"I don't know what that means, Marty. I just knew I had to punish you. God sent me to punish his weak vessels, to purify them, to make them whole again."
"As in to make them dead, Marlin?"
"Don't answer that, Marlin. Watch yourself, Agent Sherlock."
"Why did you leave out Belinda Madigan's name?"
He gave her that superior smile again, disregarding her question. "Belinda who? I don't know any Belinda. That's a pretty name, old-fashioned. What's she to you, Marty?"
"Do you think I look much like her, Marlin?''
"No, but I think you're prettier, I always-"
Big John Bullock's mouth was working. He didn't know what was going on, but he soon would. He wasn't stupid.
Lacey sat back in her chair and drew in a very deep breath.
Big John said finally, "Who's Belinda?"
"She was one of the women in San Francisco that Marlin had to purify. It was seven years ago. He purified seven women in San Francisco. It was seven, wasn't it, Marlin?"
He was shaking his head. "No, not seven. I don't do seven. My pa always told me that seven was a bad number, that it was even worse than thirteen. He'd always laugh at the hotels who didn't have a thirteenth floor, told me that the fools on the fourteenth floor were on the thirteenth really, but they were too stupid to realize it. No, I never did seven, did six, like my pa told me."
"All right. The six women you purified in San Francisco, all of them cursed and bad-mouthed their husbands?"
He nodded. Big John didn't say anything, which Lacey considered a gift.
"Did you date any of them, Marlin? You're a good-looking guy, I bet it wouldn't have been hard for you to get a date with almost any woman, right?"
He nodded again. "Ladies like me," he said, and studied his thumbnail. "They tell me I'm a great lover." She nearly gagged. "You date Belinda?"
"I told you, Marty, she wasn't one of the women I had to purify. Why are you so interested in her anyway?"
"I like the name. It's unusual."
"I don't like the name, but I like yours, Marty. It sounds kind of like a boy's name. It was close, you know? Once I thought God wanted me to purify little boys, to correct them if they'd gotten a bad start, put them on the right path, but then I realized it wasn't boys, it was girls. Women who'd had their chance to straighten out, but hadn't. Women who'd married good men and turned on them. I slept with them, you know, just to make sure they were the ones to take out. All six of them cheated on their husbands, told me what jerks they were, so then I was sure they had to walk the walk through my maze."
"Marlin," Big John said very quietly, "shut up."
"Yeah, well, purify, then. That's it, purify. I wish I'd gone to college. I could have learned more pretty words like purify"
She was riveted. She imagined that all the people listening
to Marlin were riveted. She wondered what Savich was thinking.
"You didn't ask me out when I came to the hardware store."
"I know. That was weird. I slept with Hillary. She was good. She sucked me off really well. Do you know that she said bad things while I fucked her?"
She would push back. "Why didn't you try to fuck me, Marlin?"
She watched him actually flinch. None of it was an act. "Don't, Marty. That sounds so crazy coming from you. Don't talk like that, okay?"
"Okay. But why didn't you want to be intimate with me, Marlin?"
He shrugged. "You came on so strong, talking about your poor husband like you did, and then there was your foul mouth. You said all those bad words right in front of me." He sighed. "But you know, I was just in a hurry. I couldn't take the time to ask you out, to see if you'd sleep with me."
"Why the hurry, Marlin?"
"Because God wanted me to go to Toronto. I couldn't until
I'd taken care of six women here in Boston. Yeah, I was in a hurry. I'm sorry, Marty. Do you wish I'd made love to you?"
"I don't think so, Marlin. I do find your claim hard to believe. No one reported seeing any of the women in San Francisco with you. No one saw you with Hillary here in Boston. Why do you think that's so?"
"I knew I had to be careful. After Denver, I was real cautious, not that I could do everything I wanted to there. Only two women and then it was just too dangerous. I'd been seen with both women. I had to leave. God saved me there, but he told me I had to be smarter and so I was in San Francisco. The women all loved the mystery, the secrets I shared with them, the dark little places I took them to. They all loved how I smelled, you know, like fresh-cut wood, real fresh. They all thought I was dangerous and wonderful. With two of them I didn't even have to hit them on the head. I just asked if they wanted to play the maze game with me, and they couldn't wait. They both loved it. Until the end. Until I told them what I had to do. I think they forgot I was a good lover then."
"Marlin, shut the fuck up!"
26
SHE WONDERED WHAT WOULD happen if she threw up on the Formica table. Would anyone even know?
"But not Belinda? She wouldn't sleep with you, would she, Marlin? She thought you were sick. She thought you were disgusting. She didn't want to have anything to do with you. She just wanted her husband, nobody else, just her husband."
His hands were fists. "I don't know what you're talking about."
The sergeant was away from the wall in an instant, his gun up.
Lacey just shook her head. "You know what I'm talking about. God wouldn't want you to lie. Just tell the truth. Belinda didn't want you. She probably laughed at you, told you you were pathetic. That's why you ki-purified her, isn't it? She didn't want you, plain and simple. She didn't curse. She didn't bad-mouth her husband. She didn't fit the mold of all the other women. You know she didn't. Why, Marlin, why did you kill her?"
"This is over," said Big John, rising slowly from his chair, one beefy hand on Martin's shoulder. "Don't say anything, Marlin, nothing more for these folks."
"What makes you believe I didn't have Belinda?" Marlin said in a low whisper, leaning toward Lacey. "You really think a woman could laugh at me? Turn me down? No way, Marty. Yeah, I had Belinda. I don't want you, Marty. You're cynical. You probably hate men, you probably don't ever-"
"Marlin, dammit, let it go. Listen, you moron. I told you to shut the fuck up."
It took just an instant of time, just the barest instant, for the violence to erupt. Marlin raised his chained hands, clasped them together into fists and brought them down with all his strength on John Bullock's left temple. Big John groaned very softly in his throat and slumped back into his chair, his head falling forward to hit the Formica tabletop. He was out. A trickle of blood snaked out of his right nostril.
The sergeant was all over Marlin. The door burst open again, and three cops surged in. She wondered why they didn't just shoot him. It would save the taxpayers millions of dollars. But they didn't shoot him. She wanted to yell at them that he was filth, that he'd probably go to an institution and maybe get out in twenty years and begin it all again. She managed to keep her rage to herself.
"They'd send me to jail for sure if I did," Dillon said close to her ear. "Sorry but I can't, Sherlock." It was then she realized that she'd just whispered what she was thinking. Only Dillon had heard her, thank God. No one was paying any attention to her at all. They were all over Marlin, dragging him out of the room. She heard someone yell out, "Get a goddamn ambulance in here! The guy cracked his own lawyer's head!"
Marlin turned very slightly and smiled back at her. "She was good, Marty, really good. That punk husband of hers was a monster, not me. I cared about them, cared about their souls. But he was real bad. She wanted me, Marty, not the other way around, I swear. You know something? I miss Belinda."
And then he was gone, surrounded by cops, shuffling forward, the leg shackles clanking against the linoleum of the hallway.