She thought for a minute and decided to add Steve Cochran to the list. He had dated Vicki and had reacted oddly to Carla’s picture. If nothing else, he was a member of BodyFit and could therefore be expected to have had some contact with Carla. Maybe Judy, too, on her one visit there. But he’d had no connection to Trish that anyone was aware of, although, since he worked for the city, he could have seen Trish. Occasionally the police were called to homes for whatever reason and found conditions that warranted calling the Health Department, so he could have even been on calls with her.
Jen suddenly remembered Al’s admonishment the day of Cochran’s interview. He had begged her not to antagonize the men the way she had Cochran. She also remembered Cochran’s hostility and threatening manner. Could he have followed them because of her?
She shook her head, uneasy with the thought. It didn’t hold up to logic. After all, if he followed them because he was angry with her, then why not come after her?
She was approaching her starting point again and felt herself tiring. She was getting out of shape. Four miles never used to tire her, and she still had to get home. Of course, she thought, smiling, after last night, I should be thankful I can still walk.
Her mind returned to the cases. There were other connections so obvious no one bothered mentioning them. The most obvious was the fact that the victims were all female. She’d read of cases where the victims bore a similar physical resemblance to one another, but that didn’t apply here. Another similarity was the fact that all lived alone. No one had made much of this, assuming it was simply a matter of convenience for the killer.
She slipped through the opening in the hedge and huffed up the sidewalk, her thighs burning. Okay, she thought, what else did they have in common? They were all divorced females, living alone. They were all white, and all were in their twenties.
She stopped suddenly in the middle of the sidewalk. Divorced! All four victims were divorced. What’s more, they had all been divorced at about the same time. Was that a coincidence? If it was, it was at least a coincidence that included all four victims.
Jen remembered a time when most newspapers printed divorce announcements, but nowadays that information was available online, so most had stopped wasting ink and paper by printing them. An exception was a local free paper called The Eye. She’d picked it up a couple of times after its initial appearance in town and been disgusted by its sensationalism. It only printed stories that appealed to people who enjoyed mean gossip or did its best to slant them that way. The money was made from the ads, which also slanted toward the more tawdry—strip clubs, a Hustler store, impotence cures of questionable validity. Every Thursday the boxes were filled with the latest edition, and sadly, the boxes were usually empty by the next day.
One of The Eye’s more popular features was the court news. If you wanted to know if your neighbor had been caught drunk driving, urinating in public, or worse, The Eye would tell you. They would also tell you if your neighbor had been sued for divorce and would remind you of that fact when the divorce was actually granted. The announcements weren’t printed every week but saved until there were enough to bother printing. Judy, Carla, Vicki, and Trish had all been divorced within a two- or three-week period. Had their notices been in the same edition? She began running again, ignoring her fatigue, anxious to get back to the apartment and try the idea out on Will.
He was still asleep, his snoring louder than when she had left. He snores, she thought, first mark in the minus column for him. Letting her eyes roam over his parts that weren’t covered by the blankets, she decided she might be able to put up with a little noise.
She took her robe and slippers and tiptoed out of the room. She showered and shampooed in the hall bath, covered her body with perfumed lotion, dried her hair, then fluffed out the curls with a pick. No makeup, but not too scary, she thought, looking in the mirror. I guess he’ll be able to stand the shock of waking up to me.
He was more than able to stand it as he proved when she kissed him awake. He groaned, opened his eyes, and reached for her, pulling her onto the bed, his hardness pushing at her through her robe. She kissed him back and decided she didn’t have to tell him her idea for a few more minutes.
“I think you’re trying to kill me,” she said afterwards, as she snuggled into the crook of his arm.
“Can’t take the pressure, huh?” He kissed the top of her head.
“Oh, now wait just a minute! I’ll have you know I jogged five miles this morning while you were still snoring!”
“You jogged five miles? After last night?” He groaned. “And I thought women were supposed to be the weaker sex.”
“Will, I think I might have come up with the common denominator.”
She rose up on her elbow and looked at him. Discussing murder within minutes after making love might be a mood killer, but she couldn’t wait any longer to try her idea out on him. She told him her theory. By the time she was done, Will was sitting on the edge of the bed, reaching for his robe.
“I think it’s the best idea we’ve got,” he said. “Let me get cleaned up, and we’ll go check it out.”
Jen
