told you Willie Lee was innocent,” Karina said, her mouth tight, “that he wasn’t the Moonlight Strangler.” Her voice was raspy but clear enough for Cord to hear the accusation in there.
The Moonlight Strangler had been a source of contention between Karina and him after Willie Lee Samuels was identified as the serial killer. And then captured. That had happened a month ago, after he’d attacked Cord.
Of course, Willie Lee didn’t know about the multiple murder charges against him yet because he’d sustained a gunshot wound and been in a coma ever since being taken into custody.
And Cord had been the one to shoot him.
Willie Lee hadn’t been able to confess. Hadn’t been able to confirm anything related to the dozens of murders he’d committed as the Moonlight Strangler. Or any of the other crimes for that matter. Still, Cord had been sure Willie Lee was the right man.
Until tonight.
If the Moonlight Strangler was in a coma, then who the heck had attacked Karina?
“He’s your father,” Karina added. “Don’t you feel in your bones that he’s innocent?”
“No. I don’t feel anything about him one way or another.”
It was a lie. Cord felt plenty. Plenty that he didn’t intend to share with her or anyone else for that matter.
Cord knelt down to make better eye contact with Karina. “Why don’t you go ahead and get in the ambulance? We can talk this out on the way to the hospital.”
She didn’t budge, probably because she didn’t trust him. She’d wanted him here only so she could say that she had told him so, that the cops had the wrong man in custody. But he glanced around at the signs of the struggle to remind her what’d gone on here. The toppled bales of hay and feed. The scattered tools and tack.
And the blood.
“You don’t want to stay here,” Cord reminded her.
He motioned for the paramedics to come closer and do their job, and Cord breathed a little easier when Karina didn’t resist. Once she was on the stretcher, they started toward the ambulance. Cord followed right along beside them.
Rocky didn’t attempt to go with them, probably because Jericho ordered him to stay put. No doubt so he could question the ranch hand and begin this investigation. Well, unless...
Cord stopped that thought. He didn’t want to go there yet.
Because the real Moonlight Strangler hadn’t done this.
“Make sure the horses are okay,” Karina called out to Rocky.
Rocky assured her that he would.
“I’ll meet you at the hospital as soon as the CSIs get here and I take Rocky to the station,” Jericho said to Cord. “Anything Karina says to you will need to go in the report.”
That last part wasn’t exactly a request, but Cord had already known it would need to happen. Whether he wanted this or not, he was officially involved. Partly because Karina had insisted on calling him. Also in part because anything that had to do with the Moonlight Strangler automatically had to do with Cord.
“You’ll need to drop the charges against Willie Lee,” Karina insisted.
Cord had been stunned with the news of this attack on Karina, but he was a lawman above all else. And a born skeptic. Being abandoned at a gas station when he was just a toddler could do that. Hard to grow up trusting people when most people he met weren’t trustworthy.
Karina just might fall into that category.
And that was just one of the many, many reasons he wouldn’t even consider trying to get those charges dropped against Willie Lee.
“Did you set all of this up to make Willie Lee look innocent?” Cord came right out and asked her.
She didn’t exactly look outraged by the question. Just disgusted. “You think I had this done to myself?” Her breath shattered, and the tears came while her gaze skirted across the two cuts she could see.
There was another one, on her cheek, that she couldn’t see.
The bald paramedic scowled at Cord, probably because he thought Cord was being too hard on her. If he was, he’d apologize later. For now, he needed to get to the truth, and the fastest way to do that was by not pulling any punches.
“Did you set this all up?” Cord persisted.
The glare she gave him could have frozen a pot of boiling water. “No.”
Cord didn’t want to believe her—it would be easier if he didn’t. Easier because it would mean there wasn’t a killer out there. But even if she hadn’t done this to herself and there was another killer, it didn’t mean Willie Lee was innocent.
One of the paramedics got in the driver’s seat. The other got into the back with Cord and Karina, and they finally started the drive to the hospital.
“This attack could have been done by a copycat,” Cord suggested to her. “Maybe someone who wanted to get back at you?”
If this had been a regular interrogation, this was the point where Cord would have asked Karina if she had any enemies. But he already knew the answer.
She did.
And Cord was one of them.
It was hard not to be enemies with a woman who was defending and praising a serial killer. But that’s exactly what Karina had done.
“You don’t know Willie Lee,” she said. “And if you did, you’d know he wasn’t capable of murder.”
It was the same argument he’d heard from her too many times to count. She considered herself a good judge of Willie Lee’s character because the man had worked on her family’s ranch in Comal County for the past fifteen years. A ranch she still owned now that her folks had passed, but she’d rented this place near Appaloosa Pass so she could be near Willie Lee while he recovered.
If he recovered, that is.
After all, the man had been in a coma for over a month.
“Willie Lee’s DNA was found at the scene of a woman he murdered,” he reminded her, though it was something she already knew. That DNA match had been confirmed shortly after he was caught. Since it was a verbal jab, Cord waited for her to get her usual jab back.
“It could have been planted, and you know it.”
Yes, he did. But there was the other match. “My own DNA is a familial match to Willie Lee’s. No one planted that. I had three labs repeat the test.” And each time Cord had hoped the results would be different. “How do you explain that?”
She huffed. “Willie Lee might be your father, but that still doesn’t mean he’s a killer.”
Again, it was an argument they’d already hashed and rehashed. “Willie Lee also matches the height and weight descriptions that witnesses
