Ann Peterson - Accessory To Marriage

“Until he got around to finally killing her.”

Trent nodded. He could almost smell the hot tang of blood mixing with the scent of spruce trees and lilac bushes. Fresh blood.

Damn. If he had been a little faster he could have saved Kane’s first wife. Faster identifying Kane. Faster locating him. Faster…

But he hadn’t been. Kane had beaten him by mere hours.

The memory of the worried tremor in Rees’s voice echoed in his ears. He looked down at the mutilated photo of her and Dixie. He couldn’t let Kane beat him this time.

Wiley studied the crime-scene photos and the snapshots of Farrentina Hamilton side by side. “So he wouldn’t be turned on by a brunette.”

Trent snatched his thoughts from past regrets and focused on the case at hand. “No.”

Wiley screwed up his forehead in concentration. “Didn’t I read something in one of the Hamilton woman’s letters about coloring her hair? Maybe she dyed it blond for him.”

Trent skimmed through the letters until he found the one Wiley was referring to. He read aloud. “As you can see, I colored my hair for you, Dryden. The red lingerie looks nice on a brunette, don’t you think?”

Wiley tapped a ballpoint pen on the tabletop. “But that sounds like she dyed her hair brunette for him. Not blond.”

Yes, it did. But that didn’t make sense. A serial killer didn’t change his signature. The emotional need his crime fulfilled was always the same, crime after crime. He might change his modus operandi as he learned more efficient ways of committing his crimes, ways he could avoid getting caught. But he didn’t change the emotional satisfaction, the sexual charge he got out of the act. And Kane fed on his victim’s fear as he exacted revenge. Revenge against the ex-wife who’d humiliated him. The ex-wife with long, blond hair. “The sequence of this hair color change is important. Are there any other photos? Any of Hamilton as a blonde?”

Wiley flicked through the stack of photos they’d found in Kane’s cell. “Yes. This head shot.” He handed a photo to Trent.

Rook leaned over the table to get a glimpse.

In the picture, Farrentina Hamilton’s platinum blond hair flowed over her shoulders. She wore a trendy suit, the style outdated by today’s standards, and she looked appreciably younger than she did in the lingerie shot.

Damn. He didn’t know what to make of this. Kane couldn’t have changed his signature. But if he hadn’t, why had he asked Farrentina Hamilton to dye her hair brunette?

“Dixie.” Dixie was a natural brunette, like Rees, but she had bleached her hair blond for as long as Trent had known her. He picked up the wedding picture and the mutilated picture from the table. In both photos Dixie’s hair was platinum and arranged in ringlets falling to her shoulders. If Kane’s preference had changed to brunettes, why had he married a blonde only a month ago?

Unless Dixie, like Ms. Hamilton, was no longer blond.

Trent’s gaze skimmed the mutilated photograph, landing on Rees. Her happy, wholesome smile, her arms circling her sister, her teddy bears cuddled around them on the bench. His gut tightened. “Professor Madsen might have some answers for us after all.” He stood and walked to the door.

Behind him, Wiley snorted and drummed his pen on a file folder. Trent ignored his obvious disapproval.

Risa was half out of her chair before the door swung open. “Did you find anything?” Desperation tinged her voice and tightened her every muscle. She looked small, delicate among the square, government-issue furniture lining the wall. Feet rooted to the floor, she leaned toward him, straining to find answers in his eyes.

Answers he didn’t have. “Will you come in here?”

Head snapping up and down in a quick nod, she scurried across the reception area and through the door he held open. As she moved into the room, his fingers stroked the small of her back as if of their own accord. The way they always had when he’d ushered her through a door. Back when the two of them were together. Back when he had a right to touch her.

The silky texture of her sweater grazed his fingertips. The warmth of her skin beckoned to him from under the thin silk.

Her body stiffened under his fingers, but she didn’t look at him. Instead, she bolted into the room and took a seat at the table.

What the hell was he doing? He had no right to touch her. No right to let himself fall back into familiar patterns, familiar gestures. He’d given up those rights two years ago. Given them up to keep her safe from just the kind of evil threatening her now.

He closed the door and circled the table. Pushing away memories of holding her, touching her, he folded himself into the chair next to her.

She kept her eyes riveted to the tabletop. Following her gaze, he spotted the stack of file folders hastily shuffled together. The corner of a crime-scene photo peeked from one of the folders. The face of one of Kane’s victims stared up at her. Knotted blond hair, pale skin, sightless eyes.

Trent grabbed the picture, shoved it back inside its folder and slid the stack toward Rook. As far away from Rees as he could get them. “I have some questions for you.”

She looked up at him, lips drawn into a flat, tense line. She clasped her hands together in her lap, her fingers clamped tight as a vise. “Shoot.”

“Has Dixie changed her hair color recently?”

Rees raised her eyebrows, clearly surprised by the question. “Yes. She changed back to her natural color.”

“When?”

“After her wedding. About three weeks ago.”

Wiley ceased tapping his pen for the first time since Rees had entered the room. “So she’s a brunette now?”

“Her hair is about the same shade as mine.”

Trent nodded. Also the same shade as Farrentina Hamilton’s. “Did she say why she dyed it?”

“Oh yes. It was a big deal to her. A big compliment. She said Kane wanted her to be her natural self. He loved her just the way she was.”

His stomach turned at the thought of Kane whispering those words to Dixie, his voice thick with false charm. And judging from the revulsion on Rees’s face, she was fighting the same touch of nausea.

Wiley leaned forward across the scarred tabletop. “So he asked her to dye her hair brunette?”

“That’s what Dixie told me.” She glanced from Wiley to Rook to Trent.

Trent stared down at the tabletop. An icy point of foreboding pricked between his shoulder blades.

“Why do you want to know about Dixie’s hair color?”

Trent raised his gaze to meet hers. “It seems Kane has changed his hair color preference from blond to brunette in the past few weeks.”

She gave him a confused look.

“He asked Farrentina Hamilton to dye her hair brunette too.”

“The woman in the red lingerie,” she said, putting two and two together.

“Yes.”

“And the women he killed before were all blond, right? That was part of his signature.”

“Yes.”

“So what does this mean?”

Trent blew a frustrated breath through tight lips. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. A killer doesn’t just up and change his signature. It doesn’t make sense. Unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Unless hair color was never really part of Kane’s signature.”

“What do you mean?”

He looked at Rees’s long brunette hair, shining under the fluorescent lights. Hair that smelled of lavender. Hair that had once flowed through his fingers and puddled on his pillow like warm silk.

The knife of dread broke skin and delved into muscle. “Have you ever done anything to Kane that he could have misconstrued? Anything that made him angry?”

The jolt that ran through Rees’s body was unmistakable.