And she had a feeling every second was going to count.
“What are you doing here, Dean?” she breathed.
He looked frustrated. Unhappy. “I didn’t want to come. I had to.”
She wondered if she could get out through the slider, which was on the opposite side of the room, but thanks to the scare she’d been given by her last visitor, she’d secured it with a broom handle so it couldn’t be lifted off its track. By the time she removed the handle, unfastened the latch and slid the door open, it’d be too late. “No one made you come here.”
“You don’t understand. It was my fault.”
Envisioning poor, frightened, mother-of-three Sherrilyn, who might’ve been down this road before her, Francesca backed slowly toward the bed. She’d left her pepper spray under the blankets and needed to find it. But it was only a two-ounce can, not large enough to see easily. Would she be able to lay her hands on it—and spray Dean before he overtook her?
There was a small chance she could. If she moved fast and the can wasn’t tangled in the bedding…
“What was your fault?” she asked.
“The panties. I’m the one who hid them in Butch’s truck.”
Trying to put the bed between them, she veered to the left as she stepped away from him. “What panties?”
If he knew she was stalling, he didn’t let on. “You know the ones. You took them. I need them back. If you cooperate, this night will end a lot better than if you don’t.”
She managed to clear the bed while there was still ten feet or so between them. “What if I don’t have the panties?”
“You have to have them. They’re not at the salvage yard.”
“What if I do have them? Why would you care about some underwear I picked up in the yard, Dean?”
He had an object in his hands—not a bat, not that large. She couldn’t make out any details in the dark, but she was almost positive it was a piece of rope.
“Don’t play stupid,” he said. “It insults my intelligence.”
She might be battling the effects of a sleeping pill, but he sounded chillingly lucid. Struggling with the dull-witted feeling the medication gave her, she changed tactics. “So you’re the one?”
“The one who what?”
“Who’s been beating women to death.”
He grimaced. “No. Of course not. It’s Butch. You know that.”
She was no longer so sure. Dean could’ve followed him the night he met April at the Pour House, could have murdered her in an attempt to set up his brother-in-law. If Dean was indeed a sociopath, the sociopath who’d murdered seven women over a span of five years, what was one more? And there was certainly no love lost between the two men. Seeing that Butch went to prison would be a decisive way to remove him from the salvage yard without a body and without being blamed by Paris or their parents. It might even have been Dean who placed that business card from the bar near the bodies in Dead Mule Canyon.
The only problem with this reasoning was the fact that Dean had admitted to putting the panties in Butch’s jockey box. If he wanted them to be found, why was he here, hoping to retrieve them? Had he changed his mind? Had he realized that his plan could backfire and bring him under police scrutiny? “How do you know it’s Butch?” she asked.
“Who else could it be? Besides, there are certain signs.”
“Like…”
He started coming around the bed, so she jumped on top of it, planning to hop off the other side if he ever abandoned that spot between her and the door.
But he stopped, choosing to guard against the possibility that she could dart past him and beat him out of the house. “His eyes,” he said. “His eyes are empty. And his heart is cold.”
Attempting to locate her pepper spray with her feet, Francesca inched to one side. How had she been positioned while holding it? Had she been on the right or the left? And where might it have gone during her conversation with Investigator Finch, when the desire for a sleeping pill and a hot bath had superseded her fear?
She’d been too preoccupied, couldn’t remember letting it go. Or was her fuzzy memory because of the sedative? “Paris doesn’t seem to think he’s so bad.”
“Paris loves him. She’s blind to his faults. Besides, she hasn’t witnessed his handiwork. I have.”
“Handiwork” likely meant the kind of brutal murder suffered by April Bonner—and the others, as well. His words raised the hair on the back of Francesca’s neck. But she wasn’t convinced he was telling the truth, not after learning about Sherrilyn. Was Dean projecting his own actions on to someone else? Someone who seemed capable of killing? Someone he’d hoped to frame? “You’ve seen him kill?”
“I’ve seen the body.”
“What body, Dean? Sherrilyn’s? Or Julia’s?”
Dean jerked as if she’d shot him. Had he taken one more step, Francesca would’ve had no choice but to dive for the pepper spray, even though she hadn’t located it yet in the bedding.
“How do you know about them?” he asked.
“I’ve been doing my research. They’re dead, right? You killed them.”
“No.” Seeming stricken, he shook his head. “Sherrilyn’s not dead. She’s just…missing. I’ve been looking for her for years. Almost every night. All over. I’ll find her eventually.”
His voice sounded so childlike. Had he slipped into a psychotic episode? And, if so, would that help or hurt her chances of getting out of this alive? “What about the others?”
“Don’t confuse me. This—this isn’t about anyone else.”
“Who’s Julia, Dean? Where did she come from?”
“Why should I tell you? I can’t trust you. You’re not my friend. I tried to be nice. But you—you weren’t interested.” He moved forward again. “I need to think of my mother. What did you do with the panties?”
What did this have to do with Elaine Wheeler?
Francesca came up against the headboard. She still hadn’t found the pepper spray, but making a run for it seemed just as big a gamble as a search. “They’re on their way to a police lab. So this is pointless, Dean. You might as well go home and not get yourself into any more trouble. If there’s DNA on those panties, the police will build a case against you, and they’ll put you in prison.”
“Why me? I haven’t killed anyone! And I’m not going to kill you. Whether you die is up to Butch. He’s the murderer.”