me. If she wanted to kill somebody, she would pick Douglas, not me. The cops pushed me on it and I did give them her name, but no specific circumstances. I noticed those faint white lines on your finger pads. What are they from?'
'I whittle. Sometimes the knife slips and you cut yourself. No big deal. Now, that's really good. A jealous wife would really make them laugh. It's not raining as much. Let me see what's wrong with this very nice car that's new and shouldn't have stalled.'
Nothing was wrong. She'd flooded it.
'I should have thought of that,' she said, annoyed and embarrassed.
'You're excused this time.'
'So it was an accident. I was scared that you'd find the distributor cap missing or the oil line cut.'
'It doesn't have to have been an accident. It's possible it was on purpose and if it was, you know what the guy intended, don't you?'
'Yes, to obliterate me.'
Savich tapped his fingers on the dashboard. 'I've always thought that trying to hit someone with a car wasn't the smartest or most efficient way of whacking your enemy. On the other hand, it's a dandy way to scare the hell out of someone. Yeah, that sounds about right. If, on the other hand, someone did want to kill you, then I wonder why the car came at you when you'd just stepped off the curb and into the street. Why didn't the guy wait until you were nearly to your own car? You'd have been a perfect target then. That doesn't sound too professional. All the planning was in place, but the execution was way off.' He shrugged. 'As of this point in time, we haven't the foggiest notion. I'll run those three letters of the license plate through MAXINE and see what she can dredge up.'
'MAXINE? You got another computer?'
'No. MAXINE used to be MAX. Every six months or so there's a sex change. I've had to accept the fact that my machine is a transsexual. Pretty soon, she'll start insisting that I stop swearing when I'm working with her.'
'That's crazy. I like it.'
'Now, back to the accident-'
'It was an accident, Dillon. That's what the police think.'
'On the other hand, they don't know you. Now, see if this wonderful ski-hauling four-by-four will start.'
She turned the key and the Navajo fired right up. 'Go back to the Bureau, Sherlock, and drink some of Marcy's coffee. That'll fix you up. Oh yeah-stay away from Douglas Ma-digan and his wife. Don't you call him, I will. Where is he staying?'
She sat propped up against pillows in bed, the TV on low, just for background noise, reading the police and autopsy reports on Belinda. She didn't realize she was crying until the tears hit the back of her hand. She laid down all the pages and let herself cry. It had been so long; the tears had been clogged deep inside her, dammed up, until now.
Finally, the tears slowed. She sniffed, then returned to the reports. Tomorrow she would consult with MAXINE to see if there were any differences, no matter how slight, between Belinda's killing and all the others. She prayed with all her might that there wouldn't be a smidgen of difference. Now that she'd studied the reports, she hoped to be able to see things more clearly.
On the edge of sleep, she wondered if indeed Candice had tried to run her down. Just as her father had tried to run down her mother? No, that was ridiculous. Her mother was ill, had been for a very long time. Or just maybe her mother had said that because of what her husband had said so casually about Belinda and her father. It had come out of left field. Who knew?
Of course Douglas had called her, furious that she'd allowed Savich to call him. It took her ten minutes to talk him out of coming over to her town house. He said he'd spoken to Can-dice, who'd been visited by the police. He was outraged that anyone would believe she had tried to run down Lacey. It had been an accident.
'I wouldn't be leaving unless I was certain it was an accident, Lacey. I want you to be certain, though, that it wasn't Candice.'
'I'm certain, Douglas.' She'd have said her tongue was purple to get him off the phone. 'Don't worry. I'm fine. Everything is fine. Go home.'
'Yes, I am. I'm taking Candice home too.'
Now that sounded interesting, but she was too tired to ask him to explain.
The next morning, Big John Bullock, Marlin Jones's lawyer, was on CNN, telling the interviewer, a drop-dead gorgeous guy who looked like a model right out of GQ, that the FBI and the Boston police had forced Marlin to confess, that he hadn't known what he was doing because he'd been in so much pain. He would have said anything so they'd give him more medication. Any judge would throw out a confession made under those circumstances.
Was Marlin guilty? the gorgeous young hunk asked, giving the audience a winning smile even as he said the words.
Big John shrugged and said that wasn't the point. That was for a jury to decide. The point was the police harassment of the poor man, who wasn't well either mentally or physically. Lacey knew then that if the judge didn't suppress the confession, Big John would go for an insanity plea. The evidence was overwhelming. Lacey knew that when the lawyer saw all the evidence against Marlin, he'd have no choice but to go for an insanity plea.
Lacey just stared at the TV screen, at that model interviewer whose big smile was the last thing on the screen before the program skipped to a toothpaste commercial. She'd been a fool. She should have shot Marlin straight through the heart.
She would have saved the taxpayers thousands upon thousands of dollars. It would have been justice and revenge for all the women he'd butchered.
By the next afternoon, MAXINE hadn't come up with a thing. There were no differences at all in Belinda's killing versus the other women's. Only tiny variations, nothing at all significant.
She felt better. Belinda would finally find justice, if the little psycho ever made it to trial. A psychopath wasn't crazy, necessarily, even not usually. But who else knew that? Then she pictured him with Russell Bent of Chicago, both of them playing cards in the rec room of the state mental institution, both of them smiling at each other, joking about the idiot liberal judges and dumb-ass shrinks who believed they weren't responsible for their savagery because they'd had bad childhoods.
She had to stop it. There was nothing more she could do. Her father was right. Douglas was right. It was over. It was time to get on with her life.
19
IT HAD TO BE MARLIN Jones.'
'It seems likely, but you don't sound as if you're really satisfied.''
'I'm not, but MAX-oh, I forgot, he's in drag-MAXINE-didn't turn up a single variation in the way Belinda was murdered as opposed to the other women. Marlin killed them all, he had to have.' She sighed. 'But why did he leave out Belinda in particular? It makes no sense.'
'I'm glad you're not satisfied. I'm glad you have that itch in your gut,' Savich said slowly, tapping his pencil on his desktop, deliberately. 'You've inputted all the physical data and run endless comparisons, but there are other aspects you need to take into account. Now you've got to finish it.'
She was frowning ferociously. A long, curling piece of hair flopped into her face. She shoved it behind her ear, not even aware of what she was doing.
He smiled as he said, 'MAXINE and I have been doing a little work. It's her opinion that we need to go back to the props. Okay, think now about how he killed the women. Think about what he used to kill them and where he killed them.'
'A knife.'
'What else?'
'He killed them in warehouses and in a couple of houses. He obviously prefers warehouses, there aren't as many people around at night.'
'What did he use?'
'He built props.'
'Just the way Marty Bramfort was building props for her kid's school play in Boston. Think about what you
