'Thanks for coming, Lieutenant.' Pludenza looked about as agitated as I felt. He led me through a grand foyer, my short heels clicking on the terrazzo floor.
'Bankruptcies seem to be on the rise.'
'Hmm? Oh. My wife comes from money. It's like living in the Taj Mahal. Derrick is in the den.'
The den was an expansive room with vaulted ceilings, black leather furniture, and a beautiful Prairie Wind pool table in colonial maple.
Derrick sat in an armchair, hugging his knees to his chest.
'Is he out yet?' he asked.
'Soon. Closing arguments are today. If you want to keep him locked up, you have to testify.'
His head shook violently.
'No. No testifying.'
'Then he's going to get out, Derrick. And then he'll come for you. He was a cop. He knows how to find people.'
Derrick began to hum, off-tune.
'Did you want something to drink, Lieutenant?'
I asked Pludenza for some coffee, and sat across from Rushlo.
'Derrick, we need to keep him in jail. Do you understand that?'
He nodded.
'I know that you're scared. We can keep you safe. I promise. But you need to help us make sure he doesn't get out.'
He nodded again.
'Tell me about Southern Illinois.'
His good eye locked on me.
'You know about Southern?'
'I know about you getting kicked out. I know that's where you met Fuller. I know about the body you stole.'
'I took her out into the woods, where no one would see. He followed me and watched.'
I ventured a guess. 'Fuller turned you in.'
Rushlo looked at me like I'd just grown donkey ears.
'Barry didn't turn me in. He was the one that told me to do it. He understood.'
'How did you meet him?'
'He came up to me, after class. Wanted me to get him and some of his fraternity buddies into the morgue. For hazing week.'
'Did you let them?'
'No. I would have gotten kicked out of school. But for fun, I let them see my embalming book. The guys were making jokes, acting tough, because they didn't want to admit being grossed out. But Barry was different. He seemed . . .'
'Interested?'
'More like aroused. Not by the embalming pages. By the reconstruction pages. He liked the trauma pictures. Extreme disfigurement. Stuff like that. So a week later, he came by again, alone. We got to talking. We have a lot in common, you know.'
Yeah, I thought. You're both psychotic perverts.
'Were you helping Barry with disposals while in college?'
'No. That didn't happen until I had to leave. During my internship, at the funeral home in Champaign-Urbana. We stayed in touch, and one day he calls me up and says, 'Do you want a fresh one?''
'A fresh corpse?'
'Yeah. He was still down at Southern. He told me she was untraceable, and he needed my help to get rid of her.'
'This was someone he'd killed?'
'Yeah. So I drove down to Southern to pick her up. He'd bloodied her up pretty good, but she was still warm.'
Derrick got a faraway look in his one eye; the other one always had a faraway look.
'You buried her in a closed casket with another body.'
He fixed both eyes on me, a first for him. 'How did you know that?'
'Do you remember the names, Derrick?'
'The girl's name was Melody. Such a pretty girl.'
