“I was sort of in business with Dugan. I went to school with his son, and I was over to his house a lot when I was a kid. When I moved to Georgia I stayed in touch with Lou. He was a sharp businessman. I learned a lot from him. I was making foreclosures at the bank, and Lou saw a way to make money on them. I’d foreclose on some loser’s house, and Dugan would buy it for way under market value through one of his holding companies. And then we figured out how we could get creative, and by manipulating some paperwork we could snatch houses right out from under people. Problem was we yanked a mortgage from some whiner who didn’t just roll over when he lost his house.”
“That’s when you went to jail?”
“I was only in jail until my bail bond was set. I got out and started cleaning house. I got rid of the two men under me who knew what was going on. They could have testified, and I would have been sent away for a long, long time.”
“The cornfield?”
“Yeah. And then Lou got nervous. I got my kickback from him in cash, but he was sitting there with all these hot properties in his holding companies.”
“Do you still have the money?”
“The lawyers have the money. Trial lawyers and divorce lawyers. I should have been a lawyer. The only money I have came from the stash my cousin stole.”
“So you killed Lou because he was nervous?”
“He’d transferred a load of money into a Buenos Aires bank, and he was getting ready to disappear. Asked me to drive him to the airport. He was taking a red-eye. I had a feeling he was going to kill me, so I killed him first.”
“Just like that.”
“Yep. Came up behind him, choked him, and broke his neck. And then I had the same stupid body problem. I was driving him around in his car, thinking it was like that movie
“My mistake was that I didn’t dig it deep enough. I buried Lucarelli deeper, but they found him anyway. Then I decided to have some fun with Juki and Kulicki. I knew the security people installed video. What did you think of the Frankenstein mask? Good touch, right?”
“I understand why you killed Dugan. I don’t get the other murders.”
“I had to clean house. Lucarelli was the lawyer who processed all the paper, and Kulicki moved a lot of the transactions through his bank. Sam Grip worked for Dugan and knew
“So it didn’t have anything to do with the poker game?”
“What poker game?”
“They all played poker together. Except for Juki.”
“I didn’t know that,” Dave said.
This is why we didn’t connect the dots to Dave, I thought. We were in the right neighborhood, but we were on the wrong road.
“What about the cars?” I asked him.
“When I kill someone I like to leave my car out of it to cut back on the DNA potential. After I burned Francie’s car I realized burning a car produces a lot of smoke that could attract attention, so I stopped burning cars. And after I drove the car into the woods and burned it I had no way to get home. So I started using one of Harry’s moving vans to drive the car to the car graveyard. I’d just drive the victim’s car in, close the van doors, and drive the car out when I got to the barrens. The more you know, the more impressed you are, right? Morelli’s no match for me. I’ve been making him look like an idiot.”
“Why did you leave Sam Grip in the trunk?”
“I was in a rush. I killed him in the afternoon, and I was making pot roast for dinner.”
I popped two more Tums. I’d been saving the big question for last. “So are you done killing now?”
“That depends on you,” Dave said. He took a white envelope from his jacket pocket. FOR STEPHANIE was written on the outside of the envelope. “This will get us to Thailand. The plane leaves at six o’clock tomorrow morning. We can stay at an airport hotel tonight, have some fun, I’ll snap a couple intimate pictures of you for Morelli, and we’ll start a new life together. Or I can kill you now, have some fun with you after you’re dead, and go to Thailand by myself.”
“That’s gross.”
Dave shrugged. “Life is gross.”
He’d been calm through all of this, showing some animation when he talked about the killings, showing some checked anger when he mentioned Morelli. I’d been working hard to contain my fear and revulsion, and I think I was successful. My plan was to do whatever I could to buy time, and look for an opportunity to make an escape. I suspected he had only one ticket to Thailand. He’d kill me on the road or at the airport hotel. He knew it was only a matter of time before forensics discovered it was Francie in the trashed car. And Francie was the clue to his undoing. So Dave was anxious to get out of town. He wanted to complete his revenge on Morelli, but he was feeling pressured.
“I’ve never seen Thailand,” I said, taking the envelope.
“Smart girl.”
“Let me throw some things in a suitcase, and I’ll be ready to go.”
