Love me to death

THIRTY-TWO

“You don’t have to talk to him,” Kate said when she saw Lucy.

Lucy had admired Kate from when she first met her, for more reasons than Lucy had ever shared with her. But the primary reason was that Kate was willing to face evil and fight for what was right, that she could put her pain and her anger aside to do the right thing all the time, even when it came at great personal or professional or physical risk. She spoke her mind, and was more of a sister to her than her own flesh-and-blood sisters.

Lucy hugged Kate spontaneously-neither of them was demonstrably affectionate, and the physical display came as a surprise to both. “I love you, Kate. I don’t think I ever told you that.”

Lucy stepped back and Sean took her hand. He’d accepted her decision to talk to Mallory, even if he wasn’t happy about it.

Lucy observed Mick Mallory through the one-way glass. He sat rigid, though he’d been there for several hours. His hands were on the table in front of him, shackles on his feet.

He was much older than she remembered. But she didn’t really remember what he’d looked like. She’d blocked him from her mind the way she’d blocked what happened to her on the island.

There were only two things she remembered clearly from that time: when Dillon pulled her up from the filthy floor of the cabin and gave her his shirt to wear, and when she shot Adam Scott two days later.

Everything else was dark and fuzzy, and she preferred it like that.

But she’d know Mick Mallory if she saw him on the street. That he was living in nearby Herndon seemed unreal. She didn’t hate him, and that surprised her.

He hadn’t raped her.

But he watched.

He’d apologized.

He did nothing while the others hurt her.

He had nearly died sending Kate information.

He may have killed Cody.

Lucy might be able to forgive the past, if only because harboring lifelong anger and pain would destroy any chance of living a normal life. But what if Mallory had killed Cody because of her? Because she’d asked Cody to look into Prenter’s murder?

Maybe it would have been better if she’d looked the other way. If she’d ignored her suspicions. Prenter was a rapist. Cruel, sadistic, he didn’t care about the women he hurt, drugged them so they didn’t remember, couldn’t testify. Drugged them into a coma.… He was better off dead. She had no remorse that he was gone. No guilt. No grief. No sympathy.

Did that make her as cold and calculating as Mick Mallory?

Yet she would never have killed Prenter. She would never have killed any of those men, unless they were a direct threat. She’d never have thought of it … but she’d thought about killing Adam Scott. Not only thought about it, but took a gun from her father’s safe and walked the three blocks to Dillon’s house and shot the bastard who’d kidnapped her. Six times. She remembered it as clearly as if she’d shot him yesterday, felt the recoil of the handgun each time she pulled the trigger.

Maybe she was more like Mick Mallory than she thought. More like him than she wanted to be.

Cody was dead and even though he had been following her, he wasn’t a rapist or a killer. Had he found something that incriminated Mallory? If that was the case, his death was for nothing-the FBI had found the connection to Mallory only hours after Cody died.

But if Cody had committed suicide, then he’d done it because of her. In her head she knew that if Cody was distraught enough to kill himself, he had a lot of problems. But in her heart she couldn’t help but think that the way she treated him yesterday-that her inability to love him the way he wanted-that her rejection of his marriage proposal last year-that somehow, all that turned him suicidal.

She didn’t know if she could face this every day as an FBI agent.

She asked quietly, “Do you know if forensics has a report on Cody’s death? Suicide or murder?”

Noah said, “The D.C. police are giving our people full access. We have our best ERT processing all evidence. Our people are canvassing with the police to find any witnesses. We’re talking to everyone whom Officer Lorenzo had contact with over the last seventy-two hours. We’ll have an answer, but we can’t rush it.”

Lucy said, “I’m ready.”

Noah started with her toward the door. She shook her head. “I need to talk to him alone.”

“Hell no,” Sean said.

She squeezed his hand. “I’m okay.”

Noah agreed with Sean. “I’m not putting you in the room alone with that killer. He promised to talk to you, but he said nothing about being alone with you. We’d never agree to it.”

Hans said, “Kate can join them. Mallory and she have a history. He may be more forthcoming with Kate in the room, Noah.”

Exasperated, Noah ran a hand through his hair. “Okay. Fine.”

Hans said, “Lucy, I’m confident you’ll know what to say and do, but he did promise a full confession if you talk to him, so get everything you can out of him. Plus, we have a few questions for him-like why Robert Ralston went to Seattle. Why he waited until Morton was in D.C. before killing him. Confirm how they select their targets, and why Ralston was killed. Was Ralston working only for Morton, or playing for both teams?”

Lucy took a deep breath. “And why he killed Cody.”

Hans nodded. “The minute you feel uncomfortable, you can leave. You don’t have to stay. Even if you just need a couple of minutes, take them.”

She nodded. “I’ll do my best.”

Sean turned her face to his. “I’m right here.”

She gave him a smile that she hoped wasn’t as weak as it felt, then stepped inside the interview room behind Kate.

To say Mick Mallory brightened when he saw her was an understatement. He sat straighter. He didn’t so much as smile as open his mouth slightly in surprise and something that felt like awe. Lucy considered turning around and having Sean take her home. She didn’t want to be in the same room with this man.

But there was no going back. She would face Mallory and get the answers they all needed. The answers she needed.

She sat down. Kate sat next to her. Lucy didn’t take her eyes from Mallory’s face.

“You wanted to talk to me.”

“Thank you.”

She shook her head. “I’m here so you will confess. I want the truth. The truth will set you free.” She intentionally quoted from Cody’s fake suicide note. Mallory nodded, not flinching or showing any other reaction. He was cold. Colder than she remembered.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

“I don’t want your apology. I want the truth. Start with why you have a picture of me in your house.” She hadn’t intended to start with that piece of information, but her mind had gone blank when she saw him sitting there.

He nodded and showed his first sign of discomfort as he reached back and rubbed the back of his neck, licking his lips at the same time. “I took that a year after I got out of the hospital. I came back here and didn’t know what I was going to do. I wanted to kill myself, but didn’t have the courage. Then I heard about the plea agreement between the government and Roger Morton, and my anger over that kept me alive. Guilt and vengeance fuels me; it runs through my veins. It’s the air I breathe.” He cocked his head. “You didn’t know, did you?”

She shook her head.

“I wanted to see how you were doing, to make sure you were, I don’t know, living as normal a life as possible.

“I shouldn’t have tried to find you, but I couldn’t help myself. I learned your schedule and waited one afternoon for you to leave one of your classes, I don’t remember which one. You looked both sad and happy at the same time-I didn’t know how that was possible. I was looking at you through a long lens because I didn’t want you to see me. I didn’t want to scare you. And I snapped a picture, without intending to.”

For the first time, Lucy feared she’d been wrong about Cody-that he hadn’t been the one stalking her. Trying to keep the anger out of her voice, she asked him, “Have you been stalking me?”

“No, I swear. The last time I saw you was at the WCF fund-raiser, but before then it had been a long time.”

Lucy couldn’t keep the shock off her face. “You were there?”

“Yes. You wouldn’t have recognized me.”

“You were in disguise?” Her head began to spin. She willed her breathing to even out.

“Pretty much.”

“What about the skating park?”

He stared at her blankly. “I don’t skate.”

“No, at the skating rink in Arlington.”

He shook his head. “Before Saturday, I hadn’t seen you in over a year.”

“Why were you at the WCF fund-raiser?”

“I’m not going to say.”

“You said you’d tell me everything if I talked to you. I’m here. I’m talking. It’s your turn.”

Kate interrupted for the first time. “It might be helpful, Mick, if you tell Lucy about why you used her to lure parolees into a death trap. She deserves to know, don’t you think?”

“Yes.” He swallowed, his head falling into his hands. His shoulders rose, then fell. Again. Lucy did not feel bad for him, not even a sliver of empathy.

Mallory focused on Lucy. It was as if Kate wasn’t in the room, though it was clear he’d heard her.

“After my wife and son were murdered, I lost my heart and my soul. Lost everything that was good, everything I loved. After the … situation where I was fired, Fran was the only person I could talk to. We kept in touch.”

“That doesn’t answer Kate’s question,” Lucy said. “Why did you use me?”

“We didn’t. I never wanted you to know.”

“Too late. I figured it out. But not until after seven parolees were killed-seven that I lured into public.”

“Don’t feel an ounce of remorse for those animals! They were all violent predators who are better off dead.”

“Because you’re a god? Is that how you see yourself?” Lucy asked.

“No, I’m sure I’m going to Hell. I figured I’d send some of those bastards there before I arrive.” He paused, glanced at Kate, then turned back to Lucy. “Four years ago, Fran called me from Boston. She’d learned about a rapist who walked on a technicality. The bastard had been raping his niece from the time she was ten until she was fifteen. She committed suicide instead of telling her family that she’d had two abortions. They only found out after she died, from her diary. The judge wouldn’t allow the diary to be admitted as evidence, and there was nothing else to prove he was a child molester.

“The situation reminded Fran of what happened to her sister. She went to Boston and killed him. In his own house. Then she called me to help her cover it up. So I did. I stole the creep’s paintings and fenced them. He was quite a collector. Look it up-his name was Parker Weatherby.” Mallory paused, then added, “I read the diary, Lucy. It was gut-wrenching. Fran should have gone after the fucking judge. When our own system fails the innocent!” He slapped his palm on the table and a startled Lucy leaned back.

Mallory looked pained that he’d scared her. He said in a rush, “After that, I had an idea. I needed to do something to stop these men. I only took a few hits a year to avoid patterns, I never charged more than my minimum expenses, and I rarely did a job in the same state twice. If the Bureau had figured it out, they weren’t looking at me.

“It wasn’t enough. I was so dissatisfied, but couldn’t take on more. Not from lack of opportunity. And if I went after killers and rapists who got off on technicalities, like the prick up in Boston who Fran killed, the Feds would have figured it out pretty quickly. So I asked Fran to identify parolees for me to hit. She’d already started the lure program, it was successful, but honestly-why should these monsters go back to prison on the taxpayer’s dime for two, three, four years to finish their sentence when we damn well know that the minute they get out, they’ll be hunting for their next victim?”

“Did you know I volunteered for Fran?”

He didn’t say anything at first.

“Don’t lie to me!”

“I knew. I kept up with what you were doing.”

“And that’s not stalking? I suppose you’ve already rewritten the criminal penal code to suit your vigilante justice, so why not redefine stalking?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t accept your apology!” Lucy took a deep breath. Her anger wasn’t getting them the information they needed. “So you set these guys up. I copied the database and identified seven I was responsible for. Eight including Brad Prenter.”

“You? Responsible? I killed them!”

“I set them up. How do you think that makes me feel? That I caused another human being to die?”

“You should feel relieved that they can’t hurt anyone else, that they will never destroy another family.”

In the back of her mind, Lucy realized that she was relieved they were off the streets. But she couldn’t accept cold-blooded murder. If vigilante justice ruled, anarchy would soon follow.

“The system is far from perfect. But your way is not the answer. It’s premeditated, cold-blooded murder. That makes you as much a monster as they are.”

He looked pained. “I thought you would understand. You took justice into your own hands.”

Kate jumped up. “Don’t go there, Mallory, dammit!”

“It’s okay, Kate.” Lucy put her hand on Kate’s arm without taking her eyes off Mallory. “I’ll tell you the difference. Adam Scott raped me. He nearly killed my brother. He stabbed Dillon, who can no longer feel anything in his left hand. He’s lucky he still has a hand! It was personal. He hurt me and people I love. I killed him.” When she’d learned that Adam Scott had set explosives in Dillon’s house, when she heard the explosion she later found out was in Jack’s car, she didn’t think. She didn’t plan. She took one of the many guns in the house and ran the six blocks to Dillon’s house. She saw Scott and Dillon fighting in the yard. There were no cops anywhere; there was no one to help. It was up to her.

Scott was such a sick psychopath, deep down in his core evil. He believed that she’d come to run away with him. He let his guard down, stepped toward her and said, “You’re late.”

She shot and killed him.

She said, “For six years, shooting Adam Scott has eaten me up because I don’t feel any remorse for it.”

Lucy took a deep breath, and before Kate or Mallory could say anything, she asked, “Why Prenter? He didn’t fit the profile of the other victims.”

“Yes he did,” Mallory said, and left it at that.

“How?”

Mallory shrugged. “Figure it out.”

“I’d rather you just tell me and stop playing these games. I’m sick and tired of it.”

He didn’t say anything, but stared at her, waiting.

“And Roger Morton? Why did you kill him?”

“You have to ask? I don’t regret the killing of Morton. I’d dance on his fucking grave if I could.”

Kate said, “I could have put him back in prison for life. Did you manipulate him into coming here, or did you learn he was coming here and then plan to kill him?”

“Prison,” Mallory snapped bitterly, turning to Kate for the first time. “Really. I prefer a bullet in the back of the head. Cheaper, faster justice.”

Lucy said quietly, “So you killed Morton because he was a rapist and helped Adam Scott cover up untold murders. And he was walking free.”

“I would have saved you if I could-”

Lucy raised her hand. “But you didn’t. And that’s the crux of it, isn’t it? Because you didn’t stop him from raping me, you needed to punish him because of your own guilt. You took a picture of me after deliberately getting my class schedule. You framed it and put it in your house. You knew where I worked and what I was doing. You lured Roger Morton here so you could kill him in my own backyard. And you say you’re not obsessed with me?”

“Lucy, you needed to know he was dead. I wanted to give you peace.”

“Peace.” Lucy almost blurted out her accusations about him killing Cody, but she needed to do the one thing that Hans had asked her to do, not use this interview because she was battling her own guilt. “Why bring Morton here? You were a noble assassin,” she said sarcastically. “Why have him come here? To where I live?”

“I had to.”

“But why?”

Mallory didn’t answer.

“Dammit, tell me!”

He was wrestling with something, she saw it on his face, but a moment later he sighed and his shoulders sagged.

“Adam Scott kept souvenirs from all his victims. Usually a piece of jewelry. Denise, the woman who helped him, told me about it. She found the box in Scott’s suitcase when we were on the island, and threw it away. Scott found out and recovered it. Beat the living shit out of her. I went to Seattle to try to find it but couldn’t. I had been working with Dave Biggler for two years, and he knew Ralston, one of his dad’s informants. The first time I tried to get to Morton, it was to go to Seattle to retrieve the box. We paid Ralston to plant the idea that there was substantial cash, securities, and jewelry that Scott hid on the island in a metal box with intricate designs on it-I was certain Morton would know exactly where it was.”

“Why would Morton think that Ralston knew about it?” Kate asked. “Wasn’t Morton suspicious?”

“No. Ralston was a longtime cohort of Adam Scott-and we told Ralston to say that the information came from one of Scott’s former security people who had a financial backer to create another Internet sex site.”

“Wait,” Kate said. “None of that was for real? All those videos Morton was collecting was because of your scam?”

“I would never have let them go live.”

“You’re fucking insane,” Kate said. “You’re the one who gave Morton the idea to re-create Trask Enterprises!”

“No, he was already playing around; I just provided incentive for him to act faster.”

“But Morton didn’t go to Seattle, Ralston did,” Lucy said, trying to get Mallory back on track.

“I didn’t know he sent Ralston to retrieve the box. However, I did learn that Ralston was keeping the box for Morton.”

“So you killed Ralston because of it.”

“I killed Ralston because he was playing both sides. He thought he could get more money if he worked with Morton.”

“Why did Ralston help you in the first place?”

“Because Dave asked him to and we paid him well. I should have realized he was a double agent, so to speak. Morton didn’t show up with the box when he was supposed to on Thursday. So after the meet at the marina, I went to his motel. It wasn’t there. I realized that Ralston had to have known where it was-Morton was carrying one piece of jewelry on him from the box, so it had to be somewhere, and Ralston was the only one Morton had talked to since he arrived.”

“What sick reason could you want with Adam Scott’s souvenirs anyway?” Kate asked.

Lucy knew. “You wanted to give the jewelry back to the families.”

He nodded. “I have your ring, Lucy. I just didn’t know how to give it to you.”

She blinked back tears she refused to shed in front of Mallory. “You know, I almost understand. I don’t agree with anything you did, but I understand. Everything. Except Cody. Why’d you kill him?”

Mallory looked like he’d been slapped, but Lucy continued without pause.

“He was a good man,” said Lucy. “He never hurt me, he never hurt anyone! He believed in what we were doing, putting the parolees back in prison. He was loyal to Fran. And you killed him because he found out about your cowardly vigilante group!”

Mallory was shaking his head and leaned forward. “No. No fucking way did I kill Cody Lorenzo. I swear on my wife’s grave that I didn’t kill him.”

Lucy rubbed her eyes to stop her tears from leaking out. She didn’t want to believe Mallory, yet everything else he said had the ring of truth, so why not this? But she’d rather believe that Mallory killed Cody than Cody killing himself.

“You didn’t? Who’d you send to do it? Fran? David Biggler? Who did it?”

“It wasn’t any of us, I swear to you, Lucy. I would never hurt someone you cared about. All I’ve wanted these last six years is your forgiveness.”

Lucy rose from her seat and leaned forward. “I forgive you for what happened six years ago. But I’ll never forgive you for what you’ve done since. I don’t want my ring back. I don’t want to see it or see you, until your trial.”

She walked out.

Sean found Lucy sitting in the small lobby of FBI headquarters. He sat next to her and took her hand. She looked up at him, and he kissed her. “Kate and Dillon are going to be awhile and Armstrong and Resnick are headed out to Mallory’s place to wrap up the search for evidence. They still can’t find any guns.”

“He probably got rid of them. It sounds like he would know exactly how to do that.”

Sean hated how defeated Lucy looked. He wanted her fire back, the same fire that led her to pursue this investigation in the first place, that gave her the courage to confront Mick Mallory. “Come home with me, okay?”

“Do you think he killed Cody?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

Lucy closed her eyes and leaned back. “Neither do I. When I went in there I was so certain that he’d done it. And now … if Cody killed himself, I can’t blame anyone but him. And I don’t want to.”

“They’ll know for sure by tomorrow whether it was suicide or murder,” Sean said.

“Will they?” she asked.

“You know Forensics better than I do, but Noah said they are prioritizing this and hope to have a definitive answer in the morning. What do you think?”

“With ballistics, they know for certain more than ninety percent of the time-but it still could be inconclusive.”

“I’ll go with the odds.” He kissed her on the forehead. “You’ll have the answer tomorrow. Don’t beat yourself up about it now.”

“What about Fran?”

“She’s in jail for the night. So is David Biggler. Armstrong said they don’t have anything on his sister, but told her not to leave town. Mallory didn’t give her up, so maybe she really wasn’t involved.”

“Or he’s trying to protect her because she’s a young woman. She’s my age.” Lucy hated Mallory, hated what he’d done, what he’d perverted in his twisted sense of right and wrong. That she’d somehow been the impetus for his decisions sickened her.

“You’re exhausted, Lucy. Let’s go.”

“I am tired,” she agreed.

Sean stood, pulling her up with him and wrapping an arm around her shoulder. “There’s nothing more either of us can do tonight.”

When Noah and Hans arrived at Mallory’s house, it was after eight at night, below 30 degrees, with the promise of blizzard-like conditions by Thursday morning. The search team was done, but SSA Lauren Cheville had asked Noah to come out.

“I wanted you to see this,” Lauren said. “Pictures simply won’t do it justice.”

He and Hans walked with Lauren toward the kitchen. “I thought the search was a bust,” Lauren explained. “We found nothing to implicate Mallory in any crimes. But I remembered what you said, Hans.”

“That he will have kept his guns.”

“Exactly. I just didn’t imagine that he’d have made it so easy for us to trace them-just hard to find them.”

They followed Lauren into the basement, accessed by a door in the kitchen. The basement was damp with a moldy scent that made Noah sneeze. There was full fluorescent lighting and several workbenches, tools hung meticulously on peg-board lined walls, and canned goods lined a metal shelf. “We checked the basement earlier, did a complete sweep, but nothing jumped out. After we came up empty, I walked through the entire place again, thinking about where I would have hidden a gun collection. I knocked on walls and tables, and then found it.” She motioned to an agent who was standing by a workbench. “Show them, Carl.”

Carl knocked on one of the two six-foot-long workbenches. It was solid wood. He knocked on the other. It sounded hollow. “Watch this,” he said. He extended his arms as far as they could go and reached under both front corners of the bench. “There’s a special release-you have to press both at the same time and-voila!”

The top of the bench popped open on a spring. Inside on the felt-lined hidden compartment were dozens of handguns-mostly nine-millimeters and.38s. Three rifles-an M21 and two M24s-were secured on the underside of the workbench lid. Several knives were also on display.

Each firearm had a name painted on the barrel in white.

“My God,” Hans said. Even he appeared surprised, although he’d predicted that Mallory would have kept the weapons he used. “How many are there?”

“Seventeen nine-millimeters, ten.38 revolvers, and two Glock.45’s,” Lauren said. “This is a fortune in guns to be tagged and left for souvenirs.”

“But it makes each murder that much harder to prove when the ballistics don’t match up with anything else,” Hans said.

Noah read the names. Most he didn’t recognize. Then he saw Roger Morton next to Robert Ralston. “See those?” He gestured toward the guns.

“Can’t miss them. Did you notice what’s under each gun?”

“File folders.”

“My guess? It’s his justification for each murder-a list of their crimes, sentences, parole information. Mallory doesn’t want anyone to think he’s a monster, so he convinces himself that he’s a savior.”

Noah stared at the firearms and wondered what it would take for someone to turn vigilante-what was the trigger? For Mallory, the trigger had been the murders of his wife and son, coupled with his inability to protect Lucy Kincaid when she was kidnapped. But Fran Buckley-other people have been victims and lost family, and they didn’t take the law into their own hands-why had Fran? What had been her trigger?

Nothing good was coming from this investigation. A cop was dead, lives were ruined, and Noah suspected it wasn’t going to end with Mick Mallory’s confession.