“What’s up, Hugh?” He kept his voice low as he made his way down the hall to the kitchen.
“Sorry to bother you so early, Butch. I know you can’t be happy to hear from me. But thanks to the forensic anthropologist we’ve had working around the clock, we’ve been able to identify some of the remains found in Dead Mule Canyon.”
Butch breathed a sigh of relief as he put on some coffee. All his secrets had been laid bare. He had nothing more to hide, so he didn’t really care what they learned about those victims. He had his own problems to worry about, like who he was going to hire to represent Paris and how he’d pay a good attorney if they were still at odds with her folks. “What do you need from me?”
“I’d like to run the names past you to see if you’ve ever heard of these women. Maybe Dean associated with one or more of them at some point.”
Butch sank into a chair to wait for his caffeine fix. The way Dean traveled around at night, Butch thought he might’ve killed those women. It wasn’t as if anyone had been watching over him. Dean certainly gravitated toward female companions when he had the chance, craving their attention and their love. Unlike Butch, his preoccupation didn’t seem to be sexual in nature, but he was definitely looking for someone who’d be as good to him as his mother. And knowing Paris would likely go to prison because of Elaine made Butch more than willing to cooperate. “I’ll do what I can.”
“Great. Thanks.” Papers rustled on the other end of the line. “One woman, a twenty-eight-year-old white waitress from Prescott Valley, was named Venice O’Cleary. You ever heard of her?”
Butch knew Venice. He’d slept with her. They’d had a brief fling after he’d met her while having breakfast at the Golden Griddle. He’d even given her a hundred bucks to help her pay the rent one month. After that she’d never answered his calls, but he hadn’t been all that interested in her, hadn’t tried to reach her more than three or four times.
“Butch?”
Feigning preoccupation, Butch cleared his throat. “Sorry about that. I got…distracted. What was the name again?”
“Venice O’Cleary.” Hunsacker repeated the information about her age and where she’d worked, too.
“Never heard of her.”
“What about Wanda Erickson?”
“No,” Butch said, but he’d had to stifle a gasp.
“She was a bit older, almost thirty-five,” Hunsacker was saying. “She came from Nevada, where she worked in a brothel for a few years. She called herself a masseuse once she hit Arizona, but she might’ve been selling sexual favors along with her back rubs. Do you know if Dean ever frequented massage parlors, ever talked about one or mentioned a woman named Wanda?”
Was this some sort of nightmare? Butch knew Wanda, too! Three or four years ago, he’d spotted her massage sign hanging outside the quaint little house she’d rented near old town and stopped in for whatever he could get—and always came away very happy. She was clean and she worked cheap. She also knew how to be professional. He’d made her place a regular stop whenever he had a few bucks in his pocket and the excuse of errands to run. The last time he’d tried to visit, however, he’d bumped into the owner of the house, who’d told him she’d cleared out. He’d assumed she headed back to Nevada to be with her sick mother. He’d never dreamed she’d gone missing or…been killed. What had happened to her things? Her family must have come for them. The landlord hadn’t mentioned anything being left behind.
“No,” he hurried to say, before Hunsacker could prod him again. “I’ve never heard Dean mention a Wanda.”
“Besides Bianca Andersen, there’s one more. We’re still working on the last three. Her name was Jane Pew, from Phoenix.”
Hunsacker explained a bit about her, too, as he had the others, but Butch wasn’t listening. Like April, he’d met Jane via an online dating service. The fact that he’d known, even slept with, every woman who’d been killed was no longer a coincidence.
He’d also known Sherrilyn, he realized. But he hadn’t slept with her. If she was dead, she didn’t fit the same pattern.
Still…what was going on? Who was murdering these women? Was it that little faggot Dean? Had Dean been following him around, killing any woman he touched? Why would he care that much? He and Paris had never been close….
“Sorry.” It was difficult to talk when he could scarcely breathe, but he had to deny knowing these women, and he had to be convincing. Otherwise, the police would return, and this time they’d take him to jail. Anyone would think he was the killer. These women came from different places and different walks of life. Who else could’ve known them all?
Dean? He couldn’t have followed Butch’s every move. Sometimes when Butch left the house, Dean was already gone.
Then it occurred to him. Paris. Remembering her rage when she caught him grabbing Julia’s ass, he stood so fast he knocked over the chair. Maybe what she’d done that night hadn’t been an accident. Maybe she’d gotten violent because she was used to getting violent…
Drained of strength, he let the phone dangle in his hand. When would she have had the time and opportunity to attack his lovers? How would she have arranged it?
Hoping and praying he was wrong, he tried to calm down, but he couldn’t. She must’ve gone through his phone, his office, his pockets. Checked up on him at every opportunity. Eavesdropped on his conversations. And those P.I.s he thought Kelly’s husband had hired? Maybe one or more of them had worked for his own wife. Paris must’ve met each woman while Champ was in preschool, he decided. Butch couldn’t come up with another occasion when she’d be away from the house for any length of time without his knowledge. Except when he was out himself, of course. He was pretty sure she’d picked up April on the highway where he’d left her or someone else would’ve seen her before she disappeared.
“Butch? You there?”
Hunsacker was still on the phone. What should he do? If he talked, Paris would be taken away from him and Champ for life.
He had to prevent that. It was his fault she’d done those terrible things. And he could make her stop. He just had to quit cheating and spend more time with her. Keep an eye on her for a change.
If only you’d quit like you promised….
Who knew how literally she’d meant that?