by Dean Koontz
“Watch women being hurt?”
“I like to watch, all right? But I’m ashamed.”
“I don’t think you’re ashamed at all.”
“I am. I am ashamed. Not always during, but always after.”
“After what?”
“After…watching. This isn’t…Oh, man. This isn’t what I want to be.”
“Who would want to be what you are, Stevie?”
“I don’t know.”
“Name me one person. One person who would want to be what you are.”
“Maybe nobody,” Zillis said.
“How ashamed are you?” Billy persisted.
“I’ve thrown the videos away. Lots of times. I’ve even destroyed them. But then, you know…after a while, I buy new ones. I need help to stop.”
“Have you ever sought help, Stevie?”
Zillis didn’t respond.
“Have you ever sought help?” Billy pressed.
“No.”
“If you really want to stop, why haven’t you sought help?”
“I thought I could stop on my own. I thought I could.”
Zillis began to cry. His eyes were still glazed from the Mace, but these were real tears.
“Why have you done those things to the mannequins in the other room, Stevie?”
“You can’t understand.”
“Yeah, I’m just stodgy old Billy Wiles, got no zing, but give me a try anyway.”
“That doesn’t mean anything, what I did to them.”
“For something that doesn’t mean anything, you sure put a lot of time and energy into it.”
“I won’t talk about this. Not this.” He wasn’t refusing as much as pleading. “I won’t.”
“Does it make you blush? Stevie? Does it offend your tender sensibilities?”
Zillis cried continuously now. Not wrenching sobs. The steady, scalding tears of humiliation, of abashment.
He said, “Doing it isn’t the same as talking about it.”
“You mean what you do to the mannequins,” Billy clarified.
“You can…you can blow my brains out, but I won’t talk about it. I can’t.”
“When you mutilate the mannequins, are you excited, Stevie? Are you huge with excitement?”
Zillis shook his head, hung his head.
“Doing it to them and talking about it are so different?” Billy asked.
“Billy. Billy, please. I don’t want to hear myself, hear myself talking about it.”
“Because when you’re doing it, then it’s just something you do. But if you talk about it, then it’s something you are.”
Zillis’s expression confirmed that Billy had gotten to the quick of it.
Not much could be gained by harping on the mannequins. They were what they were. Rubbing Steve Zillis’s face in his perversion could be counterproductive.
Billy had not yet gotten what he needed, what he had come here to prove.
He was simultaneously tired and wired, in need of sleep but strung out on caffeine. At times, his pierced hand ached; the Vicodin had begun to wear off.
Because of exhaustion staved off with chemicals, he might not be conducting the interrogation cleverly enough.
If Zillis was the freak, he was a genius of emotional fakery.
But then that’s what sociopaths were: voracious spiders with an uncanny talent for projecting a convincing image of a complex human being that obscured the insectile reality of icy calculation and ravenous intent.
Billy said, “When you do what you do to the mannequins, when you watch those sick videos, do you ever think of Judith Kesselman?”
In the course of this encounter, Zillis had been surprised more than once, but this question shocked him. Bloodshot from the residual effect of the Mace, his eyes widened. His face paled and went loose, as if he had taken a blow.
chapter 63
ZILLIS SHACKLED TO THE BED. BILLY FREE ON the chair but with a growing sense of being trammeled by his prisoner’s evasiveness.
“Stevie? I asked you a question.”
“What is this?” Zillis said with apparent earnestness and even the merest trace of righteous affront.
“What is what?”
“Why did you come here? Billy, I don’t understand what you’re doing here.”
“Do you think of Judith Kesselman?” Billy persisted.
“How do you know about her?”
“How do you think I know?”
“You answer questions with questions, but I’m supposed to have real answers to everything.”
“Poor Stevie. What about Judi Kesselman?”
“Something happened to her.”
“What happened to her, Stevie?”
“It was in college. Five, five and a half years ago.”
“Do you know what happened to her, Stevie?”
“Nobody knows.”
“Somebody does,” Billy said.
“She disappeared.”
“Like in a magic show?”
“She was just gone.”
“She was such a lovely girl, wasn’t she?”
“Everybody liked her,” Zillis said.
“Such a lovely girl, so innocent. The innocent are the most delicious, aren’t they, Stevie?”
Frowning, Zillis said, “Delicious?”
“The innocent—they’re the most succulent, the most satisfying. I know what happened to her,” Billy said, meaning to imply that he knew Zillis had kidnapped and killed her.
Such a full-body shudder passed through Steve Zillis that the handcuffs rattled protractedly against the metal bed frame.
Pleased with that reaction, Billy said, “I know, Stevie.”
“What? What do you know?”
“Everything.”
“What happened to her?”
“Yes. Everything.”
Zillis had been sitting with his back against the bed, his legs splayed on the floor in front of him. Now he suddenly drew his knees up to his chest. “Oh, God.” A groan of abject misery escaped him.
“Precisely everything,” Billy said.
Zillis’s mouth softened and his voice grew tremulous. “Don’t hurt me.”
“What do you think I might do to you, Stevie?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to think.”
“You’re so imaginative, so talented when it comes to dreaming up ways to hurt women, but suddenly you don’t want to think?”
Shivering continuously now, Zillis said, “What do you want from me, what can I do?”
“I want to talk about what happened to Judith Kesselman.”
When Zillis began to sob like a young boy, Billy got up from the chair. He sensed that a breakthrough was coming.
“Stevie?”
“Go away.”
“You know I’m not going to. Let’s talk about Judi Kesselman.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I think you do.” Billy didn’t go closer to Zillis, but he squatted in front of him, coming down almost to his level. “I think you want very much to talk about it.”
Zillis shook his head violently. “I don’t. I don’t. If we talk about it, you’ll kill me for sure.”
“Why do you say that, Stevie?”
“You know.”
“Why do you say I’ll kill you?”
“Because then I’ll know too much, won’t I?”
Billy stared at his prisoner, trying to read him.
“You did her,” Zillis said with a groan.
“Did what?”
“You killed her, and I don’t know why, I don’t understand, but now you’re going to kill me.”
Billy took a deep breath and grimaced. “What’ve you done?”
For an answer, Zillis only sobbed.
“Stevie, what’ve you done to yourself?”
Zillis had drawn his knees to his chest. Now he stretched out his legs again.
“Stevie?”
The crotch of the man’s pajamas was dark with urine. He had wet himse
lf.
chapter 64
SOME MONSTERS ARE PATHETIC RATHER THAN murderous. Their lairs are not lairs in the fullest sense because they do not lie in wait. They take to ill-kept burrows, with minimal furniture and the objects of their misshapen sense of beauty. They hope only to indulge their mutant fantasies and live their monstrous lives in as much peace as they can find, which is precious little, for they torment themselves even when the rest of the world leaves them unmolested.
Billy resisted the conclusion that Steve Zillis was one of this pathetic breed.
To admit that Zillis was not a homicidal sociopath, Billy must accept that much precious time had been wasted in the pursuit of a wolf, presumed fierce, that was in fact a meek dog.
Worse, if Zillis was not the freak, Billy had no idea where to go from here. All the evidence had seemed to funnel him to a single conclusion. The circumstantial evidence.
Worst of all, if the killer was not before him now, then he had stooped to this brutality without profit.
Consequently, for a while he continued to question and harass his captive, but by the minute, the contest between them seemed to be less a contest than an act of oppression. A matador can find no glory when the bull, bristling with banderillas and lanced by the picador, loses all spirit and will pass not even listlessly at the red muleta.
Sooner than later, concealing his growing despair, Billy sat on the chair once more and raised his final issue, hoping that a trap might spring when he least expected.
“Where were you earlier tonight, Steve?”
“You know. Don’t you know? I was at the bar, working your shift.”
“Only until nine o’clock. Jackie says you worked between three and nine because you had stuff to do before and after.”
“I did. I had stuff.”
“Where were you between nine o’clock and midnight?”
“What does it matter?”
“It matters,” Billy assured him. “Where were you?”
“You’re gonna hurt…you’re gonna kill me anyway.”
“I’m not going to kill you, and I didn’t kill Judith Kesselman. I’m pretty sure you killed her.”
“Me?” His amazement rang as true as any reaction he’d had since this had started.
“You’re really good at this,” Billy told him.
“Good at what? Killing people? You’re bugshit crazy! I never killed anyone.”
“Steve, if you can convince me you have a solid alibi for nine to midnight, then this is over. I’m out of here, and you’re free.”
Zillis looked dubious. “That easy?”
“Yes.”
“After all this—it’s over that easy?”
“It could be. Depending on the alibi.”
Zillis worried over his answer.
Billy began to think he was concocting it from scratch.
Then Zillis said, “What if I tell you where I was, and it turns out that’s why you’re here, because you already know where I was, and you want to hear me say it so you can beat the shit out of me.”
“I’m not following you,” Billy told him.
“All right. Okay. I was with someone. I never heard her mention you, but if you have a thing for her, what’re you going to do to me?”
Billy regarded him with disbelief. “You were with a woman?”
“I wasn’t with her, not like in bed. It was just a date. A late dinner, which had to be later ’cause I covered for you. This was our second date.”
“Who?”
Steeling himself against Billy’s jealous outrage, Zillis said, “Amanda Pollard.”
“Mandy Pollard? I know her. She’s a nice girl.”
Warily, Zillis said, “That’s it—‘She’s a nice girl’?”
The Pollards owned a successful vineyard. They grew grapes on contract for one of the valley’s finest vintners. Mandy was about twenty, pretty, friendly. She worked in the family business. Judging by all evidence, she was wholesome enough to have come from an era better than this one.
Billy let his gaze travel the sleazy bedroom, from the porno-tape package lying on the floor beside the TV to the pile of dirty laundry in one corner.
“She’s never been here,” Zillis said. “We’ve only had two dates. I’m looking for a better place, a nice apartment. I want to get rid of all this stuff. Make a clean start.”
“She’s a decent girl.”
“She is,” Zillis eagerly agreed. “I think with her in my corner, I could clean up my act, start over, do the right thing for once.”
“She ought to see this place.”
“No, no. Billy, no, for God’s sake. This isn’t the me I want to be. I want to be better for her.”
“Where did you go to dinner?”
Zillis named a restaurant. Then: “We got there about twenty past nine. We left at about a quarter past eleven because we were the only people in the place by then.”
“After that?”
“We went for a drive. A nice drive. I don’t mean we parked. She isn’t like that. We just drove around, talking, listening to music.”
“Until when?”
“I took her home a little after one o’clock.”
“And came back here.”
“Yeah.”
“And put on a porno flick of a guy whipping a woman.”
“All right. I know what I am, but I also know what I can be.”
Billy went to the nightstand and picked up the phone. It had a long cord. He brought it to Zillis. “Call her.”
“What, now? Billy, it’s after three in the morning.”
“Call her. Tell her how much you enjoyed the evening, how very special she is. She won’t mind if you wake her up for that.”
“We don’t have that kind of relationship yet,” Zillis worried. “She’s gonna think this is weird.”
“You call her and let me listen in,” Billy said, “or I jam this pistol in your ear and blow your brains out. What do you think?”
Zillis’s hands shook so badly that he misdialed twice. He got it right the third time.
Hunkering beside his captive, the muzzle of the pistol pressed against Zillis’s side so he wouldn’t get a half-wise idea, Billy listened to Mandy Pollard answer the phone and express surprise at hearing from her new beau at that hour.
“Don’t worry about it,” Mandy told Zillis. “You didn’t wake me. I was just lying here staring at the ceiling.”
Zillis’s voice had a tremor, but Mandy might easily have assumed he was nervous about calling at this late hour and about expressing his affection more directly than perhaps he had done previously.
For a few minutes, Billy listened to them recap the night—their dinner, the drive—and then he gestured at Zillis to wrap it up.
Mandy Pollard had spent the evening with this man, and she was not some half-cracked thrill seeker who knowingly hung out with bad boys.
Having dinner with Mandy, Steve Zillis could not have been the freak who propped Ralph Cottle’s corpse on Lanny’s living-room sofa and nailed Billy’s hand to the hallway floor.
chapter 65
SLIPPING THE PISTOL INTO THE HOLSTER AT HIS hip, Billy said, “I’m going to leave you handcuffed to the bed.”
Steve Zillis looked relieved at the holstering of the weapon, but remained wary.
Billy tore the phone cord out of the wall and out of the phone, knotted it, and put it in his bread bag. “I don’t want you calling anyone until you’ve had plenty of time to cool down and to think about what I’m going to say.”
“You’re really not gonna kill me?”