She gathered her files, then picked up a pair of new slip-on sneakers. Because the interrogation rooms were built almost fifty years ago and didn’t include one-way mirrors or observation rooms, the session would be recorded by SID on the fourth floor. Although Klinger was still missing and Chief Logan remained eerily silent, Rhodes would oversee the recording to make sure that no one was eavesdropping from above.
The phone rang. Barrera grabbed it and listened, then hung up and turned to Lena.
“Rhodes,” he said. “They’re ready. Tape’s rolling.”
She met his eyes, then walked out of the office heading for the interrogation room. When she pulled the door open, Cava looked up from his chair against the rear wall.
“Would you like a cup of coffee, Doctor?”
He stared at her for a moment, surprised. “Sugar, but no cream,” he said in a quiet voice.
Lena left her things on the table, then poured two cups of coffee at the counter by the fax machine, added sugar, and returned to the room. As she closed the door and sat down, she could feel Cava’s eyes on her. He seemed reserved, catlike. She pulled her cell out and flipped it open. When the screen lit up, she switched off the power and returned the phone to her pocket. Cava’s eyes slid across the table to his coffee. Lena watched him lift the cup. His hands were trembling, and he seemed aware that she had noticed.
“Where are my medications,” he said. “And what happened to my shoes?”
She pushed the sneakers across the table. “These should fit. They’re size ten.”
He pulled them closer and examined them, then noticed the lack of shoelaces. “You think I’m gonna hang myself?”
She shrugged and it seemed to anger him.
“The pair you took from me were Bruno Maglis. They cost four hundred dollars.”
“These cost twenty-three,” she said.
He shook his head, then dropped the sneakers on the floor and slipped them over his socks. Lena used the time to open her files and lay them out on the table. As she made a few adjustments, Cava rattled the handcuffs.
“You think that I don’t know what you’re doing,” he said.
She turned to him, but remained silent.
“You think I haven’t sat in your chair before and done the same thing? You think that I’m really gonna talk to you? You think that I’m that stupid?”
He was nervous. She could see it. And he was spent. His eyes were glassy. Like a window in a gutted house, she could see the damage on the other side.
“How did you find me?” he asked.
Lena ignored the question and stared at him for a moment. “You’re not a real doctor, are you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sure, you went to med school, Cava. But you almost flunked out. You’ve never worked at a hospital and you’ve never had any patients. You’re a loser, Cava. And I’ve seen your military file. You’re not even a real spook. You’re only half a spook. The only reason the army took you into the medical corps is because no one else signed up. They were desperate. After they ran out of good guys, they came to you. They took one look and knew that you’d do their dirty work for them.”
Cava laughed. “Nice try, but it won’t fly. No matter how strung out I am, you will never break me down. Never ever, bitch. I’m gonna walk on this. You’ll see.”
“You’re too sloppy to walk, Cava. You do too many drugs and you’re too far in. You only see what you want to see.”
“I’m connected. And I’m gonna walk out of here in these lousy shoes. I’ll drop you a line from paradise when I get there.”
Lena pushed her coffee aside. She didn’t need it.
“But you don’t live in paradise, Cava. You live in a world where it’s cloudy every day. I went through your medications. You need pills to do everything that you do in this world. You take a pill to get up and another one to go to sleep. You need medication to eat, take a leak, get it up, or turn your stupid iPod on. You even take something because you can’t blink your eyes on your own. You’re a parasite. A follower. A scavenger and a user. You see a situation and you take advantage of it. You work it, exploit it. You don’t mend things, you kill them. And I can see it in your eyes, Cava. Your dead fucking eyes. You dig it. Killing turns you on.”
Cava leaned back in the chair, stunned by the barrage. “That’s not true. Now tell me how you found me?”
Lena ignored the question again. It was time to walk the murderer down Memory Lane. She sifted through the pictures she had selected with Barrera and Rhodes and began setting them down on the table. First up were snapshots of the Taser they recovered and the Cock-a-doodle-do.
“You don’t even need to talk,” she said. “Just sit back and relax.”
“Fuck you.”
She set down a series of pictures from the crime scene inside the garage on Barton Avenue, and the alley behind Tiny’s a half block north of Hollywood Boulevard. Jennifer Bloom was finally on the table, stuffed inside a garbage bag with her lost eyes squared up to the lens. Everything was here: the makeshift operating table, the buckets filled with the victim’s blood.
“We know that you shot her five times with the Taser. Twice in the parking lot, then three more times in the garage you rented. We know that you bled her out, cut her up and dumped her body in Hollywood.”
“Could have been anyone.”
“Like I said, Cava, you’re a loser. You’re sloppy. You’re in over your head.”
She laid down two additional snapshots. The first was taken at Cava’s apartment at the time of his arrest. A close-up view of the shoes he had been wearing that included the Phillips head screw still embedded in his right heel. The second, the footprint SID picked up from the garage that made it a perfect match. Then she added three more. Joseph Fontaine slumped over his chair with a bullet in his head. Greta Dietrich sliced and diced and packed up in the basement freezer. And finally, Denny Ramira, an award-winning journalist, sprawled out on his kitchen floor beside a bag of groceries with a meat thermometer puncturing his heart. When she remembered the shot of Ramira’s dog, Freddie, hanging from the stairway, she threw that on the table, too.
A moment passed. A long stretch of silence.
Four people. Four murders. Four corpses and a small dead dog.
The scope of the crime, the photographs, cut to the bone.
Lena returned to her chair and sat down, watching Cava examine the photos. “Do you really think that you’re gonna walk, Cava? Are you so deluded that you think there’s a way out of this? That somehow your friends can explain this away and get you off the hook? You’re the only one who’s expendable. The only one without power or standing. You know what’s gonna happen better than I do. You’re a soldier and they’re gonna throw you into the wind and run for cover. Look at these pictures. Think about the story they tell. What’s a jury gonna say when they see them?”
His dead blue eyes rocked back and forth over the photos, then rose up from the table and found her in the room.
“The question isn’t how long you’ll be in prison,” she said. “It’s the circumstances that you need to worry about. They’re special. You’re gonna die, Cava. They’re gonna stick the needle in your arm and you’re gonna die. The last execution I witnessed didn’t go very well. Someone screwed up and it took half an hour for the guy to die. It looked like it hurt.”
He was still staring at her with those bloodshot eyes. His face had lost its color and he was perspiring. When he spoke, his voice was so hoarse she could barely hear him.
“You’re good at this,” he said. “Now tell me what you want.”
“The man who’s writing the checks. Dean Tremell and everyone else who’s in on it.”
“What do I get in return?”
“Have I shot straight with you?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’d say you’re a straight shooter. Do you have the authority to make the deal?”
“Everything’s been approved.”