The inside of the Simms house contrasted sharply with the overgrown front lawn. The floors were immaculately clean. Porcelain figures sat
on every available surface. Dozens of framed pictures hung on the hallway walls: Christopher in school picture after school picture, the same solemn stare on his face in each. There was only one picture of a man. I took a closer look and froze. The man was smiling warmly. There were a few wrinkles near the edges of his eyes. I recognized him.
Daniel Redding. What kind of woman had a fondness for doilies and hung a serial killer’s picture on her wall?
“You have his eyes.” Trina ushered us into the living room. She sat opposite Dean. Her gaze never left his face, like she was trying to memorize it. Like she was starving, and he was food. “The rest of you…Well, Daniel always said you had a lot of your mother in her.” Trina paused, her lips pursed. “I can’t say I knew her. She didn’t grow up here, you know. Daniel went to college—always so smart. He came back with her. And then there was you, of course.”
“Did you know my father growing up?” Dean asked. His voice was perfectly polite. He seemed perfectly at ease.
This was hurting him.
“No,” Trina said. Another purse of the lips was followed by an explanation. “He was quite a few grades younger than me, you know—not
that a lady ever tells her age.”
“What are you doing here?” Christopher threw that question at Dean from the entryway to the room, his arms crossed over his chest. His face was cast in shadows, but his voice left no doubt to his feelings about this turn of events. He didn’t want Dean in his house. He didn’t want Dean’s father’s picture on his walls.
Not that I blamed him.
“Dean is welcome here,” Trina said sharply. “If things go well with the appeal, this could be his home.”
“Appeal?” Dean said.
“Your father’s appeal,” Trina said patiently. “The evidence they planted.” “They being the FBI?” Michael asked. Trina waved a hand at him like
she was waving away a fly.
“None of those searches were legal,” Trina said. “None of them.” “My father killed those women.” Dean paused. “But you know that,
don’t you?”
“Your father is a brilliant man,” Trina said. “Every brilliant man needs outlets. He can’t be expected to live as other men can. You know that.”
The familiarity with which Trina spoke sickened me. She thought she knew Dean. She thought he knew her.
But did she kill Emerson Cole? Did she kill the professor? That was why we had come here. That was what we needed to know.
“It must be hard for a man like Daniel,” I said. Dean’s hand found mine.
He squeezed in warning, but I already had Trina’s attention. “To be caged, like an animal, like he’s less when really—”
“He’s more,” Trina finished.
“That’s enough,” Christopher said, crossing the room. “You need to go.” He reached for my elbow and wrenched me off the couch. I stumbled, trying
to catch a look at Christopher’s eyes, to know what he was thinking, whether he’d meant to grab me so hard—
One second Dean was next to me, and the next he had Christopher pinned to the wall, his forearm pressed against Trina’s son’s throat. The contrast in their skin tones was striking—Dean’s tan and Christopher’s pale.
“Christopher!” Trina said. “This young lady is our guest.” Her chest heaved with agitation. No, not agitation, I realized. Seeing the look in Dean’s eye, the way he’d moved, she was excited.
Michael walked over to Dean and hauled him off his prey. Dean fought Michael’s hold for a second, then went still. Michael let him go and patted the front of Christopher’s shirt, like he was dusting off the lapels of a suit jacket, even though Christopher was dressed in a worn and battered tee.
“Touch her again,” Michael told Christopher conversationally, “and Dean will be the one trying to pull me off of you.”
Michael told me once that when he lost it, he really lost it. I could hear it beneath his pleasant tone—if Christopher laid another hand on me, Dean might not be able to pull Michael off.
Christopher’s hands knotted themselves into fists. “You shouldn’t have come here. This is sick. You’re all sick.” The fists stayed by his sides, and a moment later, he stomped out of the living room and out of the house. The front door slammed.
“I’m afraid Christopher doesn’t quite understand my relationship with your father,” Trina confided to Dean. “He was only nine when his own father left, and well…” Trina sighed. “A single mother does what she can.”
Dean came back to sit beside me. Michael stayed standing, and I realized he was watching Trina from an angle that decreased the chances that she would notice his attention.
“How long have you and Daniel been together?” I asked. You aren’t
together, I thought. He’s using you. For what, I wasn’t sure.
“We’ve been seeing each other for about three years,” Trina replied. She seemed pleased to be asked—which was, of course, why I’d chosen that question. If she believed that we were on board with the relationship, it would feed into the happy little picture she’d painted in her mind. Dean was visiting. This wasn’t an interrogation. It was a conversation.
“Do you think this new case will affect his chances of an appeal?” I asked.
Trina frowned. “What new case?” she asked. I didn’t reply. Trina looked from me to Dean.
“What’s she talking about, Dean?” she asked. “You know what a crucial time this is in your father’s legal situation.”
His legal situation is that he’s a convicted serial killer, I thought. Based on my interactions with Briggs and Sterling—and Dean himself—I was almost certain this appeal was as fictional as Trina’s misguided belief that if the older Redding was released, Daniel and Dean would move in here.
“That’s why I’m here,” Dean said, casting me a sideways glance as he followed my lead. “That girl who was killed at Colonial? And then the professor who was writing the book?”
“The FBI tried to talk to me about that.” Trina sniffed. “They know I’m your father’s support. They think they can turn me against him.”
“But they can’t,” I said soothingly. “Because what you have is real.” I swallowed back the guilt I felt, playing on this woman’s delusions. I forced myself to remember that she knew Daniel Redding for what he was: a killer. She just didn’t care.
“This case has nothing to do with Daniel. Nothing. The FBI would love to pin something else on him. Left on a public lawn?” Trina scoffed. “Daniel would never do something so rash, so sloppy. And to think that someone else is out there—” She shook her head. “Claiming credit, trading on his reputation. It’s a crime, is what it is.”
Murder is a crime, I thought, but I didn’t say it out loud. We’d gotten what we needed here. Trina Simms wasn’t concerned with continuing Daniel Redding’s work—to her, the copycat was a plagiarist, a counterfeiter. She was female, a neat-freak, and controlling. Our UNSUB was none of the above.
Our UNSUB was a male, in his twenties, subjugated by others. “We should go,” Dean said.
Trina clucked and protested, but we made our way to the door. “If you don’t mind me asking,” I said, as we were leaving, “what kind of car does Christopher drive?”
“He drives a truck.” If Trina thought it was an odd question, she didn’t show it.
“What color is the truck?” I asked.
“It’s hard to say,” Trina said, her voice taking on the tone she’d used repeatedly with Christopher. “He never washes it. But last I checked, it was black.”
I shivered as I thought of the profile Agent Sterling had given us and felt the ghost of Christopher’s grip on my arm.
“Thank you for having us,” I managed to say.
Trina reached a hand out and touched my face. “Such a sweet girl,” she told Dean. “Your father would approve.”
