“Any minute.”
Gray stopped himself from asking her if she was okay, or if she was sure she was ready to see this. He already knew the answers she would give to both questions, even if he suspected those answers weren’t exactly honest.
“You’re going to be in there, too, right?” She kept her eyes fixed on the drab gray interior of the interrogation room.
“Yes.”
She nodded tightly, frozen in place. Gray started to walk away when he felt her fingers reach for his. He stopped. “Mia.” He wrapped his hand around her cold skin. After a time, the warmth began to return to her fingertips. “I’m going to ask him about her.” It was both a promise and a warning.
“I know,” she said, and squeezed his hand.
The doorknob turned behind them, and they broke contact. Morrison ambled back into the room, slurping a cup of coffee. “D’Augostino’s back. The vic’s in the hospital getting checked out.”
He’d have to send Gail chocolates. The police had obtained a search warrant for Valentine’s home in Revere in record time. Austin Quinlan lived alone in a small two-bedroom ranch. The exterior of the house was neat, with pale yellow aluminum siding, a chain-link fence in good repair and modest plantings. No one passing by that house would have guessed that inside, Quinlan had prepared a chamber of horrors. They’d found Kate Haley chained to the floor of the basement in which Quinlan had planned to torture, kill and mutilate her. After seeing the extent of the knife wounds on his hands and arms, Gray speculated that Kate Haley was alive only because Valentine was too injured to commence with his plan.
“Is Kate okay?”
“Dehydration, messed up ankles from the chains. They’re, like, raw.” Morrison blew the steam across the surface of his coffee and took another slurp. “It was nasty. You ever seen anything like that?”
Kate Haley’s ankles were torn, the metal cuffs holding them slippery with her blood. Gray’s stomach dropped just thinking about the sight. “No.”
“Nasty,” Morrison said. “D’Augostino said she’d been pacing for hours and that she never even felt it. Can you imagine?”
“She was focusing on her own survival,” Mia said quietly.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
Morrison eyed her with obvious distrust, but Gray knew he was too excited about interrogating Valentine to make an issue of her presence. Morrison didn’t have anything on Mia other than a theory, and it was a far-fetched one, at that. Even bulldogs had to know when to back down from a fight.
The door in the interrogation room opened. Gray heard Mia suck in her breath as Austin Quinlan was led into the room, his hands cuffed behind him. The officers leading him pressed him into a chair across from the two-way mirror. The chair was uncomfortable, the temperature in the room was warm and the walls were bare. Gray would let him sit for a while so he’d already be itching to leave when he and Morrison entered the room.
Austin was still wearing the long-sleeve T-shirt that he’d been wearing in the greenhouse that morning. His hands weren’t visible from that angle, but Gray had seen the swollen purple wounds on his hands and arms. Some of them looked as if they needed medical attention, but the bastard could wait for that. He’d already waited several days.
Beside him, Mia whispered, “What happens now?”
Gray folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the table behind them. “Austin’s got to settle in and start fidgeting,” he said. “So now we wait.”
* * *
Mia knew that if she stopped long enough to think about it, she was weak with fatigue and hunger. She hadn’t eaten all day, and she’d been awake for far too long. She couldn’t think about it. As exhausted as she was, Valentine was being questioned. She needed to see this.
Gray and Morrison were in the interrogation room. They’d made Austin wait for about an hour, observing him from the two-way mirror. During that time, he’d had his hands cuffed behind him and movement had been minimal. Gray told her that the point was for Austin to be uncomfortable in the small, overheated room. Being uncomfortable might make him more willing to confess in order to get out sooner. Austin had stared into space for a long time, and then he’d walked over to stare directly into the two-way mirror. Mia’s heart had sputtered when his gaze passed through her like a rapier. If leaving Valentine alone was supposed to make him uncomfortable, then why was she the one wishing she could be anywhere else at this moment?
She forced herself upright, holding her spine rigid. All around her were other officers desperate for a glimpse of Valentine, the serial killer who didn’t officially exist. Now that Austin had been arrested, the department had already released a statement acknowledging that he was a serial killer whose spree had officially ended. Funny how that happened.
Gray stuck Morrison in the chair in the corner. He wanted to be in charge of the interrogation, and Morrison was too much of a loose cannon. The officer sat forward in his seat, his knees on his elbows, as if he was ready to spring at the suspect. Gray, on the other hand, was measured in his examination. Not only that, but he was friendly. He tried to talk sports with Valentine or to engage him on local politics or the weather.
Valentine issued short answers, sitting stonily in his chair. His hands were crisscrossed with scabs and raw wounds, but he kept them folded on the table, left over right, as if nothing were wrong at all. He’d just been arrested for abducting Kate Haley, and more charges would follow, but Austin Quinlan appeared unfazed by the events of the past several hours. Mia wondered if his demeanor would change when Gray began talking about the murdered girls. She swallowed.
“Hey, Dr. Perez.” Officer Langley came up beside her. “I thought you might like something to eat.”
He pressed a steaming white mug into her hands. Inside, little noodles were expanding, and dehydrated vegetables were taking shape. “It’s just one of those soup packets,” he explained. “I keep a box of them around for when I have to stay late. They’re low sodium.” He handed her a white plastic spoon.
She must have been hungry, because the soup smelled fragrant and her mouth began to water. “Thank you, Langley,” she said, touched at his thoughtfulness. “Really, that was very kind of you.”
“Well, it’s hours past dinner, and I hate to eat alone.” He shrugged as he pulled up a chair at the table she was leaning on and stirred his own mug. “And I figured I’m the one who got you into this mess in the first place.”
She sat beside him, angled so she could still view the interrogation. “What do you mean? What mess?”
“By inviting you to that crime scene last week. That reporter who was killed.” He took a sip of his soup straight from the mug. “I mean...Lieutenant Mathieson admired you a lot, Dr. Perez. And I do, too. I feel terrible that you got mixed up...you know, with the gun.”
“Oh.” She rested her gaze on her mug. Little balls of dehydrated spices burst and foamed at the surface of the hot water. “I appreciate the kind words, Langley. I don’t understand what’s happening myself, but it’s not your fault.” She tried and failed to muster a reassuring smile.
“It must be a misunderstanding,” Langley continued. “Some kind of lab mix-up. I’m sure it will be straightened out soon.”
Nice that Langley could feel optimistic for her. She, on the other hand, was certain her situation was going to get worse before it improved. She was either more jaded than she’d realized, or she had an instinct that knew more than her conscious mind did. She stirred her soup and tasted a spoonful. The broth was salty and too heavy with oregano, but food was food.
On the other side of the glass, Gray had moved on from preliminary questions. “You know why you’re here, Austin, right? The officers who arrested you explained the charges.”
“Yes.” His mouth barely moved when he answered, and his vacant stare didn’t waver.
“Can you tell me what they told you? What you’re charged with?”
Austin shifted slightly to the right, almost as if he were physically avoidi
ng the words leaving Gray’s mouth. “It’s because of that girl.”
“That girl?” Gray feigned confusion. “Are you referring to Katherine Haley?”
“Yeah.”
“And when you say that ‘it’s because of’ her, you mean it’s because you abducted her, correct?”
Mia held her breath. At any point, Austin could ask for a lawyer and the questioning would have to stop. That could mean that they wouldn’t learn what had happened to her sister that night, if ever.
“That’s what I’m charged with,” Austin said.
She exhaled. He didn’t exactly deny abducting Kate Haley, and he didn’t ask for an attorney. Mia gripped the warm mug between her hands and forced herself to take another sip. Her stomach was suddenly feeling uncomfortably full.
“All right,” Gray said. “You know we found her, right? We found her chained up in your basement out in Revere. She’s alive, Austin, and she’s talking.” Austin peered down at his marred hands but didn’t respond. “What if I told you that she said you told her about the other women? How you kept them in that basement, chained them up and tortured them?”
Gray was giving Quinlan hypotheticals, trying to get him to talk. The suspect’s countenance remained frozen and he continued to stare at his hands. Gray watched him closely but was careful to remain in character. “What if I told you she said you were going to sexually assault her?”
Austin chuckled quietly to himself and shook his head. Gray said, “You’re shaking your head.”
“I never...” Austin looked up at him. “She’s lying about that.”
“I thought so.” Gray leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Look, personally? I thought, he doesn’t seem like the type to do that. I mean, that’s not what this was about.”
“No,” Austin agreed. “She’s lying.”
Mia’s heart began to pound. Slowly but surely, Gray was building a case for the prosecution, and Austin was going along with it.
“That’s exactly what I thought, too,” Gray said. “She’s got a story now, and maybe she’s embellishing a little.”
“Yeah. For attention.”
“For attention,” Gray echoed. “Now, what if I told you she said you were going to let her starve down there, in that basement?”
Austin’s face grew visibly tight. “She said that?”
“She may have. She may have told us that you didn’t give her any food so that she’d starve to death.”
“I didn’t...” It was as if Austin had suddenly come to life. He shot forward in his seat. “Now, that’s a lie. That’s a lie. I fed her.”
“I knew you would. You seem like you’re thoughtful.”
“I made a special trip to get the kind of food she liked,” he continued. “She likes to work out. She runs, you know? And she likes those all-natural energy bars. The fruit kinds, like raspberry.”
Gray gave a low whistle. “Those aren’t cheap.”
“No.” Austin laughed. “They’re not. I gave her a whole bunch of them in flavors she likes.”
“Now, how did you know what flavors she likes? You must have seen her around before.”
“Yeah, I saw her around the BPL. I go there a lot to read and do research.”
“Oh, yeah? What kind of research?”
“Horticultural studies, mostly.”
“You take your job very seriously,” Gray observed without a hint of irony.
“I do,” said Austin. “I saw her around, doing research. She was one of those stuffy types. Thought she was better than everyone.”
“You’re talking about Kate Haley, right?”
“Yeah.” Austin’s shoulders relaxed as he began to really confide in Gray. “Just really snotty and rude.”
“Oh, man, I know what you mean.”
“I held the door for her once, and she didn’t say thank you.”
Gray nodded. “Here you are, trying to be a gentleman.”
“Someone needed to take her down a peg, you know what I’m saying?”
Mia couldn’t believe it. Austin was speaking with Gray as if they were old friends. As the interrogation dragged on, Austin admitted he’d abducted Kate to teach her a lesson, but he maintained that he hadn’t decided her fate yet. “It was her choice,” he said quietly. “She could have been nicer to me and just...apologized.”
“And then you might have let her go,” Gray said.
“Yeah.”
He paused. “Is that what happened with the other women, Austin? Did they not apologize to you? Were they disrespectful?”
He was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, “Yes.”
“My God.” Mia gasped. “Are we actually going to get a confession out of him?”
“Bartlett’s the best,” said Langley. “Morrison likes to grill suspects, which has its uses—don’t get me wrong. But Bartlett’s not letting him talk, because if you grill this suspect, I’ll bet he’d lawyer up like that.” Langley snapped his fingers.
Mia sat back in admiration as Gray continued the interrogation. He was face-to-face with a man who’d undoubtedly murdered, and yet he was unintimidated and coolly in control of all aspects of the discussion. More impressively, he was actually outwitting the suspect. She couldn’t help but be impressed by a man who knew how to get things done.
“Tell me about the other women,” Gray said. “Were they snobs, too?”
As Austin began to tell Gray about the other victims, Mia listened with a mixture of fascination and horror, putting all of the pieces together. Austin was a college dropout with a mean inferiority complex that led him to imagine that those who’d succeeded where he’d failed—women in particular—looked down on him.
He became obsessed with particular women, convincing himself that they were equally fixated on him. He learned their schedules, followed them home and even knew small details, like what they ate or drank. He knew them, and when the time was right, he would appear at their door under the pretense of delivering flowers. They would open the door, and he would invent some excuse to come inside, asking, for example, whether he should put the flowers on the table. Once he’d gained access, he’d drug the victim, hide her in the toolbox he kept in the back of his truck and make a quick getaway. Then he would isolate, torture and kill them.
Mia smoothed the goose bumps on her arms as he continued talking. She’d been unable to finish even half of the soup Langley had given her, and as Austin explained what he called his “process” for eliminating his victims, she was glad she hadn’t forced herself to eat more. All she could think about was this monster stalking her sister. Selecting flowers to send her a message. Walking to her door. Drugging her and stuffing her into a metal toolbox. Cutting out her heart.
She rubbed at her temple. It was more than she could take, and yet she couldn’t leave. She had to know what had happened to Lena.
Austin was going into great detail, bragging to Gray about what he’d done. Gray was doing an impressive job feigning admiration. “You can’t just kill them,” Austin said. “Where’s the lesson in that? You have to make them think about what they did.”
“Now, how did you do that?” Gray asked.
His face broke into a smile that chilled Mia to the core. “Instruments. It’s all about having the right instruments.”
He went into detail about the torture devices he’d acquired and created—whips with nails, pruning shears and metal spikes. By the end, Mia was shaking with rage.
Langley cleared his throat. “Dr. Perez? If you need to take a break or anything—”
“No,” she said through clenched teeth. “Not now.”
On the other side of the glass, Gray was still unflappable when presented with the horrors to which Austin was confessing. “But you did more than that, didn’t you?” Gray said. “I mean, there’s torture and killing, but you went beyond that.”
Austin smiled again. “You mean the heart thing.”
“Yes!” Gray said, as if what he meant had otherwise slipped his mind. “
That’s what I mean. The heart thing.”
“Have you ever held a human heart?” Austin clenched one fist in illustration. “It’s about this size, and you know, it’s like holding a rare flower. It’s the best thing about us. Just my opinion. Perfect, beautiful. I plucked their hearts.”
Gray swallowed. It was subtle, but Mia noticed it. “All four of them?”
“Yeah.” Austin paused. “Wait. No, there were only the three. Kate’s still— I never got there with her.”
“Three?” Gray scratched at his head as if he were confused. “What were their names?”
“Let’s see.” Austin counted on his fingers. “There was Jennifer, Gretchen and...” He paused. “Amy. Sorry, I almost forgot about her.”
The way Gray looked at the two-way mirror, Mia could have sworn he saw her rise from her seat and stand directly in front of the glass, leaning forward until her breath made a circle on its surface. There were four victims. He’d killed four women. She locked gazes with Gray, knowing he couldn’t see her but saying out loud all the same, “Ask him about Lena. He killed Lena.”
“You know,” Gray said, turning back to Austin, “we’d always thought you had killed four women. There was a woman who went missing last summer. Her name was Lena Perez. Ring a bell?”
Austin shook his head. “No. I never heard of her.”
Mia stepped back from the glass and stumbled into the table behind her. Langley rose to steady her. “Dr. Perez? You okay?”
She felt for her seat and sat down, resting her head in her hands and trying to process the confession she’d just heard. She stared blankly at the table as Langley asked her if she was all right. Her brain no longer processed the words.
Behind her, the door opened and Joe D’Augostino walked in. His uniform had traces of blood on it, and his face looked ragged and frayed. “What’s going on?” The question was directed at Langley.
“He’s confessing,” the officer replied. “We got him.”
D’Augostino pulled up the seat beside Mia. “It’s over, Mia. We may never recover Lena, but now her memory can finally be put to rest.”
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