Page 74 of M for Murder

It doesn’t matter. He’s blackmailing you. He’s hardly going to kill you.

She tried to restart the conversation.

‘You didn’t tell me what you do for a living? Do you work at the college? Is that how you know Lawrie and Kylan?’

He glanced at her. ‘You ask a lot of questions.’

‘Well, I hadn’t noticed you, that’s all. If you worked at the college I meant,’ Justine pushed. ‘So, do you?’

‘At the moment… yes. The reason you haven’t noticed me is because in my line of work I have to be very discreet.’

‘Oh,’ Justine mumbled, not really sure what he meant. ‘So how do you know Lawrie and Kylan?’ she asked, trying a different approach.

He gave a knowing smile that made her feel even more uncomfortable. ‘Let’s just say we go back a long way.’

‘I see. Old friends, are you?’ She giggled nervously. ‘Dumb question. I guess you can’t be that close friends if you’re going to help me break them up. Of course, I’m sure you have your reasons.’ As she continued rambling, her mind returned to the murders.

Scott Jagger, Emma Keeley. She remembered the cop who’d been talking to Mandy Tyson in the cafeteria that day, and how at the time she’d wondered what had been going on.

Now of course she knew.

Emma Keeley had been so beautiful alive, and Justine couldn’t help but wonder how she looked dead. A cold, dead corpse. Justine had never seen a dead body before and, thinking about it now, she didn’t ever want to. She tried to push the image of Emma Keeley from her mind and instead turned her thoughts to Rufus Lind, the college clown. His face was clear in her mind: the carrot-red hair, the wide blue eyes. Come to think of it, she could picture all of them clearly in her mind. Scott, Emma and Rufus. Three students, all very different, but all well known around campus. Why had the killer chosen them?

Her mind ventured further back. These weren’t the only murders that had taken place at Juniper College. She vaguely remembered her father talking about the killings that had taken place on the campus a few years back. She hadn’t believed him at the time, thinking that it was just some spook story that he’d made up to scare her. Since she’d been in Juniper, though, she’d realised his stories had been true. Most of her friends on campus knew details of what had happened. How the Alphabet Killer had been a college professor who had stalked and murdered several of his students. How he had selected his victims from the register. Always in alphabetical order. How one of his victims had fought back and left him for dead in a burning house. How the police had never found his body.

Graffiti in the washrooms told of his name: Professor Boone.

And the classroom in the English block, where he had taught, stood empty because the current professors didn’t wish to be tarred with the same brush, and the current students disliked the idea of having lectures in the place where the serial killer had selected his victims.

Justine thought it ironic that, only a few years later, the same college had become the hunting ground for another serial killer. Did he, like the Alphabet Killer, have some weird hang-up?

She thought about his victims again. Scott Jagger, Emma Keeley and Rufus Lind. Jagger, Keeley, Lind. J, K, L.

It was just a bizarre coincidence, wasn’t it? Then she remembered that the police had found five victims, but two of them still hadn’t been named. What if the unnamed victims had initials M and N? That meant that a person with the initial O was to be the next intended victim.

O for Orton. Justine Orton.

‘You all fit the profile of the killer’s next victim.’

She cast her mind back, trying to remember some of the other students who had been in the hall. Mary Osborne, Judy O’Brien, Keith Ottinger. They all matched the next victim’s profile because they all had the same initial.

The initial O.

Justine had to bite down on the sickness that rose suddenly. A cold sweat broke out on her forehead. This wasn’t possible, was it? She couldn’t be the killer’s next victim. And this man in the driver’s seat beside her, he wasn’t a killer. He needed her. He’d told her so.

He needed her to help him and in return he would help her to get Lawrie. Wouldn’t he?

Thinking about it, he hadn’t specifically told her that he was going to help her get Lawrie. Only that they both wanted something that was at the moment unobtainable to them. What if she had misread him? What if it wasn’t Kylan Parker he wanted?

‘Where are we going?’ she asked, swallowing down hard on the bile rising in her throat.

He looked at her, acknowledged she’d spoken, but didn’t answer.

Justine drew in a shaky breath; tried to calm her shaking nerves. ‘Please! Where are we going?’ she asked. ‘You still haven’t told me.’

The man gave an irritated sigh. ‘Haven’t you figured it out yet, Justine?’

‘Figured what out?’