Karen at the Carlton the night Liz was murdered. It hadn’t been the wine stain at all. He’d seen her before. With Liz. His confession only made Jack more sure he’d killed Liz.
“Then Liz did come back to Missoula looking for her daughter?” Jack said.
“She’d remembered seeing me that night with the baby but it had all been like a dream because of the drugs. She came looking for me after she’d somehow learned that the baby really hadn’t died. She put the ad in the paper.”
“So why didn’t you just not answer it? Ignore it?”
“I don’t read the personals, but my sister Annette noticed it and called, thinking it odd that it was the same day as Danielle’s birthday. I knew the moment I saw the ad. I guess I’ve always feared something would come of the…adoption. I knew Liz would find me eventually. See my picture in the paper or see me on the street. I thought if I met with her and explained—”
“So you met with her, secretly,” Jack said.
“She wanted to know about her daughter. I told her Danielle was with a good loving family, had a wonderful life and that she didn’t know she was adopted. I begged Liz to leave it alone because of all the lives she’d ruin if it came out. I knew what it would do to Annette and Danielle.”
“But you couldn’t convince her.” So you killed her.
“That’s just it, I did convince her.”
“Then why did she call Karen and say she’d found out everything and was demanding answers the night she was murdered?”
“She saw a photograph in the newspaper of Danielle’s sixteenth birthday,” Baxter said with a groan.
The same one Jack had seen. Just a wild shot a photographer had taken at Danielle’s birthday party at the city carousel. Like him, Liz must have recognized her daughter. It didn’t take much to figure out that Annette Baxter Westbrook was Captain Baxter’s sister.
“This time she wasn’t so easy to convince,” Jack said, starting to see the whole picture. “So you had no choice but to kill her.”
Baxter looked away for a moment. “Do you want to hear the truth or not? You seem to have already made up your mind that I’m guilty.”
Jack had always thought of himself as a good cop. A fair cop. Baxter hit a chord. “All right.”
“I asked her to give me time to tell Annette so I could prepare her and Danielle. I promised to call Liz the next day and let her know when she could meet her daughter. But I never got the chance before the call came about the murder.”
Jack shook his head. “It’s a little too neat. With Liz dead, your secret should have died with her. Except for Karen. You couldn’t be sure that Liz hadn’t told Karen about you and Vandermullen and the child the two of you stole from her.”
“You don’t believe me,” Baxter said simply.
“No. You put Karen in a safe house only to have it blow up. How do you explain that?”
He shook his head. “I can’t. The killer found out somehow.”
“Right. What about the second stakeout? You pulled everyone off when you saw Karen near the carousel, realizing you’d missed killing her at the hotel.”
“I called them over to the hotel because I thought Karen was inside,” Baxter said angrily. “How was I to know she’d tricked the officers guarding her?”
He could have found out from those same officers that Karen had gotten away. Baxter would have surmised that she’d head for the second stakeout, as stubborn as she’d proven to be about helping solve the murder.
“Did you know that Danielle’s father wasn’t Vandermullen?” Jack asked.
From Baxter’s shocked expression Jack figured he really hadn’t known. “Then who—?”
“Denny Kirkpatrick is the father,” Jack said, enjoying Baxter’s shock.
“No, my God,” Baxter said, taking it even harder than Jack had expected. He knew there was no love lost between Baxter and Denny but the captain looked more than shocked. He looked…sick. “I just didn’t want my sister and Danielle hurt.”
Jack stared at him. Was there something more to this?
“Didn’t you realize that killing Liz would hurt them?”
“I’m a cop,” Baxter said quietly. “I’ve made mistakes trying to protect my family, but I’m not a murderer. Why do you think I’ve told you all this? You think you have your killer and that this woman you care about is safe. You’re wrong, Jack. The killer is still out there and will kill Karen Sutton if you foolishly think this is