4th of July - James Patterson [90]
“And Doc O’Malley? What about him and his wife?”
“Doc was selling his own child on the Internet. There was a camera in her room. That stupid Lorelei knew. Caitlin knew. I only hope that her grandparents get her the help she needs. I wish I could do it myself.”
The more she talked, the more I understood the depths of her narcissism. Carolee and her cohorts had taken on the mission of cleaning up child abuse in Half Moon Bay—acting as the whole judicial package: judge, jury, and executioners. And the way she described it, it almost made sense.
If you didn’t know what she’d done.
“Carolee. You killed eight people.”
We were interrupted by a knock on the door. The detective cracked it open a few inches, and I saw the chief outside. His face was gray with fatigue. I stepped out into the hallway.
“Coastside hospital called,” he told me. “Hinton administered the coup de grâce after all.”
I stepped back into the chief’s office. Sat down in the swivel chair.
“Make that nine, Carolee. Ed Farley just died.”
“And thank God for that,” Carolee said. “When you people open the barn at the back of the Farleys’ yard you’re going to have to pin a medal on me. The Farleys have been trafficking in little Mexican girls. Selling them for sex all across the country. Call the FBI, Lindsay. This is a big one.”
Carolee’s posture relaxed even as I grappled with this new bombshell. She leaned forward confidingly. The earnestness in her face was absolutely stunning.
“I’ve been wanting to tell you something since I met you,” she said. “And it doesn’t matter to anyone but you. Your John Doe? That terrible shit had a name. Brian Miller. And I’m the one who killed him.”
Chapter 144
I COULD HARDLY ABSORB what Carolee had just told me.
She’d killed my John Doe.
That boy’s death had been on my mind for ten full years. Carolee was my sister’s friend. Now I tried to grasp that John Doe’s killer and I had been traveling on adjacent paths, paths that had finally converged in this room.
“It’s traditional for the condemned to have a cigarette, isn’t it, Lindsay?”
“Hell, yes,” I said. “As many as you want.”
I reached on top of a filing cabinet for a carton of Marlboros. I broke open the box and placed a pack of cigarettes and a book of matches beside Carolee’s elbow with a casualness I had to fake.
I was desperate to hear about the boy whose lost life I’d been carrying with me in spirit for so many years.
“Thank you,” said Carolee, the schoolteacher, the mom, the savior of abused children.
She peeled cellophane and foil from the mouth of the packet, tapped out a cigarette. A match sparked, and the smell of sulfur rose into the air.
“Keith was only twelve when he came to my school. Same age as my son, Bob,” she said. “Lovely boys, both of them. Tons of promise.”
I listened intently as Carolee described the appearance of Brian Miller, an older boy, a runaway who gained her confidence and eventually become a counselor at the school.
“Brian raped them repeatedly, both Bob and Keith, and he raped their minds, too. He had a Special Forces knife. Said he’d turn them into girls if they ever told anyone what he’d done.”
Tears slipped from Carolee’s eyes. She waved at the smoke as if that was what had made her tear up. Her hand shook as she sipped at her container of coffee.
The only sound in the room was the soft sibilance of the magnetic tape spooling between the reels of the Sony.
When Carolee began speaking again, her voice was softer. I leaned toward her so that I wouldn’t miss a word.
“When Brian was finished using the boys, he disappeared, taking their innocence, their dignity, their self-worth.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?”
“Look, I reported it, but by the time Bobby told me what had happened, time had passed. And the police weren’t so interested in my school for runaways. It took years to get Keith to smile again,” Carolee went on. “Bob was even more fragile. When he slashed his wrists, I had to do something.”
Carolee fooled around with her watchband, a dainty, feminine gesture, but fury contorted