“Yeah. I’m sure your little white-trash girlfriend was as afraid of you as your wife was. Or was she an accomplice? But we caught you in a lie about where you were the day your wife was murdered. I hate cops that lie. If they lie about one thing they’ll lie about the important things, too.”
“I was a good cop.” Chambers swallowed the words.
Will said, “I just never understood the others.”
“What?”
“The other women. Jill Kelly. Lisa Schultz.”
He moved up to Chambers, making him dance his toes away from the wheels, vaguely aware of his foolhardiness. “I mean, if you were going to tamper with the DNA and implicate Factor, why kill those other women? Why turn the beef with your wife into a serial killing that had the whole city terrified?”
“Factor raped her and killed her. He killed all those girls. It was his semen. A jury said so.”
“It was his semen with Theresa. That’s the only one he was convicted for. Craig Factor had a rap sheet as a Peeping Tom. He’d never even been arrested for a violent offense.”
“Who the hell knows what makes a psycho snap.”
“Yeah, you should know, Marion. Two other women all killed the same way. Their clothes neatly folded. Very violent knife attack. The knife wiped clean of prints and hidden in the same room. They had been raped, the same as Theresa. Only, the funny thing, there was no semen. You made them take showers before you killed them? And the mutilation. You especially liked that, right? Got your dick all hard, that sense of power.”
“You say. Nobody believed that.”
“Don’t kid yourself. Who else could have done it? By the time the second murder happened, we were all over Mount Adams with stakeouts. Everybody was locked in their houses after dark. But the killings went on. Who else could do that but a cop, somebody who knew how we worked and could monitor our radio frequencies. Somebody who could get a woman to open her door.”
“Get the fuck away from me.” Chambers sidestepped him and stood at a distance.
“I’m just a guy in the hospital, remember? Just a curious guy. For awhile I wondered how you got Factor’s semen. How’d you do that, Marion? Or did you get one of your corrupt buddies in the evidence room to tamper with the DNA?”
Chambers’ eyes were bright with hate. His hands beat a silent tempo at his side. “You’re out of your mind, Borders. This is over, done.”
“No, Marion. We wish it were, but it just can’t stop, can it? You can’t stop. What was your connection to Dr. Lustig?”
“I don’t know who the hell you’re talking about now. All I know is I was exonerated. I always said a nigger broke in and raped her and killed her, and who’d it turn out to be? Nearly had a riot in Liberty Hill, I hear, when you and Dodds chased Craig Factor down in the street and arrested him. Somehow that wasn’t good enough for you. But the killings stopped when Factor was busted.” Chambers stepped aside and moved five paces away.
“I always wondered if you had a hard-on for me because I fucked your wife,” he added. “But I didn’t think you ever knew.”
“We’re talking about you. Why you killed those other women. Why you started again. You came down into the hospital basement on Friday night and did the same thing to Dr. Christine Lustig. Did you even know her name?”
“What are you talking about?” Chambers refused to look at him.
“Did you pick her like you picked the other ones? Remember, anything you say can and will be used against you. You also have the right to an attorney.”
“Eat shit!”
“Christine Lustig. It was your style, Marion. The whole thing, right down to how the knife was stashed. It was you, all over again.” Will studied his face for any telltales, seeing a moon of rage. But he was breathing deeply and sweating, even though the corridor was chill. It was just like those hours after the first homicide when Will and Dodds had tried to break him. Before command had told them to back off, and then the other killings had started. Will let silence fill the space between them for one minute, then two.
“She even looked like Theresa.”
His eyelid. That involuntary flutter.
“You’re done, Borders.”
“Is that a threat?”
“It’s reality, asshole. Look at yourself.” He spat on the floor in front of the wheelchair.
“But we never answered that why. The criminal mind, you know? Why the other women, when you could have just tampered with Theresa’s sample and gotten off.”
“You tell me, Sherlock.”
“I just figure you got a taste for it…Marion. That happens with some killers. Some are full of remorse the minute the killing is done. And some, well, they get a taste for it.”
“Well you have all the answers.” His voice was low and gravelly, yet it echoed strangely through the hallway.
“Wrong again,” Will said, wheeling the chair again and moving so Chambers was forced to turn his head to follow him. “I don’t even know what you did with those fingers you cut off, with the rings still on them. I think you’ve still got them.”
“You…”
“Trophies. You still have them, don’t you, Marion? You started out as a bad cop and you turned into a serial killer. Just another scumbag who could only get it up when he was hurting a woman, who can blame it all on his childhood and find Jesus before he gets the needle. And you will get the needle, Marion.”
Chambers shook his head and laughed. Turning, he walked past Will. Suddenly Will was falling and the floor came up hard and cold, as the wheelchair clattered harshly against the tiles. His hips and ribs shuddered from the impact. A wildfire of pain broke out in his lower back. Chambers studied him from an even higher vantage, making a clucking sound with his tongue and teeth.
“I know about you, Borders. You don’t have clean hands. And now look at yourself, cripple.” He studied Will a moment longer, then walked away with a slow, confident saunter.
Chapter Twelve
Cheryl Beth rounded the corner into the old atrium and saw the man sprawled on the floor, his wheelchair on its side. One of the wheels was still turning. She ran to him and was relieved to see he was conscious.
“I’m all right.”
“What happened?”
“Spill on aisle one.”
She laughed loudly and told him to not move while she checked for any possible broken bones. Fortunately, he looked to be about her age, a dark-haired tall man. He wasn’t one of the elderly patients that seemed to find every opportunity to get over the railings of their beds or lose hold of their walkers. The nurses called them falling stars. He had sutures in the middle of his back, an incision about nine inches long, but they were in good shape, probably overdue to come out. It looked like the handiwork of Dr. Goldstein. A spinal cord tumor, she guessed.
“I told you I was okay.” He pulled down the sweatshirt that had ridden up on his back and belly.
“We need to get you up. Can you stand?”
He shook his head. He was on his side with his legs still drawn up against one arm of the upset wheelchair. He raised himself to an elbow but couldn’t get any higher. She would need help. She glanced into the chapel but it was empty. No one was coming toward her from the main part of the hospital.
Suddenly she smelled it. He must have lost control when he fell from the wheelchair. The noxious, all-encompassing odor of feces seemed at odds with the man’s handsome, lived-in face and his full head of lush wavy hair. Her well-trained gag reflex didn’t react. He started coughing and stared over her shoulder. She turned and saw Lennie.
He must have just stepped out of the stairwell. His gray pants and blue workshirt were smeared with shit. An old green parka looked little better, turned brown with age and dirt. As always, Lennie greeted her with a rotten-toothed smile beneath the large crimson nose and its ever-expanding map of broken veins. His hair was long and wild, spiked out like the images she had seen of Medusa. It was just Lennie. His eyes were different, though. His stare was fixed and uncomprehending, looking into a dimension that existed only in his mind.