Terminal Island Federal Corrections Institution

Los Angeles, California

 

Wren couldn’t believe her luck when she realized that Devin Wilde was being held on Terminal Island. It was less than an hour’s drive from her apartment, and it was a minimum security facility, meaning there wouldn’t be special hoops she’d have to jump through to meet with Wilde. Even better, he’d already agreed to see her, but only her.

What Cormac didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

She stood at the front desk and waited while they went through the files she wanted to take into the visitation with her. Unlike more modern facilities, this one still allowed face-to-face visitation. In this particular instance, they’d been granted the right to use a private visitation room where she could sit across from Wilde at a table and look into his eyes while she asked him if he had killed her mother.

“You’re good,” the corrections officer at the desk told her, pushing her files back under the bullet proof glass. “But I don’t think you’ll get the answers you want out of that man.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re here to ask about the Santa Monica Black Dahlia, right? Well, you aren’t the first. And everyone else has always gone home disappointed. I don’t imagine you will be any different.”

“Who’s been here to ask him about that case?”

The corrections officer looked up with a raised eyebrow. “You really asking me for names on his visitors list? You do know you need a court order for that, right?”

“Of course.”

“Take a seat. Someone will call you when he’s been brought into the room.”

Wren did as she was told, sitting in one of the molded plastic chairs that encircled the teeny waiting room. It wasn’t fifteen minutes before another guard came to get her. She followed him down the long corridor to the visiting rooms, her heart beating fast in her throat. When the guard stopped, he gestured to a door that stood partially open to her right.

“If you need anything, there’s a red button on the wall that will alert the desk.”

He walked away, leaving her alone there in the cold, concrete corridor.

Wren took several deep breaths, wondering if she was about to look into the eyes of her mother’s killer.

She opened the door when she felt she could do it without puking, and strolled to the table, taking a seat and organizing her things before looking at the man sitting across from her. He was surprisingly handsome, this gray-haired man with the most intense blue eyes she’d ever seen. He was tall and painfully thin, his prison clothes hanging slightly off one shoulder as though they were two sizes too large. But he had a strong jaw and full lips that just seemed to be sculpted by some great artist, the kind of man who would have stood out in a crowd even now, even as thin and gray as he was.

“Devin Wilde,” he said, holding out a hand to her.

“Wren Ryland,” she said, accepting the gesture by shaking his hand lightly.

He tilted his head slightly to one side, studying her closely. “Have we met before? You seem very familiar.” Before she could respond, he chuckled. “Oh, I know what it is. You’re related to Elizabeth Thomas.”

It wasn’t a confession, but it took her breath away, just the same.

“How do you know that name?”

“Oh, well, she’s the Santa Monica Black Dahlia.” He frowned slightly. “That is why you are here, isn’t it?”

“What do you know about her?”

“I know how she was killed. I’ve seen the crime scene photos a million times from a dozen different law enforcement representatives. Let me guess, you’re trying to solve Mommy’s murder?”

He licked his lips in a way that made her want to shudder. It was like he was judging how delicious her liver would be, like a slightly more demented Hannibal Lecter.

“Did you kill her?”

He smiled softly. “Despite my current residence, I am a man who has confessed to the murders of more than twenty women. I’ve decapitated, mutilated, and raped my share of beautiful women. And I’ve put my name on each one that I earned. I, however, am not the kind of man who would lay claim to another man’s work.”

“Or you might decide to deny it because you know how desperately everyone wants to close this case.”

He shook his head. “I stopped playing games when they caught me.”

“But you know her name, and you know what she looked like.”

“I know her name because I’ve seen it in files just like the ones you’ve come to show me.”

She didn’t believe him, or she didn’t want to believe him. She wasn’t sure which.

She opened one of her files and pushed it toward him, the gory pictures right on top.

“Do you know this woman?”

He smiled softly. “Well, I’ll be. I hadn’t known he’d done it more than once!”

“What do you mean, he?”

“The killer, sweetheart!”

She wanted to reach across the table and shake his shoulders. He was talking in riddles!

“Who is the killer? Do you know him?”

“I do, actually. Quite well.”

“Is he still alive?”

“Yes, as far as I know.”

“Where is he? How many has he killed?”

“Like I said,” Devin tapped the photographs with one long fingernail, “I didn’t know there had been more than the one. But I am quite impressed.”

“What’s his name?”

Devin smiled. “Now, that would be too easy, wouldn’t it?”

She sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. “What do you want in exchange for the information?”

“Just another visit from you, sweetheart.”

“Why? Why would I come visit you again?”

“Because I’m going to let you in on a little secret. And after you leave here to check it out, you’ll come back because I’ll have more secrets to tell.”

“What secret?”

He leaned forward, the teasing and lightness gone from his expression. “You run a little security office called Mastiff Security, correct?”

“How do you know that?”

“One of your operatives—that is the right word, correct?—is currently the target of a hitman who was once an inmate in this place.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I overheard a phone call a few days ago. Someone hired this hitman to kill one of your operatives because he didn’t like who he was cozying up to. The job is supposed to be completed before Monday, which means your operative only has a few hours to live.”

“My operative? Which one?”

“That, my love, is for you to figure out. But you’d best get going. Time’s a-wastin’!”

Devin stood then, knocking the file she’d pushed in front of him to the floor. “Guard!” he called. “We’re done here.”

A moment later, the guard appeared and took him away, the chain on his shackles clanking as he moved out into the corridor.

Wren’s hands were shaking. She sat there for a long few minutes, trying to wrap her mind around what had just happened. Almost robotically, she got up and gathered her materials, shoving everything back into the file folder without really looking at it. It wasn’t until she was out in her car that her hands began to shake, and tears began to roll heavily down her cheeks.

Had that man just admitted to knowing her mother? Had he suggested that he knew her mother’s killer? Had he known all these years? Was she close to actually having a name?

Despite her long obsession with the case, Wren had never really believed she would find the killer. At least, not in a concrete sort of way. It was always a sort of fantasy, something that seemed to be a long way away. But now she was so close she could almost taste it, and that scared the shit out of her.

And what had he said about a hitman and one of her operatives?