Of course.
MacNally rolled to his knees, then, unsteadily, stood up and faced his son. “Why are you doing this?”
“Why? Why?” Allman tilted his head, as if MacNally was a child who could not understand that which should have been a simple concept. “All these years, I’ve been showing you what you haven’t had the guts to do. I was showing you how to be a fucking man.”
MacNally squinted anger; his face reddened.
“But you haven’t been paying attention,” Allman shouted. “Have you? Have you been following it in the newspapers? I sent you all the articles!”
MacNally blinked and recoiled his head at Allman’s raised voice. “I didn’t-I didn’t know who they were from,” he said quickly. “It didn’t have your name on them. I didn’t understand.”
“Then you’re as stupid as the people who imprisoned you. As stupid as the cops who were my best buddies while they were investigating-and I was writing about-the people I’d just killed.”
MacNally shook his head, as if doing so would jar something and bring things into focus. “I don’t think as well as I used to-my brains were scrambled, I’m-”
“Pathetic, that’s what you are,” Allman said. “If you were a real man, you’d have taken care of all these jerkoffs yourself. They wronged you, they abused you. They beat you, they threw you in a goddamn sensory deprivation cell and drained your soul. Total darkness, never seeing the sun, twenty-four hours a day. Day, after day, after day.”
“And how would you know about that, Clay?” Burden asked.
“I read the goddamn books. All of ’em. And I’ve watched the interviews with the guards and the cons. And I read the warden’s records in the San Bruno Archives. It’s all spelled out there in detail. What a fucking wimp my father was. What an embarrassment.” He turned back to MacNally. “But what did I expect? If you’d been a man when I was young, you wouldn’t have ended up in jail on some stupid plan to rob banks. Banks! What a pathetic excuse you were for a father. You couldn’t even do that right.”
“I tried to be a good father. That’s the only reason why I did it, why I destroyed my life.” MacNally’s face crumpled in pain. “You know that. I only wanted to give you food, a house. A bicycle…”
“And did I ever get that bike?” Allman leaned into MacNally’s face. “Answer me!”
MacNally recoiled, raising a shoulder as if it could provide a defense against painful vitriol.
“You’re a failure, Dad. Always were.”
“Not true!” the muscles in MacNally’s neck went taut, the veins in his forehead bulged, spittle flying forth from his lips as he spoke. “I had a job. A family. A wife, a beautiful soul. And I was a good man.” Tears flooded his eyes and he fell to his knees. His voice rose in a painful whine as he craned his neck toward the sky. “Doris… Why’d you have to die?”
Allman spit on his father. “You’re a pathetic old man. Clueless to this day. All that time to think, and you still don’t know.”
“Mr. MacNally,” Vail said gently. “Henry killed your wife. He killed Doris.” She turned to Allman. “You never had the courage to tell him, did you? Go on, Clay. Tell him.”
Allman glared at her, his eyes black…no reflection. Soulless. She had seen this many times before when a psychopath felt threatened. Snake eyes.
MacNally looked at his son, perhaps putting events together in combinations he had never thought to do-could never think to do.
“You killed her,” Vail said firmly. “Didn’t you?”
Allman’s face relaxed, broadening into a grin. “She was my first. It made me who I am.”
MacNally pulled his gaze up to Allman. “How could you?”
“Mom knew I was different. She didn’t know why or how, but she knew. It was you that was the problem. You didn’t want to hear it.”
MacNally looked at Vail, his eyes glossing over.
Despite the anger and blind rage that Walton MacNally had built up over his years of incarceration, deep down, Vail believed he regretted having to kill to survive; that he would not have taken a life had he not been placed in the do-or-die situations he had undoubtedly confronted in prison. He killed out of necessity. MacNally was capable of emotions, of bonds, of deep love for his son. He was not a psychopath, even with his brain injury. Vail was sure of that.
But he gave birth to one.
MacNally brought his sleeve up and dragged it across his face.
Henry MacNally-Clay Allman-was a sexual serial killer who did not need a reason for killing-but in his distorted view of things, his father presented him with one that brought cohesion and purpose to his murderous ways.
MacNally looked at Vail-his face pleading disbelief. Wanting an explanation.
“You probably didn’t know what you were seeing, Mr. MacNally, but I’m betting that Henry showed some early signs as a child…inappropriate sexual contact, maybe even sexual aggression.”
MacNally swallowed hard. “Doris-his mother found him with a girl about a week before she…before Doris was killed. Henry was holding her down, touching her breasts.” He shook his head, looked up at the sky, then sniffled. “Doris was very upset by it. I told her he’s just being a boy, he’s curious.” He turned to Allman. “I talked to him, told him that it’s not right to touch other people’s bodies like that.”
Allman laughed. “I remember that.” He smiled. “You had no fucking idea what you were dealing with.”
You sure got that right.
“I bet you even took something from your mother,” Vail said. “A locket, an heirloom of some kind.”
Allman smiled.
MacNally’s eyes widened. “Her grandmother’s brooch. He had it when I got home that night. I thought he wanted something from his mother, to remember her by. How-how’d you know?”
“That’s what a young psychopath would do. He did take it to remind himself of his mother-but it wasn’t an act of sentimentality. He took it to remember how he felt when he killed her. To relive that sense of power.”
“I find it kind of touching,” Allman said. “Don’t you?”
“That bar of soap.” MacNally’s eyes filled with tears as his gaze canted up toward his son. “I thought you stole it from that store because the scent reminded you of your mom. But it was really some sick way for you to relive her murder.”
“It’s over, Clay.” Vail steadied her Glock. “Drop the weapons and get down on your knees.”
Allman frowned. “Go fuck yourself, Vail.”
MacNally struggled to get to his feet. He again drew a sleeve across his face and he sniffed back a nose full of snot. “An officer once told me that life’s a series of choices. I made some bad ones that landed me behind bars, decisions that were for Henry’s benefit. But that guard was right. Yeah, I always had a reason or an excuse-we needed the money. Or it’s prison, and you’ve gotta eat or be eaten. Maybe that’s all true. But it was never for me, it was for my son.” He turned to Allman, whose contempt-filled smirk indicated his indifference to his father’s moral struggles.