Her Final Confession

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Two hours later, Josie stood outside the picket fence, jotting down the last of her notes from her interview with the Wilkinses’ next-door neighbor. The evidence response team was finishing up. Dr. Feist had come and gone. Josie knew she would be back at the morgue by now, awaiting the arrival of the bodies. Mettner came to the fence and waved to the ambulance sitting curbside. “We’re ready for you guys,” he called. The paramedics had been on scene for some time, waiting to go in and get the bodies so they could be transported to the morgue. Owen stood with his back against the side of the ambulance, scrolling on his phone. He looked up and nodded at Mettner.

“Who’re we taking first?” he asked.

“Take the wife,” Mettner answered. “She’s in the living room.”

“You got it.”

Owen saluted Josie as he and his partner navigated their gurney past her. She was glad he had been on duty when the double homicide call went out. He was one of the few EMS workers who didn’t flinch or turn green at the more gruesome bodies. She knew he would treat the couple respectfully. Josie couldn’t get the image of Margie Wilkins’s glassy, vacant eyes out of her mind.

Noah emerged from the passenger seat of Josie’s Escape, where he’d been talking on the phone. “What’d you get?” he asked her.

Josie flipped a page in her notebook, reading over her notes. “The neighbor to the east didn’t hear or see anything. The neighbor to the west said he saw them come home last night around six—dinnertime—first Joel and then about a half hour later, Margie. He said she’s a part-time fitness instructor at the college, and Joel teaches at the high school. He said he chatted with Joel when he came home, and Joel told him they were leaving on a cruise this morning. He did notice both their cars were still here when he woke up but just figured that their plans changed.”

Noah held up a hand to interject. “I just got off the phone with Joel’s sister, and she said that she got a text from him around 11:30 last night. It was a normal exchange. Him asking her questions about exactly where they’d meet and what time, that sort of thing.”

“So, it was definitely him,” Josie said.

“Yeah. She said there’s no doubt in her mind. Then Joel texted that they were going to bed, and that was that.”

Josie gestured toward the house. “Neighbor in the back said their dogs started going crazy around 2:00 a.m., barking and growling. The owner went outside, looked around the yard, didn’t see anything unusual. By that time, the dogs had stopped barking, so he went back to bed.”

“So, they were alive at 11:30, and the killer most likely came through the back around 2:00, used a crowbar to pop the kitchen screen out and pry open the window. Climbed in and went to the bedroom.”

“He took the phones on his way through the kitchen and dumped them in the toilet before he went to the bedroom.”

“Unless the wife was sleeping on the couch, he had to have woken them both and then separated them. But how did he tie the husband up without the wife running or going after him?”

Josie chewed her bottom lip for a moment. It was ballsy as hell to go after a couple. Especially alone. “I think we should assume he had a gun. A scene becomes much easier to control when you have a gun. He could have had help. Another person with him. Or he bashed the husband’s skull in before he even woke the wife.”

“No blood on the bed,” Noah pointed out.

“Maybe he dragged the guy out of the bed, tossed him onto the floor, and then hit him before either one of them knew what was going on. They were probably both completely asleep. Waking up to an intruder in your bedroom would have been very disorientating. The other scenario is that the killer woke them and then made the wife tie the husband up. What did the sister say about the climbing rope?”

“It’s probably theirs. They did a lot of rock climbing. She said they were very outdoorsy.”

“So, the killer didn’t bring the rope. He either found it in the house or made them get it out,” Josie said. “He could have seen the photos and had them get the rope out. My guess is he would have made the wife do it.”

“Do you think the husband was dead before the killer even took the wife into the living room?” Noah asked.

Josie said, “If he wasn’t, he was close to it. If the killer was alone, he wouldn’t want to run the risk of the husband getting loose while he was committing his other crimes. He would have seen the husband as the biggest threat. Anyone with half a brain would neutralize the biggest threat right off the bat. He was smart enough to dump the phones before he even got started and find and use the climbing rope. Also, there were no lights on in there, and none of the neighbors—especially the guy in the back—remember their lights being on during the night. So, this guy was also smart enough to use a flashlight—I’m guessing—and to keep the lights off so he didn’t draw any attention from nosy neighbors. This killer isn’t an idiot.”

“Well,” Noah said, “let’s hope he left us some evidence somewhere in that house.”

“What’ve we got in the way of background on these two?” Josie asked.

“Joel Wilkins is from here. Went to college out west. Came back to Denton to settle down. Margie Wilkins is from Erie. Also went to school out west, which is where the two met. They’re both into teaching and fitness. They were married roughly a year ago. They’d been dating for about three years before that.”

“So no exes looking for revenge,” Josie said.

“’Fraid not,” Noah said. “I asked the sister if she could think of anyone who might have it out for them, but she couldn’t. She says they were good people and well liked.”

Josie sighed. “Yeah, that’s what the neighbors said. All of them were pretty devastated to hear what happened. This is a pretty tight-knit block. No one can remember seeing anything out of the ordinary in the days before this, so I’m not sure if the killer randomly chose the house or if he did some reconnaissance before he struck.”

They both lowered their heads as Owen and his partner brought out a gurney with a body bag on it. They watched as Margie Wilkins was loaded into the back of the ambulance. “We’ll be back in twenty,” Owen told them.

Josie and Noah nodded their acknowledgment. Once the ambulance drove off, Noah said, “The sister will be back in town in a few hours. I told her to wait until tomorrow, once we’ve got the scene cleaned up, and she can do a walk-through and tell us if anything is missing that we wouldn’t recognize.”

“Perfect,” Josie said.

“What are we looking at here, Boss?”

She knew what he was asking. It wasn’t whether or not the murders were particularly savage, because they were, or if they were calculated, because they were. Noah was asking if this was a one-off or if they would need to put the city on high alert. There was never any way to tell, of course, until you had another slaying. But from everything Josie knew, killers who exhibited this level of sophistication were neither first-time offenders nor likely to stop. Josie gave a long sigh. “We’re going to need the press,” she said. “Maybe this was personal—someone who knew the Wilkins and had some kind of beef with them—but I have a feeling it wasn’t.”

“The crime scene certainly has a cold and impersonal feel to it,” Noah said.

“If it wasn’t personal, and we’re dealing with someone who enjoys killing for the sake of it, then we need to put the community on high alert.”

Noah pushed a hand through his thick brown hair. “All right. Let’s get back to the station and talk with the chief, and then we’ll sound the alarm.”