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Josie double-checked the dates. “The homecoming game that Dean was playing in when he had his last concussion is the same date as this party. Both Dean and Holmes said that Sylvia never came to the hospital. They couldn’t even get hold of her. Carter drove Dean there. Holmes talked to her after the fact. Went to her house to find out how Dean was doing. That was when they kissed and she told him she never wanted to see him again. But this…” She pointed at the photo still on her screen. “This is where Sylvia was while her youngest son was in the emergency department with a head injury.”

Turner shrugged, motioning to the photo. “She was at work.”

What had it been like for Carter and Dean to know she gave all of her warmth to other children? What had it been like for them—even as young adults—knowing that their mother hadn’t come when they needed her because she was with those children?

“You don’t think it’s odd that Sylvia didn’t answer any of the calls or texts from Carter that day? Dean said he called and messaged her multiple times.”

“She probably just didn’t check her phone while she was working. Even if she had, yeah, it’s weird that she didn’t respond, but if Dean was playing football, he was what? Sixteen? Seventeen?” Turner argued.

“Eighteen,” she said. “He told me he was eighteen.”

“An adult then, and you said they’re two and a half years apart so Carter would have been twenty or twenty-one. They were grown men. She probably figured they didn’t need Mommy to hold their hands.”

Except that it wasn’t about her holding their hands. It was about a lifelong pattern of her giving the world one version of herself while giving her sons a much lesser version. This was just the final straw. The smeared lipstick wasn’t only about messing up the perfect façade, it was about exposing the ugliness beneath it—the ugliness she showed only to them.

Josie could hear the thud-thump of her heartbeat in her ears. “Turner, I’m telling you, the victims don’t represent women who rejected the killer or women he wanted to date. They represent a mother.”

“Wait.” Turner froze in place, his little foam basketball in his hand which was extended high above his desk, ready to throw. “You think the Last Kiss Killer is one of Sylvia’s sons?”

“Yes,” she said.

Fifty-One

Turner frowned. “Carter and Dean West have airtight alibis.”

“Are they airtight, though?” Josie countered. She thought about Wren sneaking out of the house. She’d been gone for hours before anyone noticed she was missing. Pretending to be asleep in your room, Noah had said. That’s the oldest trick in the book.

“Come here.” She pulled up Sylvia’s home on Google Maps and zoomed out just a bit.

Turner tossed the ball at the net, missing. Instead of picking it up and making another failed attempt, he came to stand behind her again.

Josie pointed to each location as she spoke. “This is Sylvia’s house, the church, the firehouse, Dean and Kirstie’s place and Carter and Erin’s home. They’re all within two to three miles of one another.”

Turner’s foot tapped on the tile. “What are you saying?”

She pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and index finger. “I’m saying if he left his phone behind and went to the scenes on foot, it would look like he had an alibi.”

“Kirstie was Dean’s alibi for Sylvia’s murder,” he said, a sense of urgency rising in his tone. “And she was killed next. He was at the church but did anyone actually stand over him the entire time he was there? That place is big. The building on the side has lots of bathrooms. Even if someone had come looking for him and he wasn’t there, they probably just thought he was taking a break or getting something from his truck.”

Josie turned in her chair, forcing him back a couple of steps. “Dean? You think it’s Dean?”

His lips twisted in confusion. “You think it was Carter?”

She stood up. The blood was still rushing in her ears. “Dean would have been eighteen and post-concussion when he killed Alanna Jarrett. The homecoming game was October eighteenth, and she was killed on November second. Not only would he likely lack the sophistication it took to pull off a murder without leaving anything damning behind, but he likely wouldn’t be in any shape to garrote a woman.”

As she said it out loud, the date of Alanna’s murder stirred the shadows in the back of her mind. November second. Eleven two.

Turner looked down at her with a severely arched brow. “The concussion could have made him volatile. Labile. That’s my word of the day b. t. dubs. Oh and b. t. dubs is how the youth say ‘by the way’ in case you didn’t know. Anyway, my point is that if he was labile, that might have sent him over the edge. Besides, he was the one who was injured, so it was more of a betrayal for him that Sylvia never answered any of their calls or messages while he was at the hospital.”

“But Carter was the one who always took care of Dean. He parented Dean, maybe more than Sylvia for all we know,” she argued. “He was older.”

“Dean lived with Sylvia when she was first attacked.”

November second. Eleven two.

The buzz she’d felt overtaking her body earlier intensified. She was so close to stripping away the barrier between her conscious mind and the thing that eluded her. What was it?

“He crashed at Carter’s apartment that night,” she countered. “He probably fell asleep and never even realized his brother had left and come back. Carter left his phone at home so when the police reviewed the contents, it looked like he’d been home the whole night.”