Humpty Dumpty: The killer wants us to put him back together again (Book 1 of the Nursery Rhyme Murders Series) (23 page)

“Thanks,” Reggie responded. “I studied film for a semester in college.”

Agent Cooper was still sitting there, not speaking. What was she doing? And Joshua didn’t seem all that inclined to step in to fill in the gap. The suspect shifted in his seat a couple of times, and then finally spoke.

“Don’t want to talk?” Curtis Howse asked, his voice flat through the speakers of the monitor. The images onscreen were crystal clear, however. “Fine, I’ll start. Why am I here?”

“Why do you think you’re here?” Coop asked.

“Is it about what they found up in Cedar Rapids?” he asked.

“And how would you know about that?” Joshua leaned in, his face intent.

Curtis shrugged. “Please. I have a police scanner. Any trucker with brains has one.”

“So you heard about what we found up there?” Coop pressed. “Everything we found?”

The suspect shook his head. “I just heard that there was a body up there. Word spread pretty fast. That kind of thing doesn’t happen a lot out here in the Midwest.”

“So you hadn’t heard that it was only part of a body?” she asked.

“No.” He paused for a moment, as if to take that in. “So where was the rest of the body?”

Joshua pulled out a map and began writing x’s with a red marker. “Here. And here. And here. Oh, and here, here and
here
.” With the last
here
, the former agent circled the x and thrust the pen down, almost as if he were stabbing the location. It was the one in Cedar Rapids.

“Notice anything unusual about those locations?” Coop added.

“Uh,” Curtis grunted, leaning in to view the map. “They’re all over the place?”

“How about now?” Joshua added more x’s, locations of previous body part deposits from thirteen years ago. The map was beginning to look like a spider web, with tendrils and trails extending out in what looked like random patterns. But Had knew that those patterns were all related to trucking routes. This man’s trucking routes, to be specific.

“Hold on. There’s something weird here…” Reggie murmured at Had’s side, moving closer to the screen, her nose almost touching as she traced the routes. Bella bounded out of her lap and came up to Had, placing her paws on his thigh. He lifted her up into his lap. Reggie was still following the marks on the map.

Back in the room, the trucker also seemed entranced by the shapes described by the points of red. “This looks like…” He broke off, his gaze flicking from Joshua to Coop and then back to the map.

“Yes, it does, doesn’t it?” Joshua crooned. “Familiar territory for you, isn’t it? In fact, I would say that it looks like your travel itinerary for the last fifteen years.”

“It is interesting,” Coop chimed in. “And by
interesting
, I guess I really mean
uncomfortable
.
Painful
, even.”

“I can’t be the only trucker that rides these routes,” Curtis said, leaning back and crossing his arms. It may have been Had’s imagination, but the trucker seemed to have lost some of the confidence he walked in with.

“That’s true,” Agent Cooper said. “But let’s take a look at your rap sheet.” She pulled out a page from the file folder in front of her. “Stalking. Peeping. Public indecency. Breaking and entering. That’s not a short list.”

Curtis blew out air between his lips. “I haven’t been arrested for a long time.”

“Yeah, that’s part of what’s so interesting,” Joshua purred. “It
has
been a long time, hasn’t it? Thirteen years to be exact.” The former agent raised an eyebrow. “What happened
thirteen years
ago?” There was a strong current of menace that was creeping into Joshua’s voice, and the trucker hadn’t failed to notice it. The man scooted his chair back away from the source of conflict and licked his lips.

“I… uh…”

Joshua snarled at him. “I’ll tell you what I think. I think that thirteen years ago something happened. Something that scared the shit out of you. You know who I am, don’t you?”

The man’s forehead creased together as he looked closer. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t? You sure? Take a closer look.” Joshua leaned across the table, getting in the man’s face. “I’m the face you see in your nightmares.”

“You… ah… you’re getting a little close…”

“I’m sorry. Am I making you uncomfortable? Look too much like the woman and three children you killed and
threw in a wood chipper
?” By the end of the sentence, Joshua was standing up, the cords of his neck standing out against his skin. A pulse beat in his forehead. Had was mesmerized, but at the same time he thought what a lovely job Reggie had done with the audiovisual setup. Bella, hearing the change in her owner’s tone, barked at the screen.

“Hey, I don’t have any idea what the hell you’re talking about,” the trucker responded. It was hard to tell under the lights, but it appeared that he was getting more and more pale by the moment.

Reggie was still peering at the screen. “There’s something about those points on the map…”

And then Joshua was up and around the table almost before Had could blink. His face was inches away from Curtis’. The former agent spit the words out, each word articulated and clear.

“You killed my family. Did you think that wouldn’t come back around at some point?”

Agent Cooper moved over to Joshua’s side. “Okay. I think we need to take a second here…”

Curtis, on the other hand, seemed to be done. “I don’t understand what he’s saying, but I think I need a lawyer.”

Coop’s shoulders slumped, and she pointed Joshua toward the door as she spoke to the suspect. “That is your right. Are you sure you want to invoke it? I can’t help you once a lawyer gets involved.”

The trucker looked up at Agent Cooper, then over to Joshua, who was still staring the man down as if he were trying to peer inside Curtis’ soul. Shaking his head, the suspect spoke again.

“Yes. I want a lawyer.”

And just like that, the interrogation was over. Had was sure it would start back up again, but the next time, the trucker would be hiding behind his representation. They would never have the same opportunity with the guy that they’d had… and blown… right now. And from the look on Agent Cooper’s face, she knew it.

It was clear that there were about to be some sharp words, most of them directed at Joshua. Things were about to get ugly on their little team.

And Had was pretty sure that he was going to get caught in the middle.

CHAPTER 15

Joshua’s head throbbed as he took the scolding from Coop. Bella was prancing around at his feet, trying to get his attention, but he could do nothing with her at the moment. He knew he deserved every bit of what he was getting from Agent Cooper right now. There was no doubt in his mind, or anyone else’s who had been watching, that he had royally screwed the pooch here. Losing it in the middle of an interrogation was never a winning tactic.

But while Agent Cooper continued to berate him with the number of ways in which he had made their job here more difficult, Joshua went over the conversation in his mind. And there were some things that didn’t fit.

True, the guy had been in each one of the locations of the body part deposits, on or near the time they would have been left. Yes, he fit the profile Joshua and Coop had spelled out, which included the parameters Joshua had teased out when he was working the case the first time around. Male, 35 to 60, with a criminal record that pointed toward preplanning. A loner, a drifter, with antisocial markers.

Curtis Howse was a bull’s eye on just about every level.

Which is one of the reasons that had pushed Joshua over the edge. It had to be him. He was perfect.

But while Joshua was having what was close to an out-of-body experience there in the box, a part of him had remained calm, a third-party observer. It almost made Joshua wonder if he’d somehow gone ape-shit-crazy on purpose.

And what he’d seen was a man who had no idea what was going on. Curtis Howse was either the best actor Joshua had ever seen, or he was innocent. Well, innocent of these crimes, at any rate. Something strange was going on with the guy, but it might not be what they were trying to pin on him.

It just felt… off.

“And finding enough to convict him just got infinitely harder,” Agent Cooper was saying. She was right. But what if she were wrong, too?

“I don’t think it’s him,” Joshua replied, speaking in a brief pause that Coop had taken in order to draw breath.

“Excuse me?” she fired back. “Were we not in the same room together?” Bella growled at her, and Coop stared back at the puppy until she circled back behind Joshua’s leg with a whine. He looked back up at Agent Cooper.

“I know, it seems crazy—”

“No,
you
are what seemed crazy. Back in there, when you went off the reservation. Which is why I’m stunned that you’re now doing a one-eighty on me now.”

“I’m not,” Joshua shot back. “Not completely. I just think—”

“It’s him, Joshua. He’s Humpty.”

“No, you just want him to be.”

She glared at him. “Of course I do. We’ve got a guy in there who practically screams ‘reasonable doubt’. If it’s not him, the prosecuting attorney’s going to be screwed.”

“That’s their problem. We can’t worry about that. We just follow the evidence.”

“Which is exactly what we’re doing.” She looked at him and shook her head. “And you blew any chance we had of getting a confession.”

Joshua stared back at her. “Are you shitting me? If he was Humpty, there was no way we were going to get a confession, period.”

They had drifted from the interrogation room over toward the main area that they had set up for a workspace. Had and Reggie had come out of the observation room and were doing what they could to pretend like they weren’t there.

Like Reggie could ever manage to do that.

“I don’t know what you were doing in there, but I was going for a confession,” Agent Cooper said, continuing the argument.

“Only because you’re inexperienced and naïve. This is the reason why you could never work this case without me.” From Coop’s sudden stillness, Joshua could see that he’d taken it too far, but he couldn’t stop himself. “If you were alone on a case like this, you would be eaten alive.”

“And yet,” she replied in a matter-of-fact tone, “I wasn’t the one that sent four officers up to their deaths.”

Joshua felt all of the blood rush from his face. She was right. There was no denying the reality of what Agent Cooper had presented. That was something she did so well. Correct data with no apologies.

Turning on his heel, Joshua scooped up Bella walked away from Coop, away from Had and Reggie, away from the team and the investigation. All of it. In a matter of seconds it had gone from being an argument to being a millstone hung around his neck while he was treading water in the middle of an ocean.

And this was going to drown him.

Right as he was walking out the door, he heard Had call out to him, “Joshua, hold on a sec.”

But there was no way that was happening. Joshua was heading straight to his hotel room. That was the only choice that didn’t make him want to punch someone in the face right now.

Once he was in his room? Well, it was a new day there at the hotel, which meant that housekeeping had been through. Which meant there would be a fresh stock of mini bottles of alcohol waiting for him.

If there was ever a time he needed a drink…

As he walked, the faces of the four cops flashed through his mind’s eye, their expressions somehow much kinder and more benevolent than they had been in real life. To be honest, Joshua had found them all to be small-city pricks with power complexes. To a man.

And yet…

It was all on Joshua. He had been the one to realize the link between the gaze of the corpse and a possible message above. It had been he that had pointed the cops in that direction. He who had gone off after a puppy at the very moment the bomb erupted in volcanic fury.

He scratched Bella’s chin absently as the thoughts rushed through his mind in rapid succession. She thrust out a wet tongue that caught him on his cheek and for a brief moment made him smile.

A very, very brief moment.

These black thoughts swirled around him in a dark cloud of rebuttal until, seemingly out of nowhere, the door to Joshua’s room materialized in front of him. He pulled out his key card and swiped it through the reader with shaking hands. The light turned green—a first for Joshua, who had never managed to get in to his room without swiping the damn thing at least four times.

He pushed past the door, deposited the dog on the floor, and went right to the mini fridge. The bottles stared back at him, a row of beautiful, glistening jewels that were waiting for him to press the sweet nectar out of their glassy, hard facets.

His entire body was trembling, and his knees felt loose and watery as he moved back and forth between the fridge and the sink, stacking all of the bottles on the counter. He stopped counting at eight.

With hands that refused to grip with a solid purchase, Joshua opened up every one of the tiny containers in front of him, emptying the contents into the bucket that was supposed to be used for ice. He did so with no regard to what he was mixing together. The labels were all blurred, his vision crossed and dim, as if he were moments from passing out. Whatever this concoction was, it would not taste good.

But that was the last thing on Joshua’s mind. There was a gaping hole in his stomach that was growing too big for his body to contain. It was an abyss that could only be filled with the fiery burn of the alcohol as it ran down his throat into the pit.

That glow would save him. It would fill him. He wouldn’t have to drown in his own emptiness.

The liquid sloshed in the bucket as Joshua held it up to his mouth with hands that could not follow his brain’s most basic commands for steady movement. The fumes from the mixture invaded his nostrils, causing the tender flesh inside his nasal passages to wrinkle back as if it could escape the punishment about to be administered.

Tilting the container back, Joshua felt a tugging at his ankle. Bella had dragged her leash over and was now biting at his pant leg, her tail wagging with a ferocity that only the young and exuberant could muster.