by Michael Beck
"Did you hate good men, Father? Did you hate them because they were good and you weren't? Is that it?"
"No. No. I don't hate good people. I want people to be good. That's what I preach."
"But that must have driven you insane, didn't it? All these good people in your congregations and you, not being able to stop killing. That must have ripped you apart?"
Bailey swayed from side to side, moaning.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't know why I did it. Dear God, I'm just like my father, aren't I?" He began sobbing.
Bensen and Graves sat back, staring at Bailey with a mixture of disgust and hate. Fulton stopped the video.
"That's as far as the interview went," said Fulton. "He's now undergoing a medical and psychiatric evaluation."
"He's not exactly what I pictured," said Bear.
"You and me both," agreed Fulton. "He comes across as a whiny, pathetic loser."
"A loser who's killed at least eighteen people," I corrected. "He can't be that hopeless and pull off what he's been doing for fourteen years undetected. Don't be fooled by what you see."
"You think he's putting it on? He seemed pretty natural," said Bear.
"Life in prison is a strong motivator," I said.
"He wouldn't be the first to go down the insanity path," said Fulton.
"What was that about not being like his father?" Bear sounded more curious than anything.
"We don't know. We'll look into it but, at the moment, we're still busy working the crime scene."
"Have you dug up the basement yet?"
"We've recovered three bodies so far. Initial observations are that they are teenage girls. It looks like you were right. He cemented over each of the eight teenage victims."
"So that means there will be five more bodies," said Bear. "But we counted nine different cement sections. Who's the ninth body?"
"You heard him. Jesus Fernandez. It was about the only name he could remember," I said.
"Jesus. That's a boy's name, isn't it?"
"Yeah. It's Mexican."
"So what's a lone Mexican boy doing in a graveyard containing only American teenage girls?" mused Bear.
"I don't know," said Fulton. "Perhaps he's the one who started all of this, his first. Or someone he killed before he developed his MO. It will probably take us a while to identify all the victims. One thing is clear, we won't get much help from Father Bailey. You saw him. He has trouble remembering any of their names."
"If we believe him," I said.
"He might be the best actor in the world, but one thing I know. He is going down for this. We've got enough evidence for eighteen life sentences. He's never going to see the light of day again. You can move on now, Tan. You finally got him."
"Did I tell you Jade spoke this morning?" I said as I walked to the door.
"No. That's damn good news, Tan. Why didn't you tell me right away? That's fantastic. So she's alert and talking?"
"Yes, but she gets confused and often uses incorrect words. Do you know what were the first words she uttered?"
"What?"
"I showed her a picture of Father Bailey and asked her if he was the man who hurt her. She said no, it wasn't him."
No one spoke for a long moment.
"Tan, she was six and in a darkened room. Even if she saw him, it was probably only for a second. Plus she suffered severe head trauma. All of this happened fourteen years ago! You really expect her to remember the guy? Jesus, would you?"
"Yeah, that's what I thought. Hell of a first sentence though, isn't it?"
CHAPTER 58
The motion sensor went off as I was packing my bag for training. I opened the door. Bob stood there, arms raised.
"Ta da."
"Bob, come in." There was no car. "How did you get here?"
"Taxi. Why?"
"It's best if you don't come here, Bob."
"Are you sick of me already?" Her words were flippant but her eyes were wary.
"Not yet." I held up my hands. "Just joking. It's just best if you're not seen here."
"You're worried about what happened to that tennis player...Melanie Bishop?"
"It's best to be on the safe side."
"I thought they caught the guys that did it? By 'caught', my sources say that you killed them both. Isn't that right?"
"Not the person who sent them."
"Who is this person? Why is he out to get you?"
"It's a long story."
"Give me the highlights then." She saw my hesitation. "You still don't trust me, do you? Is that why you didn't tell me your parents were killed by Cupid?"
This silenced me for a moment. So she knew.
"No. It's not that I don't trust you. It's just that... It's not something I ever talk about. What happened became part of me, you know? And..."
"You don't like talking about yourself," she completed my thought. "Yeah, I kind of gathered that. Getting personal information from you is like interviewing a goddam computer."
"You want the highlights? Okay, here they are. I was shot twice and captured on my third tour in Afghanistan. I spent three weeks naked hanging from a beam where breakfast every morning was a whipping and dinner was someone whaling away with a piece of timber on my feet. I cut my own finger off to escape, and blew up a family of three kids and a mother, who just happened to be the wife of El Casera, Chairman of the Ruling Council of the Taliban."
I clamped my mouth shut. Neither of us spoke for several seconds.
"When you open up, you really go whole hog, don't you?" Bob smiled, but her lips trembled and her eyes were moist.
"You're not going all girlie on me, are you, Bob?"
"You wish. So this El Casera was responsible for the bomb that killed Melanie Bishop?"
"Yes."
"Is that what's under that tarp out there?"
"Yes. What's left of my trailer."
She stared at me for several seconds and I thought she was going to ask me why I hadn't disposed of it, but she just nodded. "So you think this El Casera might still come after you?"
"I blew up his family. What do you think?"
Bob regarded me silently again. "I think you want him to come after you? That's why you still live here and why you don't want me to come around. You're hoping he'll try again. Are you fucking crazy?"
I shrugged.
"You never let go, do you?" she said.
"What do you mean?"
"El Casera. Cupid. You never give up do you? You're like a goddam lemming. You can stomp, shoot or burn them, but they just keep coming."
"Perseverance is my middle name," I agreed.
"Oh? I thought it was fucking brainless."
"You know, you've got a touch of the lemming, too. Have you ever given up on a story?"
"No. But no one is trying to blow me up to stop me."
"If they were, would that stop you?"
"No," she said after another short silence.
"I didn't think so. Anyway, how did you know my parents were killed by Cupid?"
"Are you kidding?" She threw the newspaper on the table. The headline said Cupid Killer Caught. "It's only on the front page of every major paper across the country. And here, I've been sleeping with the guy who caught Cupid and, whose parents were killed by him, and I don't know a thing about it. Thanks for the tip off."
"It all happened quickly. I didn't know myself if he was Cupid until yesterday."
I scanned the paper. It had the murder victims we knew about; Abrahams, Symonds and my parents and the fact that Cupid struck every two years. It reported that an unknown number of victims had been found inside Bailey's house and that a member of the church was helping police with their enquiries. It made no mention that the buried victims were teenage girls or that Cupid had been ripping their hearts out and putting them inside his male adult victims. The headlines were big now. Wait until that got out.
"Can you tell me how you traced him and what you found inside his house?"
I coul
dn't help smiling. "Who's the obsessed one now?"
"I'm not obsessed. It's just this could be a good story."
"Good story?"
"Okay, great story. It could be a fucking, great story."
"You're wrong. You've got no idea. It's not a fucking, great story. It's a fucking Pulitzer winning story, that's what it is."
Bob's whole attention was fixed on me. If I'd ever wondered what a deer felt like before it was consumed by a lion, now I knew.
"Tan, stop fucking with me. Are you going to tell me?"
"Bobette, are you asking me for a favor?"
"All right, all right. What do you want?"
"Well, I don't want a dinner date, I can tell you that. But there is something."
After Bob finished cleaning the inside of the Winnebago, I put her in a taxi and packed a bag for the afternoon's training session. Just as I was about to leave I heard the message box on my email beep. I clicked on it and found Mole had sent me the file on Henry Hunter's insurance claim against Dedrick King's Eureka mine. I was about to file it away for some boring bedtime reading when the last line grabbed my attention.
Claim action: Claim disapproved.
I scrolled back through the report. Just as Sheriff Shaw had told me, Henry Hunter was struck in the back at work by an ore trolley. It snapped his vertebrae. What Shaw hadn't told me, or more likely didn't know, was the reason Hunter was struck in the back. Three sentences under the heading Accident Description stood out.
Three miners have provided the investigators with affidavits that they saw Henry Hunter drinking alcohol during the work shift when the accident occurred. The three miners all state that it was common practice for Henry Hunter to keep a bottle of whisky hidden in an air vent between sections 34 and 35 of central shaft three. Subsequent blood testing of Henry Hunter, two hours after the accident, at hospital showed an alcohol reading of 0.18.
I sat back, trying to take it all in. Henry Hunter was drunk at the time of the accident, so his claim had been rejected. So why had Sheriff Shaw claimed that Hunter had received a generous settlement from the company?
I brought up Hunter's financial details that Mole had provided me with. Yes, just as I thought. Each month, for a number of years after the accident, an amount of six thousand dollars had been credited to Hunter's account. The payer was Regal Insurance.
Why had the insurance company paid $6,000 per month to an employee who had been drunk on the job and whose claim had been rejected? The name of the insurance company, Regal, struck me as interesting and I Googled it. Just as I suspected. Regal Insurance was a subsidiary of King Enterprises LTD.
Regal Insurance was owned by Dedrick King.
Why did Dedrick King pay the man who married the love of his life, and who was falling down drunk on the job, $6,000 per month? Was it because he still loved Tammy and couldn't stand to see her living in poverty? That would explain why he made the payment under the guise of the insurance pay-out. Henry Hunter did not strike me as the kind of man who would accept charity from his wife's ex-lover. But an insurance pay-out was another matter.
I sighed. This case was becoming like an episode of Desperate Housewives.
I picked up Decker at his house on the way to training. Liz wasn't there, which was just as well. That kiss still ran through my head a thousand times an hour. All of those emotions and feelings I had bottled up three years ago were breaking out. I had made the right decision. There had been no real future for us back then. I had too much stuff going on in my head. Afghanistan, El Casera, Cupid. I was a powder keg.
Until I caught my parents' killer, I wouldn't be right for anyone. Now I had caught him. What should I do now? Was it too late for us? Had I missed that boat? Judging by that kiss, Liz still had feelings for me. What did she feel for Decker?
And Bob. Bob.
There was something about her. She was smart, pragmatic, unsentimental, stubborn, driven. And oh, that body.
"Liz told me," said Decker as he drove.
"What?" I said, startled out of my reverie.
"I said Liz told me what happened."
"Um, did she?" I said lamely.
"Yeah. How you caught the guy that killed your parents. Cupid."
"Oh, that. Yeah, we got him."
"Liz said you'd been looking for him for fourteen years. Is that right?"
"Not counting weekends."
"That's a hell of a long time. You never thought about giving up?"
"No."
Decker stared straight ahead, his hands tight on the steering wheel. "I couldn't have done it," he said. "I couldn't have kept looking for so long."
"Troy, you searched for as long as you could for Ashley Hunter."
"You wouldn't have stopped. You would have kept going."
"You had the first stages of frost bite. No one could have done more. I couldn't have done more. I would have stopped too. Hell, I get cold at home just opening the ice-box."
He flicked me a glance. "I meant to thank you."
"For what?"
"The other day when those goons attacked us."
I shrugged. "That's okay. That's what I get the big bucks for."
"But I'm not paying you anything."
"That's right, you're not. Next time I let you get clocked, okay?"
"Next time I'll pay you."
We pulled into the Turbos training center parking-lot. Fans, reporters and press photographers were waiting outside the entrance.
"Did I tell you I ran into Matt Maxwell the other day?" I said.
"Yeah?" Decker cast me a disbelieving glance. "And where did you run into him?"
"In his motel room over in Newark. Beautiful place. Cockroach heaven. It appears that someone set him up to lose his job and fabricated the child pornography evidence that has led to him being charged."
"So he says."
"You don't believe him?"
"He's a drunk. He'd say anything to get sympathy."
"How do you know he's a drunk?"
Decker was silent for a moment.
"My parents must have told me. They're still in touch with some friends from Leadville."
"You're parents seem to know a lot of interesting tidbits, don't they? You know he's going to lose his family and probably go to jail?"
"It's probably what he deserves."
"For what he's done lately or what he did nine years ago?"
Decker's eyes were burning with anger but he held his tongue.
"I happened to come across a couple of things at his place that might interest you," I said.
"Just happened, eh?"
I shrugged. "I have a photo of the Fantastic Five at the cabin in late autumn. Kyle King is in the photo."
"So? We went up there every autumn."
"Yeah, but in this one you all have the Fantastic Five tattoo, including Ashley."
He was silent for a moment. Hawk and Davis had appeared at the player's entrance and were mobbed by autograph hounds.
"I must have been wrong then," he finally said. "She must have got her tattoo the autumn the year before she died. It was a long time ago so it was hard to remember."
"Yeah, I'm sure. I found something else that you might be interested in."
"You sure do seem to find a lot of things don't you? I'm sure Maxwell would be interested in how you found these things?"
"Somehow, I don't think Maxwell will put up an argument over this. I found an old pair of panties. Very old."
Slowly, Decker's face turned around to me. His face was an interesting study. Subtle movements flickered across it, like the earth shifting because of invisible, massive movements miles below.
"I'm pretty sure they belonged to Ashley Hunter." I was watching him closely.
"Were they--"
"Were they pink? Were they damaged? Were they torn? What would you like to know, Troy? You tell me and I'll tell you."
He sat looking out the window at a group of kids that had begun to throw a ball around in front of the entry gat
es.
"Were they...torn?" he said hoarsely.
"Yes. They were ripped in half."
His eyes closed and he leaned his forehead against the steering wheel.
"You didn't know?"
"How would I know?"
"I suppose you wouldn't...if you were in the bedroom that night."
"She might have..."
"Accidently torn them herself?" I completed his thought. "Because girls rip their panties in half all the time, don't they? And Maxwell just happened to keep them all these years because he has a panty fetish? I don't think so. What do you think?"
He didn't answer.
"Yeah. Now do you want to tell me again how Kyle King got sick and couldn't go to the cabin that weekend?"
But Decker ignored me, climbed out of the car and strode towards the entry gates. The autograph hounds flocked around him, but he brushed past them as if he didn't see them. And I'm pretty sure that right then, he didn't.
All he was probably seeing right now was a young girl, whom he loved, in a snow-bound cabin, and three boys, who he had thought were his best friends.
CHAPTER 59
Decker and I worked out in the gym and then ran laps before Decker went off to the physiotherapist to have his arm treated. His forearm was still badly bruised from our altercation with the Steeler supporters. He didn't say a word the whole time.
I was talking to Jeffries when I heard my name called. Coach was waving to me from the middle of the field where he was working with the offensive and defensive line. As I ran over, the offensive line ran a pass play. Hastings threw to his receiver, and then rubbed his shoulder. Coach spoke to him quietly before he turned to me.
"Mark, have you read the play book?"
"I hope that's a trick question."
"Joel's arm is sore, so I don't want him to do any more today. Colson has a virus and Decker still can't play. I want to run some plays, so it looks like you're it."
I gazed around. There were players kicking, blocking and passing all over the field.
"Coach, there's a cazillion players out here. Surely one of them can throw."
"Yeah, there is. You. Catch."
I caught the ball.
"See, you're a natural."
"I don't know the whole play book," I protested.
