Second Honeymoon

Chapter 94

MARTHA COLE DREW a deep breath, exhaling slowly. She was calming down. I chalked that up to Sarah and gave her a quick, approving nod. Run with it. She’s all yours.

I took a seat on the other couch next to Detective Harris and crossed my legs. Then I crossed my fingers. We were overdue for some good luck.

As promised, Sarah kept it simple. “Martha, when was the last time you saw or spoke to Robert?” she asked.

“About a month ago.”

“And when did the two of you end your engagement?”

Martha hesitated. Her eyes welled up, the emotions kicking in. She was doing her best to fight it.

Finally, she answered. “It wasn’t a mutual decision. I’m the one who broke it off.”

Detective Harris reached into his pocket, then handed Martha a folded handkerchief. Nice to think some guys still carried those around. Very old school.

“Thank you,” said Martha, wiping her eyes. As raw and torn as she was, I couldn’t help but notice her determination. She continued: “When Robbie came back from the war—Afghanistan—it was like he was going through withdrawal. He missed the action, the constant adrenaline.”

Sarah nodded. “Let me guess—you couldn’t compete, right?”

“Exactly. Everything was boring to him, including me,” she said. “I thought I was doing him a favor.”

“You mean by breaking things off?”

She couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. Her guilt was too strong. Her anger even stronger.

“That damn war!” she nearly shouted. “It wasn’t Robbie’s fault, do you hear me? He wasn’t the same person. The guy who came back wasn’t the guy I’d fallen in love with!”

Sarah put her hand on Martha’s shoulder, rubbing gently. “We understand, we really do,” she said.

“But Robbie didn’t,” said Martha. “I tried to explain it to him, but it’s like he wouldn’t even listen.”

“How long ago was this?” asked Sarah.

“The end of last year, right after Thanksgiving. We were supposed to get married on Christmas Eve,” she said. “When I broke it off he just went ballistic.”

“Did he hurt you?”

“No. But I was scared.” She paused, her voice dropping. “He owns guns.”

“Do you know what kind? Handguns? Rifles?”

“All of the above. His favorite was what he carried in the war. I forget the name, but it was one of those semiautomatic rifles.”

Sarah and I exchanged a quick glance. Bingo.

“So what kind of missions was Robert involved with in Afghanistan?” asked Sarah. “Did he ever say anything to you?”

Martha worked the handkerchief on her eyes again as she thought for a moment. “There was this one time,” she said. “He’d been drinking and, well, I don’t know how we got on the subject, but he started to tell me things.”

“What kinds of things?”

“It was sort of like he was bragging,” she said. “There was this group he got recruited for, some kind of special weapons unit. He called it the James Bond crew because they trained with all these new gadgets and stuff like that. Poisons, too.”

“Poisons?”

Double bingo.

“Yeah,” said Martha. “He once joked that I should be careful because he knew all these ways to kill me with certain chemicals. I didn’t think it was very funny.”

Sarah and I locked eyeballs again. Certainly Robert Macintyre had the means. But the motive was still not 100 percent clear.

The guy gets dumped a few weeks before his own wedding, so he decides to kill newlyweds. Fair enough. Or should I say crazy enough? Assuming he was suffering from PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, the bitter disappointment and heartbreak could easily cause him to snap. Violently.

But why kill just the Vows couples?

Were we looking for logic where there simply wasn’t any? Insane behavior has its own set of rules.

Patiently, methodically, Sarah pressed on.

“So you read the article in the paper this morning, Martha, and you obviously must have had your suspicions. But what makes you so sure it’s Robert?”

I was hurting for this girl as she wiped her eyes yet again. She felt so damn responsible.

“Robbie told me that if it couldn’t be us, it shouldn’t be anyone.”

“I’m not sure I follow you,” said Sarah.

Slowly, Martha looked at Detective Harris, then me, then back to Sarah. And that’s when she told us.

“The day I broke up with him was the same day we heard back from the New York Times,” she said. “They wanted us to be a Vows couple.”