“They weren’t sane,” said Matthew. “You of all people should be able to see that now.”
“Shut the hell up,” snapped the doctor.
Matthew turned to Bernadette. “Why would two otherwise fine people resort to water torture as a form of child discipline? They had to be crazy.” He looked at his brother with that last word, a term a psychiatrist would find vulgar, and repeated it with a smirk. “Crazy.”
“How did your parents do it?” asked Garcia.
“It was very civilized,” Luke said flatly. “Everyone had their role. Mother would fill the tub with cold water. Why waste hot water, right? Father was the judge, jury, and executioner. He determined who would receive the dunking and who of the other children would witness it.”
“Witness it?” Garcia asked. “Why a witness?”
Matthew shrugged. “I suppose to lend some sort of validity to it, a modicum of ceremony and propriety.”
“We offenders would put our hands behind us and lean over the side of the tub,” Luke continued. “Our sister usually tied her hair back herself, when she was the one being punished. Then Father would hold our heads under. The length of time we were held, the number of dunkings—all of that was up to Father. The more serious the offense, the worse the punishment. When we were toddlers, I imagine the length of time we were held in the water was minimal. As we got older—”
“Everyone was okay with this?” Garcia interrupted. “I can’t believe your mother went along.”
“Mother had experienced this sort of discipline at the hands of her parents,” said Luke. “She had no lasting physical damage and saw nothing wrong with using it on her own children.”
“You kids didn’t fight back?” asked Bernadette. “Why didn’t you run away or tell someone? You could have gone to a teacher. Another relative. A neighbor.”
Matthew sighed. “It had been a part of the fabric of our family for so long, we thought it was normal. We tolerated the dunkings the way other children accepted spankings or time-outs or getting grounded.”
Bernadette’s eyes narrowed as she addressed her next question to the doctor. “Have you used this on your kids?”
“Never,” he shot back. “I now recognize it as perverted. Abusive.”
“That revelation comes too late to help your sister,” said Garcia.
“You think we don’t beat ourselves up with that thought every day?” Matthew asked.
“Every minute of every day,” said Luke, his voice cracking. He dropped his head and his shoulders started vibrating.
Bernadette ripped a paper towel off a roll and tossed it to the weeping man.
“Save the boohoos for the jury,” said Garcia.
Bernadette shot a curious look at her boss.
“They’re leaving something out of this sob story.” Garcia tipped his head toward the doctor. “Tell her. Go ahead.”
Luke stayed silent.
“One of them killed their father,” Garcia explained. “Pushed him down the stairs. Told the cops the old guy fell.”
Bernadette, leaning her back against the counter, kept her gun on the pair. “Which one did it?”
Luke wiped his eyes while his younger sibling slouched in his seat. Neither man volunteered an answer.
“They’re fighting over who gets credit,” said Garcia.
She smiled tightly. “Sibling rivalry.”
“I did it,” Matthew blurted.
“He’s lying,” said his older brother, bunching the paper towel between his cuffed hands. “It was my call. He’d had a stroke … and I … wanted to put him out of his misery.”
Garcia said, “Who are you kidding? You hated his guts.”
Bernadette walked back and forth between the counter and the table. “Who raised his hand first?”
“Matthew confessed first,” said Garcia.
Bernadette studied the younger brother’s face. He’d never expressed the understanding of his parents’ behavior that his older brother had voiced. “Matthew did it, and the doc stepped in after Little Brother blabbed.”
Luke shook his head. “You’re wrong.”
“We’ll see who passes the polygraph and who doesn’t down at the police station,” said Garcia.
“That brotherly love thing again,” she said. “It’s serving them well—all the way to the jailhouse.”
“Speak of the devil,” said Garcia, seeing lights flashing across the kitchen windows.
Bernadette dropped her gun into her jacket pocket, went to the back door, and opened it. She held up her ID for two uniformed officers planted on the back stoop. “Can you give us a few minutes before you load them?”
The bigger cop looked into the kitchen and saw the two handcuffed men seated at the kitchen table. “Sure. This is your deal.” He glanced over at Garcia and said, “Hey.”
“Hey,” said Garcia.
“You’re Ed’s cousin, right?” asked the cop. “Ed in Homicide?”
“You betcha,” said Garcia. “Tell him I’m sending him a package.”
The officer gave Garcia a crooked grin. “We’ll hang out on the back steps.”
“Appreciate it,” said Bernadette, closing the kitchen door.
Seeing the officers jolted Matthew awake, and he was suddenly twitching in his seat. “Kyra Klein and the drownings in the river, we had nothing to do with those.” He nodded toward Garcia. “He says we did, but we didn’t.”
The horrific family history that the brothers had recounted at the kitchen table, paired with the April death of their sister, had to have some association with the murders. There was too much to be a coincidence. “Even if you didn’t do it, you know who did,” Bernadette told Matthew.
While the younger brother had touched back down to reality, his older sibling was drifting off. Drumming his fingers on top of the kitchen table, the doctor said in an eerily mechanical voice, “This is an early Victorian mahogany dining table. The piece is supported on beautifully proportioned fluted legs and came with two extra leaves, allowing it to extend to a length of nearly ten feet. It came with eight matching chairs, all but one with the original upholstery. I remember the day she picked up the set, at a well-attended auction outside of Chicago.”
“Your mother?” asked Garcia.
“The instant she laid her eyes on it, she had to have it. She called home so excited. She beat out two other bidders.” Luke meshed his fingers together, as if praying. “That same day my sister suffered a fall at the nursing home. Someone had dropped her during a bed transfer, breaking both her legs. When we told our mother, she acted as if we’d bothered her with some minor annoyance. We’d chipped a vase. The neighbor’s dog had excavated one of her rosebushes.”
“Doctor, please,” said Bernadette. “We need your help.”
“How?” asked Matthew. “How can he help? Tell us.”
The younger brother sounded sincere. Bernadette pulled out a chair and sat down across the table from the pair. “I believe someone close to your sister snapped when she died. He’s drowning these girls as some sort of—I don’t know—reenactment or something.”
“An old boyfriend?” asked Garcia.
Luke shook his head.
“Could I have a drink … of water at least,” Matthew croaked.
Bernadette got up, took down a glass from a cupboard, and went to the refrigerator. As she pressed the glass into the water dispenser, she scrutinized the Catholic mosaic decorating the front of the refrigerator. Handmade magnets in the shapes of crosses and flowers, undoubtedly produced by the doctor’s young daughters, held up church bulletins, fall fest raffle tickets, and Sunday school artwork.
Bernadette eyed one of the rare magnets not fabricated by a child’s fingers. “What’s this number?”