Body Copy - Michael Craven [88]
They cloak this kind of murder in a haze of bravado, but this kind of crime really comes from a place of fear—the fear that they’re either going to die or get killed or never amount to anything worth a shit.”
The look in Evan’s eyes began to change. He had a glazed-over, almost hypnotized look as he listened to Tremaine’s diatribe.
“Another kind of murder,” Tremaine said, “is a crime of passion. This is the most interesting of all murders, if you ask me. You know why? Because so often it’s the work of someone who’s not a killer. This kind of murder comes from a place of love. Not necessarily healthy love, but love nonetheless. The love one person has for another. But when they see the person they love with someone else, it triggers something in their hearts that they simply can’t control.
And they’ll do anything to satiate that feeling.”
The waves pounded in the distance, and the moon’s 277
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reflection off the big mass of water provided enough light for Tremaine to see that the look in Evan’s eyes had shifted yet again. From a state of hypnosis to one of anger.
Evan said, “Are you through?”
“No,” Tremaine said. “But the next thing I’m going to tell you, you already know.”
Tremaine stepped forward, moving toward Evan, who was now standing up, no longer touching the rock. This was the moment Tremaine had to trust himself, trust his instincts, trust his mind to have pieced together things properly, trust the fact that he was hired to connect dots, make educated assumptions, work on instinct and intuition.
Tremaine said, “You killed Kelly Burch, Evan, and you also killed a man you thought was named Dean Latham.”
“It’s true what they say, Tremaine—you are insane.”
Tremaine was not deterred.
“You were still in love with Kelly, Evan, she did that to people. You tried to hold on to her, but you couldn’t.
But you never let go of your love. You couldn’t do that either. And one day, you caught Kelly and Dean together and the sight of it made you sick, seeing her with another man. Seeing her want someone else, someone who wasn’t you. So you shot Kelly and you hit Dean over the head, then you suffocated him. It was actually quite clever. You were smart, Evan. Because you didn’t want two people both to have bullets in their bodies from the same gun, you suffocated the stranger. Then you found out it was Roger Gale, looked at his wallet, I don’t know. And once you found out who he was, you knew exactly where to take him. Chainsaw, your company, has done work with Gale/
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Parker. You knew exactly where the agency was. So you took his disguise off and took him there. And you know how you got past the security guards? You got lucky. They were screwing off, who knows? You probably found the code to the building’s alarm on Roger Gale, then walked right in and out. The fact that Roger was found dead at his own agency was sure to confuse the hell out of people.
And as far as Kelly’s murder was concerned? She was a druggie—no money, no job, no family. Just another street murder. And nobody would ever connect the two. How could they? For all intents and purposes, the man Kelly was having an affair with didn’t even exist.”
Evan looked calm. He said, “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“You killed two people, Evan,” Tremaine said. “And you did it with the gun you’ve got in your coat right now.”
Tremaine moved closer to Evan. “And I’m going to take that gun away from you, and then we’ll match the bullet from Kelly’s body with your gun, and you’ll go to jail.”
Tremaine kept walking toward Evan, and as he got closer, a combination of fear and anger and sorrow registered in Evan Mulligan’s eyes.
Evan pulled a gun out of his coat pocket and pointed