Darkhouse

He managed to keep talking. ‘You’re new to this, Marcy. Stay focused, all right? Let’s not jump the gun.’

Her smile faded and as soon as she took the details from him, she walked out, back to the file open on her desk and the yellow pad beside it. Parnum followed her, flipped the file closed and pushed it under his arm.

The interview room of the Stinger’s Creek Police Department was small and windowless. Light came from a dim bulb that hung loosely from the ceiling, barely covered by a dusty green lampshade. It cast grim shadows.

‘Will you wait here to speak with the Chief?’ said Marcy.

‘I will speak to the Chief, ma’am, yes I will. But I’d like to speak to him alone.’ Duke Rawlins sprawled himself on a metal chair with his back to the door, spreading his legs wide, tilting his pelvis upwards. Marcy Winbaum turned and left. Parnum stood in the doorway and stared at the man sitting in front of him. Beads of sweat sprang up across his brow. He wiped them away with a handkerchief pulled from his pants pocket.

‘Remember me?’ Duke turned around and leaned an elbow over the back of the chair. Parnum shut the door behind him, then pushed against it until he heard a click.

Duke raised his eyebrows and smiled. ‘What am I again? Your little bitch, your little faggot, your baby boy, your tight-ass whore, your, oh yeah, your, oh yeah, your buckin’ bronco?’

‘I got a report from the lab an hour ago,’ said Parnum, dropping his voice to a hiss, ‘to say they’ve matched the paint on our Jane Doe’s shoe to a Dodge Ram pickup. And Jesus Christ Almighty there’s only one that I know of round here and it’s sitting in your yard.’

Duke looked at him calmly.

Parnum slammed his fist onto the table. ‘Don’t you get it? Other people know. Marcy, the lab…we’ve found evidence!’

‘Well, here’s the thing,’ said Duke, leaning on his palms, pushing himself close, ‘you can damn well UNfuckingfind it.’

Parnum recoiled. ‘Are you out of your mind? I can’t, I…’

‘Now let me think. What about Mrs Police Chief and the baby Chiefs? They like to know your secret? What about Reverend Ellis? What about the amazing grace of the First Baptist Church Choir?’

Parnum remained silent. Eventually he spoke. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘No – you’ll DO what you can do.’

‘You’ve murdered five women.’

‘D’ya think?’

Parnum swallowed.

‘Oh, don’t you judge me – don’t you dare judge me, you motherfuckin’ son of a bitch.’

Waves of nausea swept over Parnum. He gripped the table edge.

‘You were there Friday night—’

‘If I was there Friday night, Chief, how could I have gone all-in against your poker of sevens?’

‘I wouldn’t play poker with a—’

‘You wouldn’t play poker with me?’ He snorted. ‘Anyway, wasn’t just me. Donnie Riggs was there too. We wouldn’t have had any beer if it wasn’t for Donnie.’

‘Sweet Jesus. Donnie Riggs. We never—’

‘I guess your life’s about flashin’ before your eyes right now, big boy.’

‘You sick son of a bitch.’

‘Me?’ Duke laughed loud.

‘I know about Rachel Wade,’ said Parnum. ‘You let your uncle go to jail…’

Duke’s eyes narrowed. ‘What? Do I look like a judge to you? Do I look like twelve angry men to you? Or,’ he stopped, ‘maybe I look like the fat fuckin’ donut boys who worked the case. You got the wrong guy. And then, all I could do was support him. I went to that trial every day—’

‘Sat there and listened to the details of your—’

‘Watch your mouth now. You watch what you’re sayin’ there. Wouldn’t want to make any accusations you can’t back up, now, would you?’

‘Bill Rawlins was a good man,’ said Parnum.

‘Never said he wasn’t.’

‘His handkerchief was found in that girl’s mouth…’

Parnum shook his head. ‘You let him die.’

‘I will say to you again. I let nothing happen. I wasn’t there in that prison cell when he clutched his heart and fell to the floor. If I was, I would have been pumpin’ his chest a lot quicker than the retards who found him.’

‘You are one—’

‘Shh, shh, shh, now.’

The room was silent. Outside, Marcy Winbaum banged a drawer shut. The phone rang.

The air conditioning hummed.

Duke spoke. ‘Do you think you’re a good man, Chief? Do you?’

‘Uh, I, uh…’

‘DO you?’ boomed Duke. ‘Do you?’

‘Yes.’

‘You know, I knew that. I knew that’s what you thought. Which makes this all the more pleasurable.’ Duke thrust his crotch out and grabbed it with his hand. ‘This way, it’s win-win for me. I get to keep on keepin’ on. I get the goddamn purity of the pleasure that that brings. And for my bonus round, I know that every night when you lie in bed you will be thinkin’ about me. And this time, you won’t be gettin’ no woody in your shorts. You’ll be gettin’ the cold sweat of fear soakin’ into your sheets.’

Parnum was rigid. Duke eased himself up and bent low into his ashen face. He leaned in and kissed him hard on the cheek, trailing his tongue down his jaw. Parnum shuddered.

‘My ass may have been yours at one time, Parnum…but now your ass is well and truly mine.’ He kicked back his chair and walked out of the room.

‘Nothin’ to see here,’ he said to the deputy as he stepped into the cool night air.

THIRTY-ONE

D.I. O’Connor wrenched open the door to the interview room and charged down the corridor. He grabbed the phone from the front desk and punched in the number for Mountcannon station. He was instantly diverted back to his own switchboard. He ran for his car. The siren rang out through the city as he sped onto the road to the small village.

Joe was bent over the drawer in the kitchen, dragging his hands frantically through blister packs and bottles of medicine that would do nothing to stop the pain building all over his skull. He filled a glass of water and tried to drink, but the cold ripped through his teeth and made his head spin. His mind ran through images like slides from a projector, flashing white corpses and black blood. He tried desperately not to imagine Anna among them, injured or dead or…he couldn’t consider what else Duke Rawlins was capable of. Somewhere inside him, a shutter descended to preserve his sanity. He willed himself to think of every beautiful image he had of Anna – walking down the aisle, holding Shaun on her hip, painting their new apartment, standing in the hallway with her tousled hair when he was going to sleep in the spare room.

He wiped away tears and concentrated on the man he knew he would be forced to face. Duke Rawlins had gone to jail for a minor stabbing, but had got away with his vilest crimes. He had managed to get an alibi from a Police Chief that lasted him over ten years. Joe knew he was unlikely to ever find out why. What mattered now was that he had been sucked into the world of a psychopath. His actions on a sunny day in a New York park had brought this killer to his family and to the village they loved. Joe decided he deserved the pain he was feeling.

His one consolation was that he had already struck what he hoped was the final blow to Rawlins’ plan. He