The Beginning

by Catherine Coulter

  He was staring at her. At that moment, she felt she could see his dead eyes looking through her skin down to her bones, looking at the blood pulsing through her veins. For an instant, she saw him dip his hands into her blood. She jumped, then forced herself to stillness again. He was scary with those eyes of his, but she was the one making him into more than he was. He was a monster, but she was making him into the Devil. Just let him stare. There was nothing he could do to her. He’d already tried and she’d won. She had to remember that. “Did you, Marlin? Ever see me before Boston?”

  Slowly, he shook his head. “Nah. Maybe, but who cares? I still don’t like you even though you’re pretty. You’re a real bitch, Marty.”

  “I’d like you to tell me something, Marlin.”

  “If I feel like it.”

  “Remember when you were in the hospital I asked you to list the women you’d killed in San Francisco?”

  “I remember.”

  “You left out a woman named Belinda Madigan. Why? Why did you leave out her name?”

  “Did she curse?”

  “No. I’ve never cursed either, Marlin. Why did you leave out Belinda Madigan’s name?”

  He shrugged, his eyes narrowing now, and she saw into him, clearly. He knew he could play her, knew he was in control, knew he could string her until—until what? Had he ever seen her before? In San Francisco? Did he know who she was? Something was awfully wrong. She knew he was playing mind games with her, but she couldn’t stop.

  He grinned, showing all his beautiful straight white teeth. “I got trouble remembering sometimes, you know?”

  “Maybe my father prosecuted you? He was an assistant D.A. in San Francisco seven years ago. His name is Corman Sherlock. Was that it, Marlin?”

  “I heard about your daddy, heard he was a mean son of a bitch, heard he never cut anybody any slack, but I never met him.”

  “Why did you kill Belinda Madigan?”

  Big John roared out of his chair, knocking it over. The sergeant grabbed his arm, his gun out. The door to the interrogation room burst open, and three armed officers rushed into the room.

  Sherlock stood up slowly. “It’s all right, gentlemen. Mr. Bullock got a bit riled, didn’t you, sir?”

  “You’ve got no right to ask him questions like that, Agent Sherlock. If you do it again, Marlin won’t say another word, the interview will be over, and there’ll never be another one. You got that?”

  “I got it.” She saw Dillon standing in the doorway, his expression set, his eyes hard. They’d argued about this, but in the end, he’d given in, allowing her to see Marlin alone. She knew he’d seen her desperation. He said nothing now, merely looked at her. She smiled, gave him a slight nod, then sat down again. “I’ll be careful with my questions, Mr. Bullock,” she said. “Please sit down, sir. If you feel like bounding around like that again, please don’t. I’d just as soon not get shot by accident.”

  “You watch yourself, little lady.”

  “I’m Special Agent Sherlock,” she said mildly, admiring his tactic.

  He wasn’t stupid. He merely shrugged and sat back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest.

  She turned to Marlin, who hadn’t moved or spoken throughout the ruckus. “Did I entrap you, Marlin?”

  “I don’t know what that means, Marty. I just knew I had to punish you. God sent me to punish his weak vessels, to purify them, to make them whole again.”

  “As in to make them dead, Marlin?”

  “Don’t answer that, Marlin. Watch yourself, Agent Sherlock.”

  “Why did you leave out Belinda Madigan’s name?”

  He gave her that superior smile again, disregarding her question. “Belinda who? I don’t know any Belinda. That’s a pretty name, old-fashioned. What’s she to you, Marty?”

  “Do you think I look much like her, Marlin?”

  “No, I think you’re prettier, I always—”

  Big John Bullock’s mouth was working. He didn’t know what was going on, but he soon would. He wasn’t stupid.

  Sherlock sat back in her chair and drew in a very deep breath.

  Big John said finally, “Who’s Belinda?”

  “She was one of the women in San Francisco that Marlin had to purify. It was seven years ago. He purified seven women in San Francisco. It was seven, wasn’t it, Marlin?”

  He was shaking his head. “No, not seven. I don’t do seven. My pa always told me that seven was a bad number, that it was even worse than thirteen. He’d always laugh at the hotels that didn’t have a thirteenth floor, told me that the fools on the fourteenth floor were on the thirteenth really, but they were too stupid to realize it. No, I never did seven, did six, like my pa told me.”

  “All right. The six women you purified in San Francisco, all of them cursed and bad-mouthed their husbands?”

  He nodded. Big John didn’t say anything, which Sherlock considered a gift.

  “Did you date any of them, Marlin? You’re a good-looking guy, I bet it wouldn’t have been hard for you to get a date with almost any woman, right?”

  He nodded again. “Ladies like me,” he said, and studied his thumbnail. “They tell me I’m a great lover.”

  She nearly gagged. “You date Belinda?”

  “I told you, Marty, she wasn’t one of the women I had to purify. Why are you so interested in her anyway?”

  “I like the name. It’s unusual.”

  “I don’t like the name, but I like yours, Marty. It sounds kind of like a boy’s name. It was close, you know? Once I thought God wanted me to purify little boys, to correct them if they’d gotten a bad start, put them on the right path, but then I realized it wasn’t boys, it was girls. Women who’d had their chance to straighten out, but hadn’t. Women who’d married good men and turned on them. I slept with them, you know, to make sure they were the ones to take out. All six of them cheated on their husbands, told me what jerks they were, so then I was sure they had to walk the walk through my maze.”

  “Marlin,” Big John said very quietly, “shut up.”

  “Yeah, well, purify, then. That’s it, purify. I wish I’d gone to college. I could have learned more pretty words like purify.”

  She was riveted. She imagined all the people listening to Marlin were riveted. She wondered what Savich was thinking.

  “You didn’t ask me out when I came to the hardware store.”

  “I know. That was weird. I slept with Hillary. She was good. She sucked me off really well. Do you know that she said bad things while I fucked her?”

  She would push back. “Why didn’t you try to fuck me, Marlin?”

  She watched him actually flinch. None of it was an act. “Don’t, Marty. That sounds so crazy coming from you. Don’t talk like that, okay?”

  “Okay. But why didn’t you want to be intimate with me, Marlin?”

  He shrugged. “You came on so strong, talking about your poor husband like you did, and then there was your foul mouth. You said all those bad words right in front of me.” He sighed. “But you know, I was in a hurry. I couldn’t take the time to ask you out, to see if you’d sleep with me.”

  “Why the hurry, Marlin?”

  “Because God wanted me to go to Toronto. I couldn’t until I’d taken care of six women here in Boston. Yeah, I was in a hurry. I’m sorry, Marty. Do you wish I’d made love to you?”

  “I don’t think so, Marlin. I do find your claim hard to believe. No one reported seeing any of the women in San Francisco with you. No one saw you with Hillary here in Boston. Why do you think that’s so?”

  “I knew I had to be careful. After Denver, I was real cautious, not that I could do everything I wanted to there. Only two women and then it was too dangerous. I’d been seen with both women. I had to leave. God saved me there, but he told me I had to be smarter and so I was in San Francisco. The women all loved the mystery, the secrets I shared with them, the dark little places I took them to. They all loved how I smelled, you know, like fresh-cut wood, real fresh.
They all thought I was dangerous and wonderful. With two of them I didn’t even have to hit them on the head. I asked if they wanted to play the maze game with me, and they couldn’t wait. They both loved it. Until the end. Until I told them what I had to do. I think they forgot I was a good lover then.”

  “Marlin, shut up!”

  TWENTY-SIX

  She wondered what would happen if she threw up on the Formica table. Would anyone even know?

  “But not Belinda? She wouldn’t sleep with you, would she, Marlin? She thought you were sick. She thought you were disgusting. She didn’t want to have anything to do with you. She wanted her husband, nobody else, only her husband.”

  His hands were fists. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The sergeant was away from the wall in an instant, gun up.

  Sherlock shook her head. “You know what I’m talking about. God wouldn’t want you to lie. Tell the truth. Belinda didn’t want you. She probably laughed at you, told you you were pathetic. That’s why you ki—purified her, isn’t it? She didn’t want you, plain and simple. She didn’t curse. She didn’t bad-mouth her husband. She didn’t fit the mold of the other women. You know she didn’t. Why, Marlin, why did you kill her?”

  “This is over,” said Big John, rising slowly from his chair, one beefy hand on Marlin’s shoulder. “Don’t say anything, Marlin, nothing more for these folks.”

  “What makes you believe I didn’t have Belinda?” Marlin said in a low whisper, leaning toward her. “You really think a woman could laugh at me? Turn me down? No way, Marty. Yeah, I had Belinda. I don’t want you, Marty. You’re cynical. You probably hate men, you probably don’t ever—”

  “Marlin, dammit, let it go. Listen, you moron. I told you to shut up.”

  It took only an instant of time, just the barest instant, for the violence to erupt. Marlin raised his chained hands, clasped them together into fists, and brought them down with all his strength on John Bullock’s left temple. Big John groaned very softly in his throat and slumped back into his chair, his head falling forward to hit the Formica tabletop. He was out. A trickle of blood snaked out of his right nostril.

  The sergeant was all over Marlin. The door burst open again, and three cops surged in. She wondered why they didn’t shoot him. It would save the taxpayers millions of dollars. But they didn’t shoot him. She wanted to yell at them that he was filth, that he’d probably go to an institution and maybe get out in twenty years and begin it all again. She managed to keep her rage to herself.

  “They’d send me to jail for sure if I did,” Dillon said close to her ear. “Sorry but I can’t, Sherlock.” It was then she realized that she’d whispered aloud what she was thinking. Only Dillon had heard her, thank God. No one was paying any attention to her at all. They were all over Marlin, dragging him out of the room. She heard someone yell out, “Get an ambulance in here! The guy cracked his own lawyer’s head!”

  Marlin turned very slightly and smiled back at her. “She was good, Marty, really good. That punk husband of hers was a monster, not me. I cared about them, cared about their souls. But he was real bad. She wanted me, Marty, not the other way around, I swear. You know something? I miss Belinda.”

  And then he was gone, surrounded by cops, shuffling forward, the leg shackles clanking against the linoleum of the hallway.

  “What is going on here?” Savich said, his hand tightly around her wrist.

  “Nothing makes any sense, nothing.” They walked out of the station. She remained silent for three blocks, then stopped and said, “He was playing me, Dillon. The minute I said Belinda’s name, he began his game. You heard all those questions I asked. I was trying to learn the truth, but now things are muddier than ever.”

  “That’s why Big John let you go on and on with Marlin with just a bit of his famous bluster. He wanted to muddy the waters.”

  “He succeeded. Do you think Marlin was intimate with Belinda?”

  Savich frowned at her, then shook his head.

  THAT evening, on Newbury Street, coming out of Fien Nang Mandarin Restaurant with its red paper lanterns swinging in the evening breeze, Savich was speaking to Sherlock, his hand raised to flag down a taxi. He never saw the car that came around the corner, skidding loudly on two tires, heading right toward them, until it was too late.

  He threw her to the sidewalk just before the car struck him, flinging him onto the hood of an old Buick Riviera.

  “NO doctor, Sherlock. No hospital, no paramedics. Forget it. We can’t afford the time. No, it’s not the time. Imagine the police reports, the investigation, the questions, it would take too long. No doctor.”

  He was right, but she worried. He was holding his arm, limping slightly. She knew every step hurt him. The elevator door opened onto their floor. He leaned on her heavily. “No, don’t say anything. I’m all right. I’ve had enough injuries over my thirty-three years to know when it’s serious and when I’m banged up. You promise me you’re okay? I threw you pretty hard.”

  “I’m a little bruised on my left side, nothing more.”

  She unlocked the hotel room door. “If I’d been the one struck by the car, what would you have done?”

  He stopped in the middle of the room. He had the audacity to grin at her. “You’d be strapped to a gurney on your way to the Emergency Room.”

  She shut the door very quietly and locked it. She slid the chain home.

  “I see. But you, the big he-man, can take anything anybody dishes out.”

  “Yep, that’s about the size of it. Now, I need to make a phone call.”

  She got ice and wrapped it in a towel. He was on the phone when she handed it to him. He lifted his shirt and pressed it against his ribs. So, it was his ribs, not his arm.

  “Quinlan? I need your help. Yeah, some ugly-ass trouble here in Boston. Can Sherlock and I visit your parents’ cabin on Louise Lynn Lake for a couple of days? No, I’m not at my best at the moment. A car got me. I need a few days to get myself together again. No, nothing to Maitland. He’s not expecting anything in any case. That gives me a little leeway. Yeah, all right.”

  He hung up the phone and lay back, closing his eyes. “That feels good. Thank you.”

  “Take the aspirin.” She handed him three pills and a glass of water. He took the pills. “What’s this cabin on Louise Lynn Lake?”

  “It’s a nice lake in Maryland where Quinlan’s parents have a small home. You and I are driving there tomorrow. Rent us a nice big comfortable car, Sherlock. I’d like to get out of here early tomorrow morning.”

  “The wounded animal going to his lair?”

  “That’s about it. Quinlan’s lair. I need to get one for myself. This hurts, but it’s not serious.” He opened his eyes and looked at her standing beside the bed, her legs spread, her hands on her hips. She didn’t look happy.

  “You look pretty bad. I saw you limping. You sprain your ankle?”

  He tried to grin at her, but it hurt. “Only a minor sprain. No big deal. Hey, I didn’t hurt my pretty face, did I?”

  “Yes, a bit. Lie there and I’ll clean you up. Are all your teeth still in there?”

  “Teeth are fine.” He watched her walk to the bathroom. She was stiff, holding on to her control. He was grateful for that. He’d already had a strip taken off him. He didn’t need her to take off another one. He heard the water running. She would bring him a cold compress for his aching head. The ice sure felt good over his ribs.

  She was taking this well. He sighed with relief and closed his eyes again. After she cleaned off his face and wrapped ice in a towel around his ankle, she stood there, looking down at him. “I hope you know what you’re doing. If you don’t, I’m going to hurt you.”

  He gave her a big smile. He slept until two o’clock in the morning. She was there with three more aspirin.

  At six o’clock A.M. they’d checked out of the hotel and were on the road fifteen minutes later in a good-sized Ford. Savich’s seat was tilted back as far as it
would go. His eyes were closed. He looked bruised, wrung out. Sherlock gave him a long look before turning off onto I-95 South. It would take them a good six to eight hours to get to Maryland. At least they had a full bottle of aspirin and blankets.

  Louise Lynn Lake was in southern Maryland. It took them nine hours to get there. She was so wired from all the coffee she’d drunk, she couldn’t keep still. She was tapping her foot on the accelerator, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel. She was too nervous to listen to music or talk radio. “You’re feeling all right, Dillon? You promise?”

  “Yes. Stop worrying. You want me to drive?”

  She gave him a look. He closed his eyes and leaned back against the seat. Thirty minutes later, he was tapping his own fingers and looking for landmarks. He said, “Turn here. Yes, this is it. Around this bend. We’re here. You did really well, Sherlock. Nice place, huh?”

  “There’s someone already here,” she said. “Damn, we’ll have to keep going. I don’t want to take any chances, not with you in such bad shape. If there’s more than two of them, I might not be able to protect you.”

  He arched a black eyebrow at that. “I could maybe take on one, Sherlock, if he was a little guy.”

  “No, we’ll keep going. I’ll drop you off at a motel and then come back and check things out.”

  “No, wait, Sherlock, it’s Quinlan.”

  She watched James Quinlan come loping toward the car. She rolled down the window, giving him a big smile.

  “I am so glad it’s you. We’ve had enough bad guys for a while.”

  “Nope, I’m a hero, ask my wife. Hey, Savich looks like he lost the fight, Sherlock. Did he get fresh with you? Did you have to pound him?”

  “No, he was hit by a car. I’ll smash him when he’s feeling better. No doctors. He’s a fool. Help me get him inside.”

  Sally Quinlan met them at the door. Behind her was a black man dressed all in Calvin Klein. He was huge, ugly as sin, and had a Marine haircut.

  “Oh, this is Marvin the bouncer from Ms. Lily’s Bonhomie Club. He didn’t think James could take care of all the possible trouble and insisted on coming. Marvin, this is Lacey Sherlock.”