The woman stared at Mia, her expression softening just slightly. “They deserved to die. Each and every one of them. No one else was stopping them from their cheating ways. It was up to me. It’s filthy whores like you with your tight, skimpy clothing and makeup who steal them from their wives. You should be ashamed of yourself, you disgusting bitch.”
“I only dress like this when I’m working,” Mia said. “When you hire me for a job. When you want me to test the fidelity of a married man. A woman doesn’t steal away a married man; he chooses to cheat. That’s why you kill the men, isn’t it? Because they choose to cheat.”
“That’s right. They choose to cheat. And I choose to kill them.”
Relief flooded Mia at the confession.
“That blond man came on to me so hard, in such a disgusting way,” Mia said, adding an expression of revulsion. “So I led him out here, then told him I left something inside. But I really just ducked here, waiting for you to come and do what you have to do.”
“That is what I do,” the woman whispered. “I do what I have to do. I had to kill all four of them.”
“I know you did,” Mia said. “The last man, Robert Gray, the one at Chumley’s, he also came on to me very strongly.” Confess, Mia prayed. Confess for the tape recorder.
“I watched that pig pick up different women every Saturday night at eight o’clock for six months, sometimes several women a night. What a pig! Disgusting pig. He was married, but what did he care? He just cheated and cheated!”
“I know,” Mia said softly. “I understand.”
The woman’s eyes darkened with rage. “Cheaters never prosper!” she woman hissed.
“No,” Mia agreed. “They don’t. Thanks to you.”
The gun still rested against her temple. Mia’s breath was so shallow, she could barely hear herself.
The woman was staring at her. “They all cheated, weekend after weekend. I watched them all, time and again. I saw the way they’d take off their wedding rings—if they bothered to wear them at all—and go pick up some slut like you.” She reached into an open pouch at her waist and pulled out a large square of electric tape.
Mia’s heart began booming in her chest. She tried to find her voice to scream, but no sound came forth. The singing from the other side of the fence was so loud that any sound Mia managed to croak would be drowned out anyway.
I love you, Matthew, she mentally told him. I love you so much....
The woman plastered the tape hard against Mia’s mouth and smoothed it out. “They didn’t even care who saw them with their tongues down your throat,” she continued. “Like clockwork, they’d show up at their favorite bars, same time every weekend, get drunk, and go after women. Bastards.” She spit on Mia’s forehead.
Again, everything went black; then a flash of white sparked behind Mia’s eyes, followed by stars. She felt the woman blowing in her face and gently slapping her cheek.
“Don’t you faint on me, you filthy whore,” the woman said. “You’re a slut! You’re disgusting. It’s all your fault that they cheat. I thought I could trust you. I thought you were a good girl who never went with a married man. But you’re just like her. You were going to leave with that blond man and have sex with him. But instead, you’re going to die.”
Shut up! Matthew mentally yelled. I can’t hear if the door opens!
A group of young women on Bridge Avenue were singing a pop song at the top of their lungs. Dammit! He wished he could jump the fence and tell them to shut their traps.
Calm down, man. They would either quit singing or keep walking eventually. But they’d been stationary for so long that Matthew sensed they were waiting in line to get into one of the more crowded nightclubs. The singing continued. Shut up! he yelled in his head again. Shut the hell up!
“You big jerk!”
Matthew spun around to find Norman Newman stalking toward him, his hands hidden behind his back.
Here we go, he thought. Here we go.
“Where’s Mia?” Norman demanded. “I want to talk to her!”
Relief coursed through him that Mia was clearly safe. “She’s using the ladies’ room,” Matthew said, gesturing to MacDougal’s.
“You don’t deserve her,” Norman growled.
“Oh, I think I do,” Matthew said, wiggling his eyebrows to really piss off Newman. “The wife won’t do what I have a feeling Mia will do—and do well.”
A vein popped out in Norman’s temple, and his face turned beet red. “Don’t talk that way about Mia! She’s an angel.”
“Whatever,” Matthew responded. “I don’t know her. I only know she looks damned good.”
“You’re vile!” Norman said. “You make me sick. You’re married. What does your wife think of you cheating on her?”
“What do I care?” Matthew shrugged. “As long as I get some hot sex on the side.”
Norman took a swing; Matthew moved his shoulders a fraction and avoided the clumsy punch.
So he doesn’t have a weapon in his hands, Matthew thought. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have one hidden in his waistband or sock. Don’t get careless.
“Why did you do it?” Matthew asked, locking eyes with Newman. With the man who killed his brother.
“Do what?” Norman snapped.
“Kill those men,” Matthew said. “Why?”
“What are you talking about? What men?”
“There he is!” shouted a male voice up along the side of MacDougal’s. He must have come from the Bridge Avenue pass-through. “John, I found him!”
“Oh, no!” Norman whimpered. He began stamping his feet. “They’re gonna take me back, and I haven’t squared things away with Mia!”
Matthew stared at Norman, wondering what the hell was going on. “Who are those guys?”
Norman continued to stamp his feet, but then he waved at the men. “They’re my friends,” he told Matthew. “They’re the only ones who care about me.”
“Ye-ah, yeah! Baby, baby. La, la, la! Ye-ah!” Dammit, would those drunken women ever shut up?
The men, wearing white shirts and white pants and white shoes, jogged over. “Roger, we’ve been combing Center City all night for you. You know the rules. You keep running away like this and we’ll have to take appropriate measures to protect you.”
“What the—” Matthew looked from the men to Norman and back again. Who the hell was Roger?
“Roger, do you know this man?” one of the men asked Norman.
“No,” said Norman. “He was trying to pick up the woman I like.”
Matthew leaned over to read the patch sewn onto the men’s shirts. Center City Gardens Hospital.
Gardens Hospital? That was—
“Why do you keep calling him Roger?” Matthew asked one of the men. “His name is Norman Newman.”
“I’m only Norman Newman outside!” Norman screeched. “Inside, I’m Roger Shea. Like Shea Stadium. Oooh, I know this song! Yeah, baby! La, la, la!” Norman began to sing along with the women, still crooning on the other side of the fence.
Matthew’s head was spinning. Inside? Huh?
“Norman Newman?” the other man repeated. “Is that your real name, Roger?”
Norman swished his lips from left to right, then hung his head and nodded.
“He admitted himself with identification that said Roger Shea,” one of the men explained to Matthew.
“Center City Gardens Hospital is for the mentally ill, isn’t it?” Matthew asked as one of the men soothed Norman and held him firmly by the arm. “Norman is a patient?”
The man nodded. “He’s run away five times now, but yes, he’s a patient. He checked himself in three weeks ago.”
Five times? Three weeks ago? Robert had been murdered three weeks ago. “Is it possible to find out if he was accounted for on a certain night?” Matthew asked.
“Sure, if you have proof you’re a close relative.” the man said. “You can stop by the records office and see Bobbie or Mary, depending on whether
it’s a weeknight or weekend you’re talking about.”
“It was a weekend,” Matthew said absently. “A Saturday night. June nineteenth.”
The man soothing Norman glanced at Matthew and seemed to decide it would be harmless enough to give him some information. “Oh, I can tell you right now that he was accounted for from six P.M. until two A.M. June nineteenth, a Saturday night. That was the night he checked in. I know because it was my first night on the job, and I was assigned to his ward. I sat with him for eight hours straight. He was crying like a baby.”
“Was not!” Norman whined. “I wasn’t crying!”
“It’s okay to cry, Norman,” the other man said, punching his coworker on the arm.
“He’s despicable,” Norman hissed, pointing at Matthew. “He’s married, but he’s cheating with the woman I’m in love with.”
Matthew shook his head softly.
“He’ll get his, Roger,” one of the men said to Norman. “They always do. C’mon, big guy. Let’s get you back to your room. We’re going to have to talk to Dr. Field about the best way to keep you from running away again. You have to be protected from yourself, Roger. That’s the rule. We explained that when you checked in. You’re on serious medication, Rog. You can’t just run off.”
“Sorry,” Norman said. “But how am I going to convince Mia to marry me?”
“Hey, Norman, I thought you were living with your mom,” Matthew said. “Did you tell the principal that because you were embarrassed to tell him the truth? That you’d checked into the Gardens Hospital?”
“I didn’t want Mia to find out,” Norman said, stamping his feet again. “If I told Principal Ashton, Mia would have found out. So I told him I had to take care of my mother after her stroke. I had two weeks’ vacation coming to me.”
“Your mother didn’t have a stroke?” Matthew asked.
Norman started to cry. “She did, too! But she has an aide. Part of my salary pays for it!”
“Let’s go, Rog,” the man said to Norman. He slipped Matthew one of his cards. Matthew glanced down at it. Center City Gardens Hospital. John Dumont, Senior Orderly. Then the men led Norman, who was singing along with the women again, away.
Jesus. Matthew shook his head.
And then he froze.
If Norman wasn’t the killer, who was?
And where the hell was Mia?
Chapter Nineteen
“You’re going to die, you filthy whore!” the woman hissed over and over. She straddled Mia, one knee pressed hard into her stomach. “You slept with my husband. You slept with so many women’s husbands. And you’re going to suffer terribly for your behavior, you slut!”
The woman shoved the gun harder against Mia’s temple, and again, Mia saw black, then stars.
“You know what, you dirty slut?” the woman said. “I’m going to kill you with my bare hands. I want to squeeze the life out of your disgusting, whoring body.” One hand clamped tight against Mia’s neck, while the woman dropped the gun in the pouch at her waist. “I’m going to choke the life out of you, you scummy bitch.”
Mia grabbed the woman’s hand and tried to push her away, but the woman was too strong. Both hands were now around Mia’s neck, squeezing, squeezing.
I love you so much, Matthew ...
I love you, Margot.
I tried. I really tried....
“Die, you filthy slut!” the woman snarled. “Die!”
The hands squeezed and squeezed, and everything went black. And then suddenly, the hands released. Mia sucked in air, her own hands flying up to her neck to gently rub it. She gasped for air, coughing and choking.
“What the hell!” the woman yelled as she was dragged off Mia.
Matthew!
Mia got to her feet. Matthew and the woman were wrestling on the ground.
“She has a gun, Matthew!” Mia choked out.
The gun was in the woman’s hand, and Matthew was struggling with her, the gun pointed up in the air. Mia saw the cell phone just under the minivan; she lunged for it and scooped it up, then dialed 911 and hastily gasped out the information.
“She’s a filthy whore!” the woman screamed. “And you’re a dirty cheater!”
“Oh, my God, it’s you!” Matthew exclaimed. “You asked me to dance!”
“But you only had eyes for the whore,” the woman shouted. She kicked up in the air, but Matthew sidestepped her.
“You killed my brother,” Matthew said flatly. He tried to twist her arm, but the woman was strong and held her own.
“I killed a lot of cheaters,” the woman said.
Sirens wailed. As the police cars raced up Bridge Avenue and turned into the parking lot, the singing finally stopped. “My brother was Robert Gray. You murdered him outside of Chumley’s.”
The woman’s eyes gleamed. “Ah, yes, three weeks ago. He was so easy. Stab, stab, and down he went like the spineless jellyfish he was.”
A surge of adrenaline shot through Matthew, and he smacked the gun out of her hand. It clattered under the sports car, and Matthew pinned her to the ground.
“Cheaters never prosper!” the woman screamed.
“And killers don’t get away with their crimes,” Matthew responded.
“You ruined my chance to get Benjamin Slovel!” the woman shouted as two police cars raced toward them. “He was the one I wanted, not you! I watched him at MacDougal’s every Saturday night at ten o’clock. Right after your filthy brother. I watched him show up here, take off his wedding ring, and have sex with women in the backseat of his car for a month!”
“So why did you have to hire a decoy?” Matthew asked. “Why not just go after the men themselves? Why hire Margot?”
The woman tried to spit at Mia again, but now Mia was too far away. “Because that dirty whore looks exactly like the woman who stole my husband. He’d come to these bars, too, picking up women, taking them to motels. Screwing them. I watched him do it. And then I killed him. Shot him right in the nuts.”
“So you were killing your husband over and over by killing these men?” Mia asked. “And using Margot—me—to make you angry enough?”
“So, the eye-candy has a brain,” the woman snapped.
“What’s going on here?” a police officer called, gun drawn. His partner and two other cops had surrounded the threesome.
“I have the whole confession on tape,” Mia shouted. “This woman killed Robert Gray in Chumley’s parking lot three weeks ago. She’s killed three other men, too. She was going to kill tonight, but we set her up and stopped her.”
“Cheaters never prosper,” the woman screamed. “Those men deserved to die! You deserve to die,” she shouted at Matthew. “He’s a married man! Look at his wedding ring. And he tried to pick up that whore!”
The police handcuffed the woman and read her her rights. “Let’s all head to the station,” an officer said, leading the woman to the police car. “You two go in the other car.”
Mia’s legs buckled, and Matthew caught her. “It’s over,” he said. “It’s all over.”
Yes, she thought, tears stinging her eyes. It’s all over.
“We should arrest you for withholding crucial evidence for solving these murders and for conducting an investigation on your own,” Detective Osgood snapped at Matthew and Mia.
They’d been in the Center City precinct for two hours, telling their story, sharing the tape. The woman confessed every detail of her crimes to anyone who’d listen. Her name was Ginny Loomis, and she lived on the other side of Baywater.
“You’re both damned lucky everything turned out okay,” the detective continued. “Both of you could have been killed.”
“We had to try,” Matthew told him. “We knew we had one night, one opportunity, to catch a cold-blooded killer.”
“You should have come to us,” the detective countered.
“We’re here now,” Matthew said. “And all we want is to make sure that psychopath is put away for the rest of her life.”
; “She’ll probably end up in Center City Gardens after her trial,” the detective said. “If she’s considered sane enough to stand trial. She’s totally gone.”
“Well, she and Norman Newman can be roommates,” Mia said numbly.
Matthew glanced at Mia, who’d been very quiet till this point. She’d corroborated what Matthew had told the police, adding in details when necessary, but for the most part, she remained silent. Matthew had filled in Mia about Norman Newman during their ride to the precinct. She’d been shocked to learn the truth about him.
“He checked into the Gardens on his own under an assumed name with fake identification,” the detective said. “He has now been formally charged with the kidnapping of Mia Anderson and will be arrested at the Gardens in about a half hour.”
Mia nodded, her gaze on the scarred wooden table.
“The two of you can go,” the detective said. “We’ll take it from here.”
Matthew reached over to help Mia up, but she darted away from him.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I just want to get out of these clothes and take a long, hot bath.”
As they walked out of the precinct, there was finally a breeze stirring the warm, muggy night air. “Well,” he said. “We did it.”
She nodded.
“You must be exhausted,” he said. “I know I am.”
“We should get some sleep,” she said flatly. “You don’t have to walk me back to Margot’s. Now that both Norman and the killer are behind bars, I feel safe again.”
“I’ll walk you,” he offered. He didn’t want to let her go, but he didn’t want to push. She had been through quite a lot tonight.
“I’d really like to walk alone,” she said. “Digest everything that just happened. Or maybe just forget about it.”
Forget about it. Of course she wanted to forget about it, Matthew realized.
“Goodbye, Matthew,” she said, holding his gaze.
He had so much to say. But he was exhausted and wiped out, and when he opened his mouth to speak, nothing came out. He clamped his mouth shut. If only he could just grab her in his arms and hold her, then take her home with him and snuggle with her in bed and wake up fresh.
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