“None of them,” she added, “is anything your sister deserved either.”
At that, he winced, then stared off into the distance. “No, we were as different as chalk and cheese.”
“Tell me more,” she said.
He shrugged. “What can I tell you? She was a good person, and I was a shithole. If somebody should have suffered, it should have been me. She didn’t deserve to die like that.”
“What was your relationship like?”
“We were siblings. We fought a lot. She kept telling me that I should turn a corner and change my path and all that crap. She was right, but I ignored her because, of course, I knew better.” He shook his head. “And there is no remorse quite like the remorse of knowing that you were in the wrong and that maybe you could have done something to save her.”
“Do you think you could have?”
He looked at her in surprise. “I’ve always thought that, maybe, if I’d been home,” he explained, “this wouldn’t have happened.”
She nodded. “And maybe it wouldn’t have. No way for us to know until we know exactly how and why she was targeted. There have never been any other cases like this before, and there weren’t any—until now,” she stated, with emphasis.
He stared at her. “Now?”
She nodded. “Until now. And the fact is, you’re back out of prison again. So, if you didn’t do the last one, did you do the latest one?”
His jaw dropped, and Simon could see the shock and the horror on his face, as if suddenly realizing what shit he was in.
“Jesus Christ,” Rick said in a hoarse voice. “Somebody killed another girl?”
She nodded slowly. “And, in this case, a very similar methodology to what happened to your sister.”
He swallowed hard, and his fingers clenched and tightened on his lap. “I didn’t do it,” he cried out.
“I’m glad to hear that,” she noted calmly, not giving an inch either way. “If you didn’t do it, then somebody needs to give me a little bit more detail.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if you didn’t kill your sister, and if you didn’t kill our recent victim,” she began, “who do you think did?”
“I don’t know,” he wailed. “Jesus, I can’t believe this. I won’t go to jail for something somebody else did, not again,” he cried out.
“And I’m not planning on letting you,” she replied in a firm voice, “but hysterics won’t help.”
He glared at her. “Hysterics? You ain’t seen nothing yet,” he said. “Anytime anybody threatens to put me back into that hellhole, I have a right to hysterics. I have a right to throw a temper fit. I have a right to be upset. I was railroaded into serving time for a terrible crime that I did not commit.”
“And that brings up a really good point,” she noted. “Why did you confess?”
He slowly closed his mouth. And his shoulders hunched. “I’ve never regretted anything quite so much in my life.”
“Except for not being home to help protect your sister.”
He stared at her, haunted. “And that’s why I confessed. I was supposed to be home,” he replied. “I was sure that it was all my fault because I was supposed to be home with her.”
“And yet you weren’t. So where were you?”
He winced. “I was scoring drugs. Like I said, I was a little shit back then. But she deserved a whole lot better than a shitty brother.”
“Got it,” Kate noted quietly. “So why confess? You felt like it was your fault?”
He nodded. “Yes. I did feel like it was my fault, and I felt like this is what I needed to do to atone for it.”
“And now?”