of blood.”
“Ask him what he did,” Marisol said.
Noah hung up his phone and put it back into his pocket. He holstered his weapon and went over to Marisol. “Are you wounded?” he asked.
“He hit me,” Marisol replied. “He came after me. He was crazy.”
“No gunshot wounds, though,” Noah said.
She shook her head. “I shot him,” she said.
Connie gasped and covered her mouth with one hand.
“I shouldn’t say that,” Marisol said. “I know. I should wait for an attorney. You don’t know what he did. Ask him what he did.”
Josie looked at Noah and gave a slight shake of the head. Beneath her hands, the life was bleeding out of Kurt Dutton. He was barely breathing. There was no way he could hold a conversation.
Noah said, “He’s not in a position to talk right now, Mrs. Dutton. Why don’t you and I go downstairs and wait—”
Marisol sprang off the bed only to flinch, the movement obviously causing her pain. She put her right hand over the left side of her rib cage. “He’s a monster. He killed them both. Vera and Beverly—and Beverly’s baby. Did you know that he knocked Beverly up before he killed her?”
Noah said, “Mrs. Dutton, you’re in shock right now. We can take a statement once you’ve been checked out by a medic.”
He reached for her arm, but she swatted him away. “I saw her once, you know. She came to the theater to see him, but I was there that day. I never forgot that. He told me last night that he had to go to the police station today. I asked him why, and he said it was about the city flood supplies. But then he called our lawyer, and I knew he was lying. All night I asked him what was really going on until he hit me. I asked him if it had to do with Beverly Urban’s body being found. He told me. He admitted it. He killed her all those years ago, and he killed Vera because she wouldn’t keep his secret any longer. She was going to tell the police the truth.”
Connie gasped again but said nothing.
Marisol continued, “I asked him what the truth was, and he said that he and Beverly were having an affair. When she was in high school! I knew he was telling the truth because of the girls.”
“Oh, Mar,” Connie whispered.
“What girls?” Josie asked. She checked for Kurt’s pulse again. It was barely there.
“My husband liked young girls,” Marisol spat. “When we first got married, it was just college-aged girls. Interns. Unpaid interns. He’d hire them from Denton University and then romp around town with them. Like I wasn’t going to find out.”
Josie looked at Connie. “You knew about this?”
Connie nodded. “My husband saw him with college girls a few times. It was obvious that he was… involved with them, but they were adults, so we never said anything.”
“But they weren’t all adults,” Marisol said. “Beverly Urban was sixteen when they started their affair. I asked him if that was why he killed her—because if anyone found out he was having a sexual relationship with a minor, it would have ruined his life. He would have faced prison. He said he never meant to kill her, only to scare her because she was pregnant with his baby, and she was threatening to keep it. She invited him to her house when she thought her mom was out and told him. They had a big fight about it. Vera showed up. Things got worse. He was going to pay her, pay them both, to take care of it, but Beverly refused. He said he took out his gun to scare her, to scare them both into doing what he wanted, but things got out of hand and he shot her.”
Josie knew this to be a lie. There was no scenario that she could imagine in which Kurt Dutton had shot Beverly in the back of the head by accident or in the heat of the moment. From Dr. Feist’s findings, Kurt would have had to be standing behind her, a few feet away, with her walking away from him when he pulled the trigger. But they were getting Dutton’s confession second-hand.
Noah said, “Why didn’t Vera go to the police?”
Marisol said, “I don’t know. He said he offered to pay her as long as she disappeared and never talked about it. He told her if she ever went to the police, he would tell them how she