?

I realize I’ve been silent for a while, so I try to come up with something to say—some explanation for Rick’s change in plans. “Sociopaths don’t make a lot of sense.”

“True,” Ben says, and he looks ready to say something else, but I hurry on, reminding myself to keep my voice low.

“He’s gotten away with killing before—several times.” I’m not ready to tell him what I’ve figured out, so I go with a different tack. “He probably got cocky, but when he saw that he was losing control over Jenn, his anger got the better of him. I bet that when she said she’d never go on the boat, he snapped.”

“Maybe,” Ben says slowly.

We sit there, nodding without looking at each other for a moment. Then our eyes catch and hold. Does he believe me? Has he figured it out too? Does he know what I know? If so, what will he do? He blinks, which breaks our gaze. He looks away and returns to his chicken parm.

He takes a bite, swallows, and without looking at me again, says, “I’m always out to find the truth. That’s my job. If Rick is a murderer . . .” Ben’s voice trails off. I can tell he’s choosing his words carefully, wanting to be both honest with me and true to his profession.

“If Rick is a murderer . . .” I prompt.

He looks up. “Then that’s the story I’ll tell. The story that will keep him locked up.” His words have an unmistakable electric undercurrent, something unsaid.

He knows.

And we’re on the same team. I’ll have to be careful with what I say, but for this moment, having an ally, even if it’s just someone who recognizes my pain, feels good.