“Do you want to tell us?”
His breath quivered, and then he continued. “I was walking across this field behind my elementary school. It was a Sunday. I was actually walking to a friend’s house. I looked up at the school and saw two kids trying to break in. They ran after me, chased me down just as I entered the path in the woods. That was the only way I knew how to get away. And they caught me there, with nothing but tall trees surrounding us.”
He swallowed and took in another shaky breath, then he lifted his eyes. I nodded.
“They were twice my size. One kid had a tattoo on his neck that read Fuck You.”
I could feel my pulse thumping in my own neck, but I remained steady, holding my gaze on Cobb.
“The assholes took turns holding me, and the other one would punch me. One of them had this ring. It looked like a class ring.” Cobb held up his good hand and curled it into a tight fist. “He turned it around, let me look at it, then he used it as a weapon and punched my face twenty-three straight times. Blood splattered all over everything. My blood. And all they did was laugh and go at me harder.”
Quiet engulfed the room for what seemed like an hour. It must have been closer to a minute. I wondered if there was more, hoping there wasn’t.
“After I collapsed, one guy was ready to leave. He kicked my face a couple of times and started to take off. But the other guy, the guy with the ring, started laughing. It was this evil laugh. He wouldn’t stop.”
Cobb looked up, more tears pooling. “And...and...”
“You don’t have to—”
“Yes, yes,” he cried out. “I have to tell you. He fucking raped me. He raped a ten-year-old kid.” He started bawling, his head bouncing up and down.
“Holy shit,” Nick said.
A minute passed, and Cobb regained control of his emotions.
“Why did you want to share that with us?”
He rocked his head back and tried to look at the ceiling, then he looked straight at me. “Because I killed your husband. I’m a monster. And I think you should know how I became this person.”
All liquid left my mouth. I was parched, unsure how to think, what to say. I ran my fingers through my hair, and I could feel my hand shaking. It finally found my pocket.
“Okay,” I said.
He started shaking his head. “Going through all of this shit, reliving the nightmares of my childhood...”
“Yes?”
He licked his lips, glanced away for a second, then looked back at me. “Even with all that crap from my past, I wouldn’t be here right now if I hadn’t met...her.”
My breath caught in my throat, and I almost coughed up saliva. “Tell us, J. L. Tell us about her.”
I found my chair, sat down, and crossed my legs. Cobb dried up, the veins in his neck less prominent.
“She was my Maggie May.” He began to nod, his eyes studying the gray lines in the linoleum, as if he was replaying a series of pictures from his past.
“She was the best.”
I noticed his use of the past tense. “How so?”
His lips turned upward for a split second. “We just did everything together.”
“Yeah?”
“Went fishing together, took walks on the beach.”
It sounded all too normal. I wondered if it was.
He leaned back in his char. “We took this one trip down to DC. Went to all these cool museums, the Capitol, the monuments, the Supreme Court even.”
I took in a breath. He sounded like a regular guy describing a normal event between him and his so-called Maggie May. I began to feel my air passages close, knowing I’d never again make any memories with Mark. And here I was in a casual conversation with Mark’s killer. It seemed surreal, as if another Alex had taken over my body temporarily to placate Cobb, make him think I cared. I told myself I couldn’t relax. If I did, I might lash out. And then we’d never earn his trust so that he’d share the name of his accomplice.
“The coolest tour was at the Pentagon. A city within a city,” he said, lifting his eyes. I nodded, ensuring him I was still engaged.
“She taught me a lot too.”
“Like what?”
“Things I needed help with at first, like how to talk to a customer service person and ask for a refund.”
“That’s helpful.”
“Then, you know, we would trade off.”
He looked down, as if he was pondering whether to continue. Now that he was calmer, I wondered if he was questioning his decision to open up.
I tried to keep the conversation flowing. “A trade, huh? I hope it was fair.”
“Eh. At first it was. I think it was.”
“So, what skill did you share?”
His dark eyes grew wide for a moment, then he sat up straighter. “Mainly my grasp of numbers. She could ask me anything, and I could usually figure it out in my head.”
“Impressive.”
“It kind of comes naturally. Never had to study.”
“What did she teach you?”
His eyes found mine, and he paused with his mouth open.
I tilted my head a tad, hoping he’d see I was still eager to hear more.
“She taught me how to shoot a rifle.”
A bomb exploded in my gut, thinking back to the day when Nick and I were pinned against the front of the museum as some invisible sniper tried to kill us.
“J. L., was that you that day at the museum?”
He took in a breath and pushed it out through his nose. “I can keep a secret. I’ve learned how to do that. I know it’s important to trust your partner. It is. It really is.”
“You’re right, J. L.”
Shaking his head, he ran his fingers through his hair, then grabbed a fistful and tugged until he screamed again. “Dammit! I can’t do this. I can’t keep telling lies about my life. Who I am. What I became. How I got here.”
“And so...?”
“She fucking did it. She knew you were at the museum. And she tried to kill you.”
“Was that part of your plan?”
He pointed at his chest. “My plan?” His voice pitched higher. “I only gave her intel, as she called it. It was her plan. The whole fucking thing was her plan.”
Part of me wondered if there was any way he was putting on the performance of his life. Because if he was nothing more than a pawn, it could help his cause, possibly reduce his sentence. I only wanted the truth. For my sanity, and to stop this person from killing again.
“So you’re telling me that she came up with the idea to drown the victims in the bay waters?”
“Mostly. I showed her this cool fishing place at Choate Island.”
The place where the first body was discovered.
“And it just kind of happened. But the real question is why.”
“I’m game. Tell me why.”
“Because she suffered something god-awful when she was in the military. She convinced me it was the right thing to do. To bring justice to the world where there wasn’t any.”
I could see Nick fidgeting in my peripheral vision. I knew he wanted a name. I wanted a name. The information we’d learned was gold, but we couldn’t claim victory until we had the fricking name.
“So, your Maggie May was interested in bringing justice to the people who hurt her?”
He curled his lip in, his mind possibly processing how he’d ended up in prison while his Maggie May still walked the streets, a free woman.
“As I look back, it’s all kind of strange, how our relationship turned from this pretty cool thing into something...different.”
“How so?”
He played with a frayed edge of his cast. “I think she might have been using me. As much as I’ve wanted to think I’m normal and that I deserve to have a girlfriend, any real friend, like any other normal guy, I felt deep down that it was more of a dream. Not the real me. So, I guess all along I knew she was using me. But I couldn’t get my conscious self to admit it.”
Turning my head slightly, Nick gave me the signal—as in, we couldn’t keep playing the role of a shrink. Cobb might think he had ten sessions before he eventually shared the name. Nick’s concern was legitimate, but this was a balancing act. We weren’t exactly dealing with a stable person.
“Tell me more about this justice that...” I purposely didn’t finish my thought, hoping he would.
“Maggie May.”
It didn’t work. “Yeah, your Maggie May. I’m curious why she didn’t want to focus on the people who hurt her when she was in the Army.” I was only guessing about the military branch, trying to draw out more information. It worked.
“It wasn’t in the Army. She was a Marine. Semper Fi and all that bullshit.”
A Marine. Just like Bruno Chappaletti.
“Anyway, she convinced me that she’d gotten her retribution against the people that hurt her in the Marines.”
I was confused. “Then what was this justice cause really all about?”
“In her job, she came across a lot of cheesy assholes who thought they were smarter than everyone, especially their significant others.”
He was talking about Mark and me, not specifically, but mixed in with that group. My legs and arms felt a tingle from a rush of adrenaline.
“She was really bothered by their lack of integrity and loyalty.”
“And what did you think?”
He swallowed once, possibly holding back some emotion, then he looked me in the eyes. “She told me that she loved me. That we’d always share a bond.”
“You feel betrayed?”
“Fuck yeah! She said if I followed her guidance, we’d always be together. It was all about loyalty, so she said.”
I paused a moment, hoping the ebb of his emotional upswing would subside. A minute later, he had returned to playing with his cast.
“The cheesy assholes she came across. How did she decide who she would...you know?” It was still difficult for me to act like I was nothing more than an observer of this horrific string of murders. I felt like I’d been gutted by a thousand knives, all at the same time.
“Well, that’s where she needed my help. She knew these guys would bring one bimbo after another to a couple of different motels. She wanted to find out who the top offenders were.” He cleared his throat and sat up in his chair.
“She asked you to hack into the motel reservation system, like you mentioned in our last visit.”
“You got it. There are probably better computer hackers out there; I just haven’t met them.”
The edges of his mouth turned upward for a split second.
“And what did you find?”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear this, but it was the only way to not only learn Maggie May’s name, but also her motive for killing the last four people. Or had she killed them? Maybe she’d found another patsy.
“Damn, that list was longer than Santa’s,” he said, shifting his eyes around the room, finding Nick for a moment. “I remember showing it to Maggie May. It was like Christmas morning for her. She was ecstatic.”
“Why?”
“Looking back, I think it gave her some type of warped sense of duty to hunt down the worst offenders, get intel on their lives, and exact justice on behalf of their wives.”
Bile tickled the back of my throat. I wasn’t sure I could sit here calmly and listen to this. But I had no other option. I swallowed and maintained a composed demeanor on the outside.
“How many were on her so-called Christmas list?”
“There were dozens to choose from. But we didn’t just pick people randomly. She used my computer skills to get information on all of them. And then we created a top ten list.”
I nodded. I wondered where Mark sat on that list. Third, I would assume. I could feel my entire body tense up like petrified wood. And then I wondered about Monty, Ben Murphy, and the pair from Brighton Beach. Where did they fall on the list?
“J. L., we need to know if you think Maggie May could still be out there killing.”
He bit his lip until he finally drew blood. His head trembled.
“I think it’s her life’s mission.”
“From that list, do you recall anyone named Monty or Ben Murphy?”
He lifted his eyes. “Monty, hmm. He wasn’t on the list, but there was a guy with that name who owned a bar I went to. Part of our intel effort. But Ben Murphy was her boss.”
I jerked my head right and locked eyes with Nick. Murphy was the state police lieutenant.
I knew I had to turn back the clock one more time, to get the name and to finally understand how this all went down. “The night Nick and I found you in your home, the woman in there. She was a state police patrol officer. In the report she said she’d pulled you over, found blood, and then you pulled her pistol and kidnapped her.”
“That’s what she said, yes.”
Was he going to make me beg for the information? Shit!
“J. L., there’s a distinct possibility that Maggie May has continued killing people. You now understand how she used you. You can help stop the killing, J. L. Just give us her name.”
He took in a huge gulp of air. “I wish like hell I wasn’t in this position. I hate it.”
“You hate being disloyal?”
He nodded.
I leaned in closer. “But this has nothing to do with loyalty, and you know that. You never thought you’d kill anyone, right?”
“I never wanted to hurt anyone. Never thought about it...until I met her.”
“So tell us. Please.”
More tears pooled in his eyes and I could see perspiration beading on his forehead. “It’s...”
“Yes?”
“You’re right. It was the woman you found in my house. Margaret Turov. She’s my Maggie May.”
Nick smacked his hand on his leg.
Waving my hand, I kept Cobb’s attention on me. “Do you know why Margaret would want to kill people not on her infidelity Christmas list?”
“Because she’s sick and demented, that’s why.”
From everything I’d heard during the last hour, Cobb had essentially been brainwashed. I’d read about similar stories, some dating back to my initial FBI training in Quantico.
“Can I go now? I’m tired, and I just want to be alone.”
The guards untethered him from the wall and took him to the door. I could hear Cobb mumbling.
“Do you have anything else you want to tell us?” I asked as he waited for the guards to unlock the door.
He broke out in song.
You led me away from home
Just to save you from being alone
You stole my soul, and that's a pain I can do without.
He was obsessing over the tune. He probably couldn’t help himself. Anything to remain sane.
“Thank you for sharing this information, J. L. We’ll tell Kasha Timmons everything you told us. This will help your case.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m not sure I’ll live another three days in this place.”
And then he was whisked away.
13
A blanket of haze hugged the stained ceiling, swaying like waves in an ocean. The woman brought a hand to her nose, stopping mid-breath. The pungent odor of obnoxious perfumes, sweet aftershave, and alcohol mixed with the smoke to halt the pangs of hunger she’d been feeling the last several hours. But with her newly acquired information, she knew she couldn’t risk taking the time to sit down and eat a three-course meal anyway. Too much to accomplish.
She recalled a quote that had been drilled into her psyche in her former life. “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” The famous General Truman quote must have been told to her—no, yelled at her—at least a thousand times.
And it was all bullshit. With her determination on top of her skill set, there wasn’t anything she couldn’t accomplish. Most importantly, when the time came, she would gladly accept all the credit she rightly deserved. But it was mo
re than that. It was about being accountable for her actions. And she had no problem with the concept. In fact, she could hardly contain herself, waiting for the day to arrive when she would stand tall and shout to the world about what she’d achieved—not just for her, but for the betterment of society.
She flipped her straight locks of scarlet hair behind her back. Her eyes hidden behind a pair of octagonal, purple-rimmed glasses, she noticed the rainbow-colored, swirling carpet design. She wondered how it didn’t give the patrons of the Atlantic City casino vertigo or, worse yet, make them hurl.
Lifting her sights while taking in another dose of the foul air, she spotted a large contingent of Asian people huddled around three tables in the corner, and she instantly pictured herself in a seedy casino during one particular stopover in Manila a few years back.
She was there with her comrades. Always faithful, she reminded herself. All except a few who had to prove a point. And then, to show she was a bigger badass than anyone else, she had to one-up them. She had stifled the pain all these years. At times, the ping of emotion would sit at the edge of her conscious self, ready to consume her soul. But she’d become a professional in the art of suppression.
That incident was part of what made her who she was. Or who she’d become. Mostly. There were other times.
“Would the lady like a flute of champagne?”
The woman turned and spotted a squatty man with a drop of perspiration sliding down his extra-long sideburns, holding a tray of glasses filled with golden bubbly. She wondered if he’d failed at the Elvis thing and had been forced to carry a tray around all day.
“Not interested.” She scanned the expansive room and finally found the cluster of tables dedicated to the craft of blackjack. She sauntered that way, but her heel caught a snag on the carpet, and she tumbled forward. Avoiding the man with the tray, she let go of her clutch and dropped to the carpet, landing on her elbows as her red hair dropped across her vision.
Before she could breathe, three men were trying to help her up. She spotted her purse a foot away and felt her heart skip a beat when she noticed the curved grip of her knife peeking out. Still on the ground, she purposely pushed her knee up and snagged her sleeveless dress on the floor, which brought it down far enough to create a wave of cleavage. Like trained dogs, every male eye swung to her chest, giving her a brief moment to scoop up her clutch while bagging her knife in one smooth motion.
The Alex Troutt Thrillers: Books 1-3 (Alex Troutt Thrillers Box Set) Page 37
