Obviously, the cops had made up their minds. To them he was the man they were looking for. And they must have enough evidence to get a search warrant which meant that a judge also agreed that he was the serial killer.
What if he couldn’t prove that he hadn’t murdered anyone?
He could wind up in jail.
He could lose Summer, his family, his freedom, everything.
“I'm not who you're looking for,” he told the detectives as they took seats at the table. “While you're wasting time with me the real killer is still out there, free to hurt someone else.”
“Tell us about your time in Australia,” Detective Dawson said instead of offering any comment on what he’d just said.
Luke had no idea why they were asking about Australia. He didn’t want to say the wrong thing, but he also didn’t have anything to hide. Surely it couldn’t hurt to be honest. It was supposed to be the best policy, right? Maybe it was smarter to wait until his lawyer arrived, but he just wanted to get this over and done with and get home to Summer. “What about it?” he asked warily.
“How long were you there?”
“About six months.”
“Why did you decide to go there?”
“The woman I was involved with at the time was Australian. When she went back home, I went with her.”
“What did you do while you were there?”
“I was able to get a work visa, so I did some bartending.”
“Why did you decide to come back?”
Although he suspected everything he had told them so far they already knew, he answered, “I was involved in a fatal car accident. My fiancée was killed, there was nothing left for me in Australia, so I came back home.” Waking up in the car after the crash and finding Sadie’s lifeless eyes staring back at him was something he would never forget. He didn’t remember the crash, and although he had been knocked out in the impact, he hadn’t received any serious injuries, just a few bumps and scrapes.
“Spend any time getting to know Australian fauna?”
Frowning at them, confused about where this was going, he answered, “No. Why?”
“We know you're interested in snakes, you’ve had them as pets before. What about spiders?”
“I hate spiders.” He shuddered. Just the thought of one was enough to make him freak out, let alone seeing one. He couldn’t even stand those tiny little ones, and it mattered little to him if the spider was poisonous or not, he hated them all. “I get that it’s a coincidence that I happened to meet one of your victims showing her a house, and that I ran into Megan and Timmy, but it’s just that. A coincidence. Nothing more. My only connection to your case is that I had contact with three of the victims.”
“Or four,” Detective Bennett said.
“Four? Someone else was killed?”
“Henry Peyton is missing.”
Henry Peyton? The name sounded familiar, but it took him a moment to place it. “Summer’s next-door neighbor.”
“Where were you the night before last?” Detective Dawson asked.
“I spent the night at Summer’s. She was afraid to be in her home alone after the shooting.”
“But you weren’t thereallnight,” Detective Dawson said, his voice and eyes cold and hard. Shouldn’t the man be a little nicer to him since they were sort of related? And shouldn’t that earn him some sort of benefit of the doubt? If he couldn’t even get a cop who was married to his sister-in-law’s sister on his side, what hope did he have of getting any other cop on his side?
“I popped out briefly to run a couple of errands.” He had gone to the supermarket to pick up a few things and then home to feed his pet mice. That was it. Then he had gone straight back to Summer’s. She’d still been fast asleep, so he had taken a bath, eaten some dinner, then gone to bed.
“That’s not all you did though.”
“Yes, it is,” he contradicted.
“You stood and talked to Henry Peyton for several minutes.” Detective Dawson pierced him with a stern glare. “After the shooting, the residents of one of the houses across the street from Summer had security cameras installed. We reviewed the footage, and you were seen standing next to your car talking to him.”