Now Morris did pale. “I read a couple of her texts one night. I knew something was going on, but her phone was always locked, so one night I just grabbed it out of her hand.”

“What did you read?” Laurel asked.

Morris gulped. “Just plans to meet some asshole she called ‘Big Boy.’ That was his name. I mean, that’s what she named him in her phone contacts. Can you believe that?” He swallowed rapidly as if trying not to vomit. “The two texts I read mentioned what a great time they’d had the weekend before, when she was supposed to have been at a botany conference. Then she kicked me in the nuts and grabbed her phone back.” He reached for a soda in a plastic cup. “That was the end, I guess.”

“So you have no idea who this man could be?” Laurel asked.

“No.”

Huck wiped off his neck. “What about the mayor? Is there a chance your wife was sleeping with her sister’s husband?”

Morris blanched. “No. If that’s the rumor, I think it’s wrong. Sharon didn’t really care for Saul Bearing, to be honest. She thought he was a blowhard.”

That might’ve been a good cover. Laurel needed those phone records sooner rather than later. “Where were you the weekend she was killed?” She gave him the appropriate time frame.

“Visiting my brother in Seattle. When things went south with Sharon and she left town, so did I.” Morris wrote a name and phone number on a piece of paper and handed it across the desk. “I gave this to the sheriff already. I’m sure there are traffic cameras showing me coming and going, and we also attended a birthday party for a friend at Clopper’s Bar on Fifth. There were security cameras everywhere.”

“Even so, we’ll need a detailed timeline of your activities for the past month,” Laurel said. “Also, can you account for your activities last Tuesday night into Wednesday morning?”

“Is that when the other woman died?” Morris asked.

Laurel nodded. “Yes. Where were you?”

Morris shrugged. “At school and then at home. By myself. While there are security cameras here on campus, there aren’t any at my house.”

So he didn’t have an alibi for Charlene’s murder. “Have you met Dr. Charlene Rox? Ever seen her?” Huck asked.

“No. I’ve never heard of her,” Morris said. “Sorry.”

Why was he sorry? Laurel cleared her throat. Morris didn’t seem to hold the kind of mania needed to inflict the damage she’d seen on the victims, but if he were a psychopath, he’d be able to hide it well. That rage couldn’t be kept at bay for long, though, and the killer would have to murder again soon. How many women had to die? She had to find this miscreant. “Where are you living now?”