4th of July - James Patterson [83]
“Come on, Pete. Don’t make me laugh. That’s so lame.”
We were getting nowhere, and at any minute Keith could say, “Charge me for the knife and let me out of here,” and he’d be within his rights to post bond and walk away.
I stood up from the table and talked to the chief over Keith’s head, my voice colored with compassion.
“You know what? He didn’t do it, Chief. You were right. He doesn’t have it in him. Look. He’s not too bright, and he’s not exactly mentally stable. I mean, I’m sorry, Keith, you’re a pretty good grease monkey, but it’s crazy to think you have the chops to do those murders. And without leaving a clue? I don’t think so.”
“Yeah, we’re wasting our time,” the chief said, following my lead. “This little punk couldn’t get away with stealing dimes out of parking meters.”
Keith swung his head to the chief, to me, to the chief again. “I get what you’re doing,” he said.
I ignored him, continuing to direct my remarks at the chief.
“And I think you were right about Agnew,” I continued. “Now, there’s a guy with balls enough to knock off people at close range. Watch them squirm. Watch them die. And he has the brains to get away with it.”
“Right. Him being connected and all,” said the chief, patting down the back of his hair. “It only makes sense.”
“You shouldn’t be talking this way,” Keith muttered.
I turned back to him with a questioning look.
“Keith, you know Agnew,” I said. “What do you think? Is he our guy?”
It was as if a timer had tripped and a bomb had detonated far underground. First there was a tremor, then a rumble, then everything broke loose.
“Dennis Ag-new?” Keith spat. “That dick-for-brains freaking porno has-been. He’s lucky I didn’t kill him. And believe me, I’ve thought about it.”
Keith clasped his hands together and brought them down hard on the tabletop, making the pens, the notepad, the soda cans jump.
“Look. I’m a brighter bulb than you think, Lindsay. Killing those people was the easiest thing I ever did.”
Chapter 130
KEITH WORE THE SAME coldly furious expression he’d shown me when I’d put my gun to his neck. I didn’t know this Keith.
But I needed to.
“You’re totally wrong about me, both of you,” he said. “And even if you’re playing me, that’s fine. I’m sick of the whole deal. Nobody cares.”
When Keith said “Nobody cares,” I sat back hard in my chair. The Cabot kids had spray-painted the same words on the wall where they’d killed their victims. And so had the killer of John Doe #24, ten years ago.
“What do you mean, ‘Nobody cares’?”
Keith fixed me with his hard blue eyes. “You’re the smart one, right? You figure it out.”
“Don’t mess with me, Keith. I do care. And I’m really listening.”
As the video camera recorded his confession, it was a cop’s dream come true. Keith gave it all up: the names, the dates, the minutiae only the killer could possibly know.
He talked about using different knives, different belts, described every murder, including how he’d tricked Ben O’Malley.
“Yeah, I clubbed him with a rock before cutting his throat. I threw the knife over the side of the road.”
Keith laid out the details in an orderly fashion, like so many cards in a game of solitaire, and they were convincing enough to convict him many times over. But it was still hard for me to believe that he’d done these bloody crimes alone.
“You killed Joe and Annemarie Sarducci by yourself? Without a fight? What are you, Spider-Man?”
“You’re starting to catch on, Lindsay.” He lurched forward in his seat, scraping the chair against the floor, sticking his face too close to mine.
“I charmed them into submission,” he said. “And you better believe it. I worked alone. Spin that for the DA. Yeah, I’m Spider-Man.”
“But why? What did these people ever do to you?”
Keith shook his head as if he pitied me. “You couldn’t understand, Lindsay.”
“Try me.”
“No,” he said. “I’m through talking.”
And that was it. He ran his hands through his blond hair, guzzled down the last of his Classic Coke, and smiled pleasantly,