“I need a few minutes to talk to Mr. Fletcher and Ms. Bradley, alone.”
“Come on, Brandon,” Luke called out. “You can show Kenny your new bike, too.” With Kendall’s hand clutched in his, Elise’s youngest son tugged the teen across the yard, grabbed his brother’s hand and headed for the back.
Brandon pulled loose of Luke’s grip and gave his mother one last look as if to say, Are you sure?
Elise nodded, a reassuring smile plastered to her face. “Go on, honey. We’ll be in the house.”
Dragging his feet, Brandon followed Luke and Kendall around the side of the house to the shed where the bicycles were stored.
Paul’s gaze followed the boys. When they were out of sight, he turned to Elise. “Want to show me the note?”
The mention of the note set her heart racing again. If she could she’d have burned it and scattered the ashes to the winds, as if by doing so, her troubles would blow away. “It’s in the house.”
She led the way into the living room, taking no pleasure in all the warm and colorful furnishings that were so different from the Spartan look Stan had preferred. The note had turned her happy and sunny home sinister, a place where evil lurked, waiting to pounce. She crossed to the kitchen and glanced out the window.
Brandon and Luke had their bicycles out of the shed. Kendall smiled and laughed with the boys, admiring their new wheels.
Elise pulled the letter out of her purse and held it out for Paul to see. “I don’t know what to make of it, but I’ll tell you…it has me scared.”
Paul pulled a rubber glove from his hip pocket and stretched it over his large, capable hand before he took the note from her. He turned it over, inspecting the outside of the envelope. “Where did you find it?”
“It was in my mailbox cubby at school today.” Elise spun away and paced across the ceramic kitchen tiles. This was her home, a place where she could make new friends and her boys could grow up unencumbered by their father’s crimes. Fear turned to anger and she marched back across the tile to face the two agents. “Tell me, guys. What really happened to Stan? Did he, or did he not die in that fire?”
Elise’s blue eyes blazed, the anger a welcome change from the defeated and frightened young woman of a moment ago. Paul remembered the shock and disbelief in her face after she’d learned what her husband had done two years ago.
She’d suffered through the stares and whispers of the people she’d sat beside in church for years. They’d shunned her as if she’d been the one to kill those innocent women. They couldn’t understand how her husband could have committed all those crimes with her unaware. Didn’t she live in the same house?
Paul had heard the whispers, the catty remarks and the name-calling. When the reporters descended on her, he’d been there to get her out and relocate her to a private room where she, the boys and her mother remained out of the spotlight. All the while, she’d put up a strong front for Brandon and Luke, shielding them from the ugliness as best she could. They had been too young to understand and hopefully too young to remember.
He stared down at the letter, like so many others he’d seen on the case in Riverton, North Dakota. Had Stan Klaus lived through the fire and flood? They’d never found his body. “We’ll have the letter examined by our lab.”
Melissa pulled out an evidence bag from her back pocket and opened it.
Paul dropped the letter inside. “What did it say?”
Elise inhaled through her mouth, her lip quivering ever so slightly. “‘Dear Alice, for better or for worse, until death do us part. Let death begin.’” She said it in a flat, emotionless tone. When she finished, her body trembled from head to toe.
“Alice? He specifically said ‘Dear Alice’?” Melissa asked.
Elise nodded. She’d put that name behind her, even went so far as to consider her old self as someone who’d died along with Stan. Alice Klaus had been young, naive and stupid. Elise Johnson was savvy, aware and would never harbor a killer in her home. Ever.
“Have you or the boys told anyone your former names?”
“No. The two years we spent in Minneapolis gave us time to adjust to the new names. When we moved here, we started our new lives. No one knows who we are.”
Melissa snorted. “Someone does.”
“Question is who?” Paul held the evidence bag up. “Who would write a note like that and for what purpose?”
“Could be just a scare tactic.” Melissa shrugged. “Who have you made mad since you moved here?”
Scratching through her recent memories, Elise could think of only a couple people she’d angered. “One of my students’ parents, or maybe a student?”
Paul glanced up, his blond brows rising on his tanned forehead. “A student?”
“I have a bully and a talker. I sent the talker to detention for two days straight. Her mother read me the riot act, claiming I was denying her daughter an education, although she gets the same work at the detention center as in the classroom. In fact, she gets more. The only thing she doesn’t get is cheer practice and she’s benched for the next game.”
“Do you think that student could be using your past against you?” Paul asked.
“Ashley?” Elise shook her head. “She’s more interested in her next boyfriend than exacting revenge on a teacher.”
Melissa’s mouth thinned. “You’d be surprised what kids can do.”
Elise pressed her fingers to her temples where a dull ache grew into a steady pounding. “I’d be more afraid of her mother than Ashley. Gerri Finch is a nightmare in heels. Your basic overachieving stage mother.”
Melissa stared across the evidence to Paul. “Wouldn’t hurt to question her.”
“Does that mean you’re taking the case? Or should I have turned this in to the police?”
“Technically, we don’t have a case,” Melissa said. “No one’s been hurt.”
“Yet. That’s the whole idea. I don’t want anyone else hurt by my husband or whoever sent this. I don’t want to be responsible for any more murders.”
Paul lifted one of Elise’s hands. “Elise, your husband murdered those women, not you.”
She pulled her hand from Paul’s grasp, wanting the comfort, but feeling unworthy of it. “I should have seen through those late-night service calls.” She threw her arms in the air. “At the very least, I should have suspected something. Good God, I lived with the man.” The manipulative, verbally abusive, domineering son of a—
“You weren’t the only one who trusted him. He had an entire community snowed.” Melissa moved up beside Paul. “In most cases involving serial killers, the people closest to them never saw it coming.”
Elise rolled her eyes, a shaky laugh erupting from her throat. “Oh, that makes me feel so much better about the women my husband killed.”
“I
