kidnapping, aren't you? Why I chose Maggie Rosebud and her friend Shrimpie Goldberg?”
He was using the nicknames to be provocative-and flip. He loved the “Bad Boy” act. He had revealed a very'dark sense of humor over the months.
“I'm interested in everything you have to say, Gary. Go right on.”
“You know,” he said, 'one time I figured out that I've killed over two hundred people. A lot of children, too. I do what I feel like. Whatever hits me at the moment.
The greasy, automatic little smile appeared again. He was no longer Gary Murphy. No longer the allAmerican- looking yuppie husband and father from Wilmington, Delaware. Had he been killing since he was a boy?
“Is that true? Are you still trying to shock me?”
He shrugged. “Why should I?... When I was a boy, I read volumes about the Lindbergh kidnapping case. Then, all the big crimes! I made copies of all the clippings I could find in the Princeton library. I've told you some of this, haven't I? How I was fascinated, absolutely enthralled, obsessed with kidnapping children. Having them completely under my control.... I wanted to torture them like helpless little birds. I practiced with afi-iend. You met him, I believe. Simon Conklin. Just a small -time psycho, Doctor. Not worth your time... not a partner. Not an accomplice. I espe cially like the idea that kidnapping gets the parents so upset. They will destroy other adults, but God forbid if someone takes one little child. Unthinkable! Unspeakable crimes! they shriek. What rubbish. What utter hypocrisy. Think about it. A million dark-skinned children die in Bangladesh, Dr. Cross. Nobody cares. Nobody rushes to save them.”
“Why did you murder the black families in the projects?” I asked him. “What's the connection?”
“Who says there has to be a connection? Is that what you learned at Johns Hopkins? Maybe those were my good deeds. Who says I can't have a social conscience, hmmm? There must be balance in every life. I believe that. I Ching. Think about those victims I chose. Hopeless drug users. A teenage girl who was already a prostitute. A small boy who was already doomed.”
I didn't know whether to believe him or not. He was flying. “Do you have a warin spot for us?” I asked him. “I find that real moving.”
He chose to ignore my irony. 'Actually, I had a black friend once, yes. A maid. Woman who took care of me, if you must know, while my father was divorcing my real mother. Laura Douglas was her nameo-nameo. She went back to Detroit, though, deserted me. Big fat lady, with a bowling laugh I adored. After she left for Motown was when Mommy Terror started locking troublesome, hyperkinetic me in the basement.
“You're looking at the original latch-key kid. Meantime, my stepbrother and stepsister were upstairs in my father's house! They were playing with my toys. They used to taunt me down through the floorboards. I was locked in the basement for weeks at a time. That's the f way I recall it. Are little light bulbs and warning bells going off in your head, Dr. Cross? Tortured boy in the cellar. Pampered children buried in a barn. Such nice, neat parallels. All the pieces starting to fit? Is our boy Gary telling the truth now?”
“Are you telling the truth?” I asked him again. I thought that he was. It all fit.
“Oh, yes. Scout's honor.... The murders in Southeast D.C. Actually, I rather liked the concept of being the first celebrated serial killer of blacks. I don't count the clod in Atlanta, if indeed they have the right man down there. Wayne Williams was an amateur all the way. What's with all these serial killer Waynes, anyway? Wayne Williams. John Wayne Gacy, Jr. Patrick Wayne Heamey, who dismembered thirty-two human beans on the West Coast.”
“You didn't murder Michael Goldberg?” I went back to something he'd said earlier.
“No. It wasn't intentional at the time. I would haveeverything in good time. He was a spoiled little bunion. Reminded me of my 'brother,' Donnie.”
“How did the bruises get on Michael Goldberg's body? Tell me what happened.”
“You love this, don't you, Doctor. What does that -tell us about you, hmmm? Well, when I saw that he'd died on me, I was so angry. I flew into a rage. Kicked the fucking body all over the lot. Hit it with my digging shovel. I don't remember what else I did. I was so pissed. Then I threw his dead ass in that river out in the sticks. The River Sticks?”
“But you didn't hann the girl? You didn't hurt Maggie Rose Dunne?”
“No, I didn't hurt the girl.”
He mimicked my concern. It was a pretty fair approximation of my voice. He definitely could act, play different parts. It was frightening to watch and to be in the same room with him. Could he have killed hundreds of times? I thought so.
“Tell me about her. What really happened to Maggie Rose Dunne?”
“All right, all right, all right. The Maggie Rose Dunne story. Light a candle, sing a hymn to Jesus for sweet mercy. After the abduction, she was groggy. The first time I looked in on her, anyway. She was coming off the secobarbital. I played Mommy Terror for little Maggie. I sounded the way Mommy T. used to sound at the basement door in our house. 'Stopyercryin'... Shaddup. Shaddup, you spoiled little bunion!' That scared her pretty good, I'll tell you. Then I put her out again. I carefully checked both of their pulses because I was certain the Fibbers would require some evidence that the children were alive.”
“Their pulses were both all right?”
“Yes. Just fine, Alex. I put my ear to each little chest. I controlled my natural urge to stop heartheats rather than preserve them.”
“Why the national kidnapping? Why all the publicity? Why take such a big chance?”
“Because I was ready. I'd been practicing for a long, long time. I wasn't taking any chances. I also needed the money. I deserved to be a millionaire. Everybody else is. ”
“You came back to check the children again the following day?” I asked him.
“The next day she was fine, too. But the day after Michael Goldberg died, Maggie Rose was gone! I drove into the barn, and there was the hole in the ground where I'd buried the box. Big hole in the ground. Empty! I didn't harin her. I didn't get the ransom money down in Florida, either. Somebody else has it. Now, you have to figure out what happened, Detective. I think I have! I think I know the big secret.”
