Are you kidding me?
He sighed and picked up the drink, the cool aluminum familiar, reassuring. He took a sip, then returning it to the table, tapped the chocolate bar with his index finger, debating on whether or not he should eat it.
Fuck it.
He grabbed the bar, peeled open the wrapper and took a large bite. The flavors exploded in his mouth, the chocolate and peanuts injecting memories of happier times back into his soul with each chew.
Comfort.
Food had been his surrogate for love, it had carried him through all his bad times, and he knew it was to blame for most of them.
But not today.
Today it would be his savior, it would get him through this tough moment, and yank him back to the reality he had pushed aside.
“Where is he?”
“Interrogation One.”
Trace took another bite of her Snickers, this time the size a little daintier. Shakespeare motioned at her bare hand.
“Lose your ring?”
“No.” Another bite. “It’s complicated.”
Shakespeare swallowed then took a guzzle of his pop. “It always is.”
He tore another third from his bar, savoring the rich, crunchy sensations that stuck to his teeth and the roof of his mouth. Another sip. “Sorry you had to see that.”
Trace shrugged. “Nothing any of us haven’t been through before, albeit I’ve been dumped before, but never for as good a reason as she had.” She took a sip. “Just remember, it’s not your fault and it’s not her fault. It’s that bastard sitting two rooms down who did this. Let’s nail that fucker, close this case, and put five years of bullshit behind us.”
Shakespeare had been avoiding eye contact, his eyes now resting on the clock above the door. He swallowed the last of his bar, drained the can of pop, then looked at her, noting she was less than halfway through her bar. Their eyes held each other’s gaze for a moment, his, pain filled, wanting to thank her for what she had done. The simple gesture, as simple as getting him a distraction she knew he enjoyed, to take his mind off the crushing blow he had just faced, and to sit quietly, rather than heap sympathies on him that would merely prolong the pain.
“Ready?” she asked.
He nodded. “Let’s do this.” He pushed away from the table and stood, then walked to the door and held it open for her. She tossed the uneaten half of her chocolate bar in the trash, to which Shakespeare’s eyebrows shot up. Now that’s self-discipline! He deposited his wrapper and can, then followed her down the hall.
“Officer Richards. You still on duty?” asked Trace as they approached the room.
“Just wanted to see it through, ma’am. Once we”—he nodded toward his partner, Scaramell, who was walking down the hallway toward them—“heard about the raid, we asked to go along.” He turned to Shakespeare. “Glad you and your lady friend are okay, Detective,” he said.
Shakespeare nodded. Lady friend. Clouds of self-pity threatened to overwhelm him again, but Trace quickly seemed to recognize it.
“Let’s nail this bastard, shall we?” she asked, her voice upbeat, perhaps a little too so to cover up the true intentions of her words.
Shakespeare looked through the tiny window at their suspect, handcuffed to the table. “Let’s do this.” He turned to Nonkoh who had been hovering nearby, apparently nervous to say anything after what he had witnessed earlier. Shakespeare motioned toward a stack of files he was holding. “Are those the case files?”
“Yup.”
Shakespeare held out his hand and took the files, then opened the door. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Grissom, but I’ve been rather busy eating a delicious Snickers bar,” he said, entering the room, his voice conveying none of the anguish he felt inside. Now was a time for confidence, now was not the time to give the perp the satisfaction of knowing he had destroyed yet another life. Now was the time to wrap this case up, and put this cancer away for the rest of his miserable life.
Now was the time to restore balance.
Balance.
He thought of the words in the letter, the words said to him and Louise, and how much they revealed of the psychology of the man in front of them. The question he really had for him was why? Why had he done it?
I wonder how easily he’ll give it up.
Shakespeare was hoping for a quick confession, nice tidy answers, then a trip to central booking so he could go home and be alone for a while with his torturous thoughts. He sat down, and spread the files out neatly across the table. Trace stood in the corner, behind the man.
A man who seemed completely comfortable. There was no fear here. No nervousness.
“Have you ever had a Snickers bar?”
The man nodded.
“Delicious, aren’t they?”
Again his head bobbed.
“I don’t think, after tonight, you’re going to be getting to enjoy a Snickers bar for a long time.” He looked at Trace. “They’re what, two, three bucks?”
“Three from the machine,” said Trace.
“Three bucks. And you’ll be getting about twelve cents an hour doing whatever job they assign you, so it’s gonna take a lot of hours of hard work to afford one of those delicious treats.”
“Twenty five hours, at least,” said Trace.
Shakespeare did the mental math a little more slowly than Trace and nodded with a smile. “My partner’s a bit of a math genius. Twenty five hours. Oh well, maybe you’ll find yourself some nice pen pals and they’ll send you some chocolates. Or, you might find your cellmate will be sweet on you, and treat his new little prison bitch nicely, giving her a chocolate bar or two for her hard efforts.” He leaned forward and whispered. “Tell him you’ve got hemorrhoids, it might discourage him for the first few days.”
Trace laughed out loud, and Grissom squirmed in his chair. Oops. That got him. “Now, how about we start at the beginning, Mr. Grissom.” Shakespeare flipped through the files, finding the one he wanted. “Here we go,” he said, scanning the pages. He looked up. “Who the hell are you? Is it Ken Crawford, Lee Grissom? What?”
Grissom met his gaze, then held up his hands. “Can we dispense with the handcuffs? I’m really no danger to you.”
“With no saw blade in the room, I’d tend to agree,” said Shakespeare, who nodded at Trace. She stepped forward and unlocked the cuffs, removing them then stuffing them in her pocket. “So, once again, I ask, who are you?”
“Lee Grissom.”
“May I call you Lee?”
The man nodded.
“Well, Lee, we can do this two ways. The hard way, where I grill you for hours until you crack, or the easy way, where you tell me everything I want to know. You know we have you dead to rights on kidnapping. I have no doubt we’ll find evidence of what you did to Carl Gray on your table saw. Not to mention impersonating someone for over five years. So how about we cut through all the BS, and get down to brass tacks. Why don’t we do this the easy way, and get this night over with?”
“I could always ask for a lawyer.”
Shakespeare smiled. “You could, but you won’t. I’ve been doing this a long time, Lee, and I can tell when someone wants to talk. And you want to talk. You don’t want some lawyer interfering with your moment of glory. I can even tell that you’re relieved it’s over. You want to tell me why you did it, the reasoning behind it all. So this is your opportunity. Share with me, with us, with the world, why you did what you did, and let’s leave the lawyers out of it.”
Grissom smiled. “You’re very good, Detective. You definitely can read people.”
Shakespeare gave an exaggerated bow of the head. “It’s my job, and I like to think I’m good at it. As I assume you like to think you were good at your job.”
Grissom returned the exaggerated bow.
“And what exactly was your job, Lee? Why don’t you tell me what exactly you’ve been doing?”
Grissom leaned back and crossed his legs, leaving his hands resting loosely in his lap.
“I’ve been restoring balance.”
“Balance.” Shakespeare pulled out a copy of the letter that had been sent with the gun and the recording of Carl Gray’s confession. “Please explain that to me.”
Grissom’s fingers splayed open and closed repeatedly as he began. “Six years ago I should have died.”
“The industrial accident?”
“You know about that?”
“I know a lot of things, Lee.”
Grissom frowned. “It wasn’t an accident.” His voice was slightly subdued, as if reminiscing over some solemn event.
Shakespeare’s eyebrows narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“It was my fault.” Grissom’s voice cracked, the first sign of real emotion Shakespeare had seen from him.
“How?”
“I wasn’t monitoring the pressure gauge properly. Pete noticed it, told everyone to get out. I ran, left my post, and he stayed behind to try and relieve the pressure. They said afterward that he had delayed the explosion long enough for us to escape.” Grissom’s chin dropped to his chest. “But he died in the explosion. They found his hand gripping the valve, still holding it open. I guess the safety had failed, and he had to manually pull it open.” He lifted his head. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
Shakespeare pursed his lips, making some notes. “Pete I assume is Pedro Dominguez? Janet’s husband?”
Grissom nodded.
“So your friend Pete died saving you. You were explaining balance. What does that have to do with it?” Shakespeare could already guess, but for the cameras and audio equipment recording this little confab, and for the stenographers who would later transcribe it, the perp’s words were gold.
“Balance. Isn’t it obvious? One worthy man died, saving seven unworthy souls. And he died in a state of sin. They didn’t even find enough of his body to cremate, let alone bury. There was nothing for a priest to bless, nothing for us to say prayers over, except a hand.” Grissom picked at his nails, staring at them with apparent interest, then up at Shakespeare. “I had to restore balance. Seven unworthy souls had to be redeemed. That would restore the balance that my negligence had caused. If only I had been doing my job properly, instead of thinking about my vacation, everyone would be alive today.”
“So you decided to kill seven innocent women.”
“Not innocent!” he yelled, slamming his fist on the table.
Shakespeare didn’t react. Let it out, big guy. Let’s hear those words.
“They were sinners, unworthy of their husbands, husbands who had died saving others, saving the unworthy like me. But it was also obvious that these worthy men loved their wives, and if they wanted to truly be happy in the afterlife, their wives should be with them. So I decided that they must be redeemed in the eyes of the Lord, their souls cleansed of sin through the pain of torture. And I succeeded in cleansing six souls, including that of Pete’s wife, before Carl Gray interrupted things.”
“How did he interrupt things? Why not just kill your seventh victim and ignore him?”
“Because he threw things out of balance again.” He paused and shifted in his seat. “But I didn’t know it was Gray that did it. I thought it was Cooper, just like you did. And you arrested Cooper before I could get to him, so I had to wait, to figure out some way to get at him, but I couldn’t. The only way I could see getting at him was to go to prison myself, and there was still one soul left to cleanse, so I couldn’t risk that.”
“So you just waited for five years?”
Grissom shrugged his shoulders. “It allowed me to design my balance chambers, a new way of allowing people like yourself to redeem your soul voluntarily, through confession, self-sacrifice, and ultimately, pain.”
“And that’s how Carl Gray died.”
Grissom nodded. “After Mr. Cooper was released, I had already figured out what had happened. I attended the funeral, and when you won’t even shake the hand of your best friend, you know there’s something up. It took a while, but I figured out that Gray’s wife was having an affair, and then the murderer became obvious. I’m just surprised it took you so long to figure it out.”
“I apologize for delaying your plans. We were kind of distracted by six other bodies.”
Grissom chuckled. “True, Detective, I’ll give you that one.”
“So, you figured out the truth, designed your chambers, then what? If you knew Cooper was innocent, why wait?”
“The world didn’t know. The world had to know he was innocent, or at least know the murder he was accused of wasn’t linked to my redemptions. Once he was released, I knew that would come out, if I gave you enough incentive to solve the case properly this time. So I immediately finished my original plan.”
“By killing Constance Reilly.”
“Yes.”
“What do you mean by original plan?”
“To balance those seven unworthy lives saved, with seven redeemed souls taken.”
“I understand that, but ‘original’?
“Well, five years is a long time, and I didn’t build the balance chambers for nothing. My ‘original’”—air quotes were provided—“plan was to rebalance what had been set offside by my inattention, then take my own life, but at the time I had thought Cooper had interrupted those plans, and introduced an additional imbalance. I couldn’t complete my plan before resetting that, and over the long wait for a chance, I realized the world was filled with imbalance, and needed to be restored. I realized our society had lost its way, and the only way for it to be saved was for balance to be restored through example.”
He leaned forward excitedly. “Imagine a world where people led by example, through examples shown to them. Do you think Fiona Lipton will ever be the same? Carl Gray died to save her! He sacrificed his life to redeem himself, and save her sinful soul. She will probably be a model citizen from now on, now that she’s had a second chance at life, and seen a clear example of what self-sacrifice truly is. Do you think your girlfriend Louise will ever be the same? You sacrificed yourself to save her, and she will be a changed woman for it. And me? Pete saved my life, and I’m a better man for it.”
“A better man? You’re a murderer.”
Grissom leaned back and crossed his arms. “I am not a murderer. I am an instrument of God, bringing balance back to a world gone mad with sin, a world that has forgotten His teachings, a world where if balance isn’t restored, will implode in an orgy of sin and decadence from which it will never recover. I’m saving mankind from nothing less than Armageddon itself.”
Shakespeare sighed. The fervor in Grissom’s voice clearly indicated the man believed what he was saying. And was clearly nuts. Whatever had happened that day at the factory had changed him. Something inside had snapped, and this crazed idea of balance had been introduced.
He made a show of reading his notes, then put down his pen. “So you confess to the murders of Clair Russell, Jessica Fisk, Maggie Campbell, Pam Brown, Theresa Long, and Janet Dominguez?
“I confess to the redemption of their souls, yes.”
“And by redemption, you mean rape, repeated stabbings, followed up by a gunshot to the head.”
“Yes, a cleansing of their souls through trial and pain.”
“And you confess to the murder of Constance Reilly?”
“The final redemption of my original plan, yes.”
“And you confess to the kidnapping of Fiona Lipton and Carl Gray?”
“Yes, so that they could decide themselves who should live.”
“And you confess to the murder of Carl Gray?”
“No, he chose his fate. I merely was the instrument of his deliverance.”
“You sawed him in half.”
Grissom shrugged his shoulders. “I merely fed him to the machine.”
“So you admit that.”
“Without reservation.”
“And you admit to the
kidnapping of Louise Carmichael and Aynslee Kai?”
“Yes. Miss Kai was merely a bystander, her soul I feel already cleansed through what has happened to her recently, but your girlfriend’s? She required cleansing. Especially with how her husband died.”
“How did you know about that?”
“I’ve taken a great deal of interest in you since our first encounter, Detective. I watched with anguish as you tossed your life away, and you were one of the inspirations for the balance chambers. I had destroyed your life by stealing the gun from your car. I hadn’t realized what it would do to you. I didn’t know about your diabetes—”
“How’d you know about that?” asked Shakespeare, eying the camera and wondering who was on the other side of the glass.
“It’s pretty obvious what happened that night once you think about it. You were hypoglycemic. When I watched the tape all the signs were there. But you never spoke up. You never defended yourself. You threw away a brilliant career and life, and for what? To save yourself the embarrassment of telling your co-workers, your friends, that you were diabetic?”
Shakespeare shifted in his chair, but caught it, changing it into a scratch of his back, not wanting Grissom to know he had gotten to him. He knows me better than me.
“Why did you put Cooper up in a hotel?”
“Why not? Hasn’t he been punished enough? Besides, it’s not like I wanted to be caught. Having all eyes on him allowed me to complete my work in peace, and allow the real trail to go cold, or at least that was the intention.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Frankly, I didn’t expect to get caught.”
“You got cocky.”
Grissom chuckled and spread his arms out, palms up. “Guilty as charged, Detective. I focused too much on you, on the damage I had done to you. I had restored the balance of the seven who had died who shouldn’t have, by reuniting them with their redeemed loved ones, guaranteeing their entry into Heaven. I had restored balance with Wayne Cooper who was falsely accused of committing my deeds, by getting Carl Gray to confess to the murder of his wife. I restored balance with Carl Gray, who had copied my method, and I feared perhaps had been pushed over the edge by hearing of my deeds, by giving him the chance to redeem himself through self-sacrifice, and at the same time, giving Fiona Lipton a second lease on life. And I redeemed the souls of those that remained of The Seven, as you called us, for their murder of Wayne Cooper.”
Redeemer (A Detective Shakespeare Mystery, Book #3) Page 25
