felt betrayed, cuckolded. That’s why things were tense at the ranch that evening, why Carl didn’t stay for dinner. After he told you what he’d seen, you were angry.”
“I wasn’t…” Jacob started but didn’t finish his denial.
“According to the kitchen calendar, you slept with Anna that night, but around midnight, you got up and killed Laurel, took that lipstick and branded her as a harlot.”
“No! No! I didn’t,” he objected, his voice growing weaker, more strained. “I wouldn’t…”
His words trailed off, and I said, “I should have figured this out earlier. There were clues all along. Like I couldn’t figure out why Carl would have murdered Anna and the children. It didn’t make sense.”
I paused, and Jacob glared at me, so much hate in his eyes that I had no doubt that he wanted to lunge at me from across the table. But he was helpless, and he knew he was trapped like a rattler I once ran into up in the mountains. It was hiding under a rock and nearly bit me when I surprised it. That time, I backed off, retreated. That wasn’t my plan with Jacob. I felt my pulse hasten as I went in for the kill. “It didn’t make any sense for Carl to have murdered all of your family, to have cut your throat.”
“But you think it makes sense for me to murder my family?” Jacob jeered, his hand pressing on the bandage, I guessed to try to ease the pain. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Not if Anna knew what you’d done, walked in on you while you stood over Laurel’s body, or saw the body and knew you had to be responsible,” I said. “You would have worried that you didn’t have control of her. She probably said she wouldn’t tell anyone, but she might have eventually, if you’d let her live. And since you panicked and killed their mother in front of the children, you had to sacrifice Sybille and Benjamin.”
Jacob turned in the chair and crossed his legs. “You don’t have any evidence for all this,” he said. I’d thought that maybe he’d cry and profess his innocence, but instead he smiled at me. “Not a lick of it.”
“Well, there are your boots,” I said.
The look on Jacob’s face transformed, and I saw the beginnings of fear. It crawled over his eyes and froze his mouth in a straight line.
“You shouldn’t have used your own boots to make the print,” I said. “That must have been why you cut your hand. I figure you called Carl after you murdered Laurel, asked him to frame and murder Myles for you. By the time he got to your house that night, you had it all planned out. A bloody footprint on the kitchen floor to tie Myles to the crime scene. The boots that made the print found at his house with your blood on one. A fake suicide.”
“You’re mistaken,” Jacob said. He cleared his throat. “Those aren’t my boots.”
I waited, smiled at him, in no hurry.
“We sent Wilderness Shoe a subpoena, and I just got the information a short time before I showed up at your wedding.”
Jacob didn’t respond, just stared at me, his eyes freezer-cold.
“You really should have used shoes you’d paid cash for in a store, not ones you ordered from a website. They keep a record of those purchases. The right style. The right size. And I’m betting the report coming early next week will list your DNA as having been found on the inside. I’m sure you left traces when you wore them, probably on the inside of the high-tops where your leg rubbed, and on the shoelaces when you tied them,” I said. “But I don’t suppose you had time to think everything through, since you planned this in such a hurry.”
Jacob’s head dropped, and he cringed and again brought his hands up to the bandage on his neck.
“Hurts, huh?” I commented. “Of course, it’s nothing compared to what you did to your family. Think about how Laurel felt when she saw you wielding that knife. What Anna and the children went through when you killed them one by one. Who died last, Jacob? Little Benjamin? I bet he worshipped you, followed you around like a shadow. How terrified he must have been as he watched his father murder his mother, his sister. Or was it Sybille, that precious little girl? Then you wiped off the grip, the trigger and threw the gun out into the woods. You went in