“Who is it?” a voice asked with the rattle of the chain.
“Police,” Ruben clarified, putting his badge up to the peephole.
“Police?” Marion’s squeaky voice answered from inside.
“Yes, please open up, we need to speak.”
The sound of the deadbolt clicked and the door opened as far as the chain would allow it. “You need to speak to me?”
Ruben held his annoyance. This was the part he was supposed to be good at. Massaging a suspect. Getting him ready for the interrogation. Unlike Kent who usually just started pelting the perp with accusation and odd questions about his childhood.
“Yes, can I come in please?” Ruben didn’t have a warrant. Not yet at least.
“Why?”
Marion had been questioned, a lot back in Chicago. He was naturally wary of a policeman showing up at his door. Ruben forced himself to exhale through his nose, calming himself. This was going to be a long day. Without a warrant he was going to have to talk his way in. Which was why he hadn’t simply sent a patrol unit out to make the scoop. “We have some questions about your blog.”
“My blog?” Marion asked but this time with a bit of intrigue.
“Yes,” Ruben answered yet again. “We think you may have seen something that maybe you didn’t even know when you are at the crime scenes.”
That got the door to close and the chain to come off. Long before Kent ever arrived on the scene, Ruben had learned to play to ego. No one wanted to answer questions about their life. But their passion? Oh, they were all over that. And it was clear that Marion’s blog was his passion.
“Come in, come in,” Marion stated, waving Ruben through the door.
The guy looked like what a serial killer should. Brow and lip piercings. A snake tat coursing up his neck. His apartment reflected his angst rock look.
Posters of Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie, and several bands that Ruben had never heard of such as 10 Dead before Noon and Just Before the Funeral lined Marion’s walls.
Ruben scanned the room for any chainsaws or machetes. None were obvious. But would Buzz Kill really be that careless?
“We would like you to come down and answer a few questions to see if perhaps you noticed something that we didn’t.”
Marion smiled, tilting his lip bar upright. “I’ve been covering crime for nearly a year, surprised it took you this long to notice me.”
Another tried and true tactic. Make the suspect feel superior to you.
“Let me grab my car keys,” Marion stated as he started fishing around the ceramic ashtray.
“No need,” Ruben said. “I will give you a lift to the station and we’ll drive you back.”
“Okay…” Marion said, sounding concerned again.
Ruben forced a smile on his lips. “Don’t want you to waste your gas on our behalf.”
“Ya, sure,” Marion replied a little more relaxed, but not nearly as relaxed as he was a moment ago.
“So, how many hits have you had this month?” Ruben asked as they walked out the door trying to calm Marion’s nerves.
“Over twenty thousand. Man, those pics are really pulling in the readers.”
Ruben allowed the suspect to ramble on about his blog. It felt like being trapped with the two J’s again. Only they actually talked about things that might matter unlike Marion who was busy explaining how he was driving traffic to his blog through Pinterest.
The things he did for his job…
CHAPTER 12
“You coming?” Glick asked Kent as he lounged in Nicole’s chair in the detective bullpen. Kent didn’t have his own desk. Why, when he had Nicole’s?
“In a minute,” Kent said. He hated standing there outside the interrogation room as they went through the formalities. Informing the suspect they weren’t under arrest, however if they wanted an attorney present they could blah, blah, blah.
Plus it was kind of fun to piss off Bridget. Who looked ready to pee her pants in excitement to film a live interrogation.
“You can go ahead,” Kent offered but he already knew Bridget’s decision. She was not about to let Kent out of her sight, which was probably a good choice, because the first chance he had to ditch the woman, he would take it, even if it meant missing out on an interrogation.
“We can wait,” Bridget said as predicted.
Kent let the seconds tick off in his head. He knew that Nicole would be getting nervous, wondering where he was. Good. She did better when her adrenaline was coursing through her veins.
Glick tapped his foot a few times, then turned and headed to the interrogation room. The captain simply didn’t have the patience for serial killer profiling.
Kent allowed several more minutes to pass before he rose and followed Glick.
“Get rolling,” Bridget snapped at her cameraman. The bright lights shone again, filling the narrow hallway between the interrogation rooms.
“Is that him? Buzz Kill?” Bridget asked in a rush.
Kent glanced through the one-way glass. “No.”
“No?” Bridget asked. “They haven’t even asked him any questions yet.”
“Look at his body language. His arms are crossed over his abdomen, a protective position. His pupils are dilated in fear. Buzz Kill would be confident. This would be part of the game. He wants to interact with the police. He would see this as a challenge, not a dangerous situation.” Kent took in a breath. “Serial killers are if anything supremely overconfident.”
Bridget squinted looking through the glass, giving her cameraman directions. “Make sure to get close ups of his arms and eyes to cut to during Harbinger’s explanation.”
Kent put in the ear bud that Glick offered him, tapping it to turn it on. “Babe, sorry, not our guy.”
Nicole turned in her chair, giving him a world-class glare. She was going to make a great mother. That glare was going to be able to stop a teenager from going out and smoking a few joints.
On him however, not all that effective. She hated it when he made an early decision like this, but hey, he could only call it how he saw it. And he saw a guilty man, just not of his victims.
“Even if we suppose you are correct,” Glick stated. “Don’t we want to know if he killed his girlfriend back in Chicago?”
“Oh, he did it,” Kent said. “Otherwise why would he be so nervous?”
“Funny, Harbinger,” Glick replied with no humor in his voice. “But our DA likes things like proof or a confession.”
Kent sighed. Why did the entire criminal justice system rest on his shoulders?
“Fine,” he sighed. “But let’s make this quick. We’ve got two serial killers to catch.”
On the other side of the glass, Nicole nodded, turning her attention back to Marion.
* * *
Kent had just dodged a bullet from Nicole. Had he bailed on her with a perp in the chair, the profiler would have been sleeping alone for a few weeks.
Ruben stirred next to her.
Nicole waited a few breaths, expecting Kent to supply her with the questions, but he didn’t. Typical Kent. Leave her hanging.
Oh well, this was her job after all. She had been interviewing perps long before Kent crashed into her life. And he’d already given her plenty of information. They shouldn’t concentrate on the Buzz Kill murders, but instead focus on Chicago.
Nicole spread out photos the J’s had pulled from Marion’s blog. “You certainly seem to like blood.”
Marion shrugged. “It sells the blog.”
She nodded, seeming sympathetic to him. “You didn’t always like this much blood, did you?”
The perp’s eyes darted back and forth from Nicole to Ruben. “I guess…”
Ruben smiled. “Why detective Usher, I believe that Marion already knows what you are angling at.”
“Detective Torres, I believe he does.”
“I…I…” Marion stuttered. “I thought we were talking about the Buzz Kill murders and my blog?”
“Oh how cute,”
Ruben taunted. “He bought it.”
By now the perp was off balance. She and Ruben had always made a great team. At the least in the interrogation room. In bed, not so much.
Marion squirmed in his chair. “I don’t understand.”
Perhaps the suspect was a little too off balance. In another few seconds he might ask for a lawyer and they really didn’t want that to happen.
So Nicole backed off a bit. “Okay, Marion why did you leave Chicago and the cable company?”
The suspect brightened a little. “I got a better job offer.”
Ruben shuffled some papers. “I don’t see that you transferred to another cable company.”
“No way. That was just my day job until I could get my blog up and running.”
Ruben’s eyebrow went up. “You mean you are making your living off your blog?”
Nicole was equally surprised. She’d seen his blog. It was nothing to write home about. “Tell us, how did you manage that? My brother has been trying to do the same thing and can’t get any traction.”
That could also be due to the fact he was trying to blog about ground soil contamination. A noble cause, but not one that got you a blog sponsorship.
“What can I say? I’m just that good. I think the difference is that I really get in there to get the really graphic photos. I’m telling you a picture is worth a thousand words.”
Ruben still didn’t seem convinced. “And who exactly is paying you?”
“Don’t know,” Marion said. “I got an offer via email and get paid through PayPal. They only stipulated that I needed to cover all violent crime in depth when they hired me. I even got moving expenses.”
Nicole looked to Ruben who got his phone out and started texting. She figured it was to Jimmi to start a trace on that money. Had someone lured him here to begin his killing? Was there a puppet master behind it all? Was that why Marion wasn’t vibing on Kent’s radar.
“If we are through with amateur journalism hour,” Kent said in her ear. “The guy isn’t winning any Pulitzer any time soon, can we get back to the whole confession thing?”
Nicole nodded slightly, enough so Kent could see her, but not enough to attract Marion’s attention. He seemed more relaxed though. His hands were folded on the table in front of him.
“There was so much blood, wasn’t there?” Kent asked in Nicole’s ear. It seemed that he wanted to jump back into the deep end. She repeated the question.
Marion’s eyes darted so quickly it looked like he was watching a tennis game on crack.
“Blood? Where? When?”
“Oh, Marion, you know the answer to all those questions,” Nicole purred not needing Kent to guide her any further. “Don’t you?”
“No,” Marion snapped back much like a child who you caught with his fingers in the cookie jar.
“You didn’t expect so much blood, did you, Marion?” Nicole pressed. “People don’t realize how acrid blood smells if there is enough of it. The iron taste on your tongue. The warm sticky sensation on your hands. It envelopes you. Surrounds you. Consumes you.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Marion said, crossing his arms over his chest, leaning back in his chair, back away from her and her accusations.
“Be careful,” Kent warned in her ear. “You can’t alienate him too much.”
Nicole felt like responding, tell me something I don’t already know, but she couldn’t break the rhythm of the interrogation.
“It overwhelmed you, didn’t it?” Nicole prodded. “It happens all the time. Nothing to be ashamed of.”
That got Marion to lean forward again. See? She didn’t always need Kent, however even she had to admit she was emboldened by Kent’s presence behind the one-way glass. She trusted him to reel her back in if she went too far, which made her all the more brazen and better for it.
“The vomit. It is actually quite common for a first time killer to throw up right after the kill.”
Ruben nodded. “Shockingly common.”
“I… What? I didn’t…” Marion couldn’t even finish his sentence.
“When the Chicago police questioned you about it you said that you had vomited the week before after getting food poisoning at a seafood restaurant.”
Marion’s arms were back to being crossed again. His face a mask of defiance.
“Ah, but you see, we are a bit more dogged,” Nicole explained. “We tested the vomit for any form of food poisoning and guess what?”
Marion’s face blanched and his arms fell away from his chest. “What?”
“We didn’t find any. Not a one. That food was perfectly fine and not even fish.”
The perp’s eyes darted again as his cheeks flushed. Nicole was bluffing of course. She wasn’t even sure if there was a test like that and lord knew even if there was, there hadn’t been time to run it, but Kent was a big fan of lying, surprise, surprise, so she went for it.
“I think you need to get back on Yelp and give an apology to Mr. Yang’s Sushi and Roll.”
“I…I… it had been over a week, I couldn’t remember…”
Nicole let him stammer on, digging himself deeper and deeper into his obvious lie. Eventually Marion gave up. His head hung so low that his chin hit his chest.
Kent’s voice was seductive in her ear. “That wasn’t how it was supposed to go, was it?”
* * *
Ruben hated it when Kent forced Nicole to go all submissive and seductive. Her voice was silk. It caressed his ear. He wanted to lean into. Believe it was meant for him, but it wasn’t. It was to lure Marion and not for sex, but for a confession.
“You loved her. You went over there to make things right,” Nicole cajoled.
“It was just a misunderstanding,” Marion answered. Damn it, but that tone worked every time. “She thought I’d posted a birthday greeting for an ex-girlfriend on Facebook, but it had been an automated post that I forgot to delete.”
Could a double murder really have all started from a Facebook posting? People were getting weirder and weirder by the day. In Ruben’s mind, social media wasn’t bringing people closer together, it was driving them stark raving mad.
“You just went over there to explain,” Nicole encouraged, clearly trying to get the perp to open up.
Marion nodded.
“But she wasn’t hearing it, was she?” Nicole asked. “And her friend was riding you. Not letting you get a word in edgewise.”
“The bitch was telling her how the post was proof I was cheating on her. That doesn’t even make sense. Wouldn’t I hide it better?” Marion asked.
“So instead of an apology it turned into an argument.”
“An argument that traveled into the garage,” Ruben added.
Marion didn’t verbally respond but his shoulders slumped and his face drained of color again.
“What did she say?” Nicole pressed. “What made you reach your hand out for the machete?”
The perp was silent, but his eyes flickered back and forth under closed lids. He was reliving the murders again.
“You didn’t mean to. You hadn’t come over to hurt her,” Nicole stated. Ruben knew that she had to remain as sympathetic to Marion as possible. Still it cut across the grain to do so. The perp had killed two young women because his ego had been bruised. Ruben wanted to jump over the table and throttle the guy, not coddle him, but they needed a confession. They had absolutely no evidence to convict him of the murders back in Chicago.
“Trust me,” Ruben said. “I know how it feels. For you to be so much more into your girl than she is into you. It hurts. And when she says it to your face? She made the first cut, man.”
His eyes glanced over to Nicole. They had danced a similar dance a few years ago. This was all getting a little too personal for Ruben, but he knew he had to go there. The more of your real life you could put into your interrogation, the better. The more genuine points of connection, the more likely the perp was to open up. He knew Kent was chuckling behind the glass,
but that couldn’t matter to Ruben. Not now. Not when they were so close.
Marion nodded vigorously. “She shouldn’t have said she was glad to be rid of me. No more holding my hand during sex.”
Yep. There is was. The inciting incident. The statement that broke poor Marion’s fragile ego. A statement like that would cut any man to the bone, however it didn’t mean he had to kill.
Then the sobbing started and the “I’m so sorrys” began.
Ruben only hoped the mics picked up all the “I didn’t mean to do its.” and “She made me do its.”
Nicole rose. Ruben’s signal he could leave as well. Now it was for the lawyers to decide what to do with Marion.
* * *
Nicole stepped out into the hallway to find Bridget ready with her rather aggressive microphone.
“So Detective Usher, how did it feel to break that suspect?”
“As it always does, both gratifying and sad.”
Bridget cocked her rather dangerously hair-sprayed head. She really shouldn’t be standing that close to the hot lights. Nicole feared the TV host was going to go up in flames at any moment. “Sad?”
“Yes, because I’m only in there because someone’s daughter or son was killed. There is no glory in this. Just resolution.”
Nicole looked around Bridget finding her crew and Glick. “Where’s Kent?”
Bridget swung around apparently shocked that the profiler had gotten away from her… again.
“Where… How did he get away?” Bridget asked the captain who shrugged.
“I swear that man’s got a white stallion waiting at all times.”
No, not a stallion, but a Mustang. Nicole was sure that Kent had slipped out and taken her car off to who knew where.
“So what is the plan now?” Glick asked. “If we believe Kent, Marion isn’t Buzz Kill.”
It wasn’t just Kent. Nicole didn’t believe the man capable of pre-meditated murder either. She glanced over her shoulder as the man sobbed hysterically. A hardened criminal he was not.
“Not sure, but I think I need to go back to the techs. See who else could have been at the cable van.”
“You do that,” Glick said, nodding to Marion. “Ruben, looks like we’ve got some paperwork to fill out. I’m sure Illinois is going to want their murderer back.”
The Harbinger Collection: Hard-boiled Mysteries Not for the Faint of Heart (A McCray Crime Collection) Page 75