“Another thing, Mrs. Riley.”
“What’s that?”
Though her voice was controlled and even, I felt a distinct note of apprehension.
“You mentioned that your daughter was using her credit cards for psychic readings. Can you tell me if she’s had any readings lately?”
There was a pause. “What would that have to do with Dani’s death?” Mrs. Riley was desperately hiding something.
“I don’t know that there’s any connection,” I said, “but could I have your permission to check those charges?”
“I’m afraid I can’t.”
“You can’t what?”
“I can’t give you permission. I’m sure you know the law, Detective. That account is Autumn’s and though we handle much of her financing, she is eighteen years old and an adult. Only she could grant you that.”
“Of course. I was only hoping that the account was connected to you and your husband’s and in that case, you could legally give me permission.”
“I’m sorry, that’s not the case.”
“Are you still receiving the statements?”
“Uh, yes.”
“Do you still open them and send them on to the accountant?”
Another pause.
“Ever notice what she’s spending her money on?” I asked.
“Maybe.”
“So, you could tell me, if you chose to.”
“I could, if I understood why you think it will help in your investigation of Dani’s death.”
She was probably cursing herself for telling me about the credit charges for the psychic readings. Back then, Mrs. Riley believed her daughter was dead and she wanted to catch the murderer. And now, what did she believe?
“Mrs. Riley, maybe I’m asking the wrong questions here. Let’s see…let me ask you something completely different. Was there ever an incident in Autumn’s past that caused you and your husband to seek counseling or therapy for her?”
“It’s a modern world, detective. Lots of parents seek counseling for their child at one point or another.”
“That’s true but that’s not an answer to my question.”
“I already explained to you that Autumn was an extremely intelligent child, with unusual needs. She required special attention.” Her voice was a high-tension wire, crackling with nerves.
“My question is in regard to a particular incident. What happened exactly that caused you to seek counseling for Autumn?”
Gus was leaning into me now, as if he might be able to hear Mrs. Riley’s answer. A dial tone hummed in my ear. She hung up on me. Or maybe it was my cell phone. It could have disconnected for no apparent reason. They do that sometimes, you know.
“What happened?” asked Gus.
“I think she hung up.”
“Damn, you’re smooth,” said Gus. “It’s scary.”
A peculiar fear wrapped around my heart and consumed my entire chest.
“What’s wrong?” asked Gus.
“I dunno. I’m not feeling too good.”
“Oh.” He gave me a worried glance.
“I’ve gotta go see Mary Tyler.”
“Ach, that alone would make me feel like shit. I’m coming with.”
“No way, Gus. You know how it is. She’s not going to give anything up with you sitting there giving her the eagle eye.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE BUILDING WAS IMMENSE and yellow-brown, reflecting the sun’s bright glare. Heat rippled off the concrete surrounding the prison. I’d been to this prison many times before, but never had it seemed so ominous and sad. I thought of all the lost souls sustained, kept in their prison cells, fed, managed, coerced, and controlled. What was the use? I was in a black mood. I don’t like hellish hot days. Truth is, I’ve known some decent women who are ex-cons, and there have even been people on death row who were later found innocent and released. Mary Tyler was certainly not one of those. My job here was to get the location on the victims’ bodies. I parked on the side of the building where there was some shade and kept my sunglasses on as I entered Sybil’s House.
That’s what the inmates call Sybil Brand Institute.
I had to go to the infirmary to see Mary Tyler as she was recuperating from the gunshot wounds, making this visit a hospital call. Apparently, the bullets hadn’t struck a major vein or organ, so she was going to live. As investigating detective, I could set up the interview in a room and even be left alone with Mary Tyler. That meant an intimacy that could prove to be illuminating and possibly dangerous. I was counting on both, but I figured she wouldn’t be up to much physical activity with her gunshot wounds and all. Heavy machinery clanked and growled and pounded against the head plates of my skull, making for a secure prison hospital and accenting my mood.
A psychology of evil provides a killer like Mary Tyler a unique ability to withstand ordinary investigative techniques because there is no empathy for other human beings. Any attempt to invoke sympathy for the victims or surviving families is a waste of time. I would have to appeal to her selfishness, to her ego. People like Mary are consumed with being in control. They need to dominate the way most people need to draw breath. I made sure I had a full pack of Camel cigarettes before I went in the room which was essentially a large steel cage with a midsized metal table between two metal chairs, all bolted to the concrete floor. There were also steel rings bolted to the floor to which the violent prisoners could be fettered. I sat on one of the metal chairs and waited for them to bring Mary in.
I was in my own thoughts and looked up when I heard her heavy shuffling walk. Her hair was greasy and she had on a short dress made from a blue cotton material. She didn’t speak when the guard brought her in. Her hands were shackled together to a chain that ran to another chain shackle arrangement around her ankles. She walked with a slight limp in the leg where I’d shot her. There was a strange lumpiness to her stomach from the bandages. Her legs had layers of fat. The fat above her knee joints swelled out and over. There was a large white-and-beige bandage wrapped around one of her thighs. My first shot. She limped and winced with pain with each step. She could hide things in those folds of flesh if she wanted to. That might come in handy in prison. As she limped into the room, drag pulled her bad leg and she groaned her way to her chair, I tried to imagine her as a little girl dressed in a blue summer dress but was unsuccessful. Her ankles were swollen with gout. She was sporting the plastic flip-flops on her feet that they gave each new inmate and she smelled like bug spray. They must have shot her good with the lice hose when she was admitted. Her face was swollen and bruised around the eyes and I found I took some gratification in that. There was a patch over one eye and the other was bright red with hemorrhage.
“Take off the cuffs,” I said to the guard.
“Are you sure, Ms. Lambert? This is some beast here.” Yeah, don’cha know it.
“Yes, I’m sure. Leave her in the leg shackles. You can run the chain through the floor ring.”
The guard reluctantly removed the cuffs without further question, then waited outside the cell with two other guards. Mary just stood there looking at me. Maybe she wanted to lunge at me and tear my throat out or something. She had been cheated out of my death.
“Have a seat, Mary.”
“Why, thank you, I will,” she said and dropped her heft onto the metal chair with yet another groan.
I let the silence speak for a while. Her rage built up without me saying a word. Her anger was a palpable thing that filled the room. It roared. I lit a cigarette.
“So, Mary, tell me where the bodies are.” “Why? Why should I do that?”
“For the families, Mary.” She laughed.
“Fuck the families.”
“What happened to you to make you so mean? Huh, Mary? What happened to you that makes you think you have the right to cause others pain?”
“Nothing, that’s what happened to me.”
“Nothing?”
“Not a thing. But now—now, that I’m t
he big murderer, the kidnapper, the torturer, well, everybody wants to know my name. I’m going to be famous. I’ve got four lawyers competing for my case right now. One has already presented me with two different cable television offers and I haven’t been in here for twenty-four hours yet. They want to know my side of the story. You want to know why I like to cause others pain? I’ll tell you why. For those moments, those days, weeks, sometimes months that person is in my world, I have their undivided attention. If I fart, they’re interested in it. Every move I make is extremely important to them. Together, me and that person, we’re all about my next thought, my next whim. It means something to them whether I frown or smile. Hey, you know what? Right now, you’re interested in me, aren’t you? Tough bitch, smart bitch. You remember when you first saw me at the bar at De Sade’s Cage? You looked at me like you were smelling shit. I remember that, when we were sitting at the bar, you looked at me like I was shit on your shoe. But, later, in the ladies’ room, you had a very deep concern, you were very involved with me. Got your ass kicked, too! ‘Course, that was nothin’ compared to our little ride in the van. Now, that was an intimate experience. We know now, don’t we? But at first, at the bar, you couldn’t even bring yourself to look at me. Now, I’m the fucking center of your life. Hmmph.”
She put her nose up in the air in a freakish portrayal of a snooty celebrity.
“For the purpose of this conversation, I will need you to waive your right to an attorney or I won’t be able to talk with you.”
“I waive it for now, but later I might just take one of these lawyers up on his offer.”
“Okay, but anything you say to me can and will be held against you. Is that understood?”
“Understood.”
I offered her a cigarette, pulling it long for her out of the box. She snatched it and I lit it for her. She gave me a mean crooked smile for my gesture and took a long evil drag on the cigarette, making the end flare red.
“Let’s see here,” I said softly. “What can I offer you? Your life? Hmmm? Okay. Maybe if you help me locate the bodies and we blame the whole thing on your brother I can stop them from sticking you with the big needle. Do you want to live, Mary?”
“Not much.”
“Your brother planned everything, didn’t he? He was the director, and what were you? The one with the gaffer’s tape.” The put-down didn’t really sit well with her. She sniffed and twisted her mouth into a sneer but didn’t say anything. “Oh, but that’s right, you were practically an actor in the films. Actually driving the action, so to speak. So you were talent after all. Then again, all we ever saw were your hands and they look an awful lot like Johnny’s hands. In fact, it would probably be hard to prove otherwise.”
“You want me to turn on Johnny? That’s why you’re here? There’s not much point in that now, bitch.”
“All right, you’ll both get the needle.” I stubbed out my cigarette and lit another one while I figured out another angle ‘cuz this one was not working, not at all.
Mary’s jaw dropped and her eyes narrowed as if she could see something in my brain. “Where you from? The South? Ain’t no death penalty here in California.”
She had me there. I was from Missouri, where I once feared my own death by lethal injection. Some said it was justifiable homicide, but there were others of a different opinion. Mary had discovered the most vulnerable and hidden aspect of my past. I had revealed it to her.
“Oh, now Mary, you know you can’t count on that. As long as you’re on death row, the laws can change and not to your favor. In fact, I happen to know that they’re working on a newfangled death box, all fancy and efficient to put you completely out of your misery.”
“What do I care? I hear you get treated much better on death row than you do with the lifers.”
“Interesting to me that you’re so well informed about that. Okay, you got me. If you don’t care about living, I suppose there’s nothing I can offer you. I’m at your mercy and I’ve seen what that’s like.”
“That’s right.”
I made a point of not looking at her—bowed my head in defeat.
“I bet you did all the digging,” I said. “I bet Johnny didn’t help at all.”
“You think you’re so smart. Know everything. You think I’ll turn on Johnny? You’re too late. You are too damn late. You can’t begin to comprehend how little I care. You don’t know shit.” She hot-boxed the cigarette with a long drag and it burned down to the filter.
“Help me to understand then—feel free to correct me where I’m wrong. Let’s see if I have this straight. You don’t care about living, don’t care if you are put to death. But it’s a point of pride or something with you that you won’t tell me where the bodies are? You say you don’t give a damn about anything, but that’s not true. Holding back that information is important to you. You see how I might be confused?”
“I could break your neck like a chicken.”
I knew she wanted to hurt me. She was a great void, a black pit, empty without the pain of others to fill her. But she was used to doing things at Johnny’s direction. “That’s right, Mary, you could. So, why don’cha?”
She didn’t say anything, just eyed my smokes.
“Here, have another cigarette.”
I pushed the pack and lighter across the table to her. She took out a cigarette and lit it, gave me those pale pig eyes of hers. No, I’d seen pigs with more soul than her. I couldn’t think of a creature low enough to compare to Mary Tyler. People are found of calling the Mary Tylers of the world animals, but animals would never do the things she had done. She drew the smoke into her lungs and narrowed her eyes at me.
“You know Mary, this conversation sucks. You’re boring. You got some info? If not, I got things to do.”
I stood up like I was about to leave and caught the brief flash of panic in her. For the tiniest instant a hurt peeked out of those stony eyes. She didn’t want me to go, to reject her. I could feel it as strongly as I had felt the rage rise in her. Dear Lord, this creature was in mortal terror of rejection. The human soul is unfathomable in its agonies and twistings.
“See you in the death chamber, Mary. Guard!”
“They’re off the fourteen, in Lancaster.”
She said it quick; I barely heard it. The guard hurried toward me. I motioned for him to hold off and he did, but he stood attentively at the cage door, eyeing Mary like she might slip out of her leg shackles and kill me.
“Where?”
“In a field.”
I sat back down. “Where’s the field?”
“It’s out at the end of this old highway nobody uses anymore. You could never find it on your own. They’re all there. You happy now? You got what you wanted?”
“I wouldn’t say that I was happy, no. What highway? What’s the number?”
“I don’t think it has a number, it’s close to the Air Force Base.”
“Twentynine Palms. Where those dried lakes are?”
“Exactly.”
“That was smart. Who thought of that? You or Johnny?”
“I was stationed there a long time ago.”
“You were in charge of the burials. That’s vague, though, Mary. Out by the dried lakes? I could spend the rest of my life looking around out there and not find anything. I think you’re lyin’ to me.”
“Try the south side of Jackrabbit Hill.”
“I will. I’ll try it.” I leaned back in my chair like I was just getting relaxed. “How long have you been doing what Johnny said?”
“Always. I’ve always done what Johnny told me to.”
“Where did you get the kids, how did you find them?”
“We had a supplier.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. Johnny took care of that part.”
“Did he ever say it was a street pimp, or anything like that?”
“He never said. They’d just show up at the place. Like the one with pink hair. Somebody sent them over.”
> “Did Johnny call someone on the phone?”
“Johnny is too smart for that.”
“I don’t know about that, Mary. He made mistakes. Dani was a mistake. That’s how I found you.”
“Well, that was because the supplier was trying to retire on us and we were desperate.”
“The supplier stopped? After how many years?” Mary was reluctant to say. “After how many years?” I demanded.
She rolled her creepy eyes around the room. I wanted to scream at her, beat it out of her. But I couldn’t go there. That’s what she wanted, to have impact on me, to have control over me, get an emotional reaction.
“Okay,” I said, “I got business that needs attending to.”
Once again, I gathered the smokes and my lighter, stood up. The guard went to unlock the door.
“About ten years.”
I stopped, gave the guard a signal to hold off. He gave me a frustrated look back. I turned to Mary, placing the cigarettes and the lighter back on the table.
“Why did the supplier stop?”
“I don’t know. Johnny said the guy was making a career change.”
“When did he stop?”
“Six months ago.”
That was exactly when the young women started to disappear; Hector made a career change.
“And that’s why you did Dani?”
“Johnny wanted one more and the supplier wouldn’t fork one over. Then the supplier said, okay, he had one, but we had to go to her and that she was older than we liked.”
I sat back down.
“Dani.”
“Right. But Johnny liked her anyway because she looked like a boy. Johnny liked to do boys. I didn’t want to go out of the house, but Johnny made me. He thought we could leave the body on the backlot, that it would mummify before anyone would find it.”
“I see.”
“Johnny told the supplier he had to come up with one more after Dani. After the pink one, we were going to be on our own.”
“How much money did you pay for this service?”
“Ten years ago we paid two hundred bucks a kid. Over the years, the price went up to five hundred and then the last few were a thousand apiece.”
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