by S. E. Harmon
“That was Nick. They found Luke holed up in his cousin’s workshop.”
“Did he admit to anything?”
“No, he’s been pretty tight-lipped since his arrest. Don’t worry, no one is going to talk to him until we get there.”
It was a little hard to switch gears so fast, and it took me a few seconds to think about what needed to be done. I glanced down at my clothes. “I need a shower.”
He nodded. “Don’t take too long.”
I headed for the bathroom. I wasn’t surprised when I heard the front door a few minutes later. I figured he’d be too impatient to do anything else but wait in the car and drum his fingers on the steering wheel. That was fine. But if he honked even once, he was a dead man.
Chapter 27
I crossed my arms as I looked through the glass of the interview room one.
My posture subconsciously mimicked Nick’s folded arms as he leaned back in his chair. To someone who wasn’t familiar with his mannerisms, he probably looked relaxed. Casual. Like he could sit there all day long. After working with him for a while, I knew different. I could tell he was rapidly losing his patience. The signs were in the little things, like that miniscule twitch at the corner of his eye. The tone of his voice. The way he tugged at his ear every now and again.
We’d decided as a team Nick was the best person to start the conversation. Danny was too aggressive, Kevin was too easy-going, and Tabitha wasn’t personable enough. As for me? I checked my watch for the fifth time in as many minutes. They all said simultaneously that I was too damned impatient.
Fuckers.
The door to the room opened and Nick stalked out. He ran his hands through his hair with a growl. I wanted to tell him that his appearance reminded me of an irritated hedgehog, but he looked a few seconds from putting his fist through the wall.
"Things are going that well, huh?" I asked mildly.
"That man is impossible." He jerked a thumb at the room where Luke Paige waited patiently, a human version of the Wall of Gibraltar. “He’s had a long time to figure out how to play this.”
“Or maybe he’s not playing us at all,” I said, stroking my chin thoughtfully. “We know he’s a thief, but is he a killer?”
“He certainly had motive and opportunity.”
“Did he?” I stroked my chin some more. “For all we know, Mason would’ve forgiven him in a week. He always was a pushover for his brother.”
Nick scowled. “You know, if you need an evil cat and pinky ring, I can’t recommend Amazon Prime enough.”
I looked at my reflection in the glass. All the chin stroking did make me look a bit villain-like. I dropped my hand, but not before I gave him the finger.
Luke opened the thick paperback some kindly soul had brought him—smart money was on Macy. She still didn’t grasp the fact that discomfort aided in confessions. I caught a quick glimpse of the cover before he flipped the book open and recognized it as a recent political thriller. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and started to read.
Nick swore. “Maybe we should just bring him some hot cocoa and his slippers.” He stalked past me and headed down the hallway.
“Wait, where are you going?” I called after him. “We're not finished.”
“I’m uncomfortably close to strangling a suspect. I need a break.”
I stifled the urge to offer him a Kit Kat and stared at Luke some more. My turn, I guess.
I had a feeling we were coming at this the wrong way. We were making this about Mason and Hunter, and we needed to make this about Luke. Luke Paige had played second fiddle to his brother his entire life. Maybe it was time we moved him to first chair.
I headed into the room and took a seat across from him. He saved his place in the book with an actual bookmark—an old-fashioned move I begrudgingly loved—and looked at me expectantly. “I don't have anything else to say about my brother.”
I smiled at him pleasantly, as if that was the furthest thing from my mind. “I don't want to talk about Mason.”
He frowned. “I don’t want to talk about that Hunter guy. I didn’t even know him.”
“I don’t want you to talk about Hunter, either. In fact, I don’t want you to talk at all.” I leaned forward, propping my elbows on the table. “I want you to listen. I’d like to tell you a story.”
He gestured coolly at the paperback. “I’m always up for a good read.”
“Fantastic. There once was a man who couldn’t seem to get his life in order. No matter what his parents or brother did to help him, he couldn’t stay out of trouble. This man was a charming scoundrel, and people couldn’t help but fall for his charisma his entire life.”
He smirked. “Sounds like someone I’d want to know.”
“You’d be surprised.” His smirk fell, and I continued. “This man had a brother who was dedicated to saving him. Every scrape this man got himself into, his brother was right there to bail him out. Eventually this man went too far and stole his brother’s prized coin collection. It didn’t make the brother angry. It just made him very, very tired… tired enough to walk away. But the man couldn’t let his brother go.”
His jaw tightened as he eyed me, but he didn’t speak.
“One day, the brother disappeared. We found him in a trunk at the bottom of a lake. You’re a smart man, Luke.” I raised an eyebrow. “What do you think a grand jury will think of my little story?”
“I didn’t kill Mason,” he said heatedly. “And I damn sure didn’t kill Hunter.”
“Then you’d better start spinning some theories quickly because I’ve been racking my brain, and this is all I’ve got.”
His fists clenched and unclenched as he struggled to get himself under control. “This feels like a bad dream.”
“Level with me, Luke. I can’t help you if you’re not honest with me.”
“I am. True, the last week I was with my brother was challenging. We argued every time we were in the same room.” He bit his lip. “And yes, I did steal his coin collection. I’ll admit that.”
“Big of you,” I said dryly. So glad you could come clean after we dug up the proof.
“I knew how it would look. I’m sorry I lied,” he said quietly. “But I knew it wouldn’t hinder the investigation because I didn’t kill my brother. So what good would coming clean do?”
“He asked you to move out.”
“He did.”
“You had no place else to go, and he never got a chance to revise his will.” I stared at him for a few moments, letting him sweat. “You got the house, his car, his business, and a tidy insurance settlement to boot.”
“I would never kill my brother, and that’s the honest-to-God truth,” he said desperately. “You have to believe me.”
The only thing I had to do was pay taxes and die. “I assume you’ll take a polygraph.”
He laid his palms flat on the table and took a few deep breaths, looking a bit like a mouse in a cage. “I think… I need to speak with a lawyer.”
I nodded. “You know what, Luke? I think you do too.”
We left the station late, much too late to do much more than grab takeout on the way home. I was too hungry to wait for a table and chair. Instead I ate as I drove, one-handing my burger handily, and making plans about everything I was going to do when I got home. A quick load of laundry and loading the dishwasher topped the list. I got as far as kicking off my shoes before the bed called my name.
I stared up at the ceiling, sprawled out on Danny’s bed. Our bed now, I guess. After all, before we’d been interrupted, we’d agreed to move in together. For all intents and purposes, I was home. That was going to take a while to sink in.
So was the fact that they’d recovered three more bodies out of the river. I had a feeling before it was all said and done, they’d find every victim on my murder board. Even though they’d only found five, Nick had complete confidence in my abilities and already dubbed them the Ironcrest Eight.
In a few minutes I’ll get up. I�
�d shower and put on pajamas. Turn off the lights in the house and check the locks. Be a productive human being in general. My body already knew what my brain refused to acknowledge—I wasn’t going to do any of those things.
I checked my watch and called out, “Five more minutes.”
“What?” Danny’s voice drifted in from the bathroom.
“Five more minutes,” I said a little louder. I wiggled my sock clad toes. “And make sure you use cold water when you rinse.”
“What happens if I use hot?”
“I don’t know. You’re the guinea pig, not me.”
“Yeah.” His voice was accusing. “Still not sure how that happened.”
“I asked you which one you wanted to try, the avocado mask or the papaya hair mist. You chose the mask.” My nose twitched. “Which is why I smell like papaya.”
My mother had sent over a new bag of products for us to test, and I was a dutiful son. But not so dutiful that I wouldn’t make Danny help.
He appeared in the doorway, clad only in a pair of blue boxers, a bundle of clothing in his hands. I took an obligatory moment to goggle at the beauty that was Daniel McKenna. The tattoos, all that golden, dusky skin, the broad shoulders and toned arms tapering down to the defined muscles of his stomach. He wasn’t all that hairy, but I loved the dark treasure trail that started under his belly button and disappeared into his clingy boxers. It all worked for me… from the neck down.
I glanced up at his face and bit my lip to keep from laughing. Blue eyes peered at me from behind a thick, grayish-green clay mask. From the looks of the toothbrush in his mouth, he’d decided to multitask. A bit of the goop fell on his chest.
A chuckle escaped. “I’ve never wanted you more.”
It was hard to tell if he was scowling under that green monster face, but smart money was on yes. “Shut up,” he mumbled around his toothbrush.
I watched as he went over to the closet and stuffed his clothes in the laundry bin. The mask may’ve been amusing, but I wasn’t kidding. It only took a little seaweed goop to show me I loved him more and more every day. The fact that he was willing to put on a mud mask just to help my mother test products made me tingly in places you shouldn’t tingle. I frowned as my scalp tingled some more.
Oh, wait. Maybe that was the papaya hair mist.
Well, whatever the origin of my tingles, I loved him and he was all mine. That got me to thinking about love in general, and the strange things it could make people do—specifically the things it had made Luke Paige do.
All we had at this point was an extremely circumstantial case. Again. That got me to thinking about Jon Gable, and how he’d gotten away with murdering Lottie Hereford on our watch. The less I thought about that, the better.
I scowled at the ceiling. “I don’t know why these guys just don’t kill themselves instead. It would almost be like a public service.”
“We can ink at ay. We’re ops.” At my furrowed brow, he took the toothbrush out and repeated himself around a mouthful of foam. “I said we can’t think that way. We’re cops.”
“He might’ve killed two people. And I’m a human being before I’m a cop. In fact, that’s what makes me a better detective and more effective at what I do. “
“It’s not our job to be judge, jury, and executioner.”
“That’s actually a very fair way to look at things.”
“Obviously.” He closed the closet door and gave me inscrutable green monster face again. But those sparkling blue eyes were a dead giveaway to his amusement. “You sound surprised.”
“You’re the same guy who put me on two back to back shifts. I’m fully aware of how unfair you can be.”
He headed back to the bathroom. “Hey, I can’t show favoritism.”
“Even for the guy who sucks your dick?”
“Especially for the guy who sucks my dick,” he called back. “Besides, I do plenty of sucking of my own.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” I said lazily.
Those millions of things I had to do before bed were still waiting, but the sound of the water running was just too soothing. And the bed was just too comfortable. I fluffed up my pillow for better neck support.
It still bothered me that I hadn’t gotten a confession from Luke. Although maybe confession wasn’t the right word… reasoning was probably closer to what I was after. I crisscrossed the board of victims with connections many different ways, but I hadn’t yet found a common thread that bonded them all.
And then there was the piece that Saunders had found in the chest. We still hadn’t identified that yet, either. Maybe it all boiled down to the fact that I didn’t like loose ends. You were never going to know all the answers in a murder case, but loose ends had a way of coming back to bite you in the ass.
“I really wish we could identify that piece,” I said aloud, talking to myself more than anything else.
“What?” Danny hollered back.
I didn’t bother to repeat myself. Surely there were probably better, more effective ways to communicate with someone than yelling room to room. I leaned over the bed and pulled my laptop out of my attaché. I scooched up against the headboard and balanced it on my upraised knees as it booted up. Then I pulled up pictures of the Ironcrest Eight and started cutting and pasting their photos onto one sheet.
The men were connected to one another. I could feel it. I sent the sheet to my wireless printer, sure the answer was right in front of my face. Now if the answer would just have the courtesy to get up and wave.
The water stopped in the bathroom. The light flickered off and Danny appeared in the doorway, patting his face and chin with a towel. “Did you say something about Reece’s pieces?”
“I said I really wish we could identify that piece, Daniel. The piece.” I paused. “But could you pick up some Reese’s tomorrow?”
He chuckled. “Do you really think it’s important?”
“No I just have a craving.”
“The piece, Rainstorm, the piece,” he mocked with a grin. “Do you really think it’s all that important?”
“I don’t know. I just like to cover all my bases.”
“Well, you should listen to your instincts. They haven’t led you wrong so far. Into life-threatening danger, yes, but they’re hardly ever wrong.”
I huffed. “Thank you. Also fuck you.”
He chuckled. “You should feel vindicated. They already found five bodies in your killing field.”
“First off, it’s not my killing field.” I minimized the last photo and jammed it in under the rest. “Secondly, it wasn’t a field, it was a river.”
“You really think these guys are connected to Mason’s murder? Maybe you just stumbled upon a serial who’s been operating quietly for years,” he mused.
“Maybe,” I said absently, still staring at the pictures of the Ironcrest Eight. “Can you ever be a hundred percent sure of anything?”
The hairstyles and clothing of the victims dated the pictures even without my notations. As Danny had pointed out previously, they were all from different walks of life. Abraham’s photo was taken at some sort of college football game, and a glittery paw print was painted on his cheek. Paul Marks was in the lobby of a building, his hair carefully combed, his smile friendly but wan. He had a paper tag stuck to his shirt that read, “My name is”, and “Paul” was written in neat, careful letters. And then there was Grant Masters, whose green eyes were almost a dead match for Mason’s. Now that I was really examining him, he kind of looked like Mason.
I squinted at the picture. In fact, seeing all the pictures side by side made me realize they all kind of looked like Mason.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” I murmured.
“What?” Danny asked.
“They’re all the same man.” I shook my head in bemusement. “It was a little hard to see it at first because they’re all so different.”
“Let me see that.”
I turned the computer around so he could see what was so
clear to me now. When he didn’t say anything, I made a sound of exasperation. “They all look like Mason. Don’t you see it?”
Danny’s expression told me he did not. “They’re all so—”
“Different, I know, I know. But look at their smiles. The cheekbones. The mouth and the shape of the jaw.” I shook my head. “This is exactly what I was talking about when I was telling you about that guy I dated. Max didn’t look like you in an obvious sense, but his symmetry reminded me of you.”
“Max,” he grumbled. “You never did give me a last name.”
“I don’t plan to, either,” I informed him.
To the general observer, they probably did look dissimilar. But hair, eye, and skin color were only skin deep. They had the same facial symmetry and eye shape… even the smiles were approximately the same. The profiler in me thought—no, knew, that they all looked like the same man.
“The killer would’ve been drawn to these men and probably wouldn’t even know why. And every time his stressor was triggered, killing would satisfy his urge to hurt Mason, for a time.”
“But then he did hurt Mason,” Danny pointed out.
I shrugged. “You can’t fight your baser urges forever. He kept telling himself he’d never hurt Mason… until he did.”
Danny frowned for a few moments, thinking. He didn’t discount my theory, though, and in my book, that was a win. “You do realize that this is all just conjecture at this point,” he finally said.
“It is,” I agreed. “Maybe I’ll run the pictures of the Ironcrest vics by some of Luke’s friends and family. See if they recognize any of the faces.”
He eyed me skeptically. “Think they’ll actually tell you the truth?”
“Maybe, and I’d certainly rather know now than when the defense brings it up in trial.”
“I’d be surprised if there was a trial. The DA was already talking about offering Luke a deal for a full confession.”
“Is he wavering?”
“How should I know? Andy doesn’t keep me informed about every step of a case as soon as it happens.”
