11th hour

Chapter 112

Nicole Worley and I were facing off in Interview 1 while Conklin interviewed Janet in the room next door.

Our suspects were in custody and our forensic team was awash in grisly artifacts, but we were still waiting for solid evidence that conclusively tied Janet or Nicole to the human remains.

Nicole hadn’t asked for a lawyer, but psychopathic serial murderers don’t always want lawyers. Some like to talk to the police for days on end, a cat-and-mouse game in which they believe themselves to be the cats.

I wasn’t sure what Nicole was up to, but I was willing to play along. A CSI was dusting surfaces, searching her room for evidence. And for the past couple of hours, Claire had been processing body parts taken from the basement freezer.

Nicole denied any knowledge of murders at the Ellsworth compound other than what she had learned since the police answered her mother’s 911 call.

But she did like to talk about Harry Chandler.

She told me how she’d seen all of Harry’s pictures dozens of times. How people she knew couldn’t believe that she knew him personally. That he had been a friend of her childhood. She knew special things about him, what he liked to eat, funny things he had said.

Nicole Worley was just wild about Harry.

Or you could say she was obsessed with him.

It was time to get to the point.

“We opened the freezer,” I said.

“What? The one in my basement? I haven’t used that freezer in years. I can’t remember the last time.”

“We lifted fingerprints from the inside of the lid,” I lied. “And as we speak, body parts are being cataloged.”

“That’s terrible. Just terrible,” she said with a tone and an expression that showed me that she didn’t care at all.

I said, “I’m going to check on how things are going at the morgue.”

I called Claire and she picked up on the first ring. I said, “Have you got a progress report?”

Then I turned to Nicole and said, “Sit tight. I’ll be back in a while.”

“I’ve got a headache,” she said.

I left Nicole in handcuffs and went down the stairs to the lobby and out the back door, then took a brisk and chilly walk to the Medical Examiner’s Office.

Claire came to the door and I followed her through to the autopsy suite.

Claire had a chunk of meat on the table in front of her. She pulled down her mask, said to me, “See, I’ve got to treat each part like an individual specimen. I’m x-raying each part, looking for anything that will help ID this person. Metal plates or bullets or old fractures.”

“Have you found anything like that?” I asked.

The chunk of meat looked like a haunch that had belonged to a small white person, probably female.

Claire was saying, “I’ve got to use a clean scalpel for each part, do a unique description of each part, weigh each, look for GSR and wounds. I’ve taken fingerprints from a couple of hands, found one that matches our girl Marilyn Varick.”

“Got anything solid that connects body parts to our killer?”

“I pulled blood whenever I could. And I made some muscle-tissue samples for DNA testing…”

“Claire. Claire. Have you got something for me? I’ve got two suspects in custody. Give me something.”

Claire picked up the block of flesh on the table and turned it around. She pointed to a bloody line. I followed her finger as she showed me several other identical lines.

“See these knife wounds? Could be they’re going to match that knife of Nicole’s. And look at this,” Claire said.

She took a sheet off the top of a metal basin, showed me the section of shoulder in there.

She said, “Consistent with stun-gun burns. I’m guessing that’s how she knocked her victims down.”

“I need pictures,” I said.