"Mr. Fauquier, I'm Tess Monaghan."
"Yes, they told me you were coming. They said you're working on a school project." His voice was soft and whispery, which only magnified the slight lisp Fauquier was trying to downplay.
"There must have been some confusion, Mr. Fauquier. I'm not sure why they told you that." Aside from Uncle Donald's gossip along the phone lines. "I'm working for a lawyer who thinks you may know something about Michael Abramowitz. Could you answer some questions for me?"
"About his murder." It wasn't a question. He seemed amused-by her manners, or by her deceit, which he seemed to grasp instantly.
"Something that might shed light on his murder, actually. Although, if you'd like to confess to arranging the whole thing, it would make my job easier, I admit."
Fauquier smiled again. "I think I've made enough confessions in my day. They'll have to solve this one on their own."
He was in the chair across from her, almost preternaturally poised, rocking slightly. He had drawn one foot under him, which seemed an odd, uncomfortable way to sit, but it also had the effect of making him look taller. Tess could tell he was enjoying himself, enjoying the attention.
"I thought there was something you wanted to talk about, Mr. Fauquier. Something you promised to tell Jonathan Ross. Only you reneged."
She had surprised him. Fauquier leaned back in his chair, pressing the heels of his hands against the table, showing off his forearms. They were slender, but the veins stood out against them, bright blue bas-relief. A weight lifter, Tess judged, one who lifted for strength and tone, not bulk.
"Well, then Jonathan reneged, too, didn't he? He told me our interviews were off-the-record. Then he turned around and told you what I said. That's a lot worse, what he did."
He reminded her of a little boy, rationalizing away a petty infraction by blaming his older brother for a larger one.
"Not exactly, Mr. Fauquier. Jonathan told me he had been meeting with someone condemned to die, someone ‘twisted,' who got in touch with him after Abramowitz died. That gave me a one-in-thirteen chance to guess. Someone else, a woman who worked with Michael Abramowitz, said he complained about one of his clients, also a ‘twisted' gentleman convicted of a capital crime. The odds fell to one in three. Both men called you a twisted fucker. You liked to call yourself a twisted fucker. Mr. Ross and Mr. Abramowitz are dead. Is it all a coincidence?"
"Stranger things have happened." He grinned. "I happened, didn't I?"
"Tell me the story you were going to tell Jonathan, the one you wanted to tell before you die. It's no good if you're dead, is it? You need the story to be told while you're alive. You want something, attention or time. Maybe both. I can give you one of those things."
"I don't care that much about attention, and I'm not worrying too much about dying right now."
"You should. Maryland is losing patience. People want to see you guys executed-especially you. Ever since Thanos went, there's been a lot more momentum. You could be dead by next summer."
"Fuckin' Thanos," Fauquier said, as if commenting on the weather or the Orioles' season. "Fuckin' crazy Greek motherfucker. Just because he wants to die doesn't mean the rest of us have to."
She tried a different tack. Perhaps if she mixed up her questions, flitting from subject to subject, she could surprise Fauquier into telling her something, anything.
"Why were you angry with Abramowitz?"
"Hey, he did a shitty job. I'm here, aren't I? Then he dropped me, foisted me off on some other public defender to handle my appeals. He fucked me. I'm not sorry he's dead, but I can't kill anyone from here. Even if I could I don't think Abramowitz would be my first choice."
"Really? Who would you kill?"
"Ben." The name of the boy who had watched him kill, the only one who had escaped. "I loved him, and he ratted me out."
"Really? I thought you were going to kill him, too."
"Oh, I was. But I was going to love him first. I loved all of my boys, but Ben was the handsomest. You know, Jonathan looked liked my Ben. I almost thought he was Ben, the first time I saw him. Of course, they tell me Ben's in a mental hospital somewhere, but they won't tell me where, which is a shame. I'd love to write him a letter sometime."
Fauquier smiled, waiting for Tess's reaction. She tried not to show how sickened she was, which she assumed was the point of his dreamy recitation. In a copse of trees almost within sight of Governor Ritchie Highway, Fauquier had strangled his last victim with a piece of red and white bunting from a roadside produce stand, then dismembered the body and buried it. Tess suddenly remembered a strange, stray detail from the trial. Ben had testified that Fauquier sang as he shoveled. Cole Porter's "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To."
She shook off the ugly memory. This was her only chance. Someone was going to figure out that Ed Monahan, seafood king, did not have a granddaughter. "There was a time when you thought Abramowitz was your best buddy. You told reporters you were lucky to have him. What changed?"
Fauquier, his arms still braced against the table, looked at his fingernails. He had a French manicure, Tess noticed, and there were no nicotine stains on his fingers.
"Suppose you did something?" he asked, his voice still dreamy. "Something wonderful. Your life's work. And no one appreciated it, no one knew?"
She stifled a sigh. "Do you really think what you did was wonderful?"
"It was ingenious." He leaned across the table toward her, eyes glowing happily. "A lot of people thought I started because of John Wayne Gacy, but I started way before that. I had killed my first one before anyone ever heard of that clown. I was careful. I was going to kill a boy in every county. Then I realized I needed verification, or how would anyone know? I was going to make Ben watch, then sign a little paper about what he had seen. Repeat, county after county, from the mountains to the sea. In the amber waves of grain. God bless America."
"‘America the Beautiful' is the one with the amber waves and the purple mountains' majesties above the fruited plain. You're mixing the two songs up."
His eyes flickered. "What do you mean, ‘fruited'? You saying I'm queer?"
"Of course not."
"'Cuz I'm not, you know. I was an artist. I shoulda been in Guinness, that's what I was aiming for. You gotta have proof to get into Guinness."
"I don't think Guinness keeps tabs on serial killers. Besides, you topped out at, what, twelve or thirteen? You're not even a contender any more."
"Well, I certainly expected some movie producers to come around, or someone who wanted to write a book. But no ever did. At least that's what my Jew lawyer told me during the trial. I wonder now. You know, your lawyer controls who gets in to see you. My new lawyer, he doesn't interfere. He doesn't do shit. But Abramowitz could have kept all those people away from me, and I never would have known."
A decade ago no one had wanted to read the details of his story. Of course, today there would have been two paperbacks on the shelves within weeks of Fauquier's arrest, a television movie, and a horde of tabloid television reporters, ready to pay anyone for the tiniest piece of his story. Maybe Tucker Fauquier's frustration was justified. He had been ahead of his time.
"What would you do with money anyway, assuming state laws allowed you to keep it? You're never leaving here." Even as she spoke she heard Jonathan's voice, answering her question, prodding her. "The money is leverage."
"How do you know what something's worth if no one ever pays you for it? I told Abramowitz to find a buyer for my story. The best he could do was find someone to pay me $50,000 a year not to talk."
"Why would someone pay you to shut up?"
"They paid me to talk, but only once. Then they paid me, every year, not to talk about something I didn't do. Not bad, huh? It's like a double negative. If I don't talk about what I didn't do, I must've done it."