Speak No Evil_ A Novel - Allison Brennan [106]
But if Burns didn’t voluntarily come down to the station they had no reason to hold him. They had no DNA to compare to the DNA found on Becca. And without evidence, they couldn’t get his DNA.
She looked at Nick. “Ready?”
Nick should have said no. They had been going all day and his knees were on the verge of giving out. But he’d popped extra ibuprofen and no longer felt the intense pain.
“Ready,” he said.
Maggie Peterson lived on the second floor of the four-story apartment structure. Carina directed two officers to stay with Burns’s car, and two to stake out the back and front entrance of the building. Carina rapped on the door.
No answer.
She knocked again. “Maggie Peterson? Detective Carina Kincaid with the San Diego Police Department. I need to talk to you again.”
She heard something in the back of the apartment, then nothing. She was considering ramming the door when she heard the rattle of the security chain sliding open.
“What’s wrong?” the woman asked. She was dressed in a robe.
“We’re looking for Kyle Burns.”
“Kyle? Why?”
“We know he’s here. We’d like to talk to him.”
The bedroom door opened and Kyle Burns walked out, buttoning his shirt, his face a hard mask. “I can’t believe you followed me here.”
“We have some more questions for you, Mr. Burns.”
“It’s nearly midnight. This can’t wait?”
“No, it really can’t.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Carina tamped down her own anger. It wouldn’t do her any good dealing with Burns. “Maybe you’d like to come down to the police station with us.”
“Are you arresting me?”
“No.”
“Then ask your questions here.” Kyle reached over and took Maggie’s hand.
Carina had hoped that Burns wouldn’t want to answer questions around his girlfriend, that he’d voluntarily come to the police station.
“Tell us about your father,” Nick said.
“Hell, no. I’m not talking about him. He’s long gone.”
Just the mention of Mitch Burns set Kyle off.
“It sounds like you don’t like him much.”
“Are you insane? Who would like him? The man was a bastard.”
“What was it like growing up with him? Did you know he was a rapist when you were younger?”
“What are you, a shrink?”
Kyle’s rage was building. Carina wondered if someone who had so little control over their temper could plan and execute such a meticulous crime.
The killer is immature. Carina remembered Dillon’s profile, and lack of temper control was a sign of immaturity. She just needed to play it all the way through. Make him lose his temper and tell her the truth.
“Would you like to talk to a psychiatrist?” she asked.
He didn’t say anything. He stared straight ahead, not looking at Nick or Carina.
Nick took over. “I understand exactly how you feel, Kyle,” he said.
“Bullshit,” Kyle muttered without looking at him.
“You hate your father for what he did. To your family, to you, to those women. And when you were just a kid, you couldn’t do anything about it. The anger and humiliation.”
Kyle didn’t talk.
“You probably wanted to kill him, didn’t you?” Nick said softly.
Something in Kyle’s eyes flickered.
Carina watched Kyle closely as Nick continued the questioning.
“The trial humiliated you, but your father was in prison. Away. Your mother lied, right? You told us earlier that she’d lied to give him an alibi. Yet you still had to live with her. That must have been Hell.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Kyle said, looking at his hands.
“You wanted to protect your little brother, didn’t you? He was just a little guy, what, five years old? He didn’t know what was going on, and you didn’t want him to find out. So you took everything on your shoulders, tried to protect him.”
“You don’t know anything,” Kyle said.
“I know that you were angry when your father went to prison and were still angry when he got out of prison.