I buried my daughter and watched her husband abandon their girls at the grave, never knowing they were already holding the proof to destroy him.

We flew to Las Vegas three days later.

Margaret came with us. She insisted. She said someone had to keep us out of trouble. She was probably right.

The flight was long. None of us slept. We spent the time researching Elena Maria Carter on our phones.

She had been real. Twenty years old when she died. A native of Las Vegas. She had worked as a waitress at a casino on the Strip. Her obituary said she died suddenly of a ruptured brain aneurysm. No autopsy was performed at the request of her “grieving husband.”

Her family still lived in Las Vegas. Her parents were in their seventies. She had a younger brother who was now a police detective with the LVMPD.

Lucy found his name. Detective Michael Carter.

“We need to talk to him first,” she said. “If Arthur killed his sister, he deserves to know. And he can help us get the body exhumed.”

We checked into a cheap motel off the Strip. Not the fancy part of town. The part where people go when they don’t want to be found.

The next morning, we went to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

Detective Carter was waiting for us. Lucy had called him the night before. She had been vague on the phone—said we had information about his sister’s death—but he had agreed to meet us.

He was in his mid-forties. Broad shoulders. Tired eyes. The same dark hair and dark eyes as the woman in the photograph.

He led us into an interrogation room. Closed the door. Sat down across from us.

“Okay,” he said. “You said you have information about Elena. Start talking.”

Lucy pulled out Arthur’s letter. She slid it across the table.

Detective Carter read it. His face did not change. Not when he read about Arthur. Not when he read the confession. Not when he saw the photograph.

When he finished, he put the letter down carefully. He looked at Lucy.

“How do I know this isn’t some kind of hoax?” he asked. “My sister died twenty-three years ago. Some convict writes a letter claiming he killed her, and you expect me to just believe it?”

Lucy pulled out the notebook. The recordings. Rose’s affidavit. Everything we had used to convict Arthur in Savannah.

“Because he did the exact same thing to my mother,” she said. “Same method. Same story. Same everything. We put him away for life six months ago. He wrote this letter because he’s bored. Because he wants to cause more pain. But he wouldn’t have mentioned your sister if it wasn’t true. He knows we’ll check. He knows we’ll find out. That’s the game he plays.”

Detective Carter looked through the evidence. He read Rose’s notebook. He listened to snippets of the recordings. When he finished, he was pale.

“The method matches,” he said quietly. “Sudden death. No autopsy. Young, healthy woman. My parents never questioned it. They were devastated. They just wanted to bury her and move on. I was twenty-two. I thought the doctors knew what they were talking about. But I always wondered. She never had headaches. Never had high blood pressure. Nothing that would cause an aneurysm.”

He stood up and paced the room.

“If what you’re saying is true,” he said, “then I’ve been carrying my sister’s killer’s name for twenty-three years. I took his last name when I joined the force. Carter. His name. Elena took it when they married. My parents took it to honor her. We’ve all been walking around with a murderer’s name.”

He stopped pacing and looked at us.

“I’m going to get a court order to exhume the body,” he said. “Today. And I’m going to have the same independent lab that tested your mother’s samples run the tests. If there’s any trace of that medication in her system... Arthur Whitmore is going to wish he was already dead.”

The exhumation took three days.

We waited in the motel. We could not bring ourselves to go to the cemetery. It felt wrong. Intrusive. We spent the time walking up and down the Strip, watching the tourists, trying to distract ourselves.

Lucy was quiet. More quiet than usual.

On the third night, she came to my room. She sat on the edge of my bed.

“Grandpa,” she said, “what if there are more?”

I did not understand. “More what?”

“More wives,” she said. “More women. Between Elena and Mom. Thirteen years. That’s a long time. What if he married other women in between? What if he killed them too? What if there are bodies buried all over the country that no one knows about?”

I had no answer. The thought had occurred to me too. But I had pushed it away. It was too terrible to contemplate.

“We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it,” I said.

The next morning, Detective Carter called.

“The results are back,” he said. His voice was raw. “You need to come down to the station.”

We went immediately.

Detective Carter met us in the hallway. He was holding a manila envelope. His hand was shaking.

“The lab found it,” he said. “Same medication. Same levels. Exactly like your mother. Elena was poisoned. Over a period of months. Just like Rose.”

He opened the envelope and pulled out another piece of paper.

“And there’s more,” he said. “While we were waiting for the lab results, I ran Arthur’s name through every database in the country. Marriage licenses. Death certificates. Missing persons reports.”

He took a breath.

“There are three more,” he said. “Three more women. Married to Arthur under different names. All dead. All between the ages of nineteen and twenty-five. All died of ‘natural causes’—heart attack, aneurysm, stroke. No autopsies. All buried quickly. All in different states. Ohio. Texas. Arizona.”

Lucy swayed. I put my arm around her to steady her.

“Five women,” she whispered. “He killed five women. And no one noticed. No one stopped him.”

“Until your mother,” Detective Carter said. “She was the first one who figured it out. The first one who left evidence. She didn’t just save herself—she’s going to bring justice for all of them.”

He looked at each of us.

“The FBI is taking over the case now. This is a serial killing spanning twenty-three years and five states. They’re going to exhume all the bodies. They’re going to notify all the families. Arthur is going to be charged with four more counts of murder. He’ll never see the outside of a prison cell again. And this time... there won’t be any doubt.”

We walked out of the police station into the bright Las Vegas sun.

Lucy pulled out her phone. She had saved Arthur’s number from the letters. She typed a text message.

We found them. All of them. You’re not just a wife killer. You’re a serial killer. And everyone is going to know. Mom didn’t just beat you. She uncovered everything. You lose. Forever.

She pressed send.

Thirty seconds later, her phone buzzed. A reply.

How?

Lucy smiled. A cold, satisfied smile. She typed one word back.

Rose.