Page 40 of To All the Guys I Killed Before

Rue turns a glare on the dead man in the chair. “And McEwan said he couldn’t afford the HVAC maintenance at his properties.”

“And this piece of shit skated by with nothing but a fine,” Braunstein mutters. “Let’s run down the contractor to see when and how it was installed.”

When Rue crouches in front of the fireplace, my palms start to sweat in the gloves she gave me to wear. Here we go.

“I’m going to guess the first problem is this big box of decorative firewood.” She snaps a photograph then nods at the crime-scene tech, who shifts the box out of the way. “Looks like it was blocking half the air intake vent.”

“So, uh.” I hunch my shoulders even more than usual, projecting both soft and useless. “Did the log basket cause… that?”

I slide a quick glance at McEwan’s body, then make a show of turning back with a shudder.

“Maybe not on its own,” the tech says. “But check this out.”

He’s been fishing around in the vent with a long pair of tongs and straightens triumphantly. Everyone in the room moves closer to see that he’s holding up an iridescent-blue rock the size of a marble.

“That’s not supposed to be in there,” the tech helpfully explains. “And neither are its two buddies.” He pulls them out one by one and carefully places them into evidence bags. I could save him some time by telling him I wore gloves when I stuck them in the vent, but some things a lab tech’s got to find out for himself. “Now let’s see about the rest of it.”

He gets to work unscrewing the vent cover and carefully works it free as I really start to sweat.

This is what could trip me up. McEwan actually kept the fireplace vent extremely clean; I’m the one who packed the inside with compacted lint and other debris three days ago to mimic natural sediment buildup and to start raising the overall CO levels in the house.

“Gross,” is the tech’s scientific assessment when he finally exposes the innards, and the police on the scene murmur their agreement. Rue fires off a few shots of the mess packed into the vent, and even Bart pushes himself off the wall to peer over her shoulder.

“Looks like his properties weren’t the only places he was skimping on maintenance,” he says.

Rue’s thoughtful gaze travels over the house around us. “It’s weird. The rest of his house is clean. Why would he let this go, especially since he paid so much for it?”

Her gaze travels up the marble obelisk, then cuts to the body on the chair before coming to rest on me. Her amber eyes go cold as they narrow on my face.

Oh fuck. I must’ve left something behind, something pointing to me like a flashing neon sign. Rue knows, and she’s about to announce it in the middle of a houseful of cops with guns.

Five hundred and eighty-four days later, here I am: the dumbass love-struck serial killer who happily followed his woman right into a trap.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Rue

“Final Destination.”

Hugo’s nostrils flare at my soft murmur. “What?”

“Oh. Nothing,” I say quickly.

Sloppy. Stupid.

I’ve been enjoying talking Hugo through my process so much I forgot where sharing and caring needed to stop.

In my almost six years working for the ME’s office, I’ve come across a handful of elaborate accident scenes that were a little… off. Wound geometry that didn’t quite match the likely angle of impact for someone who slipped getting out of the bathtub. A highball glass sitting on the pristine end table, not the one covered in moisture rings from the ghosts of old-fashioneds past. An overdose sprinkled with a light dusting of the talc you find inside disposable gloves.

A good medicolegal death investigator would document the hell out of those discrepancies, have the police techs bag up the evidence, and prepare a report suggesting a nonnatural death requiring a thorough investigation.

I’m a very good medicolegal death investigator, but I did none of those things in the half dozen cases that immediately spring to mind, and there’s one very good reason for that: each of the dead men was already on my list or would’ve ended up there eventually. So I brushed away the powder and explained how the dead guy might’ve been twisted when he shattered his skull against the bathroom vanity. And that highball glass? Hey, people sometimes switch hands when it’s a three-cocktail kind of night. Bart rarely bothers to review my work before I submit it, and if I’ve written a logical, sound, and convincing report—which I do, always—the ME signs off with zero reservations.

After all, what’s more believable: a series of unfortunate events leading to a death in the home, or a meticulous serial killer hard at work staging elaborate Rube Goldberg mishaps? I even joked about it with Fi, saying it was like the horror-movie version of death was out there Final Destination-ing on my behalf.

But now I’ve met Gomez. He stages his kills to look like accidents and goes after targets like Aaron McEwan, who was on my own “someday” list. Hell, Gomez even told me he had a project to keep himself busy until we meet again.

This is Gomez’s kill. Those other cases were probably his too.