All the Pretty Girls - J. T. Ellison [122]
It was time to get to it. Taylor raised her hands, palms up, entreating him for calm. “Well, Mr. Buckley. Sir, I’m sure you understand that we’ve been looking for you for a couple of days now. And there’s that little technicality we’ve been dealing with. Sir, how do you explain the girl in the trunk of your car?”
Buckley’s eyes widened and his bullying veneer dropped for an instant. “What girl? What the hell are you talking about?”
“How about the bag with the knives, rope and tape…your tool kit, full of bloody evidence?”
Buckley shifted in his chair. “I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”
Taylor stood now, ready to hit her stride. She paced the room. “Let me guess, no one mentioned that you had a dead girl in the trunk of your BMW, Mr. Buckley? A girl named Ivy Tanner Clark? You met her in Louisville? It’s okay, Mr. Buckley. I understand how these things work.” She sidled up to him. “You meet a girl, maybe get a little friendly with her. Maybe things get a little rough, and suddenly, BAM! She’s dead, and you don’t know what to do. So you stash her in the trunk of your car and drive toward home, figuring you’d find a good place to dump her along the way. Is that how it happened, Mr. Buckley? Isn’t that what you’ve been doing here for the past couple of months? Meeting a girl here or there, sweet-talking her to go somewhere with you? Getting a little frisky, okay, maybe a lot frisky, and she somehow accidentally ends up dead?” Taylor stopped pacing and planted herself two feet from Buckley. He reared back in his chair as if he’d been hit.
“No. No, no, no, that’s impossible, that’s not right. I never killed any girls. I have no idea—”
Taylor interrupted him, all the sweetness and light gone from her voice. “Oh yes, yes, yes, Mr. Buckley, that’s just what you’ve been up to. Your happy little road trip throughout the Southeast? Picking up girls, murdering them, transporting their bodies. Or has that little tidbit slipped your mind? What about their hands, Mr. Buckley?” Taylor was two inches from Buckley’s face now, each word biting and cutting as well as a knife. He looked terrified.
“What do you do with their hands, Jake? Do you mind if I call you Jake? Do you tell them your name before you kill them, Jake? Were you just trying to get yourself a little bit of ass and it went awry? You found out how much you liked it, didn’t you? You liked forcing them, liked choking the life out of them. And then you administered the coup de grâce, didn’t you, Jake? You cut off their hands, took one with you to throw down at the next dead body, the next mutilated girl. Isn’t that how it went, Jake?”
Her voice was sharp, loud, and Buckley flinched away from her, shaking his head, a low keening sound escaping his throat. “No, no, no, no, NO! No, I didn’t do any of those things. I didn’t, I swear it! I may be a jerk, but I’m not a killer. I didn’t kill anyone. Christ, you have to listen to me. Lawyer. I want my lawyer. Right now!” he roared, eyes white with panic.
Taylor turned tail and walked out of the room. Baldwin followed suit. They left Jake Buckley blubbering like a baby in the interrogation room and joined the rest of the homicide team.
They met her in the hall, all four men grinning. “Nice performance, Lieutenant.” Price congratulated her. “You scared him so shitless he forgot to ask for a lawyer until the very end. Well done, girl.”
“Thank you, thank you. But we have to get him to say something other than ‘No, I didn’t do it.’ Baldwin?”
Baldwin was staring at the floor, lost in thought.
“Baldwin?”
He met her eyes. “Something’s not right about him.”
“Well, we know that. Your average guy doesn’t like to kill his dates at the end of the evening,” she said.
“No, it’s something more. He was really cocky with you when you let him think he was in control. But the second you turned on him, he cowered like a beaten dog. This killer wouldn’t do that. The notes he’s sending, the sensational nature of the crime—I think he’d be bragging about it. I don’t think he’d let you get under his skin like