Hello, Darkness

by Sandra Brown

  “You lied to your wife.”

  “That’s not a crime,” the attorney said.

  “But engaging in sexual activity with minors is,” Curtis fired back. “When did you first meet Janey, Dr. Armstrong?”

  “I don’t remember the exact date. A couple months ago.”

  “What were the circumstances?”

  “I already knew who she was. I’d noticed her, asked around, and learned that her user name for the website was pussinboots. I’d been reading the messages she left on the boards, knew she was . . .” He stammered over his next word, then rephrased. “I knew she was sexually active and willing to do just about anything.”

  “In other words, she was prey to predators like you.”

  The lawyer ordered him not to respond.

  Curtis waved a semi-apologetic dismissal of the statement. “The night you met Janey, did you have sex with her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Janey Kemp was seventeen,” the attorney stipulated.

  “Barely,” Curtis said.

  In an anguished voice, Armstrong said, “You’ve got to understand, that’s what these girls were there for. They came looking for it. I never had to coerce a single one of them into having sex with me. In fact, one—not Janey, another one—charged me a hundred dollars for five minutes of her time, then went right on to her next customer. She said she was working toward a Vuitton handbag.”

  “You have proof of this?”

  “Oh, sure, she gave me a receipt,” Armstrong replied sarcastically.

  Curtis failed to see the humor in this and remained stone-faced. Dean believed the dentist was telling the truth about the prostitution because it coincided with what Gavin had told him.

  Curtis continued the questioning. “On the night you met Janey, you had sex with her where?”

  “In a motel.”

  “Where you were found tonight?”

  He nodded. “I keep an efficiency apartment there.”

  “Which you rent for that purpose?”

  “Don’t answer,” the attorney instructed.

  “Did you take pictures of Janey?” Curtis asked.

  “Pictures?”

  “Photographs. Different in subject matter from the kind you take of your family vacations,” the detective added dryly.

  “Maybe. I don’t remember.”

  Curtis narrowed his gaze on him. “Your den of iniquity is being searched even as we speak. Why don’t you tell us what we might find and save us all some time here.”

  “I have some porno magazines. Videos. I’ve taken pictures of . . . of women on occasion, so maybe, yeah, there might be some pictures of Janey.”

  “You develop these pictures there in your makeshift darkroom?”

  He looked genuinely mystified. “I don’t know how to develop film.”

  “Then where’d you have your pictures of ‘women’ developed?”

  “I send the film to a lab out of town.”

  “What lab?”

  “It doesn’t have a name. Just a post office box. I can give you that.”

  “Let me guess. This is a film-developing outfit that caters to specialized customers like you?”

  Shamefaced, he nodded. “I don’t use it often, but I have.”

  Armstrong’s answers to this line of questioning were inconsistent with what Janey had told Gavin about her new boyfriend’s passion for photography. Either he was telling the truth or he knew how to lie convincingly.

  Curtis must have thought so, too, because for the time being he let the subject drop and asked about the last time Armstrong had seen Janey.

  “It was three nights ago. I guess it was the night she disappeared.”

  “Where’d you see her?”

  “At a spot on the shore of Lake Travis.”

  “You went there for the specific purpose of meeting her?”

  Armstrong answered, “Yes,” before his attorney could caution him not to. Too late Armstrong saw his lawyer’s raised hand. “It’s not a crime to make and keep a date,” he said to him.

  The lawyer addressed Curtis. “I’m only agreeing to let my client go into detail here because he adamantly denies anything beyond having congress with the victim, who was a consenting adult. This isn’t to be considered a confession to any allegation of kidnapping or murder.”

  Curtis nodded and motioned for Armstrong to continue.

  “Janey was waiting for me in her car.”

  “What time was that?” Dean asked, remembering that Gavin had said that he, too, had been in Janey’s car and that she had seemed to be waiting for someone else to join her.

  “I can’t remember exactly,” Armstrong said. “Around ten, maybe.”

  Curtis asked, “What did you do in her car?”

  “We had sex.”

  “Intercourse?”

  “Fellatio.”

  “Did you use a condom?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I . . . I wanted to stay with her for a while longer, but she said there was something she had to do. I think she was waiting to see someone else.”

  “Like who?”

  “Another man. She insisted I go on my way, but she promised to see me the following night, same place, same time. When I left, she was in her car, listening to the CD player. I went the next night. She wasn’t there. I didn’t know about her disappearance until I read about it and saw her picture in the newspaper.”

  “Why didn’t you come forward then?” Curtis asked.

  “I was scared. Wouldn’t you be?”

  “I don’t know. Tell me. Would I?”

  “I’d violated the terms of my probation. A girl I’d had sex with several times had gone missing.” He raised his shoulders in a gesture of helplessness. “You do the math.”

  Curtis snickered. “I’ve done it, Dr. Armstrong. My tally says you wanted more of Janey than she was willing to give you that night. Things got rough. You tend to get rough when a woman doesn’t give you what you want when you want it, isn’t that right?”

  “Sometimes I get angry, but I’m working through it.”

  “Not fast enough. In the meantime, your anger got the best of you, and before you knew it, you were choking Janey. Maybe she died right then, maybe she just became unconscious and died later.

  “In any case, you panicked. You took her to that swell room you’ve got in that lousy motel and tried to figure out what to do with her, but in the end you rolled her body into the lake and then crawled into your hidey-hole and hoped to God you’d get away with killing her.”

  “No! I swear I didn’t force her into doing anything, and I sure as hell didn’t murder her.”

  The attorney was massaging his eye sockets as though wondering how in the hell he was going to construct a defense out of his client’s frantic denials. Curtis looked as stern and unyielding as a cigar store Indian.

  “I don’t think you did it intentionally,” Dean said quietly.

  Armstrong turned to him with the desperate expression of a drowning man in search of a lifeline.

  The role of good cop fell to him because he played it well. Let Curtis be the hard-ass. For the next several minutes, Dean would be Brad Armstrong’s best friend and only source of hope. He folded his arms on the table and leaned into it.

  “Did you like Janey, Brad? I assume it’s okay if I call you Brad.”

  “Sure.”

  “Did you like her? As a person, I mean.”

  “Truthfully, not much. Don’t get me wrong, she was something else.” Suddenly cautious, he glanced at his attorney.

  “Sexy and willing?” Dean prompted. “The kind of girl we all wanted to date in high school?”

  “She was just like that. But I didn’t particularly like her personality.”

  “Why not?”

  “Like most girls with her looks, she was conceited and self-absorbed. She treated people like dirt. You either played her way or she didn’t play at all.”

  “Di
d she ever turn you down?”

  “Only once.”

  “For another guy?”

  He shook his head. “She said she was PMSing and not in the mood.”

  Pal to pal, Dean smiled at him. “We’ve all been there.”

  Then he sat back and folded his arms across his chest, his smile reversing into a frown. “The problem is, Brad, that most guys would blow it off. Oh, there’d be some frustration and maybe some hard cussing, but eventually your average guy would go have a beer or two, watch a ball game, maybe even find a more accommodating girl. But you take rejection hard. You can’t tolerate it. Which causes you to lash out, doesn’t it?”

  He swallowed hard and mumbled, “Sometimes.”

  “Like you did tonight with Melissa Hatcher.”

  “I haven’t had time to confer with my client about Melissa Hatcher,” the lawyer said. “So I can’t allow him to talk about her.”

  “He doesn’t have to say a word,” Dean said. “I’m going to talk to him.” Then, without waiting for the attorney’s permission, he continued. “This girl advertises the merchandise. She’s advertised it to me, to Sergeant Curtis here, and all the detectives in this unit. Any man would take the way she dresses as a ‘come and get it.’ ”

  “So who could blame me for—”

  “Do not say a word,” Brad’s lawyer snapped.

  Ignoring the lawyer, Dean kept his attention riveted on Armstrong. “Unfortunately for you, Brad, the state of Texas blames you. If you penetrate the sexual organ, mouth, or anus of a child, it’s called ‘aggravated sexual assault.’ Correct?” he asked, turning to the attorney, who nodded curtly.

  “How old is Melissa?” Brad asked.

  “Sixteen until next February,” Dean told him. “She claims you had sexual contact and intercourse.”

  “What if . . . what if . . . it was consensual?” Armstrong asked, seeming not to hear the admonitions of his attorney instructing him not to say anything.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Curtis answered. “You’re a convicted sex offender. Under Chapter Sixty-two that makes what you did indefensible.”

  Armstrong buried his head in his hands.

  Dean said, “Your previous conviction for indecency with a minor was a third-degree felony. This is the big time, Brad. It’s a first-degree felony.”

  “Not to mention capital murder,” Curtis chimed in.

  Without acknowledging Curtis’s statement, Dean proceeded. “You’ve paid dearly for your inappropriate and illegal behavior. You’ve lost jobs, the respect of your colleagues. You’re in danger of losing your family.”

  The man’s shoulders rose and fell in a harsh sob.

  “Yet in spite of the costly consequences of your unacceptable behavior, you haven’t stopped it.”

  “I’ve tried,” he exclaimed. “God knows, I’ve tried. Ask Toni. She’ll tell you. I love her. I love my kids. But . . . but I can’t help myself.”

  Dean leaned forward again. “That’s precisely my point. You can’t help yourself. Melissa got you so hot tonight that when she said no, you flipped out. You grabbed her, shook her, slapped her around. You didn’t want to, but you couldn’t control the impulse, even knowing how much you were going to regret your actions later.

  “Your desire to sexually dominate this girl shot your conscience and common sense all to hell. You had to have her, simple as that. Nothing else mattered. Not the punishment you would face when caught. Not even your love for Toni and your children could stop you. It’s a compulsion you haven’t learned to contain. It caused you to do what you did to Melissa tonight, and what you did to Janey.”

  “Do not respond,” the lawyer said.

  Dean lowered his voice another degree and spoke to Armstrong as though they were the only two people in the room. “I have a clear picture of what happened three nights ago, Brad. Here’s this sexy, desirable girl who you thought was as enamored of you as you were of her. She’d been seeing you regularly, and you thought exclusively.

  “That night, she goes down on you. And it’s great, but you know she’s insincere. You know she’s a liar and a merciless tease. You know that she’s waiting for her new interest to come along and replace you.

  “When you confront her about it, she tells you to get lost. You’ve become jealous and possessive, and she can’t stand your whining any longer. Did you honestly believe that she would give up other men for you? she asks. You poor, delusional slob.

  “You get furious. You ask yourself, where does she get off treating me like this? Calling up Paris Gibson and talking about me on the radio? Who does she think she is?”

  Dean’s gaze held the suspect mesmerized. “When you got into Janey’s car that night, I don’t think you had already plotted her kidnapping and murder. I think you’d planned only to confront her, have it out with her, clear the air.

  “And maybe if she hadn’t mocked you, that’s the way it would have ended. But Janey laughed in your face. She emasculated you with her ridicule, insulted you in a way you couldn’t tolerate. You lost it. You wanted to punish her. And that’s what you did. You devised a punishment of sexual abuse, befitting what she’d done to you. You hurt her until you decided you’d had your vengeance, to hell with the deadline you gave Paris, and then you choked her to death.”

  Armstrong stared at Dean in stunned horror. He looked over at Curtis, whose visage remained unmoved and unchanged. Then, folding his arms on the table, he laid his head on them. In a tormented, cracking voice, he groaned, “Oh, God. Oh, God.”

  Curtis and Dean honored the attorney’s demand to have a few minutes alone with his client and left the room. Curtis was smiling and rubbing his hands together, relishing the coup de grace.

  “He hasn’t signed a confession yet,” Dean reminded him.

  “It’s a matter of pen and paper. By the way, you’re good.”

  “Thanks,” Dean said absently. This had been round one of what would probably be a lengthy and exhausting interrogation, but several things about it were nagging him. “I didn’t ask him specifically if he’d heard Janey on the radio talking about the jealous lover she was about to dump.”

  “But you alluded to it and he didn’t deny it.”

  “He denied calling Paris about Janey.”

  “Before we even asked, which says ‘guilty’ to me,” the detective argued.

  “He knew about Paris’s connection because it was in the news. His phone records refute the allegation that he called her.”

  “There are several ways he could have placed those calls without it showing up on records.”

  “Making weird phone calls hasn’t been part of Armstrong’s MO before. Why now?”

  “Maybe he needed a new thrill. The Valentino phone calls spiced things up for him, and at the same time wreaked havoc on Paris. He wanted to get his kicks and get revenge. The calls accomplished both.”

  That made sense, but only after you massaged it into place. “Valentino’s calls have a meanness to them that I just don’t see in Armstrong. He’s sick, but I don’t think he’s evil.”

  Curtis frowned at him irritably. “Forget motivation for a moment and consider some facts.”

  “Such as?”

  “His occupation. He’s a dentist.”

  “The chemical scouring,” Dean said, musing out loud. The medical examiner had been able to confirm that, like Maddie Robinson, Janey’s body had been astringently washed.

  “Right. It’s the kind of thing a medical man would do.”

  “It’s the kind of thing a meticulous psychopath would do, too. Someone with a compulsion for scrubbing away his guilt.”

  “Armstrong straddles both categories.”

  Dean glanced over his shoulder at the closed door of the interrogation room. “Janey was restrained. She was tortured. She had bite marks, for godsake.”

  “We’ll get impressions of his bite for comparison.”

  “My point is, none of Armstrong’s priors involved violence or even hinted at a propensity for i
t. He was a creep, but he wasn’t a violent creep.”

  “What is this, Malloy?” Curtis asked crossly. “His own wife told us that his violent tendencies had been escalating. You said that was a natural progression for his particular psychosis. Are you second-guessing yourself?”

  “I know what I said, and I was right.”

  “Okay then. He knocked Melissa Hatcher around tonight.”

  “There’s a wide gulf between knocking a woman around and torturing one before squeezing the breath out of her.”

  “Not in my book. And probably not in the book of the woman being knocked around.”

  “Don’t be obtuse, Curtis,” Dean said angrily. “I’m not excusing either. I’m just saying—”

  “Ah, shit, I know what you’re saying,” Curtis grumbled, then expelled his frustration on a gust of breath. After a short pause that allowed tempers to cool, he asked, “Any more misgivings?”

  “The photography.”

  “Armstrong admitted that he might have taken some pictures of Janey.”

  “ ‘Some.’ ‘Might have.’ He talked about the photography as though it was no big deal. Janey indicated otherwise. Before we start on Armstrong again, do you mind if I get Gavin in here and ask him more about this?”

  Curtis shrugged. “I’m for whatever will help nail this guy.”

  Dean stepped into the corridor and motioned for Gavin. He got up, leaving Melissa sitting with a couple Dean assumed were her parents.

  “What’s up, Dad?” he asked. “Has he confessed?”

  “Not yet. In the meantime, I’d like you to talk Sergeant Curtis and me through everything Janey told you about Valentino. Any detail you can remember. All right?”

  “I already have, a dozen times.”

  “One more time. Please.”

  They found Curtis pouring himself a cup of coffee. He offered them one, but they declined. Curtis took a sip from his Styrofoam cup, then said, “At the risk of beating a dead horse, even an off-handed remark Janey might have made could be important, Gavin.”

  “I wish I could remember something else, sir. She told me the guy was older. Older than us, I mean. That he was cool, knew how a woman liked to be treated.”