A Perfect Evil (28 page)

M
aggie watched Nick step carefully around the piles she had scattered all over the floor of his office. He cleared a spot and set down the steaming pizza and cold Pepsis. Then he joined her on the floor, his long legs stretching out next to her. A foot almost brushed her thigh. All day she had found herself acutely aware of his presence. She thought she was too tired to feel, but then her body surprised her every time his elbow accidentally brushed her arm or his hand grazed her thigh while he shifted the Jeep into gear.

She had removed her shoes hours ago and had sat on her feet until they fell asleep. Now she massaged them one at a time while she read the coroner’s reports on Aaron Harper and Eric Paltrow, the two dead, little boys whom Jeffreys may have erroneously been convicted of killing.

The pizza smelled good despite the gruesome details she read. She glanced up to find Nick watching her rub her feet. Immediately, he looked away as though she had caught him at something. He popped open a can of Pepsi and handed it to her.

“Thanks.” This time she was actually hungry. The ham and cheese sandwich from Wanda’s had sat on a plate with only two bites removed when young Deputy Preston had finally volunteered to take it off her hands. That was hours ago. Now it was black outside the window. Phones down the hall had quieted. Staff had thinned out. Some had been sent home to rest while others were sent back out to search for a little boy who seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth.

Nick lifted a thick slice of pizza, pulling it expertly away so he didn’t lose the cheese. He plopped it down onto a paper plate and handed it to Maggie. She could smell green peppers, Italian sausage and Romano cheese. He had done good. She bit off more than she should have, dripping cheese and sauce down her chin.

“Jesus, O’Dell. You’ve got sauce all over your face.”

She licked the side of her mouth while he watched.

“Other side.” He pointed. “And on your chin.”

Her hands were full of pizza and coroner reports. She licked at the other side while she fumbled for a safe spot to set something down.

“No, higher,” he still instructed. “Here, let me.”

As soon as his thumb touched the corner of her mouth, her eyes met his. His fingers wiped at her chin. His thumb rolled over her lower lip where she was certain there was no sauce or cheese. In his eyes she saw that he felt the unexpected surge of electricity, too. His fingertips lingered longer than necessary on her chin, moved up, caressed her cheek. His thumb took its time to leave her lip and wipe the corner of her mouth. Completely surprised by her body’s reaction, she shifted away, just out of his reach.

“Thanks,” she managed to say, now avoiding his eyes. She practically flung the plate with pizza to the side, grabbed a napkin and finished the job, rubbing harder than necessary in an attempt to wipe away the electrical current.

“I think we might need more napkins and Pepsis.” Nick scrambled to his feet.

Maggie looked up at him, and he seemed flustered. From the small refrigerator in the corner of his office, he pulled two more cans and added napkins to the pile already on the floor. This time when he sat down, he kept more distance between them. She noticed his charm had been put on hold, his flirting almost nonexistent since he had discovered she had a husband. So the touch, the caress had caught him off guard, too.

“There are so many discrepancies,” she said, trying to get her mind back on the coroner’s reports. “I don’t know why anyone believed Jeffreys killed all three boys.”

“But don’t serial killers change the way they do things?”

“They may add things. They may experiment. Jeffrey Dahmer experimented with different ways to keep his victims alive. He’d drill holes in their skulls that would incapacitate them but keep them alive.”

“So maybe Jeffreys liked to experiment, too.”

“What’s unusual here is that the Harper and Paltrow murders were almost identical. Both were bound, hands behind their backs, with rope. They were strangled and their throats slashed. The chest wounds resembled each other almost exactly down to the number of puncture wounds. The same knife was used to carve the X’s. Neither boy appeared to have been sexually molested. Their bodies were found in different remote areas near the river.”

She referred to several documents laid out in front of her, leaning carefully so she wouldn’t soil them. In the last hour she had started to feel the full impact of her exhaustion. Her eyes blurred as she looked over the coroner’s scratchy notes. George Tillie had not been as precise as he should have been. The Paltrow report was the only one to mention the body being clean with little residue found. None of the reports indicated a smudge of oil on the forehead or anywhere else on the body.

Maggie glanced at Nick, who slumped against the hard credenza and rubbed at his eyes. His hair was tousled from too many reckless run-throughs with his fingers. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, revealing muscular forearms. He had gotten rid of the tie and had undone several buttons on his wrinkled shirt, exposing enough of his chest to distract her. She shook her head, grabbed a report off the floor and tried to stay focused.

“The Wilson boy, on the other hand—”

“I know,” Nick interrupted, sitting forward. “His hands were bound in front with duct tape, no rope. He was stabbed to death—no signs of strangulation. His throat wasn’t slashed. A hunting knife was used. Though there were plenty of puncture wounds…”

“Twenty-two.”

“Twenty-two puncture wounds, but no carving.”

“The Wilson boy was also sodomized, repeatedly.”

“And his body was found in a park Dumpster, instead of by the river. Jesus, this stuff makes me sick to my stomach.” He shoved the pizza aside, grabbed his Pepsi and emptied the can, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Okay, there’s a lot of differences, but couldn’t Jeffreys have changed things? Even the sodomy, couldn’t that be seen as…I don’t know…an escalation?”

“Yes, it could. But remember the sequence was Harper, Wilson, Paltrow. It would be very unusual for a killer to change, to experiment, to escalate and then go back to the exact format. He uses one knife—something with a small blade—perhaps a fillet knife. Then he changes to a hunting knife, then back to the other knife. Even the styles are very different. The Harper and Paltrow murders are meticulous in detail. Both boys were murdered by someone taking his time—someone who enjoys inflicting pain. Very much like Danny Alverez’s murder. Bobby Wilson’s murder, however, looks like it was done in the heat of the moment with too much emotion and passion to pay any attention to detail.”

“You know, I always thought it seemed too easy,” Nick said wearily. “I’ve been wondering if my dad wasn’t so caught up in the media circus that he may have overlooked something.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know how you hear about things getting missed in the excitement, the so-called rush to judgment? My dad’s always enjoyed being the center of attention. The year I started as quarterback for UNL, he’d meet me at the locker room, insisted on it, in fact—every single game. My mom said it was because he was so proud of me. Except there were too many times when he greeted the TV cameras before he even acknowledged me.”

Maggie listened patiently, then waited out his silence. Nick and his father obviously had a complex relationship. And though he was uncomfortable discussing it, she knew he was trying to tell her something important, something pertinent to the Jeffreys investigation. Did Nick really believe his father may have mishandled the case?

Finally, he glanced at her as though he’d read her thoughts.

“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying my dad would purposely jeopardize any case. He’s very well respected and has been for years. In fact, I know I would never have been elected if I wasn’t Antonio Morrelli’s son. I’m just saying that it all seemed a bit too easy—the way my dad caught Jeffreys. One day there was an anonymous tip, and the next day they had Jeffreys babbling out a confession.”

“What kind of anonymous tip?”

“It was a phone call, I think. I don’t know for sure. I wasn’t living here at the time. I was teaching down at UNL, so I got most of this stuff secondhand. Isn’t there anything in the reports?”

Maggie searched through several file folders. She had read most of them and couldn’t remember any phone calls being mentioned. But she also had seen no phone logs of any kind, even for a hotline.

“I haven’t seen anything at all about an anonymous tip,” she said, handing him the file labeled Jeffreys’ Arrest. “What do you remember?”

He seemed flustered, and she wasn’t sure if it was his memory he questioned or his father. She watched him look over the reports filed and signed by Antonio Morrelli.

“Your father’s reports are very detailed, including a blow-by-blow of the actual arrest. He even includes the evidence they found in the trunk of Jeffreys’ Chevy Impala.” She checked her own notes and read the list. “They found a roll of duct tape, a hunting knife, some rope…wait a minute.”

She stopped to check that she had copied the list correctly. “A pair of boy’s underpants, which were later identified as belonging to…” She looked up at Nick, who had found the list in the report and was reading the same items she had in front of her. His eyes met hers, revealing he was thinking precisely what she was.

She continued, “A pair of underpants later identified as Eric Paltrow’s.”

Maggie rifled through the coroner’s report to double-check her memory, though she already knew what she would find.

“Eric Paltrow’s body was found with his underpants on.”

Nick shook his head in disbelief.

“I bet even Jeffreys was surprised to find all that stuff in his trunk.”

They stared at each other, neither wanting to acknowledge out loud what they had stumbled upon. Ronald Jeffreys had been framed for two murders he hadn’t committed, and there was a good chance the frame-up had been done by someone in the sheriff’s department.

M
aggie watched Nick step carefully around the piles she had scattered all over the floor of his office. He cleared a spot and set down the steaming pizza and cold Pepsis. Then he joined her on the floor, his long legs stretching out next to her. A foot almost brushed her thigh. All day she had found herself acutely aware of his presence. She thought she was too tired to feel, but then her body surprised her every time his elbow accidentally brushed her arm or his hand grazed her thigh while he shifted the Jeep into gear.

She had removed her shoes hours ago and had sat on her feet until they fell asleep. Now she massaged them one at a time while she read the coroner’s reports on Aaron Harper and Eric Paltrow, the two dead, little boys whom Jeffreys may have erroneously been convicted of killing.

The pizza smelled good despite the gruesome details she read. She glanced up to find Nick watching her rub her feet. Immediately, he looked away as though she had caught him at something. He popped open a can of Pepsi and handed it to her.

“Thanks.” This time she was actually hungry. The ham and cheese sandwich from Wanda’s had sat on a plate with only two bites removed when young Deputy Preston had finally volunteered to take it off her hands. That was hours ago. Now it was black outside the window. Phones down the hall had quieted. Staff had thinned out. Some had been sent home to rest while others were sent back out to search for a little boy who seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth.

Nick lifted a thick slice of pizza, pulling it expertly away so he didn’t lose the cheese. He plopped it down onto a paper plate and handed it to Maggie. She could smell green peppers, Italian sausage and Romano cheese. He had done good. She bit off more than she should have, dripping cheese and sauce down her chin.

“Jesus, O’Dell. You’ve got sauce all over your face.”

She licked the side of her mouth while he watched.

“Other side.” He pointed. “And on your chin.”

Her hands were full of pizza and coroner reports. She licked at the other side while she fumbled for a safe spot to set something down.

“No, higher,” he still instructed. “Here, let me.”

As soon as his thumb touched the corner of her mouth, her eyes met his. His fingers wiped at her chin. His thumb rolled over her lower lip where she was certain there was no sauce or cheese. In his eyes she saw that he felt the unexpected surge of electricity, too. His fingertips lingered longer than necessary on her chin, moved up, caressed her cheek. His thumb took its time to leave her lip and wipe the corner of her mouth. Completely surprised by her body’s reaction, she shifted away, just out of his reach.

“Thanks,” she managed to say, now avoiding his eyes. She practically flung the plate with pizza to the side, grabbed a napkin and finished the job, rubbing harder than necessary in an attempt to wipe away the electrical current.

“I think we might need more napkins and Pepsis.” Nick scrambled to his feet.

Maggie looked up at him, and he seemed flustered. From the small refrigerator in the corner of his office, he pulled two more cans and added napkins to the pile already on the floor. This time when he sat down, he kept more distance between them. She noticed his charm had been put on hold, his flirting almost nonexistent since he had discovered she had a husband. So the touch, the caress had caught him off guard, too.

“There are so many discrepancies,” she said, trying to get her mind back on the coroner’s reports. “I don’t know why anyone believed Jeffreys killed all three boys.”

“But don’t serial killers change the way they do things?”

“They may add things. They may experiment. Jeffrey Dahmer experimented with different ways to keep his victims alive. He’d drill holes in their skulls that would incapacitate them but keep them alive.”

“So maybe Jeffreys liked to experiment, too.”

“What’s unusual here is that the Harper and Paltrow murders were almost identical. Both were bound, hands behind their backs, with rope. They were strangled and their throats slashed. The chest wounds resembled each other almost exactly down to the number of puncture wounds. The same knife was used to carve the X’s. Neither boy appeared to have been sexually molested. Their bodies were found in different remote areas near the river.”

She referred to several documents laid out in front of her, leaning carefully so she wouldn’t soil them. In the last hour she had started to feel the full impact of her exhaustion. Her eyes blurred as she looked over the coroner’s scratchy notes. George Tillie had not been as precise as he should have been. The Paltrow report was the only one to mention the body being clean with little residue found. None of the reports indicated a smudge of oil on the forehead or anywhere else on the body.

Maggie glanced at Nick, who slumped against the hard credenza and rubbed at his eyes. His hair was tousled from too many reckless run-throughs with his fingers. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, revealing muscular forearms. He had gotten rid of the tie and had undone several buttons on his wrinkled shirt, exposing enough of his chest to distract her. She shook her head, grabbed a report off the floor and tried to stay focused.

“The Wilson boy, on the other hand—”

“I know,” Nick interrupted, sitting forward. “His hands were bound in front with duct tape, no rope. He was stabbed to death—no signs of strangulation. His throat wasn’t slashed. A hunting knife was used. Though there were plenty of puncture wounds…”

“Twenty-two.”

“Twenty-two puncture wounds, but no carving.”

“The Wilson boy was also sodomized, repeatedly.”

“And his body was found in a park Dumpster, instead of by the river. Jesus, this stuff makes me sick to my stomach.” He shoved the pizza aside, grabbed his Pepsi and emptied the can, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Okay, there’s a lot of differences, but couldn’t Jeffreys have changed things? Even the sodomy, couldn’t that be seen as…I don’t know…an escalation?”

“Yes, it could. But remember the sequence was Harper, Wilson, Paltrow. It would be very unusual for a killer to change, to experiment, to escalate and then go back to the exact format. He uses one knife—something with a small blade—perhaps a fillet knife. Then he changes to a hunting knife, then back to the other knife. Even the styles are very different. The Harper and Paltrow murders are meticulous in detail. Both boys were murdered by someone taking his time—someone who enjoys inflicting pain. Very much like Danny Alverez’s murder. Bobby Wilson’s murder, however, looks like it was done in the heat of the moment with too much emotion and passion to pay any attention to detail.”

“You know, I always thought it seemed too easy,” Nick said wearily. “I’ve been wondering if my dad wasn’t so caught up in the media circus that he may have overlooked something.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know how you hear about things getting missed in the excitement, the so-called rush to judgment? My dad’s always enjoyed being the center of attention. The year I started as quarterback for UNL, he’d meet me at the locker room, insisted on it, in fact—every single game. My mom said it was because he was so proud of me. Except there were too many times when he greeted the TV cameras before he even acknowledged me.”

Maggie listened patiently, then waited out his silence. Nick and his father obviously had a complex relationship. And though he was uncomfortable discussing it, she knew he was trying to tell her something important, something pertinent to the Jeffreys investigation. Did Nick really believe his father may have mishandled the case?

Finally, he glanced at her as though he’d read her thoughts.

“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying my dad would purposely jeopardize any case. He’s very well respected and has been for years. In fact, I know I would never have been elected if I wasn’t Antonio Morrelli’s son. I’m just saying that it all seemed a bit too easy—the way my dad caught Jeffreys. One day there was an anonymous tip, and the next day they had Jeffreys babbling out a confession.”

“What kind of anonymous tip?”

“It was a phone call, I think. I don’t know for sure. I wasn’t living here at the time. I was teaching down at UNL, so I got most of this stuff secondhand. Isn’t there anything in the reports?”

Maggie searched through several file folders. She had read most of them and couldn’t remember any phone calls being mentioned. But she also had seen no phone logs of any kind, even for a hotline.

“I haven’t seen anything at all about an anonymous tip,” she said, handing him the file labeled Jeffreys’ Arrest. “What do you remember?”

He seemed flustered, and she wasn’t sure if it was his memory he questioned or his father. She watched him look over the reports filed and signed by Antonio Morrelli.

“Your father’s reports are very detailed, including a blow-by-blow of the actual arrest. He even includes the evidence they found in the trunk of Jeffreys’ Chevy Impala.” She checked her own notes and read the list. “They found a roll of duct tape, a hunting knife, some rope…wait a minute.”

She stopped to check that she had copied the list correctly. “A pair of boy’s underpants, which were later identified as belonging to…” She looked up at Nick, who had found the list in the report and was reading the same items she had in front of her. His eyes met hers, revealing he was thinking precisely what she was.

She continued, “A pair of underpants later identified as Eric Paltrow’s.”

Maggie rifled through the coroner’s report to double-check her memory, though she already knew what she would find.

“Eric Paltrow’s body was found with his underpants on.”

Nick shook his head in disbelief.

“I bet even Jeffreys was surprised to find all that stuff in his trunk.”

They stared at each other, neither wanting to acknowledge out loud what they had stumbled upon. Ronald Jeffreys had been framed for two murders he hadn’t committed, and there was a good chance the frame-up had been done by someone in the sheriff’s department.