Elsie swings around in her seat. “I didn’t mean to gossip. I just—”
“Well, at least I don’t have to fuck anything that moves to keep my mind off my ex-husband.” Beverley’s words land the punch. “We all know what you get up to at those parties. If you weren’t such a—”
With a sharp intake of breath, Margo suddenly pushes open the door.
“Wait!” Elsie hisses, but Margot has already slammed it behind her and is tottering down the road.
There’s a movement from inside the garage, and Beverley turns to see Hank at the open doorway, silhouetted by light from inside, wiping his powerful hands on a rag. She watches as his eyes fall on the car. He looks furious to realize he is being watched.
“Shit.” Beverley ducks down in her seat and prays that he cannot see them. “Elsie! Get her back in the car.”
Elsie winds down her window and calls out to Margot. They have to be quick. But Margot, even in her heels, is already too far away to hear her.
A glance at the garage tells Beverley that Hank has disappeared back inside. She’s likely got only seconds, but she opens the passenger-side door and calls out after Margot. The next time she looks at the garage, Hank has reappeared and is striding down the driveway, his right arm held out in front of him.
“If you fuckers think you can steal anything else from my garage,” he calls out, “you better be feeling lucky!”
“Jesus!” Beverley hisses.
“Shall we hold up our hands or something?” Elsie begins to raise her palms.
As Hank nears, Beverley can see that he is holding a gun.
“Just go!” Beverley cries, and Elsie reaches for the ignition. But her shaking hands struggle to turn the key.
“Drive, Elsie! He’s got a gun!”
“I can see that!” Elsie wrenches the key once more, and on the third turn the engine splutters. The radio clicks on, “California Girls” blasting into the night.
Hank is only a few feet away and holding the weapon aloft. Hemust be able to see them this close. Beverley prays that he cannot make out the details of their faces, that he won’t jot down Elsie’s license plate number, won’t come after them.
The wheels screech as Elsie jolts the car forward, making a direct line for Margot as Beverley leans back to open the car door.
“Get in the damn car!” Beverley screams through the open window as they pull alongside her. Margot glances behind them, seeing what Beverley can see reflected in the rearview mirror: the towering Hank in the center of the road, the gun pointed directly at them. Margot ducks and barrels into the back seat. She doesn’t even have time to close the door before Elsie screeches off, leaving Hank Farrer behind them, suspicious, furious and more dangerous than ever before.
Thirty-Eight
“Stabbed in herown bathroom.” Paul Hunter plucks the cigar from his mouth and sighs out a huge plume of smoke. “What a way to go.”
TheSignal’s meeting room reeks of stale coffee and all-nighters. The news team is gathered around Hunter’s desk, having been called into an early meeting, and are hanging on his every word, their notebooks open.
Elsie is standing flush to the wall at the very back of the room. Her ears are ringing with what she has just heard. She is as bone weary as any of the reporters officially assigned to the murders—not least because she spent last night staking out one of the main suspects.
Right now she is struggling to accept that, even given Hank’s behavior and the evidence she and her friends have found, Hank might not be the man they are after. If this girl Hunter’s just told them about, killed as she showered at home, is a victim of the same man who killed Sarah, Emily, Cheryl and Diane, and the murder happened last night, it cannot be Hank who is responsible. He did not leave the garage lastnight. He did not speak to anyone. Yet this murder occurred just an hour from his workplace.
Unless…
“What time did the murder take place?”
The whole room turns to Elsie. Hunter raises his eyebrows but checks his notes.
“Chief said the call came in just after midnight.”
Shit.
Midnight. She was at the garage at midnight. Hank was most definitely there, which means he cannot have been responsible for this murder.
“And we’re sure this is the same killer?” Elsie asks, frustrated.
