“No, he didn’t disappear,” Valri told them, looking from one to the other. “It turns out that the infamous Bluebeard is dead.”
Krys blew out a disgusted breath. “That’s what he wants everyone to think, but he’s done this sort of thing before. He’s—”
“That’s what I told the police chief,” Valri said, cutting into what Krys was about to tell her. “Which is why the CSI unit chief is having the body flown out here from Arizona,” she told the duo. “‘Elmer Smith’ should be here sometime tomorrow morning with all the proper papers of identification.”
Morgan saw the stunned, disappointed look on Krys’s face. “How long has he been dead?”
“According to the report, he was killed a week and a half ago,” Valri said.
“How did it happen?” Krys asked, still trying to come to grips with the information.
“According to the detectives who were pursuing him, Elmer was in a car accident. And there was a woman with him,” Valri added. “He was fleeing the police and going over a hundred miles an hour. I guess Bluebeard bought into his own legend and thought he had a charmed life. According to the official report, he lost control of his car, and that’s when he flipped it over an embankment. When the police finally managed to reach them and pull them out, they were both hurt,” Valri said.
Right now, heaven help her, Krys’s attention was only focused on Bluebeard. “He could have faked being hurt,” was her first thought.
“He could have,” Valri agreed, “but he didn’t. Someone caught the whole accident on video. They’re sending it to me and I’m going to use facial recognition on it to make sure we’re dealing with the genuine article and that no one’s trying to put one over on us,” she told the duo. “But it does look like he’s dead.” She could see how frustrated Krys was by this latest development.
“I’ll let you know as soon as the body gets here.” Valri looked from one face to another. “But you realize what this means, don’t you?” she asked, waiting for the information to sink in.
Krys said the first thing that occurred to her. “That no more wealthy widows will be bilked out of their money and then killed for it in order to seal the deal.”
“Well yes, there is that,” Valri granted. “But it also—”
“It also means that if he was killed a week and a half ago, he wasn’t the one who tried to kill you recently. And in case there’s any doubt, he also wasn’t the one who shot Claire,” Morgan pointed out.
“What about the woman with him?” Krys asked. “Did she die too as a result of the accident?”
“That hasn’t been determined yet. She was alive when the ambulance took her to the hospital, but they confessed that they lost track of her after Bluebeard was declared dead,” Valri said.
“So she just disappeared?” Morgan asked, trying to get the story straight.
“Apparently,” Valri told him. “The hospital and the police are trying to sort all that out.”
“Meanwhile,” Morgan said, “We’re losing sight of the big picture.” When Krys looked at him quizzically, he said, “We still have someone out there who seems to want you dead.”
Krys merely shrugged as if that was of no consequence to her.
Valri looked at the other woman in surprise. “Why don’t you look more upset?” she asked. Maybe the full import of this development hadn’t sunk in yet, she thought. “This means the killer is still out there, waiting to take you down.”
“I know what it means,” Krys answered. “But it also means that we’re not any worse off than we were before, and at least now a lot of families out there finally get to have closure,” she pointed out.
Morgan shook his head. “You either have nerves of steel, or you haven’t grasped the full seriousness of the situation yet,” he told Krys.
“Oh, I grasp it all right,” Krys assured him. “But I choose to make the best of it.”
Morgan glanced over toward his cousin, and shook his head. “You are one strange, strange lady, Kowalski.” And then he told Valri, “Call me the minute the body gets here.”
“You might want to relay that message to Toni and Uncle Sean,” Valri told Morgan. “They’re the ones who are going to be handling the autopsy as well as the body in general.”
“What about the missing woman?” Krys asked. “Is anyone trying to find out what happened to her?”
“So far, no one seems to know,” Valri admitted.
“Maybe he kidnapped her and when she saw her chance, she wound up killing him,” Morgan said.
“That would definitely be poetic justice,” Krys agreed.
Morgan looked at Krys. “You know you, when the body gets here, you don’t have to—”
She didn’t let him get any further. “The hell I don’t,” Krys declared, anticipating what he was about to say. “All those families of those pitiful, unfortunate ‘brides’ aren’t the only ones who want closure. I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time,” she told Morgan. “I chased after these stories until I felt as if I was a member of all those dead women’s families and that this was being done to me, too.”
Morgan had been in that same position as well, having gotten so caught up in a case that he needed resolution as much as the victim’s families did. He knew all about that edict of not allowing a case to get personal, but being human, he couldn’t always keep things at a distance.
So he wasn’t about to waste words to try to talk Krys out of feeling that way. Krys was a big girl and knew her own mind.
“I guess we’d better go back and give Toni the ‘good’ news,” he said to Krys.
“I already took care of that for you,” Valri told her cousin.
He should have known, Morgan thought. “You notify Uncle Sean, too?” he asked.
She surprised him by saying, “No, I left that for you. I’ve got to get back
