thirty years old, Randolph Fish looked like a teenage movie star.
I pulled out the straight-backed chair and Fish looked up, recognized me, and gave me an endearing smile.
I said, “Hello, Randy.”
“Well look at you, Lindsay,” he said. “You’ve put on, I’m going to say, twenty-two pounds since I saw you last. You look healthy.”
At five five, Randy Fish might have weighed 135 pounds when I’d kicked him around three years ago, but he weighed less now. His brown hair was clean. He had large brown eyes and bow-shaped lips. He looked unbelievably sweet and vulnerable and frail.
It was easy to see how women had fallen for him, done what he’d asked of them, without having the slightest sense that he was a sexually deviant psychopath with an insatiable desire to maim and kill.
“How’re you feeling?” I asked him.
“Rested,” he said, smiling again.
“I’m glad to see that you’re okay,” I said truthfully. “I still have some questions for you.”
“Don’t you have something to tell me?” asked the killer.
“What are you reading?” I asked.
“
I felt literally sick. I’d seen the morgue pictures of the five women we knew Fish had killed. One had had her fingers and toes cut off while she was alive. Another had hundreds of knife slits all over her body. All of them had been brutally raped, bitten, hanged. I knew too much about what this psycho had done and I didn’t want to give him anything.
But if I wanted to find Sandra Brody’s body and those of the three other missing young women, I was going to have to give in.
I quashed my gag reflex, but I still tasted bile at the back of my throat when I said, “I’m sorry I had to be so rough with you, Randy. But you know, you had threatened to kill a hostage. And Sandra Brody was still missing.”
“You call that an apology?”
“You remember Sandra,” I said. “She’s a pretty girl, brunette, size four, has a bit of an overbite. She was a biology major. I might be able to help you if you tell me where she is.”
“I don’t remember a Sandra Brody,” he said. “In fact, I can’t even remember why I was locked up. But I do remember you, Lindsay Boxer. I wish we’d met under different circumstances. You’re very dear to me.”
He showed me the book he’d been reading and said, “This is pretty good. Have you read it? Do you read?”
He was back into his book, turning the pages, seemingly absorbed. As far as Randy Fish was concerned, the interview was over.
I had apologized.
He’d given me nothing in return. And I was absolutely sure he was messing with me. If I had gotten down on my knees and given him an unconditional apology, he would still have messed with me.
He liked the game. He loved it.
I tapped on the glass.
Fish looked up.
I smiled and said, “Go to hell, okay?”
He shouted as I left the room, “I’m crazy about you, Lindsay Boxer. I really am.”
Chapter 60
YUKI HAD JUST about gotten a grip on the astounding fact of Lily Herman’s reappearance when John Kinsela called his first witness.
“The defense calls Gary Goodfriend.”
Yuki said, “What?” just loud enough for Nicky to hear. Her associate shrugged and looked at her with big eyes, as surprised as she was that their witness had been called by the opposition.
Yuki watched as the gun dealer who had sold Keith Herman a gun passed her chair on his way to the witness stand. He was wearing the same fringed buckskin jacket he’d worn when he was a witness for the prosecution, but the swagger was gone now that he’d gone over to the other side.
Goodfriend swore on the Bible and took his seat. Yuki looked directly at him, but he avoided her eyes.
Kinsela jingled coins in his pocket as he asked his witness, “Mr. Goodfriend, did you call my office yesterday afternoon?”
“Yes. I did.”
“And why did you call me?”
“Because I was having a whatchamacallit—guilty conscience.”
“Will you please tell the court what you told me?”
“I told you that I don’t really remember if it was Keith Herman who made that comment about having a rug rat problem, or if it was some other customer.”
“But you testified that it was Keith Herman.”
“I misremembered,” Goodfriend said now. “I definitely sold Keith Herman a gun. I’ve got the yellow copy of the sales slip. But like I said, I sold thirty guns that weekend. There was a lot of talking all around. It was noisy. It was a trade show, you know. And, what I’m thinking now is that I got confused.”
Kinsela said, “So to be clear, you’re retracting your earlier testimony. You no longer believe that Mr. Herman wanted to kill his daughter.”
“That’s right.”
“Thank you for coming forward, Mr. Goodfriend. That was an act of good citizenry.”
The judge said to Yuki, “You’ve got some questions, Ms. Castellano?”
“Just a few, Your Honor.” Yuki struggled for composure. No good to let Kinsela see that he’d rattled her. She relaxed her face and smiled.
“Mr. Goodfriend, I want to understand the timeline of your memory reversal.”
“Okay. Sure.”
“Last week you swore on the Bible that Mr. Herman had made a comment that you took to mean that he wanted to shoot his child.”
“Uh-huh. But that was then.”
“You realize that either that statement or the one you just made is a lie. Do you know that perjury is a felony?”
“I wasn’t intentionally telling a lie. I just remembered it one way and then, yesterday, I remembered it a different way.”
Yuki sighed. “You also stated that you believe that Mr. Herman is a violent person. Have you been threatened?”
“Mr. Herman is in jail.”
“I understand that, Mr. Goodfriend. Did
“The only one that put pressure on me is you.”
“Me?”
Yuki was dumbfounded. What was this guy saying? She hadn’t been sure of him when he contacted her, but he had checked out as a legitimate gun dealer, with no record of any kind. His testimony had been good for her case because he had described the defendant’s violent personality for the jury.
Goodfriend said now, “When I came to you and said I thought the defendant had made a threat, you said, ‘Are you sure?’”
“Yes, and you said you were.”
“Well, I