Danielle Steel - Southern Lights - A Novel

Alexa felt as though her heart was being torn out of her body when she left Charleston. Luisa was actually moving her things in while Alexa packed. She took Savannah and her broken heart, went back to New York, and stayed with her mother for a year. The divorce had come and gone by then, and Tom didn’t know how to explain it to her, but he said it just seemed better to leave things as they were. Better for him, Luisa, and his mother, and the little girl Luisa gave birth to. Alexa and Savannah had been banished, and went back to the North from whence they came, Yankees.

Luisa forbade Tom to bring Savannah back to Charleston, even for visits. She was back in full control. Tom came to New York to see his daughter a few times a year, usually when he came on business. Alexa wrote to her stepsons for a while, who were fourteen and fifteen when she left, and she worried about them both. But they weren’t her children, and she could sense in their letters how torn they were between their two mothers. Their letters dwindled off within six months, and she let it happen. She started law school then, and tried to shut them all out of her heart. Everyone except her daughter. It was hard not sharing her anger with Savannah, and she tried not to, but even the six-year-old could sense how wounded her mother was. Her father was like a handsome prince whenever he came to see her, and sent her beautiful presents. But eventually even Savannah figured out that she wasn’t welcome in her father’s life. She didn’t resent him for it, but sometimes it made her sad. She loved the time she spent with him. He was so much fun to be with. The fatal weakness that had led him back into Luisa’s trap didn’t show when he visited his daughter in New York. All that showed was how good-looking and fun and polite and charming he was. He was the epitome of a southern gentleman with the looks of a movie star. Alexa had fallen for it too, and so did Savannah.

“And the backbone of a worm,” Alexa would say to her mother when Savannah wasn’t around. “A man without a spine. Wasn’t that a movie?” Her mother felt sorry for her, but reminded her not to be bitter, it did no one any good and would hurt her child. “She has no father!” Alexa would lament for her.

“Neither did you,” her mother reminded her practically. Alexa’s father had died of a heart attack on the tennis court when she was five, a congenital anomaly no one had known about or suspected. Her mother had been very brave about it, and went to law school, just as Alexa had. But it was no substitute for a good marriage, the one Alexa thought she had and didn’t. “And you turned out fine,” her mother reminded her often. Muriel Hamilton was proud of her daughter. She had made the best of a bad situation, but it had taken a toll on her, and her mother could see it. Alexa had a hard outer shell that no one could get through except her daughter, and her mother. She had only dated a few men since the divorce. Another assistant DA at one point, one of her investigators, and the brother of a college friend, and all of them briefly. Most of the time she didn’t want to date and focused her attention on Savannah. The rest didn’t matter to her, except her work, which she was passionate about.

Alexa had made a vow when she left Charleston. No one was going to break her heart again. No one could find it. She had locked it away in a storage vault, except for her daughter. No man was ever going to get near her again and hurt her. There was a wall around Alexa a mile high, and the only one who had the key to the door was Savannah. Her daughter was the light of her life. That was no secret. Her office was full of photographs of her, and she spent every weekend and spare moment she had with her. She was home with her every night. The hard part was going to come when Savannah left for college in the fall. Alexa had cautiously suggested NYU or Barnard, but Savannah wanted to go away to school. So they had nine months left of living together and enjoying each other. Alexa tried not to think about what would happen after that. Her life would be empty. Savannah was all she had and all she wanted.

Alexa carefully pored over the files that Jack had on Luke Quentin, his rap sheet, and the list of victims they were trying to match him up with sent by other states. They had been watching him for months, and a cop in Ohio had tied him to one of the killings, not conclusively or enough to book him, but enough to cause concern. There was no evidence to prove it, but he had been in the right place at the right time, as he had on several occasions since. The murder in Ohio was the first one that had made them think Quentin was their man. But they didn’t have enough for an arrest. They had brought him in for questioning, and again on another case in Pennsylvania, which had turned up nothing. And he had laughed in their faces. It was only in the past two weeks in New York that Charlie McAvoy had been sure it was him when they found the bodies of two young women and fished the other two out of the river after that. They were exactly Quentin’s type, and had all died in the same way, raped and strangled. There were no other signs of abuse. He didn’t stab them or beat them up. He raped them and killed them while he did it. The only wounds on his victims other than the bruises on their necks from strangulation were the cuts and scratches they had gotten after their deaths, when their assailant dragged them away. Those cuts and scratches had provided the blood the forensic lab needed for DNA.

Alexa looked over the files that had come in from other states since the arrest the night before. They were trying to cross-check Quentin with a dozen victims. The photographs of the girls who had been killed were heartbreaking, and looked uncannily like Charlie’s sister. There was a photograph of her in the stack too. All of the victims were between eighteen and twenty-five, most of them were blond and had a similar appearance. They had the look of wholesome young girls next door. All had been raped before they died—the bruises on their necks showed that all had been strangled, asphyxiated while their assailant raped them, which was consistent with his supposed desire to reenact “snuff films” and kill women during sex. All the young women had parents and friends who had loved them, brothers and sisters and boyfriends and fiancés whose lives had been forever changed when they died. Some of the bodies still hadn’t been found, but many had. Some had just disappeared, and no one knew for sure if they had died, but the computer had spat them out as possible victims, and they had the same look as the others. In all, including those who hadn’t been found, there were nineteen of them. Twelve whose remains had been located. Seven more whose hadn’t.

Luke Quentin had a clear affinity for a certain type, if it was him. And if he wasn’t, the killer liked a certain kind of woman, young, blond, beautiful, usually tall and lanky. Several of them had been models or beauty queens, the pride of their community, young girls on their way to happy lives and success, until they met him. He wasn’t picking up sleazy women in bars, or killing hookers. He was on a rampage, seeking out the All-American Girl Next Door, which had left a trail of heartbroken, shocked, outraged parents across several states. Jack and Charlie and the rest of the investigation team and task force were all convinced he was the killer they were looking for. Now they needed to prove it, and the dried blood and hair in the soles of his boots and in his carpet was a first step. It had been their first lucky break, but that was all it took. One misstep on the killer’s part, one infinitesimal forgotten detail, and sometimes the whole house of cards came down and got them their man.

It was hard to believe that one man could kill so many women, but it happened. There were sick people in the world. It was Jack’s job to find them, and Alexa’s to put them away. And she knew as she looked at the photographs that she was going to put Luke Quentin away, if he was the killer. If so, Alexa was going to be relentless and stop at nothing to convict him.