“Bennett was smart enough to know that if you found Digoxigon in his bloodstream, you could easily find out he had a prescription for it, so in order to make it look like Arthur died from a knife wound rather than digitalis poisoning, he goes back into the house after Arthur is already dead and plunges a knife into his chest. He was betting on the fact that you’d probably just take the scene at face value and call it a stabbing death.”
Carl dropped his head into his hands and I heard him mutter something under his breath.
“What?” I asked.
“We left the Nichols house just after midnight. And it never occurred to me to check Bennett’s alibi for the rest of the evening. Dammit.” He smacked his hand on his desk. “If what you’re saying is true, I bungled this entire investigation.”
I felt for Carl in that moment. No one could relate more to that feeling than me—after all, hadn’t I just made an equally stupid rookie mistake at my job?
“It’s just a theory,” I said to try to make him feel better. “And honestly, it doesn’t explain why he’d poison David.”
“Yeah, still no leads on that,” he said, drumming his fingers on his desk, now noticeably more agitated. “But his threatening you fits.”
I nodded. “If Bennett left his house before dawn to go hunting it’s possible he came by my house on his way to his parents’ land.”
I didn’t know for sure that I was right, but just the thought chilled me to my core. Any other day, I would have been at home. Had Thad not called me to come to the hospital, Bennett would have broken into my house and found me there very much asleep. What would he have done? Would he have stopped at a warning, or would I have become his next victim?
“Okay. This is good guesswork, but we’ll need confirmation before we can make any kind of official determination. Let me put Wilmore and Butter on some of this and talk to Lindsey Davis. Until then, let’s keep the details of the PO box out of the paper.”
I agreed and stood up to leave. “Let me know what you find out.”
“Thanks for your help, Riley,” Carl said as he walked me out. “It looks like we may have finally found our killer.”
CHAPTER 41
As soon as I got back to the office, I decided to come clean to Kay and let her know exactly what I’d been up to over the past few days. She listened without comment as I detailed all the ways that I’d ignored her directive to stay off the story. I held nothing back, starting from my meeting Carl at the hospital, my visits to the Nicholses and Brandon Laytner, and even the threatening note.
Her eyes narrowed and widened at a few points in my story, but she said nothing until I caught up to the present moment. I thought there was a good chance she was going to fire me when I finished talking, so I decided to make my last comment count. “But now that it seems to be over, I think you should let me write up the story.”
Kay crossed her arms in front of her and lifted an eyebrow at me. “You want to be rewarded by getting the byline after you directly disobeyed me and went behind my back to do your own reporting?”
“Yes.”
Kay gave me an eagle-eyed stare that I returned without flinching. After a few long seconds, the corner of her lip tugged upward. “Holman would be so proud of you right now.”
It ended up being a long night at the Times, and by the time I had gotten all the stories written it was past 11 p.m. Kay decided the attack on Rosalee’s would go on page one and the update on the Davenport murder would be on page two. I was getting my first front-page byline, and although I was physically exhausted, I was fizzing with adrenaline.
While I was waiting for Kay to tell me I could go home, I called my parents, who would be back in town just in time for Sunday’s paper. My mother said she’d never been so excited to read a newspaper in her life, and my dad, predictably, cried. Mom asked how Jay was and I told her he was fine, which was sort of true because I had no reason to believe he wasn’t. There’d be time to tell them what happened once they got home; no need to worry them while they were away.
I texted Ryan and asked if he could keep Coltrane until I got home, and he said he would. So once I got the word from Kay that I could leave, I told him that I’d be home in ten minutes. As I walked toward the newsroom door, I saw Gerlach Spencer sitting at his desk. I didn’t know why he was still at the office; as far as I could tell, he was just sitting there playing Candy Crush on his phone.
“Hey Spencer,” I said. “No hard feelings about the Davenport story, right?”
“Wrong.” He shot me a death stare. “You poached that right out from under me.”
“Aw, c’mon,” I said. “Your loss was my gain, amiright?” I put my hand up to give him a high-five—and I swear for the briefest of moments he considered doing it out of some sort of Pavlovian response. Ultimately he left me hanging, which was what I hoped he’d do because it gave me the perfect opening to say, “Geez, someone needs to relax!”
CHAPTER 42
I walked out of the office and noticed the temperature had fallen quite sharply since the last time I’d been outside. I was glad I’d taken my car to work that morning because after the day I’d had, a two-minute drive sounded better than a ten-minute
