But I Need You - W. Winters Page 0,38

sympathy in his gaze. Skov turns, still standing and paces behind him.

“I do. Trust me, I do,” I tell him and my heart beats harder, wondering what change brought him in. Did my mother say anything? Please, God, please, I will do anything.

“We found a note at the crime scene, did my partner tell you that?”

A flicker of hope lights with me like the small flame of an ancient furnace. “He didn’t, no.”

I was beginning to think Marcus never left it. Or it simply wasn’t found.

The small slip of paper flitters across the table and I make great effort to only touch the plastic edges of the evidence bag it resides inside.

Bad men die.

I don’t have the ability to read past the first line. My breath is stolen from me as my blood runs cold.

It’s Marcus’s handwriting.

He didn’t try to hide it. He’s pinning it on himself.

“We’re running forensics,” Gallinger starts to say but my head spins and a ringing in my ears drowns out his voice.

I can’t breathe. I can’t focus as the man speaks. Leaning forward slightly, I manage to control my breaths. In and out, in and out.

“Are you—”

I cut off his question, but I can’t complete the statement as I say, “I recognize …”

My throat is tight. With my eyes closed, all I can see are the glimpses of last night.

“Recognize what?”

He had to have known I would recognize it from the cases. Analysis will point them there. To my cases. The unsolved ones that the fucking reporter brought up only a month ago.

“I got my father killed,” I blurt out and I don’t know why it sounds so truthful to my ears.

My hands shake at the thought of this all leading to me. Shoving them in my lap, I try to decipher Marcus’s intent. Why lead them to himself? To cases I’ve worked on? Other than to keep me as a suspect or involved in some way.

“This is bad. I need …”

I can’t think straight as my head swarms with the onslaught of coincidence.

I come into town.

The handwriting of the note matches my cold cases.

I kept my mother from coming in, who now isn’t speaking.

The heat that runs along my skin is fire, but still I feel cold as ice.

“You can tell me whatever it is you need,” Gallinger presses and I don’t fail to notice that Skov has stopped pacing, watching me intently.

“I need Cody Walsh,” I tell him and focus once again on breathing in and out. My palms press against the metal table just to feel something in this moment. “When you run forensics, you’ll find they match cold cases. They’re our cases from years ago. We suspected a serial killer named Marcus.”

“You think he killed your father?”

“Or he’s framing me.” I whisper the fear at the same time a realization comes over me.

“According to the mortician, he was dead hours before you arrived,” Skov says, piping up. “Gallinger filled me in a moment ago. If someone’s trying to frame you—”

Gallinger cuts off Skov, saying, “Which is why it doesn’t make sense that the killer waited hours after the murder before fleeing the scene when your mother says she found your father.” He’s quick to find a hole in the story.

I’m silent, processing the evidence they have.

The logical side of my brain pieces together my own defense first. Footage from the gas station, the toll pass stations on the highway … there’s enough to keep me away from the time of death.

A sense of calm comes over me, but only for a moment.

“My mother isn’t a killer. This signature—” I start to say, but stop myself. The expectant gazes of two men searching for more stare back at me.

All I have to do is be quiet. There isn’t enough evidence to convict my mother or me but there’s also evidence to the contrary. Evidence that points to a killer.

But there’s one little statement I want to deliberately let slip. “You think he was going to kill my mother too? He was waiting for her and then I arrived? Or was he going to kill me?”

I’ve never been the best actress. I can put on a show for a courtroom, but tears? Real tears? Those are hard to come by under normal circumstances, let alone this.

“If he took off when you showed up …”

In this moment, though, it’s easy to cry, mourning for my father and also shedding tears of relief for my mother. “I saved her from being killed?” I let the