“Thank you, Mr. James.” Sherlock didn’t pull away from the old man when he raised his thin veined hand to smooth her thick hair.
Warden Rafferty was moving from one foot to the other, doubtless wondering why they were playing around like this, but he kept quiet, something Savich appreciated.
Savich said, “Okay, Mr. James, you’ve flirted enough with my wife. You back off now or I’ll have to hurt you.”
The old man grinned wide again, showing white teeth that looked like his own. “You’re a lucky boy,” he said. “Okay, you’re here to ask me questions. Obviously something’s happened. What’s up?”
Savich said, “I want you to tell us all you remember about the Pallacks. The parents and their son Thomas. You said Mrs. Pal-lack was the worst, worse than her son and her husband. Tell us what you mean.”
Courtney James looked over at the blank white wall. “It was a long time ago, but you know, some things are like photographs, they stay in your brain forever. I can still see the look on her face when I stabbed her the first time. Okay, let me get back on track here. Margaret Pallack was the prettiest woman I’d ever seen, and she knew it. She was almost sixty, Pallack sixty-five when I killed them, but you know what? She was still a beauty, tall and slim— she stayed fit, had her own gym in her house and exercised every day—and she had beautiful dark hair that curved around her jaw. A stranger would have thought she wasn’t a day over forty. And did she ever know it, and use it.”
“Why would you kill a woman you so obviously admired?”
“Well, now, pretty girl, since you ask, the thing is, she slept with me. I never admitted that to the cops, prurient little bastards, never told them anything, really, since they’d already made up their minds that I was this demon psychopath, that I’d butchered everything that moved. But I don’t care now that you know. The truth is, I had loads of provocation, a whole bulging truckload.
“I think that whole serial killer nonsense was Thomas’s doing. Thomas Pallack was a chip off the old block, his mama’s old block, always tied to his mama’s leash, was Thomas. I remember that the prosecutor kept trying to sneak in references to ‘other crimes’ and ‘other people,’ that sort of thing, but they didn’t have any proof of that.
“Yeah, I’ll bet it was Thomas. The snooty little creep always hated me. I’d see him staring at his mother, then over at me, and he looked vicious, like he knew. You know something else? He looked jealous. I used to wonder if he’d have tried to frame me for killing his parents even if I hadn’t done it. But the thing is, his folks, they really asked for it like I said, they really did.” He stopped talking for some time, just stared blankly at the white wall in front of him.
Finally, Savich said, “Mr. James, you’re speaking very freely to us, and we appreciate that.”
“And why shouldn’t I, Agent Savich? I’m nearly eighty years old. How much longer can I last in the warden’s lovely country home? Like I already told you, I spent years with everyone believing I was a serial killer, that I heard voices from the devil, nonsense like that. I remember having to deny it even to the shrinks in here, but no one wanted to hear it.
“Now, here are two federal agents who are finally ready to hear what really happened. You are, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Mr. James, we came a long way to find out what really happened.”
“Ah, you’re such a pretty little girl. I hate for you to hear all this, even though all the blood is dry now, but it isn’t pleasant—”
“I’m pretty tough, Mr. James. It’s my job to be.”
He looked at her with his bright blue eyes, intelligent eyes, assessing her. Then he gave her a sweet smile, and Sherlock had to remind herself that he was a murderer.
He said, “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
“Good,” Savich said. “Please include me in that too, Mr. James. May we record this?”
The old man slowly nodded. He said, “Her name was Margaret. I called her Maggie May. I remember I used to sing ‘Maggie May’ when we were in bed. That was before I killed her.”
CHAPTER 56
Why?” Sherlock asked him when he went silent again. “Because she was older, I suppose, like the Maggie May in that old Rod Stewart song. I was her young man even though I was middle-aged then, ten years older than that loser son of hers. Yep, I slept with her, you know, and no one ever really knew about it. I kept our secret, let her keep her reputation even in death.”
Savich said, “You never told her son Thomas?”
“Yes, but not until later. He suspected, but he didn’t know for sure.”
“You said you thought Thomas was jealous of you.”
“Oh yeah, I think Thomas felt some things for his mama a son shouldn’t feel. I think he could have settled in quite naturally with all the other sicko perverts on somebody’s couch. What he didn’t realize back then, maybe he still doesn’t, is what a conniving bitch his precious mother was.”
“What do you mean?” Sherlock asked. “What happened?” He gave her another sweet smile. “After she’d slept with me maybe three months, she told me one afternoon when I’d slipped into her house and found her in the kitchen—her husband was off playing golf—that her son told her I buggered little boys for money, stuff like that. She said Thomas told her I’d made a pass at him. It wasn’t nice what she said to me, and she didn’t shut up. Then her husband came in through the back door into the kitchen and she looked like she’d swallowed her tongue. I remember as clear as day how I stood up and smiled at him, not a nice smile like I give you, Agent Sherlock, but a real mean smile. I told him flat out I was sleeping with his sweet-assed wife because he was old and bony, but hey, she was sexy and hot, and a pretty good lay, even if she was a gold-plated bitch.
“The old man threw his golf clubs at me, can you imagine? Landed six feet short, of course, since he was such a bloody wuss. I laughed at him and he came at me in a rage. I remember her screaming. I picked up one of those fancy knives she was using and stuck it in his neck. All that blood.” He paused a moment, and they saw a flash of pleasure. “Blood everywhere and she wouldn’t stop screaming, so I stuck the knife in her chest. Do you know she only made this little squeaking sound, that was all? Then I stabbed her a whole bunch of times. I don’t remember how many, I just kept going, in and out, in and out.
“They were dead, lying on that huge kitchen floor, bleeding all over the white tiles. It was a mess, I’ll tell you.
“There was no one around. It was a Sunday, you see, and the hired staff had the day off. I stood there, looking down at them, and thought about what I was going to do. I’m not stupid, so I cleaned up really good, took the knife, and left. Since the Pallacks’ house was only two doors away from mine, I could go through the backyards and not be seen by anyone.
“I thought I was home free there for a good long while, but I knew Thomas was eyeing me, like he knew I’d done it, but he couldn’t prove anything. I’ll have to give him credit though, Thomas came after me with all the money he had. He hired half a dozen investigators. It was only me he wanted, even though he pretended he was checking out all the neighbors. I think they wire-tapped my phones, talked to all my relatives, even got ahold of my credit card reports.
“One day I came home early and found the police in my basement and I knew I was in deep trouble. Thomas must have helped them get a search warrant. My lawyer told me the cops found medieval torture instruments in the basement and there was dried blood on them.”
Savich nodded.
The old man shook his head. “But it wasn’t my stuff, it was my dad’s. He was a real history nut, loved that old stuff, anything the inquisitors used, he had to have it. Everyone knew about his torture chamber, as he liked to call it—he was an eccentric. There wasn’t any blood until Thomas got some and smeared it on some of my father’s equipment. My old man was harmless.”