Page 36 of In Her Path

“I killed her,” he finally said, his voice barely above a whisper.

Jenna felt as if the ground had dropped away beneath her feet. Beside her, Jake stiffened, his hand moving instinctively toward his sidearm.

“What did you say?” Jenna asked, keeping her voice steady with an effort.

Gerald Holt’s eyes filled with tears. “I’ve killed my wife,” he repeated, louder now. “I killed Diane.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Jenna exchanged a glance with Jake. She saw that his hand rested near his service weapon, not touching it, but ready if needed.

Gerald Holt stood facing them from the doorway of his home, wearing a faded robe, his face the color of ash and his eyes unfocused. “I killed her,” he had just said. “I killed Diane.” And now he swayed slightly on his feet, his mouth working as if he might say more, but nothing else came.

It didn’t seem likely to Jenna that Gerald Holt had killed his wife. Especially since she already knew that this death appeared to match the earlier murder of Councilman Curtis Paige. The man standing before them seemed too vacant, too absent from himself to have committed that kind of violence more than one time. He might be in some kind of shock from killing his wife, but could he have planned and carried out an earlier identical murder?

“Mr. Holt,” she said, keeping her voice calm. “I’d like to come in and talk to you about what happened. Would that be okay?”

Gerald blinked slowly, his gaze drifting past her to the yard beyond. “The blood,” he said, his voice barely audible. “There’s so much blood.”

The dream-image of Diane, mouth open and bloody, tongue gone, rose with startling clarity in Jenna’s mind. She pushed it away. “May we come in, Mr. Holt? I think we should sit down and talk about this.”

Something in her words seemed to reach him. He nodded once, a small, jerky motion, and stepped back from the door. “She’s gone,” he said as they stepped into the front hall. “I killed her.”

The house was quiet—the particular quiet of early morning, before the day’s rhythm had established itself. But beneath that silence there was a terrible wrongness that Jenna felt in her bones. Jake had positioned himself just behind her, close enough to respond if Gerald’s behavior became unpredictable.

“Mr. Holt,” Jenna said, guiding him toward a small bench in the entryway. “When did this happen? When did you last see your wife?”

Gerald sat heavily, his shoulders hunched. “I killed her,” he said again, the words coming out in the same hollow tone. “I killed Diane.”

Jenna sat on the other end of the bench, facing him. She saw Jake stiffen, ready to intervene if necessary. “Can you tell me how, Mr. Holt? How did you kill your wife?”

He looked at Jenna then, really looked at her for the first time, and the confusion in his eyes was painful to witness. “Sheriff … you are the Sheriff aren’t you?” He swallowed hard, then his eyes focused just a bit better. “I woke up and went looking for her. There was so much blood.” His hands, resting on his knees, were shaking slightly. “Then I knew that I had killed her.”

Jenna struggled to keep her expression neutral. From her lucid dream, she already knew that Diane Holt was dead, but she didn’t know exactly where or how she’d been killed. Her husband’s words weren’t consistent enough to fill in those blanks. She shifted tactics slightly.

“Did you see your wife earlier last night, Mr. Holt? Before you went to bed?”

“I took my pills,” he said, his voice gaining a bit more certainty. “I take them every night. At nine. For the pain.” He gestured vaguely toward his lower back. “Diane reminds me. She always reminds me.”

“And you took them last night? At nine?”

“I took them. And then...” Gerald’s face contorted with the effort of recollection. “And then I woke up. And I knew. I knew something bad had happened somewhere in our house.” His voice dropped. “I killed her.”

Jenna flashed back to what Piper’s voices had said last night: “He'll be sleeping too deeply. Shake him awake."

Now it occurred to her that maybe Piper’s voices were warning that Gerald would sleep through his wife’s murder. But why was he accusing himself of actually killing her?

“Mr. Holt,” Jenna tried again, keeping her voice gentle. “Is Diane in the house right now? Upstairs, maybe?”

Gerald’s head came up at that. “No,” he said, the word sharp with sudden clarity. “No. She’s in her office. At the back.” He pointing down the hallway. “That’s where—that’s where I found her.”

“I’d like to go check on her,” Jenna said, rising to her feet. “Would that be okay with you?”

Gerald was already drifting away again, focusing on some inner landscape. “You should,” he said. “You should see.”

Jenna glanced at Jake. They’d worked enough scenes together to know when to split up. “I’ll stay with Mr. Holt,” he said quietly. “Go ahead.”

“Deputy Hawkins will be right here with you,” she assured the distraught man. He already seemed far away again, and might not have heard her or cared what she said.