Marie Ferrarella: Colton Copycat Killer

But any words to that effect never made it past her lips as anger uncharacteristically took over, vanquishing her tendency to just meekly accept whatever was happening rather than protesting it.

The first volley in that particular battle had been fired when she’d held her ground against her sister, wanting Celia to confess to Sam that she had engineered the lie about being pregnant just to trick him into marrying her.

Having spoken up then, she couldn’t just quietly hold her peace now, especially when doing so—just because it was expected of her—made absolutely no sense to her. It was just cruel.

After all, this wasn’t the kind of secret that someone was going to take to their grave. On the contrary, everyone was going to know who was murdered in a matter of hours, most likely in a manner of minutes.

What was the point of holding back?

It made no sense to her. Right now, she desperately needed to find something that made sense so she could hang on to it and rebuild her world which was, at this moment, completely decimated into charred, gray ashes.

Another disjointed chorus of voices was shouting out stunned reactions to the bombshell that Zoe had just dropped.

“Celia?”

“Oh my God, Celia’s been shot?”

“Celia’s really dead?”

“This is a joke—right?”

“Who did it?”

Sam had remained standing next to Zoe. He raised his hands now and gestured for the guests to lower their voices and in essence, cease asking questions altogether. Any further questions were all going to be coming from him, starting now.

From him and from the rest of the officers he had just called in to act as his backup.

“That’s what we’re going to be trying to find out,” Sam informed the sea of faces that were turned toward him. “Now, this’ll go a lot faster if you all just get back into your seats and wait until someone comes by to take down your statements.”

“But we were all in here,” one of the older women protested helplessly. “We didn’t see anything.”

“And if that’s the case, it’ll go even faster,” Sam replied. His tone of voice, neither friendly nor accusatory, gave nothing away.

The church was now filled with several more patrol officers from Granite Gulch in addition to the detectives and officers who had been invited to the actual wedding ceremony. The latter group also included Sam’s older sister, Annabel, who was a police officer on the same force.

The incoming officers joined forces with the law enforcement agents who were already there to make the process of questioning the temporarily captive wedding guests as painless as possible.

Growing just the slightest bit calmer, Zoe looked at Sam after he had finished briefing the newly arrived police officers.

“Who do you want me to give my statement to?” she asked.

Mindful of what Ethan had said to him earlier about the shock she was dealing with, he looked at Zoe with what he felt might very well be remotely associated with concern. After all, Zoe had been through a lot, and Celia was—or had been, he corrected himself—her sister. Moreover, though he didn’t have any proof at the moment, his gut told him that Zoe had nothing to do with Celia’s tragically dramatic end.

“Are you sure you’re up to this now?” he asked Zoe, scrutinizing her closely. He was a fairly good judge of what a person on the fringe looked like. He’d sent enough of them there during interrogations.

Zoe curled her fingers into her hands and dug her nails into her palms, as if registering that pain could somehow help her maintain control over the grief running rampant all through her.

“Yes,” she answered in a small, but firm voice. “I am—but thank you for asking.”

He hardly took note of the last part. Glancing around the church, he took in the scene.

A handful of law enforcement agents from the small precinct had scattered throughout the pews, singling out wedding guests the way cowboys cut out cattle from a herd for branding. Every available police officer and detective currently there was clearly busy and would remain so for the next foreseeable several hours, if not more.

That essentially made up Sam’s mind for him, although, in all honesty, it had pretty much been made up the moment he had found Zoe in the same room as Celia’s body.

“You can give your statement to me,” he told Zoe crisply.

Glancing around again, he looked for somewhere a little more isolated where he could interview the victim’s sister in private.

When he spotted the reverend, he issued Zoe a quick order, “Come with me.” He made his way over to where the preacher was standing near the front of the church, comforting several of his regulars, people who always attended Sunday services without fail. The parishioners were clearly distraught.

“Reverend Rimmer,” Sam began as he approached the older man.

He got no further. The tall, thin man of the cloth immediately made his excuses to the trio he was talking to, cut the distance between himself and the groom and took hold of Sam’s hand in both of his. For a thin man, he had very large, capable hands.

The moment the reverend began talking, it was obvious he had misunderstood why Sam had sought him out.

“Sam, I am so sorry this terrible thing happened. If you need to talk—”

“I do, but not to you right now, Reverend,” Sam said, cutting the man off before the reverend could get wound up. “Would it be all right to use your office?” He nodded at the woman on his right. “I need to take Ms. Robison’s statement and I need someplace where we won’t be interrupted.”

“Yes, of course, of course.” But rather than step out of the way as Sam had expected him to, Reverend Rimmer turned toward Zoe and took hold of both of Zoe’s hands in his.

“Zoe, please accept my heartfelt condolences on your tragic loss. I didn’t know your sister as well I would have liked—I didn’t see her at Sunday services very often,” he explained, “but I know she was a good woman who had love in her heart for her family and friends.”

Zoe offered the man a smile, patiently taking in his words. She knew what the reverend was saying to her had to be his “go-to” comfort speech, offered to the family and friends of deceased people whom he had never gotten to know on a personal basis.

To the best of her knowledge, the only time her sister ever turned up at any Sunday services in Rimmer’s church was when she was guaranteed a number of cute, eligible young men were in attendance, as well. During those rare occasions, Celia always arrived just a little bit late so she could make an entrance as well as an impression.

Celia always loved being the center of attention, Zoe thought. She felt it was her due.

In a way, Zoe thought now, if it hadn’t ultimately involved her death, Celia would have reveled in the attention this whole thing going on now was generating for her.

But Zoe knew Reverend Rimmer was doing the best he could under the circumstances, trying to comfort her on the death of her sister. This all had, after all, happened under his roof, so to speak, and she felt bad for the preacher.

“If you need anything, anything at all,” Reverend Rimmer was saying to her, “please don’t hesitate to give me a call. Mrs. Rimmer and I are entirely at your disposal—day or night,” he added, and for what it was worth, Zoe believed him.

“Thank you, Reverend,” Zoe replied. “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”

Gently disengaging her hands from the preacher, she turned to a somewhat surprised-looking Sam. Taking a breath, she said, “Let’s get this over with.”

He’d known Zoe for a lot of years. Just how many, he couldn’t have honestly said. But in all that time, he had only been vaguely aware of her. Still, she had never struck him as someone who spoke up, who could hold their own, especially not against a crowd. When he’d sent her off to inform the guests that the wedding had been called off, he’d just thought of her as a messenger. He hadn’t thought anyone would give her a hard time.