“Sorry, go ahead.”
“I had my gun. I put it against her forehead and I shot her.”
“What kind of gun?”
Leopold answered right away. “Forty-five. Smith and Wesson.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“Stole it off some guy.”
“Guy have a name?”
Leopold just shrugged.
“Keep going.”
Overhead Decker could hear doors opening and feet trooping around. It seemed some of the cops were returning from the high school.
“So I shot her. No, wait a minute. She did wake up, come to think. She sat up, she was starting to scream. That’s right. And I shot her. Then the bitch fell off the bed.”
“Flat on the floor? Her whole body?”
Leopold looked at him warily. “Maybe parta her got hung up. Foot or arm or something.”
“What then?”
This was the critical point. The one that had not made it into the papers. The wound to her head was not the only one Cassie had suffered. It had been discovered during the autopsy.
She had not been raped. But the outside of her genitals had been mutilated.
“Knew he had a daughter. I went down the hall to her room. She was sleeping.”
“So you were done with the woman. Nothing else with her?”
Leopold just stared up at him. “I told you what I done. I shot her. Dead!”
“Okay.”
“Then I went down the hall to the kid.”
“Wait a minute, the shot didn’t wake the girl up?”
Leopold looked puzzled again. “I, no, don’t think so. She was sleeping.”
“Then what?”
“I took her outta the bed.”
“Why?”
“I just did. Wasn’t thinking too clearly then. Took her to the bathroom.”
“Again, why? Not thinking too clearly?”
“That’s right. Maybe I had to take a leak and didn’t want her getting away.”
“Did you take a leak?”
“Don’t remember.”
“And she didn’t scream when she saw you?”
“No. She was scared, I guess. And... and I told her to be quiet.”
“Then?”
“Then I strangled her. Put my hands around her neck and just squeezed tight as—”
Decker put up a hand for him to stop. He looked away for a moment, the most brilliant blue blinding him. The color was so bright he thought he might be sick. It was like he was suffocating in sapphire.
“Hey, man, you okay?” asked Leopold with genuine concern on his face.
Decker’s forehead was drenched in perspiration. He slowly wiped it off. “Okay, you killed her, then what?”
Leopold looked unsure again.
Decker said, “Did you do anything with the body? Do something with her clothing?”
Leopold snapped his fingers. “That’s right,” he said, his face beaming like he’d just got the answer right in algebra class. “I sat her up on the toilet and I tied her, uh, whatchamacallit.”
“Her robe belt?” prompted Decker.
“Right, her robe belt around her and the toilet.”
“Why?”
Leopold just stared at him. “’Cause... ’cause that’s what I thought to do at the time.”
“How’d you get away?”
“I went out the way I came in.”
“Did you have a car?”
“No, I told you I walked!”
“Anybody see you?”
“Not that I know of.”
“What’d you do with the gun?”
“Trash.”
“Where?”
“Don’t remember.”
“The knife?”
Leopold shrugged. “The same.”
“You tell anybody what you did?” asked Decker.
“Not till now.”
“So why now?”
Leopold shrugged again. “They gonna fry my ass?”
“Lethal injection. Frying comes later.”
“Huh?”
“In hell.”
“Oh, yeah.” Leopold chuckled like he thought Decker was making a joke. “That’s a good one.”
“So why come forward now?” asked Decker.
Leopold said, “Seemed as good a time as any. Ain’t had nothing else going on.”
Decker eyed a lump on the side of Leopold’s neck. “What’s that lump? You sick?”
Leopold reached up and gingerly touched it. “Ain’t nothing.”
“You have it checked out?”
Leopold snorted. “Yeah. I went to the Mayo Clinic on my jet. Paid in cash.”
Sarcasm. Interesting.
“If you were in the Navy you might have health coverage.”
Leopold shook his head. “DD. Dishonorable discharge.”
“So you were in the Navy?”
“Yeah,” conceded Leopold.
The sounds from above were getting louder. Decker checked his watch. Two minutes left and Brimmer seemed like the type who would show up right on time to escort him out.
“Any PTSD?”
“Any what?”
“Head problems? Depression? From combat?”
“I was never in combat.”
“So you’re just a sick son of a bitch who wipes out a family because somebody dissed you?” Decker kept his voice level and calm.
Leopold attempted a grin. “I guess so. I’m bad news, man. Always have been. If my momma were alive she could tell you. I’m just a shit. Screwed up every damn thing I ever touched in my whole life. No lie.”
“And when we check your military records it’ll show you were in the Navy as Sebastian Leopold?”
Leopold nodded, but absently, as though he weren’t really agreeing with the statement.
Decker leaned closer. “Let me ask it clearer. Is Sebastian Leopold your real name?”
“One I been using.”
“Since birth or more recently?”
“Not since birth, no.”
“So why use that name, then, if it’s not yours?”
“What’s in a name, man? Just letters stuck together.”
Decker pulled out his phone and, pointing it at Leopold, said, “Say cheese.”
He took Leopold’s picture and then put his phone away.
Then he held out a pen and a piece of paper. “Can you write down your name for me?”
“Why?”
“It’s just for my records.”
Leopold took the pen and slowly wrote out his name.
Decker took back the paper and the pen, stood, and said, “I’ll be in touch.”
He went to the door and called for the jailer. When the man came and unlocked the door Decker said, “Memory serves, there’s a bathroom right down there, right?” He pointed the opposite way he had come in.
The jailer nodded. “Yep, men’s room is the first door.”
Decker stuffed his pad and pen back into the briefcase and moved swiftly down the hall toward the john. His change in plan had been prompted by the footsteps he’d heard clattering down the steps. More than one pair, which meant that Brimmer had reinforcements. Which meant they knew something was up.
Decker walked past the door to the toilet and hung a left and then a right and hit another corridor. He was as familiar with the layout here as anyone.
The hall ended in a door. He opened it and stepped out onto the loading dock. There was no one there. And only one truck backed up to the dock, its overhead door open, revealing the trailer to be empty.
Decker skittered down a short stack of steps and his new, tight shoes hit asphalt. He turned left down an alley and emerged on the main street ten seconds later. He hung another right and then a left at the next intersection. There was a hotel there and a cabstand.
He told the lead cabbie, “Head north as far as five bucks will take me.”
The cab dropped him off a while later. He hoofed it to a bus stop, and two rides later he was back at the Residence Inn. As he stepped off the bus he noted there were two police cars parked out front and an official departmental car he knew had to belong to someone other than a street cop.