by Lisa Black
“Right.”
“And don’t pick someone who looks like me.”
“Got it.”
He did not seem reassured. “Are you sure about this? You’re going to have to lie, Maggie. Do you even know how to do that?”
“Why not? I’ve been learning from the best,” she retorted, trying to ignite some spark of outrage within herself. It stubbornly refused to light.
Jack turned away, but slowly. He didn’t like it, of course he didn’t. He would have to trust her. If she wanted him locked up, if she couldn’t hold up under the sure-to-be-endless questioning, if she simply had a crisis of confidence and decided to confess her own sin, he would go to jail for the rest of his life.
But Maggie’s stakes towered equally high. If he continued his murderous ways and wound up caught by other means, he could sacrifice her for a reduced sentence. If his mind took some new, bizarre turn, he might also decide that confession might be good for the soul. And if all his words now were only meant to buy time to complete a perfect frame-up, pinning all the murders on her, she would not know until it was much, much too late.
But she didn’t see a choice, and apparently neither did he. They could decide to exist in an uneasy détente of mutually assured destruction, or he could shoot and kill her right now. And for whatever reason, he didn’t seem to want to do that.
So she would live.
For the moment, that would have to be good enough.
At the door, he looked back. “Maggie—what changed your mind?”
She considered him. Then she said, “On the way here I passed the steps where a little boy’s body was dumped because no one slayed a particular monster when they had the chance . . . and tonight, with this particular monster, I wasn’t about to let that happen again. It was a judgment call. Inherently illogical.”
“So you still don’t have a conclusion.”
“I do not. I don’t expect I ever will.”
Sirens wailed in the distance.
Jack said, “I suppose I should say thank you.”
“No,” she said firmly. “You shouldn’t.”
Chapter 37
Saturday, 3:05 p.m.
“My turn,” Carol said.
“I just got her,” Maggie protested, looking down into the wrinkled face of the day-old girl.
“You don’t even like babies.”
“I like babies. It’s kids I’m not so crazy about.” But she handed the delicate bundle over to her coworker, worried that her bruised face and bandaged neck might scare the infant, or that the baby might pick up the odor of decay from Maggie’s hair or skin. She had stayed at the old mansion all night, hiding her bloody shirt, helping the medical personnel with the massive amount of work needed to clean up the victims enough to be transported. Finally the last surviving victim had been trundled off to safety and Maggie could go home, where she used up every drop of hot water in her entire apartment building trying to wash the smell of the past twenty-four hours off her. She had had to give up. It still seemed to waft into her nostrils every other breath, a phenomenon both impossible and sharply real.
Then she had come to the hospital for a few stitches in the stab wound, while Denny stood outside the maternity ward window three floors up.
“You look like you need sleep more than I do,” he told her now. They conversed in low tones in the corner of the room, his gaze never traveling from his wife’s weary smile for more than a few seconds at a time.
“I got some,” Maggie said.
“You need more. Stay home for a few days.”
“I’m fine, really. You look more freaked out than I feel.”
This was an exaggeration, but in his kindly way he let her get away with it. “It’s all the blood and the screaming and the white coats. Gets me every time. Yes, I was the one doing the screaming, but still—”
“I’m sure you were very brave.”
Denny gave up trying to avoid the subject. “Patty got any suspects?”
“Not yet.”
“Some are saying we shouldn’t look too hard, just be grateful for his help. I don’t know—”
“No one knows. We never know what to think about someone who does the kinds of things this guy did. We envy his ability to take action, feel guilt that it was necessary, and wait for him to hurt the wrong person so we can say he was wrong all along, because we know that’s what we’re supposed to say. But we never know if it’s really true.”
“At least we know his signature now. The next scumbag who turns up with a full stomach and twenty-twos in his head—”
“Yeah.” Except there wouldn’t be any more showing up.
If Jack stuck to his side of their bargain.
If he didn’t find a new method, some other MO entirely, a method that didn’t raise a single red flag to the cops, one that didn’t allow her to link the cases together. He could use different calibers and hide some bodies and plant different trace evidence—she had taught him that one herself—and above all he could make sure there never, ever, seemed to be a pattern. Nothing except shards of Lexan and white cat hair and a fondness for Fords.
Maggie sighed, rubbing one eye.
She could feel Denny watching her, the first-class worrier worrying about many things at once. How this would affect her, what kind of traumas she might carry with her onto crime scenes in the future. What might happen if this killer lingered within the city. What kind of world his daughter had been born into. He said, “It’s hard to decide whose side to be on in this situation.”
“There is no side. There is no once and for all. All we can do is make the decision we have to make when we come to it, and then hope to God we made the right one.”
Denny had worked with her for many years, and just might suspect there were things she had not told him about this particular crime. “Did you make a decision?”
“Yes.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“I think Angel is the perfect name,” she told him. “Go hold your daughter.”
NOTES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
John D. Rockefeller’s wife was indeed named Laura Celestia “Cettie” Rockefeller, but I have no idea if he referred to the mansion on East 40th by that nickname. Alas, the home is no longer there. Rockefeller specified in his will that it was to be torn down upon his death, and it was.
I always wind up thanking my former chemistry professor Andrew Wolfe, and this book is no exception. Thanks for helping me get Maggie out of that room.
Though I spent many hours at the Justice Center, I do not claim to have intimate knowledge of how the Cleveland Police Department and its forensic unit operate. Therefore many details are invented, and others based on the local P.D. where I am employed.
I do try to approach my plots logically, so I always do a bit of reading. For this novel I studied Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence by Bill James; Mistrial: An Inside Look at How the Criminal Justice System Works . . . and Sometimes Doesn’t by Mark Geragos and Pat Harris; The Last Place You’d Look by Carole Moore; Super-gods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human by Grant Morrison; Crash Into Me: A Survivor’s Search for Justice by Liz Seccuro; Waiting for José: The Minutemen’s Pursuit of America by Harel Shapira; and Finding Runaways and Missing Adults by Robert L. Snow.
Of course I have to thank my fabulous immediate and extended family, a large group of absolutely fabulous people. Not that I’m biased or anything.
And thanks, once again, to my terrific agent Vicky Bijur, for not giving up on me.
Susan M. Klingbeil
New York Times bestselling author Lisa Black is the author of seven novels in the Theresa MacLean mystery series and two novels written as Elizabeth Becka. As a forensic scientist at the Cuyahoga County Coroner’s Office, she analyzed gunshot residue on hands and clothing, hairs, fibers, paint, glass, DNA, blood, and many other forms of trace evidence, as well as crime scenes. Now she is a latent print exami
ner and CSI for the Cape Coral Police Department in Florida, working mostly with fingerprints and crime scenes.
Lisa has lectured at writers’ conventions and appeared on panels, and is a member of Sisters In Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and International Thriller Writers. As a forensic specialist, she is a member of the American Academy of Forensic Scientists, the International Association for Identification, the International Association of Bloodstain Pattern Analysts, and is a Certified Latent Print Examiner. She has testified in court as an expert witness over sixty-five times. Her books have been translated into six languages. She lives near Fort Myers, Florida. Visit her on Facebook, Twitter, or at www.lisa-black.com.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2016 by Lisa Black
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 2015958938
Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
ISBN: 978-1-4967-0188-6
First Kensington Hardcover Edition: May 2016
eISBN-13: 978-1-4201-0189-8
eISBN-10: 1-4201-0189-7
First Kensington Electronic Edition: May 2016
