Come With Me by Ronald Malfi

Author:Ronald Malfi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan

5

The Furnace Police Department was housed in a historic brick building that looked like it had once been an armory during the Civil War. There were wrought-iron bars on the windows and the brickwork appeared to have sustained a barrage of small-caliber rounds at some point in its long history. It sat downhill from a quaint stone church, the land between the two buildings studded with ancient tombstones and flowering dogwood trees.

I pulled up outside the police station to find Chief Lovering standing on the cemetery grounds, hands on his hips, scrutinizing a section of the stationhouse roof that appeared to be sinking. He turned in my direction as I pulled into a spot beside a police cruiser and got out of the car.

“Is that Aaron Decker? Mr. Decker, you’re becoming a permanent fixture around here,” Lovering said as I approached.

“I think you made a very big mistake,” I responded, moving toward him down an aisle of tombstones.

Hercel Lovering did not seem perturbed in the least by my statement. His hands still planted on his hips, he kept his gaze leveled on me, his face expressionless. He said nothing.

“I know you took Holly’s sweatshirt from her bedroom,” I said. “It was never in Hillyard’s house.”

“Is that right,” he said. It was not a question.

“Rita’s boyfriend saw you take it from the house.”

“Charles Zacks doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.”

“I also reviewed the security footage from the Exxon station from the night Holly was killed. She wasn’t wearing the sweatshirt. She’s dressed all in black. My guess is she probably stopped wearing pink right around the same time she stopped playing with dolls.”

Hercel Lovering took an easy step in my direction. For now, his hands were content to remain on his wide hips. “Mr. Decker, I’ve been very patient with you, feeling bad as I do about what happened to your wife. But I’ve only got so much patience to go around, you understand?”

“Holly’s killer is still out there. That man who stopped Denise Lenchantin in Hampshire County the same night Holly was killed? I think that was the guy. I think my wife believed that was the guy.”

Lovering frowned. “You’re talking about that waitress again?”

“You told me Lenchantin was approached around eleven o’clock that night, making it impossible for Holly’s killer to drive the ninety miles from Furnace to Romney in such a short time. But Lenchantin’s shift ended at midnight that night, not eleven, giving Holly’s killer an extra hour to make it out there.”

“Mr. Decker—”

“My wife also believed that the killer knew one of his victims, that he’d either gone to high school with her or was maybe even on the faculty.”

“You’re back on this serial killer kick,” Lovering said.

“Chief, I’m willing to sit down with you again and tell you everything I know. We can go over all my wife’s work, all the deductions and links she made, all the connections. I’m not a cop; this isn’t what I do. But I could show you.

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