Strangled - Brian McGrory [92]
Vasco was quoting Cicero while trying to explain to Vinny that he was missing the point, but I couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying, I was so riveted by these photographs. Actually, it wasn’t so much the photographs but their juxtaposition with the overwhelming filth in this room. All over the walls were pictures of abnormally buxom women performing unmentionable acts. In real life, I imagine these photographs were born of desperation, filled with women willing to do just about anything to make a buck. They were probably abused as girls, never infused with a sense of right and wrong, normal and abnormal, respect and disrespect. Here they were, doing anything that the photographer wanted done for as much money as they could possibly get.
And in their midst were three remarkably different women — women, I would dare guess, of some ambition, women with culture, women with style and urbanity, women of emotional means. They didn’t belong. They didn’t fit. And yet, in Paul Vasco’s eyes, they somehow did, because here they were on this wall of shame, mixed in with the rest of the raunch.
I looked at him, still prattling on to Vinny, now about the quote-unquote right questions he should be asking as a reporter, and I wanted to give him a roundhouse punch to his pointed nose. I wanted to see blood gushing down his smug face. I wanted to see his eyes blacken. I wanted to watch as he writhed in pain like all those women I was becoming convinced he had killed.
Instead, I intentionally kept my eyes from the photos of the three dead women, hard as I was finding that to be. I walked over and stamped on the cigarette butt before the whole decrepit place burned down. Still standing, towering over Vasco as he sat on the bed, I said sharply, “Game’s up, Paul. You killed these women. You killed them then, you killed them now. Tell us why. Why’d you start all over again after all those years?”
He whirled from Mongillo to me, craning his neck to look up, and for half a fraction of a fleeting second, I thought I saw fear in his eyes, the kind of fear that liars betray when their lies are up, or that adulterers show when their mates walk in on them in the lurid act. But as fast as that look flashed across his face, it fled, and I was left with him inexplicably smiling at me, his teeth protruding like those of a hamster.
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple,” he said. He paused for effect, then added, “Oscar Wilde.”
I said, “I’m going to nail you so cold on these killings that the jury’s going to cheer when they send you back to Walpole.” I paused for effect, then added, “Jack Flynn.”
Then I slammed the side of my fist against the wall, just below the pictures of Jill Dawson, Lauren Hutchens, and Kimberly May, and I said, “Did you kill these women?”
Mongillo walked over and got a closer look at what I was talking about.
“Did you kill these women?” My voice was so taut that the words shot out of my mouth like arrows flung from a bow.
No response, though he flashed a smile — this evil fucking smile, as Bob Walters had described it to me before he died.
“Let’s go.” That was Mongillo, grabbing me by the shoulder and prodding me toward the door.
I said, “Why have you put me in the middle of a story that I can’t do anything to change? Why are you doing this?”
He stood, finally, and asked, “Would you rather not be part of the story?”
He had me. He had me cold. He was as smart as he seemed.
Vinny continued to pull me away, and I began to follow his lead. Before I got to the door, though, I turned around and seethed, “I swear to God, Vasco, when I prove you killed these women, and I will prove you killed these women, I’m going to fucking kill you myself, and it’s going to be slow, and it’s going to hurt like fucking hell.”
He said, “All truths are easier to understand once they are discovered. The point is to discover them. Galileo.”
I was about to lunge. I kept thinking of the driver