“Shannon Harps.” The name of the woman murdered by James Anthony Williams on Capitol Hill in 2008 swam up out of the murk of Becca’s memory, suddenly sharp and clear, because she was angry. She didn’t like the crafty pleasure surfacing on Voakes’s face. If he wanted to riff on the names of notorious madmen, the innocents slaughtered by them would be remembered, too. “I’m talking about shootings that happened thirty years earlier. I’m asking if you know anything about that night.”
“John, you don’t have to say anything, now.” Emily was eyeing the recorder Jo held openly in one hand. “If you want an attorney present, we can arrange that.”
“I’m not really mentally competent enough to know if I need an attorney.” Voakes grimaced against a sudden pain. “So nothing I say without one can be held against me. But thank you, Dr. Kelley.” He lifted one veined hand slightly, then let it drop back on the thin spread. “Can you come a little closer, Miss Healy? I’m not seeing very well, these days.”
Becca kept her distance. “You don’t have to see me. Are you going to answer my question?”
“I’ve pictured you, lots of times.” Voakes closed his wrinkled eyelids briefly. “You were such a blond, pretty little thing.”
“John.” Emily’s tone was suddenly sharp. “Perhaps you should mention, at this time, that you’re very familiar with the history of the Seattle crime scene. Your doctors are aware that you kept newspaper articles on area crimes long before your arrest.”
“That’s true.” A kind of sulking contrition tugged Voakes’s mouth downward. “I read all about your parents’ deaths, Miss Healy. I saw the photograph in the Post-Intelligencer of their orphaned little blond daughter. I don’t mean to imply that I laid eyes on you personally.”
Voakes’s red-rimmed gaze drifted over Becca, from head to foot. He could see her perfectly well, and a shudder went through her.
She was rapidly recalculating everything she thought she knew about psychopaths. Most of them had blunt affects, little facial expression or vocal inflection. There was no psychotropic medication for this kind of atavistic madness. But even in his last illness, Voakes was animated, revealing a kind of mild, sneaking enjoyment of this attention. Becca remembered that aspects of the sociopathic brain had more in common with reptiles than humans, and that seemed to fit him perfectly.
“I haven’t heard you deny it,” Becca said.
“I haven’t really heard enough to know if I should deny it.” Voakes sulked for a moment, plucking at the sheet, apparently striving for some combination of pathos and ambiguity. “Why the sudden interest, if I can ask? I mean, you could have asked me about this years ago. You’ve always known where to find me.”
“I’ve never been interested in finding you, Mr. Voakes, and in five more minutes, I’ll never think of you again,” Becca lied. “We don’t have any way of making you tell us the truth; you’ll either answer me or you won’t. The state of your conscience when you die is entirely up to you. But you need to make this decision, now.”
Voakes considered this, or pretended to. Becca felt Jo’s strong, breathing presence behind her, and she matched her breath for breath.
“All right. I’ll tell you the absolute truth, but then you have to do me a favor. Quid pro quo, Clarice. You’d be granting my dying wish.”
Becca bit back an automatic refusal, acknowledging Emily’s look with a slight nod. “No promises. But I’m listening.”
“I’ll even go first.” Voakes brightened, showing a flash of that malign merriment. “Then you can decide if you want to grant my last wish or not. The state of your conscience when I die is entirely up to you. Are you ready?”
Becca waited.
“I didn’t kill your parents.” Voakes sagged into the bed, color returning to his face. His meds probably contained painkillers that were beginning to kick in. “The police got it right that time. Your mother killed your parents.”
Becca looked at Jo, whose gaze was fixed on Voakes’s haggard features. She met Becca’s gaze and nodded once. Voakes was telling the truth.
“Can I have the doll?” Voakes’s eyes were closed, his face turned toward the window, slatted light falling over the bed.
Vertigo slammed into Becca, and she swayed on her feet. She fought to clear her head with a fierce act of will.
“That little rag doll you were holding that night. I assume you kept it, such an important family heirloom. I’d like to be cradling it as I fall asleep for the last time. I think it would comfort me.”
Becca found her voice. “How do you know about the doll, Mr. Voakes?”
“Oh. You were clutching it in that photo I mentioned, the one in the paper.”
She looked at Jo again, mostly because she needed to see her in that moment, but also because Jo had made a thorough study of every police report and newspaper article related to the shooting.
Jo shook her head.
“Okay, it’s time to wrap this up.” Peter scowled at Emily. “We said fifteen minutes. He’s starting to fade.”
“What about my dying wish?” Voakes sounded plaintive.
Becca had had enough. She turned with admirable balance and coordination and walked out of the room. Emily followed her closely, looking ready to perform CPR, if necessary.
They would debrief with Emily. They would drive back to Capitol Hill. On the way, they would try to explain to each other how Voakes could have seen a doll in a photo that didn’t exist.
But first Jo stopped in the doorway of the bedroom long enough to speak to John William Voakes for the first time, and pass on her own parting wish.
“Die soon, and badly.”
Chapter Fourteen
The Bentley purred silently back over the West Seattle Bridge before either of them spoke.
“Did you watch Oprah Winfrey?” Jo asked.
Becca pulled her gaze from the downtown skyline looming ahead, the black celery stick of the Columbia Tower, and frowned. “Jo, are we really in the mood for celebrity chat right now?”
“This is important.” Jo knew one reliable way to comfort Becca was to feed her, but Jo had never learned to cook. She wanted to take her to the best restaurant in the city, but there were two problems with this plan. First, she had only seen Becca consume unhealthy food, and second, Jo didn’t think she could stand one more minute in the company of strangers.
“All right, sure. I liked Oprah’s show.”
“Good.” Jo clicked her signal to exit off I-5. “The doll wasn’t a state secret, Becca. Even Pam Emerson mentioned your reaction to a doll that night.”
“But you said the only photo of me that was ever in a paper was that kindergarten portrait. That was outrage enough. There were never any shots of me holding a doll.”
“Yes, but Emily Kelley pointed out that we weren’t privy to the conversations that could have happened over the years in a state mental hospital. She told us about the forensic unit at Western, the gossip there. Voakes could easily have heard details about your parents’ deaths any time in the past two decades.”
“Maybe. What did his face tell you? Did you learn anything?”
Jo cruised silently through the Central District, trying to find words to describe the extraordinary aberration that was John William Voakes. “I’ve never seen anything like him. According to his expressions, he never lied once.”
“What?”
Jo shrugged. “I’m saying that his microexpressions are useless as a means of detecting false statements. Most people show some flicker of guilt when they lie, or at least a fear of getting caught. Your friends are right about you, Becca. You’re too inherently honest. You broadcast lies like a beacon. Voakes has no perception at all that lying is wrong, so there was no guilt or fear. He seemed to be telling the truth when he denied killing your parents. But he gave the same signals when he claimed he saw the picture of the doll in the paper, an outright deception.”