“These bruises are from a hand,” he contradicted. “Someone put their hands on you and that is not okay.”
“It-it was …”
“If you say anything, I’ll kill you.” Jaden leapt to his feet and launched himself at his wife, slamming her up against the wall and holding his forearm against her throat.
Joynelle clawed at his arm as it cut off her air supply, while Matthew lunged at Jaden, tackling the other man and bringing him down to the floor, where he pressed his knee into his back and pulled out a pair of handcuffs and snapped them on.
Jonathon and two other cops rushed into the room and hauled Jaden to his feet. “I didn't do anything. I never killed anybody.”
“You beat up your wife,” Matthew said, disgusted. Nothing revolted him more than a man who put his hands on a woman or child.
“My wife,” he screamed. “Mine. She belongs to me. She can't just walk away. It doesn’t work that way. You won't ever leave me, Joy,” he continued to shriek as he was dragged from the room. “I'd rather kill you than let you leave.”
Allina held a sobbing Joynelle Kite, and Matthew hoped the woman would give them a statement. They could arrest Jaden for domestic violence, and hopefully find something that would indicate his involvement in the Fairytale murders. He was a dangerous man. He believed women were his property to do with as he wished. But they needed to move quickly, Jaden was rich and would have no problem posting bail. They needed to find something to keep him locked up indefinitely or he was never going to stop killing.
* * * * *
10:39 A.M.
Rylla pressed play again.
Elianna’s chubby little face filled the screen. And then a moment later her husband’s voice.
“You ready?” Josh asked.
“Ready,” she replied.
“Here you go, Elianna,” Josh leaned closer to the baby and popped onto the screen. In his hand he held a stuffed bumblebee. “Buzzzzz,” he said as he tickled Elianna’s tummy.
The baby gave a gurgley laugh.
In the video she and Josh laughed too.
“She’s really doing it,” she said. “She’s really laughing, that’s a real laugh. Do it again.”
“Okay, Mommy,” Josh giggled. “Buzzzzz,” he said again, and once again Elianna began to laugh.
“I love that sound, I could listen to it forever,” she sighed happily.
“You can listen to it forever.” Josh turned to the camera and smiled at her, then he picked up their little girl and tickled her tummy. “Laugh for Mommy, Elianna.”
“I want to get in on some of that perfectly pudgy little tummy,” she said.
The screen went black.
She had filmed the video just six days before the accident.
They had all been so happy, thinking they had the rest of their lives to enjoy each other. If she had known that in less than a week her family would be gone, she would have grabbed hold of them and never let them go.
As devastating as the loss had been she obviously hadn’t learned from it.
It hadn’t spurred her to fix things with her sister or her brother. She and Elliot spoke maybe once or twice a year, usually around Christmas when they got together for their yearly family gathering. Rylla had skipped the last two because she just couldn’t take the tension.
Elliot and Mila hadn’t believed her, and she hadn’t been able to forgive them for it.
When she was fifteen her mother had suffered a psychotic break and poisoned her father. Her dad had survived but the damage to their family had been irreparable. Eighteen and twenty-one, Mila and Elliot, had already been out of the house by then. But she had been there. She had been the one to find their mom cowering in a corner screaming about birds trying to peck out her eyes, and her dad lying unresponsive and barely breathing on the floor.
Her mom had been committed to a psychiatric hospital and with just her and her dad left in the home things began to change. Her dad began to change. He wasn't the same easy-going, sports loving, outdoor loving, fun man she had always known. He became paranoid, and depressed, rarely leaving the house and making up rules.