Mind Games

“He uses it to kill people because he likes it. He’s always liked to kill things, even when he was a kid.”

“Yeah, we have witness statements from his childhood behavior. It’s one of the reasons he is where he is. Thea, you said you saw where he is. You saw the prison. It’s not a place, even with this thing he has, he’ll ever walk out of.”

“He was going to try to bribe that guard.”

“It would take a lot more than that, but that’s been handled, too. This prison is a supermax, set up for the worst of the worst, but anytime you’re worried, or get scared, or just need to talk about it, you can call me.”

Howard took out a card. “My personal number’s on there, too. Twenty-four/seven, Thea. You call.” He set the card on the tray. “Now I’m going to ask you one more hard thing. You said there was a girl.”

“I don’t know her name. I don’t think he remembers it or maybe he didn’t know it. I know she was the first he killed. He’d hurt other people, like this kid, a gay kid, but he didn’t beat him up so bad because he was gay, or not really. It was because he was smaller and weaker, and he could. But the girl…”

Thea drank some lemonade, settled herself. “She was on the street. Young, like him.”

Musk started to speak, but Lucy shook her head.

“It was cold, and rainy, too,” Thea continued. “He had a room because he’d stolen money, from his parents, his grandparents, even the kid he beat up before he left home. He always meant to go back, hurt his parents. He hated them. They never did anything terrible to him, but he hated them. And the girl, she’d run away like him, and he said she could stay in his room for the night if she … You know, um, had sex with him.”

“Okay.”

“But he couldn’t make it work, and he heard her thinking how he couldn’t, and how he was a loser or something. He hit her. He hit her really hard in the face. Then he grabbed the lamp, the lamp with the green metal base beside the bed, and he hit her with that.

“Grammie.”

“I’m right here.”

“She couldn’t fight back then, and the blood was on her face from where the lamp cut her. He strangled her when she couldn’t fight back. And he liked watching her eyes when she died. He liked it more than killing cats or dogs or birds. He put her in the closet, and wiped down the room. He took the sheets in case of DNA. He packed his things, and he took them and the sheets, and he left her there.”

“Do you know where this happened?”

“I think maybe Toledo, or he was going there after. I’m not sure. It all came so fast, and it scared me, and—”

“That’s fine, that’s good. That’s so helpful.”

“I don’t think he remembers her name, so I can’t know it, but I saw her face because he did. I tried to draw it. I’m not really good with faces.”

She went to the last pages of her sketch pad, and offered it to Howard.

“I’m going to disagree with you there. This is good.”

Artistic pride snuck through the distress. “You think?”

“I do.”

“She had blond hair with dark roots—I tried to show that, and the streaks? She had blue streaks. Her eyes were brown.”

“Can we take this page?”

“Sure. It was a motel, I think, and the door was brown, like fake wood. The number on it was 137.”

Carefully, Howard tore out the page. “I don’t suppose you’re interested in becoming a cop.”

“No, sir,” Thea said definitely. “No.”

“I’m going to say this with admiration, Thea. That’s too damn bad. I hope you can put this away now, and leave it to us. Thanks for your help, and for your time. We’ll get out of your way, but I’m grabbing one of these cookies.”

“You said you drove down from Fredericksburg?”

“Yes, ma’am. Lucy,” Howard corrected.