“Can’t wait,” Savich said. “I was just thinking the ride over was smooth as my treadmill.”
Sherlock said, “Yeah, I especially liked how my stomach heaved up to my ears when you banked halfway over to set us down.”
Bobby smiled. “I’ll have to do something about that, won’t I? I wouldn’t want you two big shots to be bored on the way back to the big bad city.”
The sun had disappeared behind darkening clouds thirty minutes before, and was still a no-show in western New York. The wind kicked up occasional gusts that dusted up the dirt beside the road. The trees, they saw, were greening up nicely with the spring rains. The land was flat, cows thick in pastures, and Alexander Road was light on traffic. Savich drove past the Attican Motel, thinking he’d like to turn in, pull the shades down in a room, and sleep with Sherlock until Monday. Coming east on the red-eye wiped you out.
Two guards and an administrator escorted them to the hospital, a basic three-story red brick building, like most of the other buildings in the vast correctional facility. There they met Warden Daniel Rafferty, who adjusted his thick glasses to closely check their I.D.s even though they’d already been checked twice, and shook their hands. “Courtney was having problems breathing during the night so we brought him here to check him out. He’s had some heart problems for years now, but never anything life-threatening. Still, we like to be careful. He’s on the third floor. This way.”
Sherlock whispered behind her hand when the warden was a goodly distance ahead of them, “We’re met by the warden himself, who refers to our mass murderer as Courtney? It sounds like they’ve given him such fine care he might fund a new building if he’s ever paroled.”
Warden Rafferty laughed, turned, and grinned at her. “The acoustics in the hospital are truly phenomenal. You’re right, of course. Courtney James is in a class by himself. Do you think he’s really a mass murderer?” The warden shrugged. “He’s here for life, so what does it matter? Fact is, I like the old guy. I’ve never been able to see him committing any random murders because some odd voice told him to do it. Come this way.”
Savich and Sherlock followed the warden through two sets of secure doors, both manned by guards who dropped their looks of hard-eyed intimidation when Sherlock nodded and smiled at them.
Warden Rafferty ran into a doctor coming out of Courtney James’s room, which was private, he remarked, because none of the other prisoners wanted to crowd in on the old man’s space. “The doc here will tell you that even the meanest thugs, the most vicious psychopaths, make way for Courtney. They defer to him in the food line, walk with him nice and slow during exercise so he won’t be alone. He has the money to get them most anything they want, legally or otherwise—you know, cigarettes, candy, CDs, and the like—but he also treats them with respect. He even gives me a rather tasty fruitcake for Christmas every year made by monks somewhere in Oregon, and he has a crate of Krispy Kremes flown in for the inmates and guards.”
Dr. Burgess, stoop-shouldered and rumpled, looked at the agents with old, tired eyes, then he turned to Warden Rafferty. “He has a fruitcake sent to me every Christmas too. Courtney’s doing fine. I took him off the oxygen. I think he overdid it with the big poker game last night and he’s just tuckered out.”
Sherlock raised an eyebrow.
Warden Rafferty laughed. “They all have a deck of cards. They’ve developed a sophisticated code to tap against the walls of their cells to communicate—a call, raise, a fold. Evidently, Black Tooth Moses was winning big, especially from Courtney, and didn’t want to stop. Since Courtney wouldn’t ever want to disappoint him, he kept going until he collapsed. Scared the crap out of all the inmates, Black Moses the most. And the guards, needless to say.” His mouth kicked up a bit. “Yep, they like the old guy and those Krispy Kremes, glazed, still warm to the touch and nearly as fresh.”
They walked into the small white-walled room with its three hospital beds, two of them empty. There was one utilitarian chair in the corner and a single window that looked out onto one of the yards. They followed Warden Rafferty to the bedside.
They’d seen photos of Courtney James from the time of his arrest in 1977 to when he was pronounced guilty by the jury in 1979. But nearly thirty years had passed. None of the photos resembled the old man they saw now.
“Courtney?”
Vivid blue eyes stared first at the warden, then took in Sherlock and Savich. He grinned. “What’s this? You bring me a pretty girl? My, would you look at those beautiful blue eyes, sort of like mine. Hmm, could I be her granddaddy, you think?”
“I don’t think so, Courtney.”
“Then I’m on my way out, Warden?”
“Nah, you’re a fixture. She’s not just a pretty girl, she’s an FBI agent. Her name’s Sherlock. This is Agent Savich. They’re here to speak to you. You feeling up to it?”
“Of course I’ll speak to this pretty girl. I haven’t seen a pretty girl in thirty years, and I haven’t seen such beautiful hair in all my life. My mama dyed her hair red, but you could tell, you know? But your hair, Agent Sherlock—you married, sweet girl?”
Sherlock leaned down to his thin, sharp cheekboned face with its pale, amazingly unlined skin. A sick old man, she thought. Interesting how it blurred the reality of what he’d done. “You’ve got to be careful, Mr. James. Agent Savich is my husband.”
Courtney James said, “Nah, he can’t be jealous of me, I’m just an old man on his way out. Maybe I should try to look pitiful— put those oxygen clips back in my nose. Big fellow, isn’t he? Looks like he eats nails for breakfast.”
“Not me,” Savich said, “I eat Cheerios along with my little boy.”
“Ain’t that a kick now?” His smart old eyes went from one to the other and back again. “You want to talk to me? About what? You reopening the case? You want to get me out of here?”
“That would be nice,” Savich said, “but I don’t think it’s going to happen.”
“Well, Agent, the thing is, I can’t tell you where any of those bodies are buried since I never killed those folk they thought I did. I killed the Pallacks, true enough, and the good Lord knows I’m sorry I got caught. Fact is, they deserved it. They were a pair of shits, especially her. She was worse than both her husband and her son.” He sighed deeply. “Can I touch your hair, Agent Sherlock? That’s quite a name you’ve got there.”
“Thank you, Mr. James.” Sherlock didn’t pull away from the old man when he raised his thin veined hand to smooth her thick hair.
Warden Rafferty was moving from one foot to the other, doubtless wondering why they were playing around like this, but he kept quiet, something Savich appreciated.
Savich said, “Okay, Mr. James, you’ve flirted enough with my wife. You back off now or I’ll have to hurt you.”
The old man grinned wide again, showing white teeth that looked like his own. “You’re a lucky boy,” he said. “Okay, you’re here to ask me questions. Obviously something’s happened. What’s up?”
Savich said, “I want you to tell us all you remember about the Pallacks. The parents and their son Thomas. You said Mrs. Pallack was the worst, worse than her son and her husband. Tell us what you mean.”
Courtney James looked over at the blank white wall. “It was a long time ago, but you know, some things are like photographs, they stay in your brain forever. I can still see the look on her face when I stabbed her the first time. Okay, let me get back on track here. Margaret Pallack was the prettiest woman I’d ever seen, and she knew it. She was almost sixty, Pallack sixty-five when I killed them, but you know what? She was still a beauty, tall and slim— she stayed fit, had her own gym in her house and exercised every day—and she had beautiful dark hair that curved around her jaw. A stranger would have thought she wasn’t a day over forty. And did she ever know it, and use it.”
“Why would you kill a woman you so obviously admired?”
“Well, now, pretty girl, since you ask, the thing is, she slept with me. I never admitt
ed that to the cops, prurient little bastards, never told them anything, really, since they’d already made up their minds that I was this demon psychopath, that I’d butchered everything that moved. But I don’t care now that you know. The truth is, I had loads of provocation, a whole bulging truckload.
“I think that whole serial killer nonsense was Thomas’s doing. Thomas Pallack was a chip off the old block, his mama’s old block, always tied to his mama’s leash, was Thomas. I remember that the prosecutor kept trying to sneak in references to ‘other crimes’ and ‘other people,’ that sort of thing, but they didn’t have any proof of that.
“Yeah, I’ll bet it was Thomas. The snooty little creep always hated me. I’d see him staring at his mother, then over at me, and he looked vicious, like he knew. You know something else? He looked jealous. I used to wonder if he’d have tried to frame me for killing his parents even if I hadn’t done it. But the thing is, his folks, they really asked for it like I said, they really did.” He stopped talking for some time, just stared blankly at the white wall in front of him.
Finally, Savich said, “Mr. James, you’re speaking very freely to us, and we appreciate that.”
“And why shouldn’t I, Agent Savich? I’m nearly eighty years old. How much longer can I last in the warden’s lovely country home? Like I already told you, I spent years with everyone believing I was a serial killer, that I heard voices from the devil, nonsense like that. I remember having to deny it even to the shrinks in here, but no one wanted to hear it.
“Now, here are two federal agents who are finally ready to hear what really happened. You are, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Mr. James, we came a long way to find out what really happened.”
“Ah, you’re such a pretty little girl. I hate for you to hear all this, even though all the blood is dry now, but it isn’t pleasant—”
“I’m pretty tough, Mr. James. It’s my job to be.”
He looked at her with his bright blue eyes, intelligent eyes, assessing her. Then he gave her a sweet smile, and Sherlock had to remind herself that he was a murderer.
He said, “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
“Good,” Savich said. “Please include me in that too, Mr. James. May we record this?”
The old man slowly nodded. He said, “Her name was Margaret. I called her Maggie May. I remember I used to sing ‘Maggie May’ when we were in bed. That was before I killed her.”
CHAPTER 56
Why?” Sherlock asked him when he went silent again.
"Because she was older, I suppose, like the Maggie May in that old Rod Stewart song. I was her young man even though I was middle-aged then, ten years older than that loser son of hers. Yep, I slept with her, you know, and no one ever really knew about it. I kept our secret, let her keep her reputation even in death.”
Savich said, “You never told her son Thomas?”
“Yes, but not until later. He suspected, but he didn’t know for sure.”
“You said you thought Thomas was jealous of you.”
“Oh yeah, I think Thomas felt some things for his mama a son shouldn’t feel. I think he could have settled in quite naturally with all the other sicko perverts on somebody’s couch. What he didn’t realize back then, maybe he still doesn’t, is what a conniving bitch his precious mother was.”
“What do you mean?” Sherlock asked. “What happened?”
He gave her another sweet smile. “After she’d slept with me maybe three months, she told me one afternoon when I’d slipped into her house and found her in the kitchen—her husband was off playing golf—that her son told her I buggered little boys for money, stuff like that. She said Thomas told her I’d made a pass at him. It wasn’t nice what she said to me, and she didn’t shut up. Then her husband came in through the back door into the kitchen and she looked like she’d swallowed her tongue. I remember as clear as day how I stood up and smiled at him, not a nice smile like I give you, Agent Sherlock, but a real mean smile. I told him flat out I was sleeping with his sweet-assed wife because he was old and bony, but hey, she was sexy and hot, and a pretty good lay, even if she was a gold-plated bitch.
“The old man threw his golf clubs at me, can you imagine? Landed six feet short, of course, since he was such a bloody wuss. I laughed at him and he came at me in a rage. I remember her screaming. I picked up one of those fancy knives she was using and stuck it in his neck. All that blood.” He paused a moment, and they saw a flash of pleasure. “Blood everywhere and she wouldn’t stop screaming, so I stuck the knife in her chest. Do you know she only made this little squeaking sound, that was all? Then I stabbed her a whole bunch of times. I don’t remember how many, I just kept going, in and out, in and out.
“They were dead, lying on that huge kitchen floor, bleeding all over the white tiles. It was a mess, I’ll tell you.
“There was no one around. It was a Sunday, you see, and the hired staff had the day off. I stood there, looking down at them, and thought about what I was going to do. I’m not stupid, so I cleaned up really good, took the knife, and left. Since the Pallacks’ house was only two doors away from mine, I could go through the backyards and not be seen by anyone.
“I thought I was home free there for a good long while, but I knew Thomas was eyeing me, like he knew I’d done it, but he couldn’t prove anything. I’ll have to give him credit though, Thomas came after me with all the money he had. He hired half a dozen investigators. It was only me he wanted, even though he pretended he was checking out all the neighbors. I think they wire-tapped my phones, talked to all my relatives, even got ahold of my credit card reports.
“One day I came home early and found the police in my basement and I knew I was in deep trouble. Thomas must have helped them get a search warrant. My lawyer told me the cops found medieval torture instruments in the basement and there was dried blood on them.”
Savich nodded.
The old man shook his head. “But it wasn’t my stuff, it was my dad’s. He was a real history nut, loved that old stuff, anything the inquisitors used, he had to have it. Everyone knew about his torture chamber, as he liked to call it—he was an eccentric. There wasn’t any blood until Thomas got some and smeared it on some of my father’s equipment. My old man was harmless.”
“They found the knife behind the radiator,” Sherlock said.
“Ha! I wouldn’t be that big a fool. That was another knife. Thomas must have gotten some blood the same type as his parents’ and rubbed it on the knife—no DNA back then, so it was easy. Then he planted it for the cops to find.”
“What did you do with the knife you used?”
“I dropped it in the Lansky River five miles away from my house. But what could I do? Nothing, that’s what.
“It was all over for me anyway, and I knew it. How can you fight being framed for a bunch of murders nobody committed at all?”
Sherlock said, “When did you tell Thomas Pallack that you’d slept with his mother?”
The old man laughed. “When I was being marched out of the courtroom between two guards right after the guilty verdict. Up dashed old Thomas, got right in my face. He looked wild with triumph, and I knew he wanted to gloat, and so I whispered it right in his face, and then I sang ‘Maggie May’ and licked my lips. He leaped on me but the guards pulled him off. I remember it so clearly, I could hear Thomas breathing hard as I laughed at him while the guards yanked me out of there.
“But hey, I’ve got lots of friends in here and the world is safe from me. I’m feeling tired now. I’d like to sleep so I can get back to the poker game later with Moses. He’s quite a gamer, old Moses, just a bit lame on the strategy. Can’t bluff worth a damn.”
Savich said, “Mr. James, we appreciate your filling us in on what happened, but the real reason we came to see you—” He saw the old man’s eyelids droop, and he added quickly, his voice sharp and hard, “Did you know Thomas Pallack finally married? Nearly three years ago.”
Courtney’s eyes popped
open. He looked surprised at that. “Isn’t that something. No, I didn’t know. There isn’t much news in here. I’m surprised, I’ll admit it. It was always his mama, always. I thought he’d go to his grave mourning her, having wet dreams about her.”
Now that they had him focused again, it was time to back up. Sherlock asked, “Did you know Thomas Pallack claims to have spoken through a medium to his dead parents every Wednesday and Saturday since shortly after you killed them all those years ago?”
That perked him up. “A psychic? Nah, you’re putting me on. He found someone—a medium, right?—who talks to dead people? Now, isn’t that interesting? He’s wigged out, has he?”
Savich said, “Whatever Thomas felt for his mother, it appears he really loved both of his parents. He claims they give him advice, that they care about what he’s doing, are always there for him.”
The old man snorted. “Dead people there for him. Now, what’s wrong with that picture? Well, his daddy wasn’t there for him. Never. And Thomas never gave a rat’s ass what his daddy thought or felt. Like I told you, he loved his mama—way too much.
“So, he got married, did he? He finally found someone to replace her. Imagine that. I wonder what maggoty rotted old Maggie May thinks about that?”
Replace her?
“I wonder what Thomas’s wife looks like.”
“A moment, Mr. Jones.” In that instant, Savich felt a rush of adrenaline. He saw Sherlock’s hand shaking slightly, knew she felt it too. He opened his briefcase and handed the old man a color photo, not of Charlotte, but of Christie. But it didn’t matter. He stared down at the photo along with Courtney James.
Courtney twisted his head up to look at Savich. “What the hell is this, Agent?”
“A photo of Thomas’s new wife, like I told you.”
“No, no, come on now, I’m not that old. I remember so well Maggie’s swingy dark hair, those bright blue-green eyes of hers. And her white skin, so soft—” Courtney James fell silent, and simply stared and stared at that photo. Finally, he said, his voice bewildered, “My God, that’s Maggie May, but a lot younger. And the clothes and the hair can’t be right. You’re telling me this is Thomas’s wife, Agent Savich?”