Her story read like so many others. Jaden had seemed like the perfect boyfriend, almost too good to be true, but that all changed shortly after the honeymoon. He started becoming suspicious of her, demanding to know where she was and who she was spending her time with. Checking her phone and email, insisting she tell him her plans for the day and calling her regularly to see if she was where she told him she would be. Then he became controlling. They had joint bank accounts, but he wouldn’t let her have access to her cards, instead keeping them in his possession. He gave her a weekly cash allowance and demanded receipts to prove where she spent her money. Although she was smart and well educated, he told her she didn't need to work, that he and his businesses could support them, then isolating her further by distancing her from her friends until all she had in her life was him.
After that came the physical abuse. At first it was just the occasional slap or shove when they were arguing, and he was drunk. Then the violence escalated. He would punch and hit her in the chest or abdomen so that the bruises wouldn’t show when he paraded his pretty wife around in public. Their sex life also grew rougher. Jaden wanted to tie her up and paddle and whip her.
Eventually, after one particularly violent night a neighbor came to her the following day. It had been summer and a window had been open, the neighbor heard what had happened and offered Joynelle help in leaving her husband. Like a lot of battered women Joynelle had refused, insisted everything was fine, implied she deserved what her husband did to her, and begged the other woman not to go to the cops. The neighbor was persistent and after a couple of months she managed to convince Joynelle to leave her husband for good.
Allina had no doubt that the neighbor had saved Joynelle Kite’s life.
“She’s staying with her sister and brother-in-law. He’s a former Navy SEAL. She should be safe there,” Heidi explained. “So we have two suspects, are we leaning in either direction?”
“Jaden Kite is definitely the more violent of the two. So far although we know Hendrick Mint has a temper, we haven't had reports from anyone that he has gotten physical with his anger,” Matthew replied. “The Kites have been married for almost seven years, and over that time Jaden had grown progressively violent. It’s not a huge leap to go from beating his wife to murdering women who he had hoped would take his wife’s place but failed.”
“And the Fairytale Killer punished his victims by spanking them. Georgia had marks and welts on her backside,” Allina said. “Jaden enjoyed paddling and whipping his wife on her backside.”
“He’s also wealthy,” Jonathon said. “So he could quite easily have a quiet place to lock the women away where no one would find them. And one of his businesses is a limousine company, that would be the perfect vehicle to use in the abductions. The women would be comfortable getting inside one because they think they’re about to have their dream date with their Prince Charming. And it’s large enough for him to be able to easily transport an unconscious victim, assuming that he knocks them out once he gets them in the car so that he can safely take them to wherever he’s holding them. There’s also the added benefit that most limousines have tinted glass so no one is going to see that there’s a passed-out woman in there.”
“Okay, what reasons are there to think it’s not him?” Heidi asked.
“So far, we don’t have anything to link him to any of the women. Doesn’t mean he didn't meet them somewhere, or that he didn't just randomly choose them on the website. Which is absolutely how things could have played out since we know that’s where the relationships were founded. But at some point, he knew who they were, and we believe he broke into their homes to get information on them and to learn their clothing size to surprise them with the dresses for the date,” Allina said.
“He also claims he’s not interested in other women,” Matthew said. “And when we interviewed him, he certainly seemed like his focus was more on his wife than other women. I think his ego can't take that she walked away from him and not the other way around. He wants a woman that won't leave him, that wants to serve him, that wants to accept him as her master. But whether he would find other women to take that place or try to force his wife to be what he thinks a woman should be is still up in the air.”
Allina wasn't sure that Jaden would go looking elsewhere. He was a control freak, he had spent years dominating his wife. Sure, he would be angry that his hold on her had been broken and he had lost her, but she felt like he would be more likely to kill Joynelle, or abduct her and hold her against her will, than find other women. She might not be convinced, but she couldn’t rule him out either. He was violent and he wanted to find a submissive woman, both fitted with their killer.
“Hendrick Mint is the complete opposite,” Jonathon said. “He’s interested in pretty much any woman he comes across. When he was working at the school he didn't target and zero in on one particular woman.”
“Although it’s possible that the killer came across the women for the first time in the Happily Ever After Club, it’s also possible that he knew them somewhere else as well which is why he focused on those specific women in the club,” Matthew said. “And so far, we have Rick linked to three of the victims.”
“Three?” Heidi asked. “I thought we could only link him to Jeannie Jones from the school and Georgia Lars because he worked at her house.”
“Once we knew about the school we checked to see if Mila Drake’s twelve-year-old daughter goes there. She does. She’s in the seventh grade so she would have been there while Hendrick was still working there,” Allina explained.
“Nothing to suggest they ever interacted,” Matthew added, “but it’s another link. It’s certainly possible that when he joined the dating website and then realized he actually knew some of the women on there, that’s why he chose them and not someone else.”
“Rick claims that he was really interested in Georgia Lars’ roommate, Whitney, though,” Jonathon said. “He even admitted to committing the break in that Whitney mentioned. He says he took a pair of Whitney’s underwear. That could be a cover though. Maybe he’s just telling us it’s Whitney he likes so we don’t think he’d have a reason to abduct Georgia. If he was in the house then he could have been in both women’s rooms, so he could have gotten Georgia’s clothing size while he was there, and Whitney never mentioned a missing pair of underwear.”
“Although he hasn’t been violent as far as we know, personality wise, he’s the more likely of our two suspects to be wanting to play Prince Charming. He just wants someone to love him. Background for Rick, he grew up without a father, mother was constantly remarrying, men were in an out of her and her kids’ lives on an almost yearly basis. He doesn’t want that. He wants a woman who’s going to worship him,” Allina said.
“So two suspects, reasons for and against both of them. Who do we like for these murders?” Heidi asked.
“Jaden Kite,” she replied. “He’s violent. He has a very low opinion of women. He has the means to commit the physicalities of the crimes, the abduction and detaining of the women. And he’s smart, certainly able to work the computer side of things so that we couldn’t track him.”
“Hendrick Mint,” Jonathon said. “We can link him to several of the women. He has admitted to breaking and entering at one of the women’s houses, and we believe that’s something the killer does. He is on a quest to find love. He wants someone who’s going to love him, he wants the whole fairytale package, and judging from the conversations we’ve read between the killer and the victims that seems to be what our killer is after.”
“Matthew?” Heidi asked.
“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I'm not sure Jaden has the patience to play games with the women online. I can't see him looking up names that mean Prince Charming or making up stories about who he is to try and woo the women. But I can't see Hendrick having the skills to hide his tracks on the computer or having bursts of such violent anger that he would commit the level of violence shown on Georgia’s body. For all we know it’s neither of them.”
While they all knew that could certainly be true, they had nothing definitive on either suspect, Allina knew they were all praying that they were getting closer to finding this killer because none of them wanted to have to tell Rylla that her sister was dead.
* * * * *
6:39 P.M.
She didn't know what to do.
Mila had never felt so helpless in her entire life. She wanted to keep trying to fight her way out of the room, but she couldn’t. After he had bandaged her hands and left her alone, she had resumed trying to claw her way through the door. Her brain knew it would never happen, but she couldn’t stop her body from trying anyway.
Her hands hurt so badly, each time she tried to pry a screw loose it would rip off more of her skin and cause another rivulet of blood to trickle down her fingers. She kept telling herself to stop. That she wasn't achieving anything. That she was only going to make the man angry. But she just couldn’t stop.