Let It Burn (21 page)

As soon as I ended the call, I had a brief debate with myself. Then I dialed Detective Bateman. I wasn’t breaking my promise to Janet. I was simply following up on the conversation we had on his boat.

Bateman answered the phone.

“Arnie,” I said, “this is Alex McKnight.”

“Alex, good to hear from you again. Good seeing you the other day, too. We should do that again sometime.”

“I’d love to. But that’s not why I was calling. Actually, I just wanted to ask you one question.”

“Shoot.”

“Is there any chance I could finally see that confession some time?”

Nothing for a long moment. Phone silences were apparently going to be the theme for the day.

“You know, I had this feeling when you were here, and I was telling you about it … You were doubting even before you got here, weren’t you?”

“I admit, I may have been.”

“Hearing me tell you how it all broke down, that didn’t settle it for you?”

“It’s one thing to hear about it after the fact,” I said. “It’s another thing to see it and hear it yourself.”

“Well, first of all, why are you thinking about this now? It was a long time ago. If you had any doubts…”

“I honestly haven’t thought about it at all,” I said. “Not until I got the call about him getting out.”

“So now, looking back, even though you weren’t there to see it, you feel like you need to tell me it wasn’t a clean confession. Is that what I’m hearing?”

“Look, I know it was a big case for you. We
all
wanted it to be solved, but—”

“We all wanted it to be solved,” he said. “So we solved it. You were the one who ID’d him, for crying out loud. How can you even be saying this now?”

This is going beautifully, I thought. This was such a great idea.

“I know this is out of the blue,” I said. “Let me try to explain why I’m thinking this way.”

“I told you I was sorry, Alex. You should have made the arrest. You should have gotten the big award, too. We both should have been up there. Even if I had to wait for you to get back on your feet.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Stop right there. This has nothing to do with who got credit. Will you please give me one minute to explain?”

“Yeah, sure. You just came up with some new evidence that would overturn a conviction based on a
sworn confession.
”

“Arnie, come on.”

“I’ll call the prosecutor. We can schedule the hearing. I’ll get up there myself and tell everyone it was all bogus. Then I’ll give back the award. Would that do it for you?”

“Listen to me…”

“No, thanks. I’ve heard enough. Have a nice life, and maybe get some help, huh? I think you got a real problem letting go of old grudges.”

I didn’t get in another word before he hung up. I stood there looking at the phone, too stunned to even be mad. Then I got over it.

“If you weren’t already half crippled,” I said to the phone, “I’d come down there and kick your ass.”

*   *   *

The next couple of days were tough for me. I don’t have much of a talent for putting things out of my mind. I just tried to stay busy. The cold weather was right around the corner, so I started getting cabins ready. There were windows to seal up. One of the woodstoves was on its last legs, so I spent an afternoon with Vinnie, putting in a new one.

“You’ve been thinking about something else all day,” he said when we went down to the Glasgow Inn. “It’s a good thing I helped you with the stove. You probably would have installed it backwards.”

“I’m trying to keep my head here in Paradise,” I said. “I’m really trying.”

But it was getting harder with each passing hour, not easier. I’d be doing something around one of the cabins and I’d suddenly have this vision of a woman lying on a cold floor, all of the blood drained from her body. I hadn’t seen any of these other crime scenes, of course. Not in Cleveland or Chicago or Milwaukee, or wherever else this same killer may have struck. So some part of my mind would make up the details and all of a sudden it would be
right there,
right in front of me. I was starting to wonder if I’d keep seeing them for the rest of my life. That would surely drive me insane.

Leon was no help, because he was just as compulsive as I was. Maybe even more so, if that were possible. I went down to the Soo Brewing Company a couple of days after his late-night visit. He was standing behind the counter, looking like a man who hadn’t slept much.

When he had a break, he came over and sat down next to me on the old couch. He was carrying a folder. I didn’t have to ask him what was inside.

“I suppose you can guess what I’ve been doing,” he said.

“I probably can.”

“I found a couple more cases.”

“More stabbings?”

“Yes.”

“In the Midwest?”

“No, that’s the thing. See, if you look at the dates for those first three cases I found, they happen anywhere from May to September.”

“Okay…”

He opened the folder and took out the news stories.

“So I looked a little further,” he said. “Here are three more open cases. All three are women, all three were stabbed to death. Nobody arrested in any of them yet.”

“Janet told me they have an active profile,” I said. “She didn’t say there were this many.”

“Savannah, Georgia. Mobile, Alabama. Jacksonville, Florida. The years are mixed in with the others, the difference being that these three all occurred from November to March.”

“You’re telling me we’ve got a fair-weather murderer here. He goes south for the winter, and if he sees his opportunity down there…”

“That’s about the size of it, yes. So what are we going to do?”

“Well, the FBI already knows everything you’re telling me. It’s the Detroit angle that’s new. If that can be tied in, I mean, maybe it helps. Especially if it was earlier than the others.”

“Assuming they buy your idea that it was a false confession,” Leon said, shaking his head. “Assuming they can do anything with that case, even if they do believe it. All these years later.”

“I officially have never felt so useless,” I said. “How about you?”

“I’m with you, buddy.”

“Let me give her another call,” I said, taking the folder from him. “I’ll make up some excuse. But really I just want to find out if anything new has happened.”

“Let me know, okay?”

“I will. Thanks for doing this. Now you should probably try to put it out of your head before it makes you crazy.”

“I’ll do that as soon as you do.”

I had no comeback. I left him there to his beer brewing. I went back to Paradise.

*   *   *

My call to Janet went about as expected. She listened to me read off the other cases Leon had dug up. She already knew about all of them. Not only that, she had one more to add to the list.

“Indianapolis,” she said. “Two years after Milwaukee. So that’s seven unsolved murders, all multiple stabbings. All with the same kind of knife, by the way. I don’t know if I mentioned that before.”

“You didn’t, but what about the Detroit case?” I said. “Have you heard anything about how that might be connected?”

“You know I can’t say anything, but I also know you’re not going to sleep until I do. So here’s what I can tell you…”

“Go ahead.”

“It turns out they did look at that case. It was three or four murders in, when they were first trying to establish the pattern. They couldn’t help but notice the similarities to the murder in Detroit.”

“Okay…”

“So they checked it out. They called the detective who was in charge of that case.”

“That was Arnie Bateman.”

“I don’t know the name. Just some guy who was kind of a blowhard, I guess.”

“That’s him. So what happened?”

“Not much,” she said. “It was a sworn confession, with a man sitting in prison. If there was something more concrete to tie this murder to the others…”

“He gave you the stiff-arm. Isn’t that obvious? He didn’t want to reopen the case that made his career.”

“I asked the agent to look at it again, okay? What else can I do?”

“That sounds like all I can ask for,” I said. “Thanks for doing that.”

“If this takes him down a rat hole, it’s not going to make me look good. You realize that.”

“That’s impossible. You always look good.”

“Don’t even try that,” she said. “Unless you’ve thought some more about moving down here.”

I wasn’t about to lie to her. So we left it at that. I thanked her and let her go back to work. Then I tried to do the same, even though I had a whole new set of dead bodies to think about. I knew it would be a long night.

Maybe I’ll call the detective again, I thought. That would
really
make the day.

I didn’t, of course. I didn’t have to. All I had to do was wait until that night.

*   *   *

The phone rang just after nine o’clock. I picked up the receiver, thinking it would be Leon, or maybe Janet. I got neither.

“Alex, this is Arnie Bateman. I’m sorry to call so late.”

“Detective, what’s going on?”

“Don’t call me detective. I’m not sure I deserve the title right now.”

“I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”

“Darryl King got out today,” he said. “He’s out of prison.”

“Okay, I knew it was coming up pretty soon, but—”

“You want to know what I did to mark the occasion?”

“I’m guessing you didn’t go down and throw him a party.”

“I watched the tape, Alex. I watched the world-famous confession.”

“What, you have a copy of it?”

“No, no. I had to call down to the old precinct, the district now, find somebody who still remembered me. I asked if I could see it and they said sure, if we can even find it. It got moved over to the records building. Some old VHS tape in a dusty old box. They finally found it, and this sergeant calls me back, tells me he can’t let it leave the premises, but I could see it if I came down there.”

“So you did.”

“Yeah. I don’t drive much anymore on account of the leg. Hurts too much to sit that long. But I figured this was worth it.”

“Why did you think that? You sounded pretty sure when I called you that it was all a big—”

“Okay, just stop,” he said. “I’m sorry. All right? Will you accept my apology before we go any further? I was totally out of line.”

“Accepted,” I said. “Now tell me about the tape.”

“Well, I guess the surprising thing is that it went pretty much exactly how I remembered it. There wasn’t one thing he said that didn’t match my memory.”

“So you’re just calling me to confirm it was a good confession. That I was totally wrong to even question it. Is that what you’re saying?”

“No, Alex. I’m calling you to tell you he didn’t confess at all.”

He let that one hang for a moment, just the faraway buzzing of the telephone line as I tried to process the words.

“You’re going to have to explain,” I said. “I’m afraid you lost me.”

“I watched it three times. At no point does he ever say, ‘Yes, I killed that woman.’ He says, ‘I’m a man, and if there’s something I need to do, I do it.’ That’s what he says.”

“I remember you telling me that, yes. You said those were his exact words.”

“Yes.”

“But then you said he went on to explain exactly what happened. How he saw her up at the station, how he got her up to the balcony…”

“He didn’t do that, Alex. He didn’t explain it. It was
me
doing all the explaining at that point.”

“How do you mean?”

“It was just a classic dumb mistake in interviewing. Everything I had been trained to do, just right out the window. Because after I got what I thought was the initial confession, I should have made him describe everything in detail from the beginning. But instead I jumped right ahead and said, ‘Okay, so you saw her at the station, right? You thought she’d be an easy mark?’ And so on, right down the line. I led him into it, and all he had to do was keep agreeing with me.”

“Okay…”

“He never said he did it, Alex. Not in a real way. Not one goddamned time. But I was so anxious to solve the case. Hell, we all were. I just heard what I wanted to hear and I rammed the rest right down his throat.”

“I think I see what you’re saying. But that still doesn’t explain why he went along with it. Even if you were leading him.”

“Well, that’s what I’m going to find out. I’m going to go down and ask him myself. Tomorrow.”

“Are you serious?”

“It’s the only way I can know for sure. You want to come with me?”

“Again … are you serious?”

“We can ask him together. Maybe it would be a good idea, too, just in case he’s got some … you know, anger that he might not be able to control. I’m not exactly the physical specimen I once was, if I have to defend myself.”

“Did you contact him? Does he know you’ve got this in mind?”

“Nope. I figure it’s better to just go down there. Let him have tonight to get settled. Then knock on his door in the morning. ‘Did you do it, Darryl? If not, why did you confess to it?’ Maybe we’ll get a genuine, spontaneous answer if he doesn’t have time to prepare for it.”

“You’re really going to do this.”

“Hell, yes. I think you want to, too. Am I wrong?”

I thought about it for all of a second and a half. “No,” I said. “You’re not wrong. How about I come down in the morning and pick you up? You said you’re not great on driving these days.”

“That would be fantastic. It’ll be just like old times.”

“Yeah, something like that,” I said. “Listen, can I ask you about something else? I was talking to an FBI agent today, and—”

“Oh God, so you already know.”

“About the other cases?”

“It was a few years later, yes. They contacted me and said they were looking at the Paige case, on account of certain similarities. Same kind of knife, all women, all stabbed approximately two dozen times. No other evidence on the scene, so the killer was being careful. It all makes sense now, looking back at it, but I’m afraid at the time I was less than accommodating.”

“As I recall, nobody had much love for the FBI back then.”

“Then or ever. But I should have at least looked at it, right? I couldn’t take one day out of my life to go down there and work with them?”