His Other Wish by Rylie Dark

Author:Rylie Dark [Dark, Rylie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-01-09T16:00:00+00:00

***

“The ink appears to be the same,” Jerry said, “but we’ll have to send it to the lab to know for sure.”

Jessie nodded. “Has anyone called Forte yet?”

“I’ll do it,” Matt said.

The fact that he volunteered to be the one to call Forte showed how thrown off everyone was by what had just happened.

Ten minutes. They were ten minutes behind. Ten minutes earlier, and they would have had their killer.

“He must have filled the tub before he killed her,” Jerry said. “There’s no way he could have done all of this and then gotten away in ten minutes.”

“How, though?” Alex asked. “How did he get in without Vanessa hearing him?” She wrinkled her nose. “Or smelling the ink?”

“She was cooking with garlic and onions,” Jessie replied. “She wouldn’t have smelled anything. She probably didn’t hear anything either over the sizzling pan.”

“And she didn’t need to use the bathroom? This is at least an hour of work. He would have had to sneak through the window again and somehow get eighty gallons of ink into the tub.”

“He probably has a tank with a pump attached that he uses to fill the tub,” Matt said.

“Still,” Alex said, shaking her head. “It’s inconceivable that he can do this without being noticed.”

“No,” Jessie countered. “It’s not. The bathroom window faces away from the other houses, and it’s on a different side of the house than the kitchen. She couldn’t have seen him through the kitchen window even if she leaned out to look. They make water pumps that are as quiet as a ceiling fan, and Vanessa didn’t lock her upstairs windows.”

“No trees, though,” Frank said, “so how did he get in?”

“A ladder would be my guess,” Matt suggested.

“So, no one noticed the killer carry a ladder to the back of a strange house, then carry—or more likely roll—a huge barrel of ink around back, come back for a pump to attach to it, then return the barrel, pump and ladder to his truck or van or whatever, then come to the front door and force his way inside?”

“People are very good at not noticing things,” Matt said. “You know that.”

The correction was gentle, and Jessie imagined that he was reassuring himself as much as Alex.

“Why did he go to the front door?” Frank asked. “If he was already in the house, why…”

His voice trailed off as he realized the answer.

“He heard the phone call,” Jessie said. “He heard the damned phone call.”

She sighed and ran her hands through her hair. Their killer probably was waiting in the bathroom, but when he heard the repeated phone calls, he put two and two together and figured out that someone was on to him. But why go out front and not just downstairs?

To cut off her escape, she realized. If she was going to leave, she was going to go either to her car in the garage or out her front door. He wanted to be there to stop her.

And he had. He had somehow managed to kill another person literally right under their noses.

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