Dead Wrong (32 page)

“He wasn’t ready then to deal with everything as he remembered it. He repeated the rapes because that gave him control, power, allowed him to humiliate his victims, who were unfortunate substitutes for his mother.”

“Then why cover her face when it’s over? Why pull her clothes together, if intimidation was a goal?” Crosby asked. “Wouldn’t the exposure be humiliating?”

“Yes, but she was still his
mother
. He doesn’t want anyone else to see her exposed like that,” Annie said.

“And maybe he doesn’t want her watching him while he’s doing his thing,” Miranda suggested.

“That’s part of it, too,” Annie agreed. “I think he’s had this need to re-create his mother’s death, but it’s been a fantasy for years. It’s taken him a while to build up to the real deal. As he grew stronger, more comfortable acting out the scenario, he was able to recreate the stabbings. But I think it took him years to get to that point.”

“So let’s assume that Channing was hired by Giordano to dispose of several people in his life who had been major sources of irritation,” Crosby thought aloud. “But the actual murders—”

“Were Channing’s own fantasies.” Annie nodded. “I’d bet a bundle that Giordano had no idea of what he was getting.”

Miranda sat on the edge of her chair. “So, what we need from the Lyndon PD is, first and foremost, assistance in finding this man, this Curtis Alan Channing.”

“Where is your suspect now?” Annie asked.

“He’s meeting with his public defender.”

“Here? In the building?”

“Yes. I see where you’re going. And I agree. Let’s start with the suspect we have, see if Mulholland recognizes this man.” Crosby picked up the sketch. “We’ll give him a set of different composites. If he identifies your Channing as the man he met in the bar last night . . . well, we’ll take it from there. Agent Cahill, Dr. McCall, this way, please.”

Anne Marie and Miranda followed Detective Crosby to the room where a weeping Tom Mulholland was meeting with his attorney. From behind the glass, the women watched as Crosby laid the sketch of Curtis Channing, along with four or five sketches of other faces, on the table in front of the suspect.

“He knows,” Miranda murmured. “Crosby knows that Mulholland isn’t the killer. He barely even argued with us. . . .”

“Watch.” Annie pointed at the glass. “Watch Mulholland’s face.”

“That’s him,” Mulholland exclaimed without hesitation and before Crosby could say a word. He pounded a fist on Curtis Alan Channing’s face. “That’s Calvin. He looked a little different, a little older, and his hair was different, shorter, like a crew cut, and he had these dark glasses on, but that’s him, that son of a bitch. He set me up for this. He set me up.”

Crosby glanced at the glass wall and smiled. Still without having said a word, he picked up the sketches and left the room.

“Convinced, Detective?” Miranda asked.

“Mulholland went right to the sketch of Channing—did not hesitate, did not deliberate, as I’m sure you saw. I think we need to meet with our chief of police and the head of our county CID. We may want to get an artist in to speak with Mulholland, get a more current sketch.”

“The FBI is having a sketch artist update the photo.”

“Let’s get it, then, so that we can get it out right away, send it to all the local stations. If he was here in the area, someone would have seen him. If we move now, we should be able to get a sketch on the early news. We’ll show it on all the subsequent broadcasts until we find him.”

“Find him quickly, Detective Crosby,” Annie said softly, thinking of Mara.

“First things first. That means convincing Chief Donner that we still have a killer on the loose. And after we’ve tackled that formidable task, we’re going to take a drive, the three of us. . . .”

“I can’t help it, Giordano, I keep coming back to you. We all keep coming back to you.”

Evan Crosby loosened his tie and scratched behind one ear. Across the ugly table with the marred Formica top, Vince Giordano smirked even as he ogled the two women who had accompanied the detective on his trip to the county prison.

“When you’re bringing along the eye candy, you can come back as often as you like.” The prisoner winked at Miranda Cahill.

“You’re not my type, Vinnie.” She rested both arms on the table and stared into his face with as little emotion as she could muster. “May I call you Vinnie?”

“You can call me anything you want, doll-face. You could start with ‘lover’—”

“Vinnie, there’s just something about men who kill kids. . . . I don’t know, it’s just a real turn-off for me.”

“I’m gonna be released, you wait and see,” he told her, even as the red flush spread from his neck to his face. “My lawyer called this morning. He’s petitioned the court for an emergency hearing because I been in here so long on a bad conviction. Could be as soon as tomorrow, day after. Thirty-six hours from now, I could be a free man.”

“And that would mean that you didn’t pull the trigger?” She continued to stare at him. “Sorry.” She lowered her voice. “You have sleaze written all over you.”

“Maybe I’ll come see you when I get out, Miss Mouth. Maybe we’ll find out we have a lot in common.”

“Actually, we do have something in common. Thanks for reminding me.” She turned to Crosby. “You have that sketch?”

The detective opened his briefcase and passed the file to her.

“This man.” She held up the picture of Channing. “I believe we’ve both made his acquaintance.”

“Never saw him before.” Giordano’s smirk was back.

“Oh, come on, Vinnie, take another look.” Miranda moved the drawing closer. “Now, when I met him, he called himself Curt Gibbons. Did he use that name when you met him, or did he use Curt Channing?”

“I told you, I never saw him before.”

“You buying that, Detective Crosby? You think Vinnie sounds sincere?”

“Nah. Now, here’s what we have, Vince.” Crosby took over. “We have a really odd set of coincidences. We have three women named Mary Douglas dead, all three murdered by the same person. Why? There’s nothing to connect them except their names. Then we find your ex-mother-in-law dead, a bullet between the eyes. And then, on top of that, we find Judge Styler—the judge who officiated at your custody hearing, the same judge who denied you visitation with your sons—murdered. In exactly the same way that the Mary Douglases were killed.”

“Hey, I heard about Styler. A tragedy,” Giordano deadpanned. “I don’t see what all this has to do with me. I never knew any of those women, those Mary Douglas women.”

“Ah, but you knew Mara Douglas.
Mara,
” Crosby emphasized. “The child advocate who recommended to Judge Styler that you not be permitted to see your sons because you couldn’t have a conversation with either one of them without beating the crap out of him.”

The corners of Giordano’s mouth twitched, but he said nothing.

“We figure that Channing misunderstood you. That he thought you said
Mary
instead of
Mara
, and didn’t do his homework before he did the deed.”

“We talked about this before, Crosby. I told you I’ve had no contact with anyone except my lawyer. I’ve had no mail, no phone calls, no visitors except you and your buddy Sullivan. So when would I have met this guy, this Channing?” Giordano smiled slyly. “And where? I’ve been locked up since the day after that hearing, and I haven’t been out of here except to go to court.”

Crosby stared at the inmate. Those were the very questions he’d been asking himself.

“And supposing I did meet this guy and asked him to do these terrible things you’re accusing me of. What incentive do I have to offer? I can’t pay him—my lawyer owns every dime I’ll make for the next forty fucking years. What could I possibly do to make someone—a complete stranger—want to kill three people for me?” Giordano sat back in his seat, the irons clanging softly. “Tell me that, Detective Crosby. Why would this man be willing to kill for me, even assuming that I wanted him to?”

“I don’t know.” Crosby shook his head. “I don’t know. That’s the missing piece of the puzzle.”

“That’s a pretty big piece, wouldn’t you say?” Giordano turned his attention to the two women who sat on the opposite side of the table. “You don’t have much to say, do you, blondie?”

“My job is just to observe,” Anne Marie said coolly.
Blondie
clearly rankled.

“Observe what?”

“You.”

“You came here just to watch me?” He snickered. “Baby, you come see me when I get out, I’ll give you something to look at.”

When she didn’t so much as blink, he said, “Well, it’s nice to see that the Lyndon Police Department finally hired some good-looking cops. I’m tired of looking at your ugly face all the time, Crosby.”

“We’re not Lyndon PD,” Miranda told him.

“Oh? Then what are you?”

“FBI.”

“Oh, hey, this must be something really special, the FBI is in town.” He made a silly face. “You an agent, gorgeous? What’s your name?”

“Agent Miranda Cahill.”

“Cahill.” He repeated the name softly to himself once, then again. “Cahill . . .” He studied her face. “We meet before?”

“No.”

“No. Guess not. I’d remember you, all right. I’d remember your face. I’d remember your body. . . .”

“Okay, that’s it for today.” Crosby pushed back from the table and signaled for the guard. “Guess there’s no point in me saying, ‘So when you’re ready to talk about Curtis Channing, give me a call,’ huh?”

Giordano laughed in his face. “Never heard of him till today.”

The guard stepped in to lead Giordano back to his cell. The prisoner stopped and turned to look at Miranda one more time, stared at her for a long minute before turning away and shuffling from the room.

“Well, that was enlightening,” Miranda said as they walked from the prison into the parking lot.

“Actually, it was,” Annie told her. “He was clearly lying through his teeth.”

“I agree. But how do we prove that? And how do we connect Giordano to Channing?”

“Find Channing,” Crosby said simply.

“That’s your job, Detective,” Annie replied as she got into the police car. “Do it before the son of a bitch finds my sister, will you?”

“And before Giordano gets out of here,” Miranda added, looking back at the gray stone building.

“Unfortunately, I have no control over that,” Crosby told her. “The state won’t deny his appeal because we think he has a connection to Channing. Who has not yet been confirmed as the murderer, Agent Cahill.”

“Then we’re going to have to connect the dots quickly, Detective. The good news is that we will then be able to kill two birds with one stone. We’ll have Channing, and we’ll have Giordano.”

“Sure. No problem,” he muttered as he got behind the wheel. “All we have to do is figure out where those two intersect. Giordano and Channing. Once we find someone who can actually place Channing in Lyndon, then maybe we can figure out what he did while he was here. Where he went, what he did. Besides kill five women, that is . . .”

Alone in his cell, Giordano was still smiling. The temptation had been so great. He’d had to bite his tongue to keep from asking, “So, Detective Crosby, how’s your little sister doin’ these days?”

But he wasn’t stupid. And asking about Crosby’s sister, when he was so close to the game, would be just too stupid for words. There’d be time enough, once he got out of here. . . .

He turned his attention to the matter that had been puzzling him all afternoon: Why did the name Miranda Cahill ring so loud a bell?

It came to him later that night as he lay awake on his cot.

Channing. He’d named his three for Archer, and Giordano had committed them to memory along with the names he’d been given by Archer Lowell.

Channing had named his old lady’s boyfriend, Albert Unger.

That writer, Joshua Manning, who’d done some books about serial killers.

And an FBI agent named Miranda Cahill.

Well, he could certainly see why she’d be memorable, and he could think of plenty of things he’d love to do to her, but killing her would be the least of them.

Though there was some appeal, he conceded, to have her on her knees, begging for his mercy. . . .