Figueras glared at Newbold. "What do you want?"
The lieutenant answered, "A ninety-day reprimand."
Figueras hesitated, then said, "Do it. Now get out!"
Newbold did.
What Ainslie would now receive was a reprimand that would go into his file for ninety days, after which the reprimand and all copies would be destroyed.
* * *
As succeeding weeks and months went by, Elroy Doil and the crimes attributed to him ceased to be at the forefront of either Homicide's concerns or public curiosity. For a while, during his trial, public attention came back when Ainslie, Dr. Sanchez, Ivan Tempone, and others appeared as witnesses, followed by a jury's guilty verdict and the judge's sentence of death. Several months later, there was some cursory interest as Doil's automatic appeal was rejected, followed by the news that Doil himself refused to allow further appeals, and an execution date was set.
Then, once more, Doil was almost forgotten until the night when Sergeant Malcolm Ainslie received a telephone call from Father Ray Oxbridge at Raiford prison.
The message was puzzling. Elroy Doil, who would go to the electric chair in eight more hours, had asked to see Malcolm Ainslie before he died.
PART THREE
1
In the austerely furnished, windowless room to which Elroy Doil had been brought, Malcolm Ainslie's thoughts were pulled back from the past by the pale, emaciated figure facing him. The man wearing leg irons and handcuffs secured to a waist belt and flanked by prison guards seemed so much in contrast to the physically powerful and aggressive Doil of the past that Ainslie found it hard to believe this really was the condemned prisoner he had come to see. But Doil's behavior had quickly left no doubt.
The room was quiet now that the priest, Father Ray Uxbridge, had left under protest, after Doil's insistent demand, "Get that asshole out of here!"
Doil was still kneeling before Ainslie, and the words of the prison officer, Lieutenant Hambrick If you want to hear it at all, better let him do it his way hung in the air.
"Whenever your last confession was," Ainslie told Doil, "doesn't matter now."
Doil nodded, then waited in silence. Ainslie knew why, and reluctantly, hating himself for the charade, recited, "May the Lord be in your heart and on your lips so that you may rightly confess your sins." Doil said immediately, "I killed some people, Father." Ainslie leaned forward. "Which people? How many?"
"There was fourteen."
Instinctively, Ainslie felt a surge of relief. The small but vocal group who had been arguing Doil's innocence would be squelched by the statement he'd just made. Ainslie glanced at Hambrick, who was a witness, remembering, too, that his own concealed tape recorder was running.
Miami Homicide, which conducted investigations into four double serial killings, and collaborated with Clearwater and Fort Lauderdale police concerning two more, would have their judgments confirmed. Then a thought struck Ainslie. "Who was the first you killed?"
"Them Ikeis couple Japs in Tampa."
"Who?'' Ainslie was startled. It was a name he had not heard before.
"Two old farts. I-k-e-i." Incongruously, as Doil spelled out the name, he chuckled.
"You killed them? When?"
"Don't remember . . . Oh, 'bout a month, maybe two, before I done them spies at the trailer place."
"The Esperanzas?"
"Yeah, them."
On hearing Doil admit to fourteen murders, Ainslie had assumed that number included Clarence and Florentina Esperanza, murdered seventeen years ago in West Dade's Happy Haven Trailer Park. As a juvenile, Doil was never charged, though recent evidence had shown him to be guilty as he had just admitted.
And yet, if the Ikeis were included a crime that, so far as Ainslie knew, Miami Homicide had never heard of something was wrong with the numbers.
Ainslie's mind was racing. Would Doil admit to a murder of which he wasn't guilty, especially now, when he was about to die? Inconceivable. So if he had killed the Ikeis and admitted to fourteen murders altogether, that left two victims unaccounted for.
But everyone police, state attorneys, news media, the public were convinced that Doil had committed fourteen murders: the Esperanzas, Frosts, Larsens, Hennenfelds, Urbinas, Ernsts, and Tempones.
If Doil was telling the truth, had some murders been committed by someone else? And if so, which ones?
Inevitably, Ainslie remembered his own instinct, first expressed to Sergeant Brewmaster, that the Ernst murders might not have been the work of the same serial killer they were after. But for the moment he brushed the thought away; this was no time to indulge personal theories. Earlier, his colleagues had all disagreed with him and he had not contested the consensus view. But now, somehow representing everyone, all viewpoints, including his own he had to wring the truth from Doil.
Ainslie glanced at his watch. So little time! Less than a half hour to Doil's execution, and they would take him away ahead of time . . . He steeled himself and his voice to lean hard on Doil, remembering Father Kevin O'Brien's words: Elroy was a pathological liar. He lied when he didn't have to.
Ainslie hadn't wanted to assume the priestly role; now it was time to drop it. "That's a crock of shit about the Ikeis and the Esperanzas," he scoffed. "Why should I believe you? Where's the proof?"
Doil thought briefly. "In the Esperanzas' trailer I musta dropped a gold money clip. Had 'HB' on it. Got it in a robbery, couple months before I knocked off them slants. Missed it when I got away."
"And the people in Tampa. What proof there?"
Doil smiled aberrantly. "There's a cem'tery near where the Ikeis lived. Had ta get rid o' the knife I used, hid it in a grave. Know what was on the marker? Same last name as mine. Saw it, knew I'd remember if I wanted the fuckin' knife back, but I never got it."
"You buried the knife in a grave? Was it deep?"
"NO, not deep."
"Why did you always kill old people?"
"They had it good too long, were fulla sin, Father. I did it for God. Watched 'em first, though. All fat cats."
Ainslie let the answer go. All of it made as much sense, or as little, as most of Doil's tortured mind. But how much of the truth was he telling, even now? Some for sure, but Ainslie disbelieved the knife-in-the-grave story; probably the money clip, too. And there was still the problem about numbers. He became specific.
"Did you kill Mr. and Mrs. Frost at the Royal Colonial Hotel?"
Doil nodded several times.
"You nodded your head. If that meant yes, please say so."
Doil looked at Ainslie sharply. "Gotta tape on, ain't you?"
Annoyed that he had given himself away, Ainslie said, "Yes."
"Don't matter. Yeah, I done them people, too."
At the mention of a tape, Ainslie had glanced toward Lieutenant Hambrick, who shrugged. NOW Ainslie continued.
"I want to ask about other names."
"Okay."
Ainslie went through the list Larsen, Hennenfeld, Urbina. In each case the answer was yes, Doil admitted having killed them.
"Commissioner and Mrs. Ernst."
"No, I never done them. That's what "
Not letting him finish, Ainslie said sharply, "Wait!" He went on, speaking for the consensus viewpoint he was representing, "Elroy, at this time, because of what's soon to happen, you must tell the truth. The Ernsts were killed in the same way as all the others exactly the same way. And you knew about Bay Point, where they lived. You went there when you worked for Suarez Motors; you knew the security system and how to get in. And the day after the murders, you left your job at Suarez and never went back, even to collect your paycheck."