“Start wherever you want,” Nick said. “You can start with Marilyn Monroe. I didn’t kill her either.”
“You already admitted that you had a sexual relationship with Darlene. Isn’t that true?”
“I slept with her a couple of times. I was trying to get her to turn snitch for me, and I was trying to get close to her. I got a little too close. It was a mistake.”
“How many mistakes did you make?” Jim asked.
Nick glared at him. “Do you mean how many times did I fuck her? It’s okay, kid, you can say the word. Your tongue won’t turn black and fall out.”
Harry saw Jim’s jaw tighten, but he kept his cool. “How many times?” he asked again.
Nick gave out a little snort. “Three, four, I didn’t keep count. To tell you the truth, for all her looks she wasn’t that great.”
“Then why did you keep going back?” Vicky snapped.
Nick seemed pleased that he had irritated her. “I didn’t say she was terrible. I might even go back to a bitch like you for a second or third roll in the hay. Who knows?”
“Not on the best day of your life, slimeball,” Vicky retorted.
Jim raised a hand, calling for an end to it, and Nick laughed out loud. First round to the suspect, Harry thought.
“According to the younger Reverend Waldo you were pressing Darlene for sex, but it never happened,” Jim said. “At least that’s what she allegedly told him.”
“And?”
“Who’s telling the truth, you or him?”
“Was he fucking her too?”
“That’s irrelevant.”
“No it’s not, rookie,” Nick barked, taking charge again. “If he was fucking her, why would she admit that she was balling me too? She might say I wanted to fuck her to make him jealous, but why tell him she’d already spread her legs for me?”
“Jealousy, that’s an interesting point,” Jim said. “You didn’t know that she was sleeping with him-with Reverend Bobby Joe Waldo?”
“I assumed she was sleeping with anybody who had a dick. That’s the kind of broad she was. For crissake, she slept with fourteen-year-old kids, didn’t she?”
“So you expected her to be promiscuous,” Jim said.
“Shit, it was a fact of life.” He leaned closer to them, lowering his voice in a mocking manner. “It was on TV, in the newspapers, it was no fucking secret. So, yeah, I expected it. I never went near the broad without a box of condoms in my pocket.”
“So you weren’t jealous of her other lovers,” Vicky said.
“No,” Nick shot back.
Harry looked at Jim. It was time for him to jump in. He did, and he came in hard.
“You’re a liar,” he snapped, his eyes cold and hard on Nick.
“Fuck you,” Nick responded weakly. He hadn’t anticipated the sudden turn, the hard edge to Jim’s body language. He thought he was in control and it had taken him by surprise.
“You were jealous of every man who had ever been with her. She was beautiful, more beautiful than any woman you’d ever had. Men saw her on television and sat in their living rooms wanting her. And now you had her. You, Nick Benevuto, a short, fat, aging womanizer, who could only get a woman when he could browbeat or threaten her into it. And you weren’t going to let this one slip away. You weren’t going to share her with anybody. So you started following her, and when you caught her with that pathetic salesman, all dressed up like a cowboy, you flipped out and killed them both.”
“Prove it. It’s all bullshit!”
Harry watched Jim bear in, ignoring Nick’s denial.
“And when you realized what you’d done, you knew you had to do two things. First, you had to move the body so it was sure to come under county jurisdiction, where you’d have some involvement in the investigation. And second, you knew people were watching her, and that somebody might have seen your department car at Darlene’s house, might even have written down the license plate, so you had to cover yourself, you had to alter department records so they never showed you taking that particular car out.”
“It’s bullshit and you know it.”
Again, Jim ignored him. “And then you found out that Bobby Joe Waldo knew about you and Darlene, so you went to him and threatened him, scared the living hell out of him. But Harry Doyle was on his case; had him named as a suspect because people had seen him at Darlene’s house. And you knew Harry was good, you knew he’d break him down eventually, and that the little punk would give you up to save himself. So this afternoon you went to see him, didn’t you?”
“What the fuck are you talking about? I was never anywhere near that dope-peddling little prick. I never even met the son of a bitch.”
“You went to him and you killed him, just like you killed Darlene. You killed him because you knew he’d not only tell Harry about you and Darlene, about how you’d threatened her and blackmailed her into having sex with you, but that he’d tell him how you were threatening him to keep his mouth shut. You knew Harry would break him eventually, and so you had no choice. It was a ball rolling downhill and you couldn’t stop it.”
“The kid minister is dead?”
Harry noted the genuine shock on Nick’s face. If he was acting, he’d missed his calling in life.
“Stop the innocent act, Nick,” Vicky said. “If you want to show us you had nothing to do with this, let us toss your apartment, right now, tonight.”
Harry could see the wheels turning in Nick’s head. He was clearly thinking about what they might find there if he allowed a search. But it wasn’t necessarily what they might find about Darlene or Bobby Joe Waldo. Harry knew if they tossed his apartment and found the duplicate evidence he kept at home, he might easily face a suspension. Very few cops, if any, were clean as the driven snow. If the department wanted to get something on you, there was always something they could find.
“Let me think about it?” Nick said.
“Think about it for how long?” Jim asked.
“A day or two,” Nick said, knowing it was more than they’d agree to, but also knowing they’d have a tough time getting a search warrant any faster.
“Just enough time to clean out the place,” Vicky said. “That’s bull.
Would you give a suspect a day or two?”
“So now I’m a suspect? I thought I was a brother cop.”
“You’re both,” Jim said.
Nick leaned forward again, glaring at him. “If I wanted to toss a suspect’s crib, I’d get a search warrant. Maybe you should do that, rookie.”
“So you’re refusing?” Vicky asked.
“You bet your ass I’m refusing. And as far as I’m concerned, this interview is over.”
Nick sat back in his chair, stone-faced, hands in his lap. Harry noticed that his hands were trembling slightly. He was scared, and he should be scared. Harry was sure murder charges would never hold up. But Nick had to know they could be filed. Mistakes had been made before. Harry still didn’t make him for either murder. It just didn’t add up, and he’d fight filing charges against Nick. But at best the guy’s career had been tarnished beyond redemption. Even if he remained with the department, it would never again be in a position of trust or authority.
“You still don’t make Nick for either murder?” Vicky’s tone was pure incredulity.
“Are you going to back us on a warrant?”
“Go for your warrant,” Harry said. “I agree he’s a viable suspect. I just don’t think he’s our guy.”
“And who do you think is?” Jim asked.
Harry studied his shoes for a moment, considering how much he wanted to say. “I still think it’s someone connected to Bobby Joe’s church. And I think he knew who that person was, and it was somebody who really scared the hell out of him.”
“You said his father scared him to death,” Vicky said.
“No, this wasn’t someone who just intimidated him. This was somebody who made Bobby Joe believe he’d be killed if he ever talked. But his father was part of it. His father sent out a call asking his parishioners to get something on Darlene. Bobby Joe answered that call-that’s how he met Darlene. But our killer answered it too, and Bobby Joe knew it. That’s what eventually got him killed. The parents of the kid Darlene molested gave me a copy of a church bulletin where that call from Reverend Waldo was repeated. That’s the only thing that was taken from my house when the killer broke in. That’s the connection, that church bulletin. So I’m going to find out why it was important enough to make our killer risk breaking into my house. And when I do, I’ll know who killed Darlene and Bobby Joe.”