Southern Lights: A Novel

The killer seemed to like a pastoral setting for his trysts. One girl in the Midwest had disappeared off a farm, she was just eighteen, and her parents said she had a bad habit of hitchhiking into town, but they knew everyone for miles around. This time, clearly, a stranger had picked her up. They waited for months, hoping for news of her, and that she had run off with some handsome young guy, she was a bit of a wild thing, but a beautiful girl. They never heard from her again, and her body was found in a field when a bulldozer was moving dirt months later. And she had died just like the others, raped and strangled.

They interrogated him for three hours, and then sent him back to his cell. Quentin sauntered out of the room, without even a look back. He didn’t look in Alexa’s direction on the way out, and she was as tired as the police officers and detectives when they met in her office to discuss what they’d heard. He hadn’t given them anything, except confirmation of where he’d been, which they knew anyway, and a lot of names that would amount to nothing, just people he’d met along the way, had dinner with, worked for, or gone to bars with. He knew how to stay out of trouble, on the surface anyway. He had never been arrested since being released from prison. He had no history of drugs, except marijuana in prison. He liked tequila and cheap wine, but so did every kid in college, and they didn’t rape and strangle women. Drinking cheap booze wasn’t a crime, and those who knew him said he could hold his liquor, he wasn’t a sloppy drunk who got into bar fights. He was cold and calculating, kept his own counsel, and watched every move he made. He had during the interrogation too.

“We didn’t get much,” one of the younger cops said, looking discouraged.

“I didn’t expect to,” Jack said calmly. “He’s smarter than that. He’s not going to give us some slip or the lead we’ve been waiting for. We’re going to have to put this case together twig by twig and brick by brick and pebble by pebble, with grains of sand, like the three little pigs building their houses. He’s not going to make it easy for us. We’re going to have to do our jobs on this one, and work our asses off to nail him.” Alexa liked the image, and smiled as the others left the office.

“So what do you think?” she asked Jack candidly, when they were alone again. They were both aware that Quentin had no history of convictions for violent crimes before this. But after his last stint in prison, he had changed his MO, and Alexa was convinced that he had done it, as was the task force that had trailed and studied him for months.

“Honestly? I think he did it. My gut says he killed them all, maybe even more than we know about. But I think we’re going to have to work hard to get him. I think he’s guilty. All we have to do now is prove it, and then you can do your job.” Alexa nodded, she agreed with him. It was no slam dunk yet, but she wanted more than anything to get him, if he had done it, and she believed he had. Her instincts were the same as Jack’s, but Quentin was as slick as a greased marble, and it would be hard to catch him. He had all the earmarks of a sociopath, a man who could commit heinous crimes, and remain indifferent and unruffled. He clearly wasn’t frightened or remorseful. Maybe he would be later. “Want to share some lunch, guaranteed to give you indigestion?” Jack offered. “We can talk about the case, or not if you prefer. I still need to absorb what he told us this morning. Sometimes I pick something up later, when I think about it. It looks like nothing, but turns out to be a thread that’s tied to something else.” It was why he was good at what he did, he focused on every minute detail, and it always paid off in the end. It had on every case they’d worked on together. He was the best investigator they had, and she was the best assistant DA.

“Sure. I have to be back here at two for a meeting. I’m getting ready for the grand jury.” It was in two days, and Jack would go with her. She wanted to be well prepared. For lack of stronger, totally conclusive evidence, her arguments to bring Quentin to trial had to be tighter and better and more convincing. There was no smoking gun yet. But she was as good at what she did as he was.

They walked across the street together to the deli they all hated but frequented daily. Alexa tried to bring food from home but usually left in too much of a hurry to do so, so she either starved all day, ate junk out of the machines, or sacrificed her digestive system at the deli. The deli was awful but the closest to the building where they worked. They all agreed that you had to be either starving or suicidal to eat there. The food was heavy, greasy, and either fried into oblivion or dangerously undercooked. Alexa usually tried to get by with a salad, which seemed minimally risky. Jack liked a man-sized meal, and took the daily special, which was lethal.