Authors: Alan Jacobson
Allman held up the hand with the stiletto. “Don’t answer. I’ll tell you.
Very
awesome. It’s what I’ve lived for. It’s what’s kept me going, day after day, year after year...plotting, waiting, planning.” He grinned slyly. “But it turned out to be even better than I’d fantasized. Having drinks with the detectives the same night that I killed someone.” He chuckled and locked eyes with Burden. “And they had no fucking clue! No one would suspect me; I had the perfect cover.” He looked up at the sky. “I get goosebumps even now, just thinking about doing it again.”
Vail heard Burden’s shoes crunch against the roof’s loose gravel. She extended her left arm and held him back.
Allman canted his head in mock sympathy. “Sorry if that hurts your feelings,
Birdie
. You know how many times I walked into Homicide after murdering someone? And not one of you had a clue. You and I sat down over lunch an hour after I killed Billy Duncan in ’90. Remember that? When I told you I was late because I got
tied up
? I thought you’d key in on that when I sent the text at Inspiration Point about Friedberg. But you disappointed me. I thought you were a better detective than that.”
“That’s what happens when people we care about are involved,” Burden said, his voice tight, intense restraint evident. “We don’t think clearly. We don’t suspect those close to us because we don’t want to think they’re monsters.”
“Aww,” Allman said, tilting his head in mock sympathy. “I understand. But...actually, I don’t. I don’t know love. Or friendship. Or guilt. I realized a long time ago I’m not like other people—how they feel things, how they get hurt by things, how they love things. I know what they’re saying, but I don’t understand it.”
So true. The failings of a psychopath. No emotions other than periodic anger and rage.
“No emotional attachments, no bonds, with anyone.” Allman looked off for a second, as if pondering his own self. Then he turned back to Vail.
“You can fake it, but you can’t feel it,” Vail said. “So why’d you do it? Why kill all these people, Clay? Or should I call you Henry?”
A loud banging noise—from behind Allman.
“What’s that?” Burden asked.
Allman looked over his shoulder, behind the large skylight several feet behind him. “Oh, someone’s awake. Let me show you.”
Vail raised her Glock, but Allman did the same as he backed away.
“I’ve got someone here you’re gonna want to meet.”
Vail, Dixon, and Burden shared a quick glance.
Another officer? Another con...or another...
con
?
Allman reached behind the skylight, grabbed hold of something, and dragged a man toward him, in front of the outcropping. His hands were fastened behind him and his mouth was stuffed with a rag.
Allman grasped the end of the duct tape and yanked it off his mouth, pulling out the gag.
The elderly man moaned.
Using the stiletto, Allman sliced through the ropes binding his wrists and ankles. “Hey, gang. I want you to meet my father. Walton MacNally.”
Of course.
MacNally rolled to his knees, then, unsteadily, stood up and faced his son. “Why are you doing this?”
“Why? Why?” Allman tilted his head, as if MacNally was a child who could not understand that which should have been a simple concept. “All these years, I’ve been showing you what you haven’t had the guts to do. I was showing you how to be a fucking man.”
MacNally squinted anger; his face reddened.
“But you haven’t been paying attention,” Allman shouted. “Have you? Have you been following it in the newspapers? I sent you all the articles!”
MacNally blinked and recoiled his head at Allman’s raised voice. “I didn’t—I didn’t know who they were from,” he said quickly. “It didn’t have your name on them. I didn’t understand.”
“Then you’re as stupid as the people who imprisoned you. As stupid as the cops who were my best buddies while they were investigating—and I was writing about—the people I’d just killed.”
MacNally shook his head, as if doing so would jar something and bring things into focus. “I don’t think as well as I used to—my brains were scrambled, I’m—”
“Pathetic, that’s what you are,” Allman said. “If you were a real man, you’d have taken care of all these jerkoffs yourself. They wronged you, they abused you. They beat you, they threw you in a goddamn sensory deprivation cell and drained your soul. Total darkness, never seeing the sun, twenty-four hours a day. Day, after day, after day.”
“And how would you know about that, Clay?” Burden asked.
“I read the goddamn books. All of ’em. And I’ve watched the interviews with the guards and the cons. And I read the warden’s records in the San Bruno Archives. It’s all spelled out there in detail. What a fucking wimp my father was. What an embarrassment.” He turned back to MacNally. “But what did I expect? If you’d been a man when I was young, you wouldn’t have ended up in jail on some stupid plan to rob banks. Banks! What a pathetic excuse you were for a father. You couldn’t even do that right.”
“I tried to be a good father. That’s the only reason why I did it, why I destroyed my life.” MacNally’s face crumpled in pain. “You know that. I only wanted to give you food, a house. A bicycle...”
“And did I ever get that bike?” Allman leaned into MacNally’s face. “Answer me!”
MacNally recoiled, raising a shoulder as if it could provide a defense against painful vitriol.
“You’re a failure,
Dad
. Always were.”
“Not true!” the muscles in MacNally’s neck went taut, the veins in his forehead bulged, spittle flying forth from his lips as he spoke. “I had a job. A family. A wife, a beautiful soul. And I was a good man.” Tears flooded his eyes and he fell to his knees. His voice rose in a painful whine as he craned his neck toward the sky. “Doris... Why’d you have to die?”
Allman spit on his father. “You’re a pathetic old man. Clueless to this day. All that time to think, and you still don’t know.”
“Mr. MacNally,” Vail said gently. “Henry killed your wife. He killed Doris.” She turned to Allman. “You never had the courage to tell him, did you? Go on, Clay. Tell him.”
Allman glared at her, his eyes black...no reflection. Soulless. She had seen this many times before when a psychopath felt threatened. Snake eyes.
MacNally looked at his son, perhaps putting events together in combinations he had never thought to do—could never
think
to do.
“You killed her,” Vail said firmly. “Didn’t you?”
Allman’s face relaxed, broadening into a grin. “She was my first. It made me who I am.”
MacNally pulled his gaze up to Allman. “How could you?”
“Mom knew I was different. She didn’t know why or how, but she knew. It was you that was the problem. You didn’t want to hear it.”
MacNally looked at Vail, his eyes glossing over.
Despite the anger and blind rage that Walton MacNally had built up over his years of incarceration, deep down, Vail believed he regretted having to kill to survive; that he would not have taken a life had he not been placed in the do-or-die situations he had undoubtedly confronted in prison. He killed out of necessity. MacNally was capable of emotions, of bonds, of deep love for his son. He was not a psychopath, even with his brain injury. Vail was sure of that.
But he gave birth to one.
MacNally brought his sleeve up and dragged it across his face.
Henry MacNally—Clay Allman—was a sexual serial killer who did not need a reason for killing—but in his distorted view of things, his father presented him with one that brought cohesion and purpose to his murderous ways.
MacNally looked at Vail—his face pleading disbelief. Wanting an explanation.
“You probably didn’t know what you were seeing, Mr. MacNally, but I’m betting that Henry showed some early signs as a child...inappropriate sexual contact, maybe even sexual aggression.”
MacNally swallowed hard. “Doris—his mother found him with a girl about a week before she...before Doris was killed. Henry was holding her down, touching her breasts.” He shook his head, looked up at the sky, then sniffled. “Doris was very upset by it. I told her he’s just being a boy, he’s curious.” He turned to Allman. “I talked to him, told him that it’s not right to touch other people’s bodies like that.”
Allman laughed. “I remember that.” He smiled. “You had no fucking idea what you were dealing with.”
You sure got that right.
“I bet you even took something from your mother,” Vail said. “A locket, an heirloom of some kind.”
Allman smiled.
MacNally’s eyes widened. “Her grandmother’s brooch. He had it when I got home that night. I thought he wanted something from his mother, to remember her by. How—how’d you know?”
“That’s what a young psychopath would do. He did take it to remind himself of his mother—but it wasn’t an act of sentimentality. He took it to remember how he felt when he killed her. To relive that sense of power.”
“I find it kind of
touching
,” Allman said. “Don’t you?”
“That bar of soap.” MacNally’s eyes filled with tears as his gaze canted up toward his son. “I thought you stole it from that store because the scent reminded you of your mom. But it was really some sick way for you to relive her murder.”
“It’s over, Clay.” Vail steadied her Glock. “Drop the weapons and get down on your knees.”
Allman frowned. “Go fuck yourself, Vail.”
MacNally struggled to get to his feet. He again drew a sleeve across his face and he sniffed back a nose full of snot. “An officer once told me that life’s a series of choices. I made some bad ones that landed me behind bars, decisions that were for Henry’s benefit. But that guard was right. Yeah, I always had a reason or an excuse—we needed the money. Or it’s prison, and you’ve gotta eat or be eaten. Maybe that’s all true. But it was never for me, it was for my son.” He turned to Allman, whose contempt-filled smirk indicated his indifference to his father’s moral struggles.
“I regret just about all the bad things I’ve done in my life, Ms. Vail. The pain and death I’ve caused.” He made eye contact with her, then Dixon, then Burden and Carondolet. “There’s a lot of things I’m sorry about...but only one I can really atone for.” He turned to Allman. “My biggest regret is creating you. Without you, your mother would still be alive. I’d never hurt anyone before you came along. Never took anything that wasn’t mine. Me, I did bad things for the right reason. You...you’ve done bad things because you just didn’t care.”
MacNally lunged forward and grabbed his son by the neck.
But Allman shoved the stiletto deep into his father’s abdomen.
And Vail shot him, twice. Allman recoiled—his eyes met Vail’s—and in that instant, he seemed to grin.
But MacNally, stiletto still protruding from his stomach, drove his son backward toward the roof’s edge, then over it.
Both men tumbled out of sight—
and then—
a sickening thud.
Vail, Burden, and Dixon ran to the edge and peered over. Walton MacNally lay atop his son, blood pooling on the concrete of the recreation yard.
Burden swung away and started dialing his phone. Carondolet ran off, back toward the cellhouse.
And Vail stood there, numb. No thoughts, other than perhaps sadness.
A hand on her shoulder.
Roxxann
.
“You okay?”
Vail slowly turned to her. “I—I need to sit.” She helped Vail to a seat on the cold surface of the rooftop. “I had a flashback. My ex-husband. And my son. The arguments I had with Deacon over Jonathan—” She stopped and turned away. “The choices I’ve made in my life, Roxx. They haven’t always been good ones. For Jonathan.”
“Come on, Karen. I know you. I know you’ve been a good mother.”
Vail faced Dixon. “Have I? My son was in a goddamn coma and where was I? I was out trying to catch a killer. Does a good mother do that?”
“I’m sure you didn’t want other women getting killed. You did what you thought would save the most lives at the time. You made a tremendous personal sacrifice. That’s what makes you such a good cop.”
“But does it make me a bad mother? I made a sacrifice all right. But it wasn’t the right choice.”
Burden cleared his throat and knelt down in front of them. “Excuse me, ladies. But we just caught us a prolific killer. I think this moment calls for congratulations, no?”
Dixon got up, then extended a hand and pulled her friend to her feet.
Vail sighed deeply and wiped her eyes. “You’re right. Congratulations, Burden. You did an awesome job. You’re a hell of a cop, one who I’d go through a door with any day.”
Burden looked at Dixon. “Is she—is she being sarcastic?”
“No,” Dixon said, studying Vail’s face. “I think she meant it.”
Vail turned and walked away, away from the fallen bodies of Walton MacNally and Clay Allman. And as she did, she pulled out her phone to call Jonathan.
VAIL HAD HAD ENOUGH OF the confining cabins of helicopters. She wanted to feel the wind blowing in her face, through her hair. She needed something to reinvigorate her.
Dixon, Burden, and Vail boarded the Coast Guard cutter as it prepared to push off from the dock.
Burden leaned both forearms on the railing. “I feel like I should’ve joined them over the side. You know how many meals I’ve shared with Allman the past twenty years? The poker games, the nights in countless bars. The Giants games.” He kicked the wall of the boat. “He was right. I was totally fucking clueless. What kind of a cop am I?”
Vail moved closer to Burden, up against his forearm. “You couldn’t have known. You realize how many people have been fooled over the years by intelligent psychopaths? The list is long, and contains a lot of prominent names. You’re looking at one of ’em.”
Burden sighed long and hard, then hung his head.
Vail turned and looked at the Alcatraz cellhouse, the wind full in her face, the chill going down to her bones. But it didn’t help. The numbness ran too deep. She needed Robby. She wanted to talk with him, to bare her thoughts, fears, and...guilt.
She needed to hug her son.