My Boss is a Serial Killer (24 page)

Ah, but observe the seasoned secretary at
work. Long hours under the tutelage of a psychotic sadist had
taught me how to bear up under asinine behavior. I recited Bill’s
cell phone number aloud and invited him to yes, please, call Bill
and clear up any uncertain details. I was bluffing, of course, but
I didn’t think this one had the testicular fortitude to call a
bluff.

Junior Gestapo Brent did not call Bill. Of
course, he wouldn’t. That would require him to do something besides
bully me. He approached this from a different angle. “When will you
be back?”

“
Ten.” I had no idea if this were true.
I didn’t care. In fact I was beginning to wonder why I’d stopped to
ask permission in the first place. If I vanished from my desk for
three hours, I wasn’t positive anyone would notice, and if they
did, I could just say I’d been in the bathroom.

“
Weren’t you out a couple days last
week?” The Junior Gestapo agent asked me sharply.

I cocked an eyebrow at him. For God’s sake, I
was worried about my boss and not in any shape to be the practice
dummy for Brent’s employee-interrogation techniques.

“
I have to go,” I said, and turned
away.

“
Carol…” came his voice, as I had known
it would. “Carol…”

“
Talk to me when I get
back.”

For the second time ever, I came to my boss’s
apartment, which against all odds looked even uglier in sunny
daylight than it had at night. I found a parking place next to his
BMW and rode the elevators up to his floor, my hand on my cell
phone in case I needed to call an ambulance. I had the half-formed
idea in the back of my mind that Bill had done himself harm.
Barring that, I hoped urgently that he would be home and let me
help. My job, after all, was to make his life a little easier. I’d
always been able to do that before.

He was home. When Bill opened his door, he
was physically intact. He was dressed for work in his
never-changing gray-suit uniform, but he was rumpled and wrinkled,
his hair mussed, his face ashen. He looked awful. I would have bet
a hundred bucks that he had not changed his clothes since
yesterday.

“
So you know I’ve been calling?” I
asked with irritation. “What, are you not speaking to me
now?”

“
I thought you didn’t want any contact
with me outside of work hours.”

“
Don’t be a baby,” I said, “and don’t
lie to me anymore.”

“
What do you want me to do? You think
I’m killing my clients.”

“
I was worried about you.” I pushed
past him into his stale little set of rooms and flung my purse and
keys onto his bare coffee table where they crashed and clunked
disconcertingly. I could tell he didn’t like them there and that he
itched to clear the table of the clutter. Insolently I sat on his
plastic-covered couch. “Sit down, for heaven’s sake,” I told him.
“When did I ever accuse you of harming anyone?”

“
It’s not a matter of accusations. It’s
in the questions you ask me. It’s in your face.”

“
I have a strong suspicion that
something unsavory is happening, that’s all.”

“
And that it’s my doing.”

“
And that you’re involved, to the
extent that these women all came to you. Yes.”

“
Well, at least that’s out in the
open.” Bill sat down as I’d requested, finally, but he reached
forward and pushed my purse and keys to the floor. I allowed him
that. “So why are you here?”

“
Because you won’t take my calls. I’ve
been trying to reach you since last night.”

“
What’s the point? I know what you’re
doing.”

“
I’m doing my job. Or I would be, if
you’d let me. I’m trying to make things easier for you.”

A harsh laugh erupted from Bill, and he began
plucking at his shirtsleeves.

“
We need to talk to Gus Haglund
together. It’s better if he finds out from us what’s happening,
rather than finding it out on his own.”

“
Pray tell, how is Detective Haglund
going to find it out on his own?” From the look on his face, I
gathered he already knew what I was going to say.

And I didn’t know how else to approach this
now except to be honest. “Including Adrienne Maxwell, Detective
Haglund has found nine suicides with identical M.O.’s in Kansas
City coroner’s records for the last fifteen years. He’s reopened
their case files, or opened a whole new case file, or maybe both,
I’m not sure. His sergeant has assigned him to investigate them,
and they’re not saying the words out loud but they are looking at
it like a serial murder case.”

Bill stared at me. Even his hands stopped
straightening shirtsleeves. I’d rarely seen him so still. I held
his gaze, and after a few moments he said, “You’ve given your list
to Detective Haglund.”

“
No, I didn’t. I didn’t tell him
anything that we’ve discussed. Detective Haglund found his own list
in the course of investigating the Maxwell case. But…” I bit my
lip, unsure of how to say this. “I inadvertently may have given him
the idea.”

“
Inadvertently.”

“
Hey, you told me to grill him about
Adrienne Maxwell’s case.”

“
No, I did not tell you to ‘grill’
him.”

“
God, let’s not bicker over terms. How
long do you suppose it would take a smart detective to figure out
the connection between them?”

“
You should tell me, Carol. You’re the
detective expert.”

“
Don’t you understand what I’m saying?
Detective Haglund is forming a list of suicides. He is
investigating them. And I have my own list which I feel obligated
to share with him, since my own more-or-less innocent questions are
what started this mess, but I didn’t want to share it with him
until I talked to you.”

“
Why do you have to tell him anything?”
asked Bill. “What business is it of yours or mine?”

“
That’s a very naïve way to think,” I
warned him. “He’ll find the connection.”

“
You don’t know that. You don’t know
that his list matches yours.”

“
I know that three of the names do.
We’ve got Adrienne Maxwell, and last night he mentioned Alice
Hooper and Bonita Voigt.”

“
I knew it,” Bill accusingly cried,
jerking his eyes away from me as if he could no longer bear my
presence. “I knew you went with him last night to talk about
this.”

“
Yes, but it’s not like you think, damn
it!” For a moment I rubbed my forehead. There was no reason not to
be calm. I had found Bill. I could make this work. This was no
different than getting him ready to appear before a judge in one of
his cases. “You and I must go together and show him our list. It
will look better that way. We’ll be cooperating.”

“
It’ll look better than what?” asked
Bill, turning his eyes back to mine with a considerable fire of
desperation behind them. “Than nine dead women? Than my dead
clients? Or the copies of the notes I took for their files that
have all their personal information including where they keep their
spare keys and whether they have attack dogs? The fact that I
haven’t noticed in fifteen years that an unusual number of my
clients eat pills until they die? My inability to have an alibi for
any night of my life because I’m always alone? My history of mental
illness?”

At the end of that tirade, I had to force
myself to relax. Tension had seeped into me like ice water pouring.
I mustn’t patronize him. He wasn’t stupid. “Yes,” I said, “for all
those reasons, you’ve got to talk to him.”

“
So he can figure out what I’ve done,”
Bill said in desolation. “How I’ve managed to cause nine women to
die.”

After a serial killer is captured or killed,
our media always tracks down his acquaintances, friends if he had
any, family members if they’ll speak, and it’s always the same
story. He was such a nice, quiet guy. Never caused trouble. Kind of
a loner. Good member of the community. It’s never “Oh sure, you
could tell just by lookin’ at him that he was running over virgins
with a lawnmower.”

After Bill said those words to me, I had a
bad moment where I thought he could have done it. If anyone really
can force someone else into suicide, then Bill must be considered a
possibility. For all the reasons he just listed, and for others.
Like, why exactly had he come to my house last weekend—if indeed he
had? And here I sat across from him in his maniacally neat living
room, and he could do almost anything to me. I’d probably never see
it coming.

The very next thing I thought was this: Bill
was the best boss I’d ever had, and if he had to go to the electric
chair, who was I supposed to work for? We’d had three peaceful
years together. My nights and weekends were my own, not plagued by
thoughts of attorneys shouting at me; I had no worries about being
blamed for things that were someone else’s fault or no one’s fault
at all, and experienced no weird sexual one-upmanship or tension.
Everything was just about working well together and then getting
paid, and then just being okay with that. If Gus and his reopened
case were to suddenly disappear, could I go on working for Bill as
if nothing had changed? We can forgive a lot from the people we
really care about.

Nine dead women, I thought dismally. All my
mother’s age. No, of course, ultimately I couldn’t live with it,
tempting though it may have been.

Of course, Bill saw the moment when I
seriously considered the possibility of his guilt. I’m not very
good at hiding my thoughts, and Bill knew me well. He nodded
sagely, watching his hands in his lap. “Do you think I have time to
leave town?”

This was a moment to keep cool. I thought
fast. “I’m sure you do. If you don’t waste too much time, you could
probably be on the other side of the world before Gus figures it
out.”

Don’t be startled at my agreeing with him. I
knew very well that Bill Nestor was no more likely to travel to
another country than he was to travel to the moon. Public
transportation upset him badly; it was far too disorganized. All
those disorganized people climbing in and out of the plane, leaving
their things tucked haphazardly under their seats. What if a
backpack strap flopped into the aisle and tripped the stewardess,
and she fell into the drink cart and the plane crashed? What if all
the overhead compartments came open and dumped luggage on
everyone’s heads, and there were multiple concussions and the plane
crashed? If he couldn’t drive somewhere in his car, he simply found
a way not to go. I saw him shudder at the thought of flying
away.

“
Or I suppose you could drive
somewhere,” I continued, “but in this country, you can’t hide.
Everything’s on videotape. Everyone’s a detective. They’ll have
your picture up on the news from here to Timbuktu; they’ll trace
your credit cards and your car; they’ll hunt down every friend or
relative you’ve ever had.”

“
I suppose so,” he said. Of more
concern to Bill would be the horror of staying in strange beds and
eating in strange places. I knew he could cope with business travel
because I’d sent him out of town often enough, but it was stressful
for him, utterly exhausting if he had to be gone for more than a
couple days. Rigidly straightening every room you enter is a tiring
activity.

“
But hiding will make you look
guilty.”

“
Guiltier than I already look? Is that
possible?”

“
Hold on. Just hold on a second.” A
sigh heaved out of me of its own accord. “Bill, let’s not get ahead
of ourselves. Nobody’s even said for certain that there has been
any wrongdoing.”

“
Nobody needs to say it.”

“
Let’s go together to meet with
Detective Haglund and explain everything to him.”

“
Turn myself in, you mean.”

“
No, it would keep you from having to
turn yourself in, Bill. It’s only if you run that things will begin
to look really wrong.” That felt like a hollow statement in the
face of everything already looking as wrong as it did.

“
Are you patronizing me, Carol?” His
mouth quirked into a weak smile.

“
Maybe a little bit. I’m sorry, Bill,
but what am I supposed to say? I’m trying to think of a way to make
this go more easily for you. I’d like for you to let me do my
job.”

“
This isn’t really part of your job,
though, is it?” For a few seconds we looked at each other, and I
felt his assessment of me like more of that cold water that had
been trying to seep into my veins. Bill had never regarded me
without a certain baffled affection until these past couple days. I
didn’t feel I deserved it, either, his sudden drama over what he
saw as my awful betrayal. This mess was not my fault just because I
was the one who had noticed it first. I was going out of my way to
keep his situation under control.

Finally Bill asked, “Do you think they’ll
beat me up? The police?”

“
Beat you up? God, no! Why on earth
would they do that? Besides, I’ll be with you the whole time. It’s
just a meeting, Bill.”

“
Like a lunch meeting,” he said wryly.
“Would you like to call your detective now and set up a lunch
meeting?”

“
Sure, a lunch meeting.”

“
Did we have any other appointments
today?” he asked off-handedly. “I didn’t remember anything on the
schedule.”