Find Me (38 page)

Public Safety Office
, 5:15 P.M.

Until he could be transported to the county jail, Jerald Pope was being held in the conference room. Two deputies were stationed in the room with him, another two outside the office.

Every single piece of evidence they had found was lined up in a neat little row.

The shoe had belonged to Alicia, the glasses to Valerie. The knife and the other items had been covered in Pope's fingerprints and both victims' blood.

Too neat.

Sarah stood outside the rear entrance, wishing again she had a cigarette.

Her instincts still leaned toward a female perpetrator. But, of course, no one wanted to hear that. They had their murderer. Sarah, herself, had been forced to admit that it was a man who called her cell phone and then snatched her.

Of course it was a man. He was covering for someone. His wife or his daughter? Sarah's every instinct insisted that was the case.

Didn't anyone consider it a little strange that the first two victims were murdered and the last two escaped unharmed?

This was utter and complete bullshit.

She jerked the door open and went back inside.

"Hey, I was looking for you."

She met Kale's worried gaze. "Are you sure you're okay?"

If he asked her that one more time…

"I'm fine. Just…" Why bother even saying anything to him? He was like the others. He wanted this case over.

"Come in here." He pulled her into the closest office and closed the door. "Talk to me."

What was the point?

"Come on, Sarah, say what's on your mind."

"Don't you find this all too easy?" She turned her hands up. "The neatly placed evidence. The fact that Polly and I escaped when the other two didn't. Think about that."

"Sarah." Kale leveled a weary gaze on hers. "You can't seriously think he's innocent after what they found in that storage unit in Bangor."

Yeah, yeah. She knew. Twenty perfectly preserved human hearts. "Yes," she agreed, "he's a sick monster who obviously killed a whole hell of a lot of people, including the two young women from twenty years ago. I just don't think he killed Valerie and Alicia."

The federal authorities were assuming jurisdiction over that aspect of the Pope case. Which was no surprise. August was probably in the men's room whacking off right now in celebration of the huge case he'd cracked.

"Sarah," Kale said patiently, "why would he accept responsibility for these two murders? Why would he let himself be caught? No one was ever going to catch him. Don't you see that what you're proposing is a little crazy?"

Crazy. Possibly.

"Why would he do that?" Kale asked.

"To cover for someone else. Think about that. That's not crazy. That's anything but crazy." She paced the small room. "The murders were motivated by envy. That's a very female motivation. The boot print, the propranolol, the roses. None of it is even remotely consistent with his previous MO."

"August asked him about that," Kale argued. "He said he'd quit killing a long time ago, but the temptation overwhelmed him and he had to kill again. He changed his MO to try and make it look as if someone else committed the murders. He didn't say a woman, but that could have been his ultimate intent."

Sarah wasn't buying it.

"What blows me away," Kale went on, "is that he had all that stuff, the tools he used to kill those people, the clothes he wore—all of it—right there in the storage unit. That's sick."

666.

The code for his storage unit.

He's the devil.

… he uses people sometimes as an angel of light to mis
lead…

The unexplained pieces fell into place and suddenly it all made sense to Sarah. Jesus… Matilda was right.

"I have to talk to him."

"Whoa." Kale took her by the shoulders and made her look at him. "You know they're not going to let you do that."

Sarah knew what she had to do. "Yes they will."

She waited for Kale to step out of the way; the instant he did she was out the door. She hunted down August.

"I need to speak with you." He looked at her, as did Chief Willard. "Privately."

When he didn't readily agree, she gave him a look that warned of severe consequences.

"Give us a moment," August said to Willard.

Kale stood in the corridor watching as Willard exited his office. Sarah didn't have time to placate him. She closed the door and turned on August. "I want to talk to Pope."

August smirked. "No way. You know how this works, Sarah. We're not going to do anything that might weaken or somehow damage our case. He's off limits."

"You either let me talk to him or I'll go outside right now and tell all those reporters how bad you fucked up three and a half years ago." There wasn't a day went by that she didn't remember.

"What would that accomplish?" He tried to pretend she was suggesting an impotent reprisal.

"You made a mistake. You leaked the information about that suspect
after
I warned you that he was innocent. You ignored me and the facts I presented and, because you did, he was murdered."

August's expression hardened. "But we got the bad guy in the end."

"Yeah," she confirmed, her jaw tightening, "the bad guy I urged you to consider before anyone innocent was murdered." She laughed. "Then you took credit for my conclusions."

He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. "All right. All right. I'll give you a minute or two with him." He shook his finger in her face. "But don't fuck this up just to get back at me."

She made a sound of disbelief. "Are you kidding? That's your MO not mine."

His glare intensified. "This thing between us is done now. You talk to Pope and then we're even."

She nodded. "Absolutely."

August jerked the door open and cut a path through the people crowding the corridor.

"What was that about?" Kale asked.

Sarah paused, looked into his eyes. "Just trust me." Then she followed the route August had taken.

When she reached the conference room door, he was ready to let her in. "Remember what I said."

"Yeah, yeah."

He opened the door and she went inside. "Step outside, gentlemen," August said to the deputies.

They looked at each other then at Sarah, but they didn't argue.

Before the door closed Sarah heard Kale demand, "What the hell are you doing?"

August would handle him… for now.

"Sarah." Pope smiled. "I would stand but—" He pulled at his wrists which were handcuffed to the chair arms.

She dismissed his apology with a wave of her hand, then settled into the chair directly across from him. "I have a few questions for you. Just to satisfy my own curiosity."

He inclined his head, analyzed her. Looking for the lie, as she so often did. "How can I know that you're not recording this conversation?"

She stood, peeled off her sweatshirt, and turned all the way around. "No wires." When she'd faced him once more, she pulled the sweatshirt back on. "Do I need to take off my pants, too?"

A grin lifted one corner of his mouth. "Not necessary. Oddly, I trust you."

"I'll bet you do." She eased back down in the chair.

For a moment they stared at each other, both analyzing.

"How did you manage to kill so many without ever getting caught?" That was a hell of a record. Seemed like a good way to get him talking while at the same time lowering his guard.

"I traveled a lot then. All over the country." His expression grew distant as he contemplated his past. "I always chose my victim while I was away. Never anyone close to home. And I planned extensively to lessen the likelihood of making a mistake."

Anyone in the business of murder had to admire a man so precise. "Your victims were random?" With that many murders involving the same MO, one would think the feds would have noticed a connection. Typically when a pattern emerged, comparisons were done among the various jurisdictions.

"Oh, no, you know better than that. A serial killer is never truly random. There is always a distinctly similar motive driven by his compulsion."

She had known he would understand what he was. "So, how did you choose them?"

"I needed to satisfy the urge, but I didn't want to eliminate anyone who contributed to society. You never know when someone might turn out to be the one who invents the cure for cancer or who turns around global warming."

She got it now. "So you selected those who were a burden to society rather than vice versa. Prostitutes, thugs, et cetera."

He nodded. "Very good, Sarah. You understand me quite well."

"When did you know you were a serial killer?"

"Aha. The million-dollar question." He drew in a deep breath. "When I was perhaps seventeen, I began to feel the compulsion to cause pain. It was controllable then. By the time I was nineteen, it kept me from sleeping, haunted my nights ruthlessly."

"Is that when you started to kill?"

He shook his head. "No, I conquered the demon by spending endless hours planning. I didn't start killing until a full year later. I decided that if I was going to kill, I would plan the perfect murder." His lips widened into that charming smile again. "And I did, repeatedly, for the next eighteen years."

"I'll bet you had a schedule, too."

"Absolutely. I was allowed one kill per year." He paused. "I'm sure you've already calculated and understand that eighteen years of killing is not twenty."

"I wondered if perhaps the two extra murders were the two young women found at the chapel twenty years ago."

"Those two were a rather unfortunate necessity."

Sarah didn't know whether to be surprised or not that he'd just openly admitted to having killed those two women. "I thought you never killed close to home."

"Never. But I didn't choose them. They were an unforeseen complication."

"How's that?"

"To that point, I had been somewhat careless in storing my memorabilia. I had designed a special storeroom beneath the water at my boathouse. Those two drunken revelers had gotten lost that night. They'd docked at my boathouse and taken refuge inside. When I discovered them early the next morning, they had passed out but it was obvious they had found the entrance to the storeroom. One had even attempted to pick the lock. I couldn't take the risk that one or both would speak of the strange hidden door they had found."

"So you killed them, using no particular MO, and left their bodies to be discovered in a public place."

"Precisely. Such careless mutilation was not my style. But I couldn't resist taking their hearts."

"That's why you moved everything to the storage unit," she suggested. "I suppose even a serial killer has to do housekeeping from time to time."

He smiled. "Yes. There were things I needed to get in order. It was unfortunate that two lives had to be sacrificed as a result."

Unfortunate, yes. Sarah wondered if this man, this being, even had a heart. "Is the number 666 indicative of how you feel about yourself?" That was certainly no coincidence.

He laughed softly. "Don't doubt my understanding of who and what I am, Sarah. Though I have tried to be a good father and husband, deep down I have always fully comprehended what I am. I chose that code as a sort of irony. So many worry about the devil taking their souls and holding them prisoner in hell. Isn't that what I've done?"