A physician named Zimmerman, slightly overweight, dressed in whites with the stethoscope of his profession around his neck, watched, fascinated, while his patient was questioned. Zimmerman could not have been more than twenty-eight.
"I killed Glick," said Joshua, wide eyes blinking. "I killed Joel. I was going to kill the priest."
"Go over each murder for me again," said Stella.
Joshua licked his lips and looked at the doctor as if he had never seen the man before.
"I was guided by the hand of a demon," he said.
"Could you be a little more specific than that?" asked Stella.
"Don't remember," said Joshua. "He called me on the phone, found me in a bottle, spoke to me in tongues. Can I request execution by crucifixion in this state?"
"No," said Stella. "Nor in any other one."
"I think he's bleeding again," Dr. Zimmerman said in a deep voice. "Right foot."
Stella nodded, clicked off the tape recorder and tucked it into her kit.
Joshua hadn't killed anyone. A case could be built against Joshua, not a strong one, but one that if taken to a jury might be enough.
Stella rose.
Joshua looked up at her and smiled.
"Anything?" asked Mac, looking through the one-way mirror.
"Lulling 'em. Making nice," said Detective Buddy Roberts, who stood with hands in pockets.
"They say anything?" asked Mac.
"No, Shelton knows we're listening."
Mac's eyes were on Shelton and Jacob Vorhees, who sat silently.
He wasn't looking forward to what was going to happen when he stepped inside that room. He wasn't looking forward to what he was going to do to the frightened boy. Mac told himself that this would hurt Jacob Vorhees, but as with most wounds, after the pain the healing would begin.
Mac looked at Roberts, who shook his head "no" in answer to some inner question.
Roberts, two months from retirement, was big and bald with deep bags under eyes that had seen almost any horror the inhuman mind could come up with. He had built a fragile wall between himself and the images of children mutilated by their own parents, women torn from between their legs up to their bloody faces.
Roberts' wall had been breached a little less than a year ago after he saw the body of a six-year-old boy who had been cut open, his liver removed. The cutter was the boy's father. It was less the horror of the dead boy, which he could block, but the reaction of the father.
"I want to be a liver donor," the father had said with a grin.
The father was a thin weasel with nervous hands and long dirty hair. The reason the father gave for what he had done was that he had been watching a rerun of Lost in Space when he suddenly got the idea of cutting out his son's liver. The weasel had thoroughly enjoyed telling the story, and that he had hidden the liver.
Mac had been on the case, had followed a trace trail of blood from the apartment building to a deli across the street. Roberts had watched Mac, who had simply stood inside the deli doorway, looked around and walked to the ice cream freezer. The deli clerk watched as the two policemen removed frozen fruit bars, ice-cream sandwiches, chocolate-topped cones, half gallons and quart blocks of ice cream.
And there it was at the bottom of the case, still red, frozen inside a zippered see-through bag. Roberts remembered thinking that the liver was no larger than one of the ice-cream sandwiches.
So, when he had interviewed the father, Roberts knew where the liver was: in the CSI lab being examined.
"Freezer at the deli," Roberts had said.
"Good," beamed the father, rubbing his head. "What say we have it for lunch?"
Roberts' wall had not come down completely, but he knew it soon might. He didn't want to see what was on the other side. He had already seen it.
"Buddy?" said Mac, pulling Roberts back from his thoughts.
"Yeah," said Roberts.
"They told them that Shelton can have a lawyer and stop talking and that Jacob must have a lawyer."
Roberts smiled, now fully back in the room.
"Shelton wants no lawyer," said Roberts. "We've got it in writing with witnesses. The Vorhees' family lawyer is on his way here now. We advised the boy that he say nothing till the lawyer gets here."
Mac looked through the window. Shelton looked tired. Jacob looked frightened and determined. Danny said something. Shelton nodded.
A few minutes later there was a knock on the door followed immediately by a lean man of about seventy in a designer business suit. The man who introduced himself as Lawrence Tabler shook Roberts' offered hand.
Mac knew who Tabler was, a high-cost, aggressive and convincing advocate for his clients. He turned his blue eyes on Mac and said, "Detective Taylor."
"Mr. Tabler," Mac acknowledged.
They didn't shake hands. A little over a month after 9/11 Mac had testified as an expert witness in the trial of a man who had brutally beaten his pregnant wife to death.
Tabler had relentlessly attacked the forensic evidence, suggested alternative scenarios to explain the evidence and, finally, attacked the integrity of the entire CSI unit, finishing with Mac. Tabler had done his homework or, more likely, had someone else do it.
"You want my client convicted, don't you, Detective?" Tabler had asked in court.
"He's guilty," said Mac.
"You're sure?" Tabler said, turning to the jury.
"I'm sure."
"Your wife died on 9/11," Tabler said.
"She did."
"You had a breakdown?"
"A short period of clinical depression," said Mac. "Like most people."
"Are you still depressed?" Tabler said, turning back to Mac.
While he didn't look directly at the prosecuting attorney, a slightly plump young blond with long straight hair, Mac did see her, wondered why she hadn't objected to this line of inquiry. Mac knew where it was going and couldn't stop it.
"I'm still depressed," said Mac.
"A man is accused of brutally murdering his wife," said Tabler. "You didn't choose to lose your wife, but you assumed going into the investigation that he had the choice?"
"We work on the evidence," said Mac. "We go where it takes us."
"And this time it took you to my client," said Tabler. "Often evidence doesn't lead. It follows, follows where you want it to take you. Is that right, Detective Taylor?"
"No," Mac had answered firmly.
"You've made mistakes," Tabler pushed.
"Yes," said Mac. He wanted to add, "Haven't you?" but decided not to.
The assistant prosecutor and Tabler made a last-minute plea bargain during the lunch break. Before the judge, the husband had admitted to having taken too many pills for a headache and going wild when his wife had asked him the same question she asked every morning: "One egg or two?"
He had gone into the kitchen and began beating his startled wife.
The plea bargain gave the murderer a minimum sentence of ten years. Mac felt that the settlement was partly due to his own testimony.
Now Mac said nothing, but opened the door and stepped through with Tabler behind him. Shelton and Jacob looked up.
Tabler smiled at the boy and said, "I'm your lawyer."
Jacob nodded.
"Have you told them anything?" Tabler asked, taking the last chair in the room.
Mac stood against the wall behind Tabler, arms folded.
"He was advised not to say anything till you got here," said Mac.
Tabler tried to turn his head to see Mac, but he couldn't.
Mac went on, "We'd like the two of them to tell us again what happened on the night of the murder."
Jacob pulled a folded sheet of yellow, lined paper from his back pocket and handed it to Tabler, who slowly and carefully read it. When he was finished, he handed the sheet back to Jacob.
"He's already made a statement and signed it," said Mac, moving now to sit next to the lawyer. "And it's on tape."
"Can't be used in court," said Tabler. "He did not have a lawyer present."