“Did you feel any remorse at all?”
Cosmo fell silent.
“Tell me the truth.”
“No, I didn’t. It felt good being in control of the situation.”
I closed my eyes and breathed in and out slowly.
“I wasn’t raised to have a heart. I didn’t even know I had one until I met you.”
“Virgil said you were obsessed with the detective on the case. You knew who I was all along?”
“Yes. I’ve read up on the case, and every time, they mentioned you in the local paper. After each body was found, I’d beg Virgil to buy me the papers so I could find out where you were with your investigation. I guess you can say it was… fun reading how you navigated each case. Do you know why I took over from Virgil?”
“Why?”
“Because I got jealous.”
“Jealous?”
“Yes, that he was leaving you bodies to find. I wanted to be the only one to leave you bodies. They were… gifts.”
“Gifts?”
“Yes, gifts. It was your job to find and solve murder cases. I gave you bodies and a crime to solve.”
His reasoning was so flawed. Who left people bodies as gifts? Yet the way he spoke about it so casually erased the horror I was sure I should have felt.
“Do you think I’m crazy?”
“I… think you’re a complicated person.”
“But you love me anyway, right?”
I kissed his temple. “I do.”
He pushed away from my lap and turned to straddle me with both hands on my shoulders.
“Here’s what truly happened. I took over the business… well, active duty while he handled the finances. Last year, I asked him where I came from, and he told me. He didn’t want to at first, but I made him tell him. He explained everything about my father—”
“Governor Roffe.”
“Yes. How he paid Virgil to kill me and my mother. But Virgil took me in, and they raised me. When I found out what Governor Roffe had done, I wanted him to pay. Virgil said it was a suicide mission and that we’d never get close enough to the governor to kill him. The day I sent off the handkerchief, and I was supposed to kill him—I had everything set up from across the street the night before—Virgil’s truck wouldn’t start, and I missed it. I knew he’d sabotaged the whole thing, but I wouldn’t let that stop me.
“It made killing him harder, though, because he started canceling his engagements. I was in the city with Virgil for another job when the man I was supposed to kill turned on me.”
“Virgil set you up?”
“Yes. But I killed them both.”
“Damn.”
“I went back to the farmhouse and confronted Virgil. I knew he couldn’t kill me himself and that’s why he hired those men to do it for him. That’s when he told me what he did. That he always suspected I would end his life and how he’s wanted to end mine since I made him kill his wife, but he never could. I gave him the gun and told him he should kill himself or I would do it, so he did.”
I hugged him tight to my chest. I should be repulsed by everything he was saying, but I was impressed. That he had been behind all this and we—I—never thought him capable. I didn’t even want to know how he disposed of the hands he’d cut off from those guys who had tried to kill him.
“You would have been free from his control. Why did you go driving in Webb’s car that night? It’s almost as if you wanted to get caught.” Oh my god, he did. “You wanted to get caught?”