The Deepest Cut (47 page)

While Persons drew his thumb across the knife blade, his gaze grew dreamy as he indulged in a recollection. He was chasing his brother Bob through the mobile home. He cornered him. Bob cowered on the ground as Persons got closer. “You’ve been a bad boy, Bob …”

Vining had been barely listening to Persons’s soliloquy, sick with worry about her grandmother, but this last part drew her in. He had a blue-eyed, disturbed half brother who had gone to art school? He must be speaking of the nutcase she knew as Nitro.

“It sounds like a good family adopted you,” Gilroy said. “Money isn’t everything.”

“Maybe not, but it would have been nice to be like Bob and have the option of saying, ‘I’m sick of living in this big house in this ritzy neighborhood. I want to live on the edge.’” He continued to draw his thumb across the knife blade. He smiled, still transfixed by the blade. “I showed Bob the edge all right.”

He looked at Gilroy. “But Mother, the point is, while I didn’t want for material goods with the Persons, if Nickerson and his wife had raised me, I would have been with my own flesh and blood. I would have felt like I belonged somewhere. You took all that from me.”

“I thought it was best for you.”

“That is such tripe. Tell me the truth.”

“I did it to get back at him, for all his empty promises.”

“Maybe that’s part of it, Mother, but that’s not the whole story. I think revenge was the smallest part of your decision not to let my father keep me. Tell me the real reason you hid your pregnancy, gave birth to me in secret, and gave me away.”

“That
is
the real reason. You were better off raised by a married couple, but not John Nickerson and his wife. He was a manic-depressive drunk and an adulterer who possibly killed himself. His boat was found drifting off Marina Del Rey His death was reported as an accidental drowning. I think it was suicide, staged to look like an accident. Cleaner and better in terms of the insurance. His wife was a shallow woman who was addicted to prescription pills.”

Persons listened thoughtfully, nodding, pressing the corners of his lips down as if it all made sense. He stepped quickly toward Gilroy, the paring knife clutched in his fist, and shouted, “Wrong!”

She was doing a good job at keeping her composure, but she reared back when he came at her with the knife.

He kneeled beside her and pressed the tip of the knife into her cheek.

She angled her eyes at the knife, her forehead furrowed.

“Why are you doing this, Tanner? Don’t do this!”

He shouted into her face. “Don’t you dare say my name.” He picked up the piece of duct tape from the ground and pressed it over her mouth. Without hesitation, he again raised the knife and drew the blade down her cheek, making a long cut.

Gilroy let out a muffled scream behind the duct tape. She began panting, furiously seizing air through her nose. Her eyes were wild.

Persons hypnotically watched the blood beading along the wound before flowing, dripping down her chin and onto her white blouse. His breaths grew short. A pink flush bloomed on his cheeks. He licked the fresh blood from the blade.

FIFTY-ONE

V
INING’S STOMACH CHURNED. BEHIND HER HORROR, SHE STILL
wondered what her role was in this drama. Had he brought her to be a witness?

“Here’s the truth, Mother,” he panted, again holding the knife against her bleeding face. “You decided to have the baby. Maybe you thought you’d keep it and make Dr. Daddy pay for everything. You’d have the satisfaction of knowing how the tongues in his social set would wag. But then, something wonderful happened. Your long-sought-after promotion to corporal was finally coming through. You’d tried to get promoted before, but your reputation as a hell-raiser kept you back. Finally, all your hard work and sacrifice was paying off. You thought they’d rescind the promotion if your secret came out. They’d have second thoughts because of the bad judgment and lack of character you’d shown by getting knocked up by the well-respected husband of one of Pasadena’s most prominent women. Of course, the brass would never say that to you. You’d just be shunted to the side for the rest of your career. You have so much invested in that insignia on your uniform and how people see you, throwing it away would be like throwing yourself away.

“You were at a crossroads. Baby or career? It was too late for an abortion, so you made up a story about having to care for a sick grandmother
out-of-state and took a leave of absence. The baby problem gone, the illicit affair buried, you went on to a stellar career.”

Vining saw him tremble as his excitement fed off Gilroy’s fear. His fluffy cheeks were steadily flushed now and he was breathing through his mouth.

“You became a real hero, Mother. An inspiration to women everywhere. Look at Betsy Gilroy! See what she accomplished! Look at the heights we women can reach!”

He waved the knife in front of Gilroy, like an artist facing his canvas, waiting for the muse to direct him where he should apply the paintbrush next.

“You had all the time in the world for polishing the brass stars on your collar, but you couldn’t give the time of day to your first-born son. I spent a lot of time and money to find you. Remember the gift I’d bought just for you? Pearls and your birthstone. It was a simulated sapphire, but it was all I could afford then.”

He darted the knife toward Gilroy, who jerked back. He picked up the pearl necklace with the knife blade.

“When you finally agreed to meet me, you at first looked at me like I was the abortion you wished you’d had. I was the last person you wanted to see in your little village where you were hot stuff. The heir apparent to the top cop. I was your dirty little secret incarnate. Then you came around and were polite and pleasant and said all the right things, political animal that you are. You looked thrilled to receive my little gift.

“For a time, I deluded myself into thinking that you were being motherly toward me. You even helped get me a security job at the Rose City shopping center. You found me a place to stay in the Joseph’s guest cottage. For my part, I honored your wish to keep our true relationship a secret. I honored your wish until
you
betrayed
me.
It was a small betrayal, but aren’t they always the most cutting?

“You gave my humble gift— the pearl necklace with the sapphire— to your beloved Cookie. I had no choice but to respond. To hurt you like you’d hurt me. Cookie probably confessed to you that she’d lost the necklace.”

He put on a falsetto voice. “Silly me. How could I have been so careless? Can you forgive me, Betsy?”

His voice returned to normal. “I’m sure you told her not to worry, while secretly you were glad to be rid of it. How could you have known that I had stolen it from Cookie’s apartment, and I forced her to put it on before—” He lunged his face menacingly close to Gilroy’s. “I slit her throat.”

Vining saw spray from his mouth fly onto Gilroy, who flinched and pressed her eyes closed.

“I destroyed her, your sweet, little Cookie-Ookie.” He picked up the necklace from Gilroy’s chest and drew his fingers along it as he spoke.

“She’d gone out with her girlfriends. They were drinking and laughing. Cookie had parked away from the others, down a dark street. ‘Don’t worry about me, girls. I’m a cop.’ They’d all had a big laugh and Cookie walked away, almost right into my arms. Imagine her surprise when I grabbed her from behind and put my hand over her mouth. ‘Hello, Cookie. Remember me?’ She thought she was a tiger, but …” He shrugged.

The fire and fight that Gilroy had shown earlier was slipping away. She seemed resigned to her fate.

As absorbed as Vining was by this perverted family tale, one question above all others nagged her.
Why was she here?

Persons stroked Gilroy’s necklace as he continued to talk. His voice had a chilling, affectless monotone that hinted at the churning passions beneath. “I put her into her own car and drove it to the Foothill Museum, where she always met
him.
That night, though, she had a date with
me.”

His plan had been to rape Cookie and to disappear. To leave town and the mother who didn’t want him, never to return. He’d left his truck where he’d abducted Cookie, planning to walk back to get it later. At the barn, he’d set the scene with the Coleman lantern and the patchwork quilt Cookie had used during her trysts with her boyfriend. He’d had her strip off her clothes and then he’d tied her wrists and ankles. Completing the scene, he’d slipped the pearl necklace over her head. Cookie had seemed passive as she lay on the quilt. Everything was ready. Everything except … him. He was a limp noodle.

His impotent fumbling roused Cookie from her stupor. Her notorious sharp tongue unleashed a barrage of insults to his manhood. She wouldn’t stop, even when he strung her up by her ankles, thinking he’d show her a thing or two. Surprisingly,
that
got him going. The more afraid she was, the more excited he became. Her talking now got in the way, so he took duct tape from the duffel he’d thrown into her car and used it to silence her. He gave her a good shove and watched her swing upside down as he stroked himself, her terrified eyes sending him to new heights of excitement. Then he had a wicked idea. It excited him even more. He took out the folding knife that he’d used to cut the rope and slowly moved toward Cookie, savoring every second of her horror.

But Tanner’s fun had been interrupted by that idiot caretaker who’d jumped screaming from his hiding place. Tanner had fled into the woods, covered in blood. After the handyman had gone back inside the cabin, Tanner had again crept into the barn. He’d finally achieved release at Cookie’s expense, but the victory was Pyrrhic. As he picked up Cookie’s blood-splattered blouse to keep as a souvenir he vowed that next time, he would get it right. Still, he’d learned an important lesson: Murder was an aphrodisiac.

He let out a small moan and bit his lower lip as he replayed Cookie’s murder in his mind. “Until I killed Cookie, I didn’t realize how pleasurable— how satisfying— the act would be. It went beyond my wildest dreams. It set my life on a new path. It touched a part of me that I thought might exist, but had never experienced. It was a deity of delight.”

He cackled and looked at Vining for approval of his attempt to be cute.

She gave him a weak smile and nod.

His eyes had brightened while recounting his moment of epiphany but they darkened again. “You knew I murdered Cookie, didn’t you, Mother?”

She shook her head and made muffled protestations.

“Yes, you did.”

She continued to express denial.

“Then why did you take the necklace off Cookie’s body? I made Cookie wear it as a message to you. When you took it, you were telling me, ‘I understand.’”

Gilroy shook her head, frowning gravely.

“When you and that lame-brained sergeant were the first to arrive and he had to run outside to puke, that gave you just enough time to take the necklace. You threw it into the woods. You probably thought it was simple luck that it was never found. But I was still there, hiding. I wasn’t going to miss any of the fun. I picked up the necklace that you threw away and it’s served as my inspiration ever since. I wore it during the whole walk back to my truck, covered in Cookie’s blood, laughing and laughing. See, Mother, that was the night you became my accomplice. Didn’t you?”

Gilroy persisted in shaking her head and protesting from behind her duct-taped lips.

“You’ve been my accomplice ever since. By railroading Axel Hol-comb, you showed me how a pro covers up a murder.” He shouted, “Admit it!”

He was blocking Vining’s view when she heard Gilroy’s muffled protests turn into a muffled scream.

When he moved away, Vining saw a Z carved into Gilroy’s other cheek. Blood dripped onto the other side of her blouse. She was breathing hard through her nose. Her forehead glistened with perspiration.

Persons admired this new wound, the tip of his pink tongue poking between his lips. He touched the cut and put his finger into his mouth, wrapping his lips around it as he pulled it out. The bulge in his pants was undeniable.

“Didn’t it happen just like that, Mother?”

Gilroy still feebly protested while staring at his hand that still held the knife, wondering where it would land next.

Without warning, he slammed the knife onto the counter and began half unbuttoning and half tearing at his shirt buttons. He yanked off his tie and threw it to the ground, followed by the shirt.

Vining and Gilroy both looked in horror at the many small
wounds, both fresh and scarred-over, that covered his pasty-white, overhanging belly. There was a tuft of hair on his chest between his flabby pectorals and pink nipples. He grabbed the knife and cut his abdomen.

Vining was so startled, she rocked the chair backward, the legs scuttling against the wood-plank floor, almost toppling over.

Persons looked down at the damage he’d inflicted, and then closed his eyes with obvious relief. Surprisingly, his skin color improved. His face wasn’t as bright red as it had been before. Blood ran down his belly onto his pants and dripped onto the floor. He touched the blood and held up his hand as if to admire it.

Reaching his bloody hand into the duffel bag, he took out a roll of paper towels. He tore off a sheet, folded it into a square, and slapped it against the wound, making it look like a perverse shaving nick.

Taking one of the champagne flutes from the island, he filled it with water from the sink there and drank it down. He seemed eerily calmer and had recovered the disturbing boyishness he’d shown earlier.

He reached inside his black bag of tricks and took out another handgun—a .45. He stuck it beneath his belt, where it made an indentation against his flabby, blood-streaked belly.

He held his hand over the open box of knives, as if trying to decide upon a bonbon from an assortment. He reached in and pulled out the butcher knife. He ran his thumb over the blade. Again, he found the edge wanting and began to hone it against the steel. He took no notice that the blood-soaked paper towel had fallen off and blood was dribbling everywhere.