Mortal Sin (35 page)

He looked pained. “I thought you would understand. You took justice into your own hands.”

Kate jumped up. “Don’t go there, Mallory, dammit!”

“It’s okay, Kate.” Lucy put her hand on Kate’s arm without taking her eyes off Mallory. “I’ll tell you the difference. Adam Scott raped
me
. He nearly killed
my
brother. He stabbed Dillon, who can no longer feel anything in his left hand. He’s lucky he still has a hand! It
was
personal
. He hurt me and people I love. I killed him.” When she’d learned that Adam Scott had set explosives in Dillon’s house, when she heard the explosion she later found out was in Jack’s car, she didn’t think. She didn’t plan. She took one of the many guns in the house and ran the six blocks to Dillon’s house. She saw Scott and Dillon fighting in the yard. There were no cops anywhere; there was no one to help. It was up to her.

Scott was such a sick psychopath, deep down in his core evil. He believed that she’d come to run away with him. He let his guard down, stepped toward her and said, “You’re late.”

She shot and killed him.

She said, “For six years, shooting Adam Scott has eaten me up because I don’t feel any remorse for it.”

Lucy took a deep breath, and before Kate or Mallory could say anything, she asked, “Why Prenter? He didn’t fit the profile of the other victims.”

“Yes he did,” Mallory said, and left it at that.

“How?”

Mallory shrugged. “Figure it out.”

“I’d rather you just tell me and stop playing these games. I’m sick and tired of it.”

He didn’t say anything, but stared at her, waiting.

“And Roger Morton? Why did you kill him?”

“You have to ask? I don’t regret the killing of Morton. I’d dance on his fucking grave if I could.”

Kate said, “I could have put him back in prison for life. Did you manipulate him into coming here, or did you learn he was coming here and then plan to kill him?”

“Prison,” Mallory snapped bitterly, turning to Kate
for the first time. “Really. I prefer a bullet in the back of the head. Cheaper, faster justice.”

Lucy said quietly, “So you killed Morton because he was a rapist and helped Adam Scott cover up untold murders. And he was walking free.”

“I would have saved you if I could—”

Lucy raised her hand. “But you didn’t. And that’s the crux of it, isn’t it? Because you didn’t stop him from raping me, you needed to punish him because of
your
own guilt. You took a picture of me after deliberately getting my class schedule. You framed it and put it in your house. You knew where I worked and what I was doing. You lured Roger Morton here so you could kill him in my own backyard. And you say you’re
not
obsessed with me?”

“Lucy, you needed to know he was dead. I wanted to give you peace.”

“Peace.” Lucy almost blurted out her accusations about him killing Cody, but she needed to do the one thing that Hans had asked her to do, not use this interview because she was battling her own guilt. “Why bring Morton here? You were a noble assassin,” she said sarcastically. “Why have him come
here
? To where I live?”

“I had to.”

“But why?”

Mallory didn’t answer.

“Dammit, tell me!”

He was wrestling with something, she saw it on his face, but a moment later he sighed and his shoulders sagged.

“Adam Scott kept souvenirs from all his victims. Usually a piece of jewelry. Denise, the woman who helped
him, told me about it. She found the box in Scott’s suitcase when we were on the island, and threw it away. Scott found out and recovered it. Beat the living shit out of her. I went to Seattle to try to find it but couldn’t. I had been working with Dave Biggler for two years, and he knew Ralston, one of his dad’s informants. The first time I tried to get to Morton, it was to go to Seattle to retrieve the box. We paid Ralston to plant the idea that there was substantial cash, securities, and jewelry that Scott hid on the island in a metal box with intricate designs on it—I was certain Morton would know exactly where it was.”

“Why would Morton think that Ralston knew about it?” Kate asked. “Wasn’t Morton suspicious?”

“No. Ralston was a longtime cohort of Adam Scott—and we told Ralston to say that the information came from one of Scott’s former security people who had a financial backer to create another Internet sex site.”

“Wait,” Kate said. “None of that was for real? All those videos Morton was collecting was because of your scam?”

“I would never have let them go live.”

“You’re fucking insane,” Kate said. “You’re the one who gave Morton the idea to re-create Trask Enterprises!”

“No, he was already playing around; I just provided incentive for him to act faster.”

“But Morton didn’t go to Seattle, Ralston did,” Lucy said, trying to get Mallory back on track.

“I didn’t know he sent Ralston to retrieve the box. However, I did learn that Ralston was keeping the box for Morton.”

“So you killed Ralston because of it.”

“I killed Ralston because he was playing both sides. He thought he could get more money if he worked with Morton.”

“Why did Ralston help you in the first place?”

“Because Dave asked him to and we paid him well. I should have realized he was a double agent, so to speak. Morton didn’t show up with the box when he was supposed to on Thursday. So after the meet at the marina, I went to his motel. It wasn’t there. I realized that Ralston had to have known where it was—Morton was carrying one piece of jewelry on him from the box, so it had to be
somewhere
, and Ralston was the only one Morton had talked to since he arrived.”

“What sick reason could you want with Adam Scott’s souvenirs anyway?” Kate asked.

Lucy knew. “You wanted to give the jewelry back to the families.”

He nodded. “I have your ring, Lucy. I just didn’t know how to give it to you.”

She blinked back tears she refused to shed in front of Mallory. “You know, I almost understand. I don’t agree with anything you did, but I understand. Everything. Except Cody. Why’d you kill him?”

Mallory looked like he’d been slapped, but Lucy continued without pause.

“He was a good man,” said Lucy. “He never hurt me, he never hurt anyone! He believed in what we were doing, putting the parolees back in prison. He was loyal to Fran. And you killed him because he found out about your cowardly vigilante group!”

Mallory was shaking his head and leaned forward. “No. No fucking way did I kill Cody Lorenzo. I swear on my wife’s grave that I didn’t kill him.”

Lucy rubbed her eyes to stop her tears from leaking out. She didn’t want to believe Mallory, yet everything else he said had the ring of truth, so why not this? But she’d rather believe that Mallory killed Cody than Cody killing himself.

“You didn’t? Who’d you send to do it? Fran? David Biggler? Who did it?”

“It wasn’t any of us, I swear to you, Lucy. I would never hurt someone you cared about. All I’ve wanted these last six years is your forgiveness.”

Lucy rose from her seat and leaned forward. “I forgive you for what happened six years ago. But I’ll never forgive you for what you’ve done since. I don’t want my ring back. I don’t want to see it or see you, until your trial.”

She walked out.

Sean found Lucy sitting in the small lobby of FBI headquarters. He sat next to her and took her hand. She looked up at him, and he kissed her. “Kate and Dillon are going to be awhile and Armstrong and Resnick are headed out to Mallory’s place to wrap up the search for evidence. They still can’t find any guns.”

“He probably got rid of them. It sounds like he would know exactly how to do that.”

Sean hated how defeated Lucy looked. He wanted her fire back, the same fire that led her to pursue this investigation in the first place, that gave her the courage to confront Mick Mallory. “Come home with me, okay?”

“Do you think he killed Cody?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

Lucy closed her eyes and leaned back. “Neither do I. When I went in there I was so certain that he’d done it.
And now … if Cody killed himself, I can’t blame anyone but
him
. And I don’t want to.”

“They’ll know for sure by tomorrow whether it was suicide or murder,” Sean said.

“Will they?” she asked.

“You know Forensics better than I do, but Noah said they are prioritizing this and hope to have a definitive answer in the morning. What do you think?”

“With ballistics, they know for certain more than ninety percent of the time—but it still could be inconclusive.”

“I’ll go with the odds.” He kissed her on the forehead. “You’ll have the answer tomorrow. Don’t beat yourself up about it now.”

“What about Fran?”

“She’s in jail for the night. So is David Biggler. Armstrong said they don’t have anything on his sister, but told her not to leave town. Mallory didn’t give her up, so maybe she really wasn’t involved.”

“Or he’s trying to protect her because she’s a young woman. She’s my age.” Lucy hated Mallory, hated what he’d done, what he’d perverted in his twisted sense of right and wrong. That she’d somehow been the impetus for his decisions sickened her.

“You’re exhausted, Lucy. Let’s go.”

“I am tired,” she agreed.

Sean stood, pulling her up with him and wrapping an arm around her shoulder. “There’s nothing more either of us can do tonight.”

When Noah and Hans arrived at Mallory’s house, it was after eight at night, below 30 degrees, with the promise of blizzard-like conditions by Thursday morning.
The search team was done, but SSA Lauren Cheville had asked Noah to come out.

“I wanted you to see this,” Lauren said. “Pictures simply won’t do it justice.”

He and Hans walked with Lauren toward the kitchen. “I thought the search was a bust,” Lauren explained. “We found nothing to implicate Mallory in any crimes. But I remembered what you said, Hans.”

“That he will have kept his guns.”

“Exactly. I just didn’t imagine that he’d have made it so easy for us to trace them—just hard to find them.”

They followed Lauren into the basement, accessed by a door in the kitchen. The basement was damp with a moldy scent that made Noah sneeze. There was full fluorescent lighting and several workbenches, tools hung meticulously on peg-board lined walls, and canned goods lined a metal shelf. “We checked the basement earlier, did a complete sweep, but nothing jumped out. After we came up empty, I walked through the entire place again, thinking about where
I
would have hidden a gun collection. I knocked on walls and tables, and then found it.” She motioned to an agent who was standing by a workbench. “Show them, Carl.”

Carl knocked on one of the two six-foot-long workbenches. It was solid wood. He knocked on the other. It sounded hollow. “Watch this,” he said. He extended his arms as far as they could go and reached under both front corners of the bench. “There’s a special release—you have to press both at the same time and—
voilà
!”

The top of the bench popped open on a spring. Inside on the felt-lined hidden compartment were dozens of handguns—mostly nine-millimeters and .38s. Three rifles—an M21 and two M24s—were secured on the underside
of the workbench lid. Several knives were also on display.

Each firearm had a name painted on the barrel in white.

“My God,” Hans said. Even he appeared surprised, although he’d predicted that Mallory would have kept the weapons he used. “How many are there?”

“Seventeen nine-millimeters, ten .38 revolvers, and two Glock .45’s,” Lauren said. “This is a fortune in guns to be tagged and left for souvenirs.”

“But it makes each murder that much harder to prove when the ballistics don’t match up with anything else,” Hans said.

Noah read the names. Most he didn’t recognize. Then he saw Roger Morton next to Robert Ralston. “See those?” He gestured toward the guns.

“Can’t miss them. Did you notice what’s under each gun?”

“File folders.”

“My guess? It’s his justification for each murder—a list of their crimes, sentences, parole information. Mallory doesn’t want anyone to think he’s a monster, so he convinces himself that he’s a savior.”

Noah stared at the firearms and wondered what it would take for someone to turn vigilante—what was the trigger? For Mallory, the trigger had been the murders of his wife and son, coupled with his inability to protect Lucy Kincaid when she was kidnapped. But Fran Buckley—other people have been victims and lost family, and they didn’t take the law into their own hands—why had Fran? What had been her trigger?

Nothing good was coming from this investigation. A cop was dead, lives were ruined, and Noah suspected it wasn’t going to end with Mick Mallory’s confession.

Lucy didn’t know if it was the strange bed or the events of the day, but after three hours of an uneasy, dreamless sleep, she woke up and was unable to go back to sleep.

She sat up and considered reading, but she needed to sleep.

She didn’t want to be alone.

She was wearing one of Sean’s shirts, a worn, oversized MIT T-shirt that hit her mid-thigh.

Maybe it was sleeping in Sean’s shirt, wrapped in his scent, that had awakened her. With the idea she had, she was glad Patrick was still in California.

She walked silently down the hall to Sean’s room. It was two in the morning, but his light was still on. Her heart flipped. He was working this late because of her. Trying to put all the puzzle pieces together, even though Mallory and Fran and Dave Biggler were all in jail.

Even superheroes needed rest, she thought, planning to say such when she pushed open his bedroom door.

Sean was asleep, wearing sweatpants and no top. He had two laptops open, one next to him and one on his lap, and a folder leaking papers lying on his chest.

Lucy quietly closed the door and walked over. She
didn’t want to startle Sean—living with a family of cops she knew that wouldn’t be wise—so she said, “Sean.”

His eyes popped open. They were cloudy from sleep, but two blinks later he was fully awake.

“Luce—you okay?”

“I’m fine. You should go to bed.”