The Deepest Cut (48 page)

He again rounded the island, but this time, he went to Vining.

The knife blade flashed as he twisted and turned it in front of her face. “This is such a fine instrument.” Picking up the rag, he moistened it with more gasoline and cleaned the knife before setting it down.

“Officer Vining, I’m going to untie you, but you have to promise to be a good girl. Bad girls get punished. Just ask Mother.” He shot a mischievous glance at Gilroy

He loosened the cords that bound Vining’s feet to the chair. He
began to peel the duct tape from her mouth, using more care than he’d shown with Gilroy.

“Stand up,” he ordered. He unlocked her handcuffs.

She brought her hands front and rubbed her wrists.

Using the rag to pick up the freshly sharpened butcher knife, he presented it to her and said, “Kill her. Kill Betsy Gilroy.”

FIFTY-TWO

V
INING’S ROLE WAS NOW CLEAR. EVERY POLICEWOMAN HE’D MURDERED
or had attempted to murder had stood in for the one he couldn’t bring himself to kill— his mother.

He sat in the chair she’d vacated, holding the .45 aimed at her. He slid his fingers beneath the butt of the Taser in the holster that painfully dug into the mound of fat that billowed over the top of his belt. He stood, took out the Taser, and set it on the island. Using the paring knife, he periodically made more small cuts in his abdomen. He stuck folded squares of paper towels on them from the roll by his feet. The paper towels weren’t doing the job.

Vining wondered, the way he was bleeding, if he would lose enough blood to pass out or even die. She tentatively held her grandmother’s butcher knife, without conviction.

“Go ahead, Officer Vining,” he goaded.

Vining looked at Gilroy, who seemed unaffected by this development. Vining decided she was either shell-shocked or didn’t fear she’d actually do what Persons wanted.

He raised his eyebrows as if something had just become clear. “A knife’s not your style? Then pick another weapon. Pick another room in the house. Remember that old board game called Clue? We’ll make
our own game of Clue. Officer Vining killed Betsy Gilroy in the study with the candlestick.”

He again laughed like a castrated hyena.

Vining toyed with the butcher knife. “What did you do to my grandmother?”

He pressed his lips together, making his cheeks puff out. “Nothing. She was snoring like a locomotive in bed when I left.”

She was inclined to believe him, thinking he would have bragged about killing the old lady. She hoped.

“Your plan is to make it look like I killed Chief Gilroy and you weren’t even here.”

“Exactamundo.”

“But your blood is getting all over.”

He laughed, “Yeah,” as he looked down at himself. “I’m a mess. Doesn’t matter. They’re going to find a murder committed by a cop with emotional problems who spilled gasoline all over and set the house on fire before she shot herself. They’re not going to analyze buckets of blood.”

“Why do you cut yourself like that?” She knew about cutters, but thought it was the domain of disturbed teenaged girls.

“You mean, like this?” He flicked the paring knife against his arm the same way he might flick off a fly. He shuddered as he observed the fresh wound. “It hurts, but it feels good, too. It relaxes me.”

As revolting as she found this behavior, she egged him on. If he cut himself enough and she waited long enough …

“Tanner … May I call you Tanner?”

“Please do.”

“Tanner, you say cutting calms you, but I think it excites you too, maybe a little.”

“It’s not about the blood. The blood’s a by-product. It’s about the metal against flesh. It’s the opening up. It opens up and you see something new. You release something bad. It’s like the chaff that comes away from the wheat.” He pulled off a soaked paper towel and gingerly probed a fresh wound, making it bleed anew. “See. Look how much is there beneath the skin. I don’t really like guns. There’s no art in firing
a gun. You can’t control a bullet like you can a knife. I’m talking about for the finer work I do.”

She leaned against the island and set the butcher knife on top. Guns were her weapons of choice in all situations. Her two guns were inches from her fingers. Could she reach them before he could shoot her? She doubted it.

“I’m confused, Tanner, because you used a gun to kill Scrappy.” She’d sensed his hand in Scrappy’s murder since she’d first seen the China Dog 187 tag. She was fishing now and hoped he’d bite. He did.

His expression changed to disdain. “Scrappy. That wasn’t art. That was extermination.”

“Why did you kill him?”

“He tried to blackmail me.”

“Over what?”

He turned his ice-blue eyes on her and said matter-of-factly, “You. Those arrow guys started showing up across the street from where I work. Scrappy was the one there at night. My boss told us security guards to keep an eye on them. To go over there and chat them up. See if we could find out what they were up to. He thought they were planning on robbing the company. Steal all their organic face cream, or something.

“So, each night I went over and me and Scrappy had a chat. We got kinda friendly. He talked about how much he hated this Chinese guy he worked for and how much he hated cops. Somehow your name came up. He talked about how you used to pay him for information. He had the hots for you. Your name came up a couple of times. Maybe I brought it up. One night, he had that drawing of me that was in the papers and demanded money.”

He made a rude noise. “Stupid beaner junkie. I told him I’d give him money. Drugs, too. Whatever he wanted. I gave him a place and a time and told him to come alone.” He beamed, showing those small teeth. “Easy as pie.”

Vining nodded. “And you painted the China Dog tag to make it look like it involved his boss, Marvin Li.”

“Precisely. It worked, didn’t it? The cops landed on that slope gimp like flies on manure.”

“You sent us in the wrong direction, that’s for sure.” She grinned.

He grinned back. The blood from the wound on his arm that he hadn’t bothered to blot dripped onto the floor.

Vining thought it looked like the deepest one yet. “Tanner, I’m so glad we have this chance to talk. There’s so much I want to ask you.”

“We have time.” He sat back down.

“Tell me something. You didn’t use a knife to kill Marilu Feathers. You used a gun.”

He turned up his lips, dwelling on the memory. “Marilu. If I had it to do over again, I would have chosen a knife.”

“You didn’t have the chance to touch her like you did Cookie and Johnna Alwin, and certainly weren’t able to hold her like you held me.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Gilroy maneuvering her feet. The chief was wearing slip-on shoes. If she could get her feet out of them, she might be able to slide from the cord that bound her ankles.

“Remember how tightly you held me, Tanner?” Vining moved to stand in front of him, blocking his view. “How excited you were?
I
remember.”

He gave her a look that was so replete with sexual longing, it was all she could do to keep from gagging.

He squirmed in the chair. He had a goofy expression on his face that she interpreted as a perverted come-hither look.

She went on, giving Gilroy time to keep working her feet free. “Remember my blood gushing all over your yellow shirt? Flowing from my neck and down your chest onto that pretty yellow shirt. And you kept that shirt. Did you touch yourself while playing with it? I bet you did. Tell me about it. Don’t leave out any details.”

He inhaled a wavering breath and lost his aim with the .45 when his wrist dropped as he became distracted. “You’d better slow down.”

“Why, Tanner? Why should I slow down?”

“Because I told you to.”

“But why? All that blood….” Vining lowered her voice seductively. “You held me
so
tight. I knew what you wanted. I felt you, so hard against me.” She wondered if this was how it felt to be a phone-sex operator.

He made another quick cut on his arm. It was also deep, and bled
furiously. His tone of voice changed. “I don’t want to talk about that.” He stood, covered in blood, and again aimed the .45 at her. “I’m in charge here. Not you.”

She inched away from him along the kitchen island.

“Pick up the knife and get busy.” He staggered.

Betsy Gilroy, in her stockings, her shoes left behind on the floor, hands handcuffed behind her back, flung herself off the chair at Persons, barreling her head directly into his groin. They flew backward, knocking over his chair and toppling the jug of gasoline, which spilled across the wooden floor.

He aimlessly fired the .45, weakened by blood loss and tangled up in the chair.

Gilroy grappled to get away from him and his bullets, trying to get traction on the gasoline-slick floor, not having her hands to help her.

Persons shot wildly as he tried to get to his feet.

As soon as Gilroy made her move, Vining spun around and grabbed a gun from the island. She thought she’d grabbed one of her weapons, but ended up with the Taser. She didn’t dare spend the time to trade it for something more lethal. She fired at Persons.

She got off a good shot. The two darts hit Persons in the upper chest. She kept her finger on the trigger, sending a steady stream of 50,000 volts into him.

He dropped the gun and fell back onto the floor, frenetically jerking from the electric jolt.

Gilroy got her feet against the island and was able to push away from the convulsing man. She managed to get around to the other side of the island and away from the gasoline.

She was so covered in blood from the wounds that Persons had inflicted, Vining didn’t know whether she’d been shot.

Suddenly, there was a whoosh as the gasoline ignited, set off by sparks from the electric charge. While thrashing on the floor, Persons had become drenched in gasoline. Now he was engulfed in flames.

Vining threw down the Taser and jumped out of the way of the growing blaze.

Screaming in agony, Persons rolled on the floor, only further spreading the flaming gasoline. He got to his feet and lumbered
around, as if amazed at what was happening. His naked chest was charred black in places and seeping pink and red in others as his flesh seemed to melt from him. As he staggered, flames leaped from him onto the window shades. They were consumed in a heartbeat. The crown molding, made of synthetic material, also caught, and fire raced around the ceiling.

Vining was frozen, astonished at seeing him being incinerated before her eyes.

He wavered on his feet, as if about to finally go down, when he saw her across the kitchen. His face was a blackened, oozing mess. His lips were burned away. Still, he smiled as if somewhere in his dark diseased brain, he was happy. He took rickety steps toward her, arms outstretched as if seeking a final embrace. While still a few feet away from her, he crumpled like a house of cards onto the floor.

Vining roused from her trance. Dodging the encroaching flames, she opened cabinets, searching for a fire extinguisher. She opened the door of the pantry and had plunged inside before she realized where she was. For a few precious seconds that she couldn’t afford to spend, she was stunned to find herself there, the place where she had crawled over a year before, the knife that T B. Mann had stabbed her with still jutting from her neck, the wound that she would die from, gushing blood. The place where she had met her doom. Dazed, she ran back into the kitchen.

Someone nudged her back to the here and now. She turned to see Betsy Gilroy, duct tape still over her mouth, hands cuffed behind her back, and her feet in stockings. She still wore the costume pearl-and-sapphire necklace that her son had given her on top of her blood-soaked blouse. She gestured with her head, urging Vining to get out.

Vining pulled the neck of her shirt up over her mouth and nose and followed Gilroy out of the kitchen, keeping low, beneath the flames that had nearly engulfed the area. She remembered to grab her Glock and her beloved Walther PPK from the kitchen island before she ran through the doorway into the butler’s pantry. She passed through the dining room and then made a left turn into the foyer with its Oriental carpet runner. She had to open the front door for the handcuffed Gilroy. When she had crossed the threshold onto the front porch, she’d completely retraced the steps she’d made that fateful day
when she’d first entered that house at 835 El Alisal Road. Now she was out. She had fled it and its spell over her.

Gilroy kept running until she reached the grassy parkway, where she collapsed.

Vining dropped to the ground beside her. She peeled the duct tape from the chief’s mouth and asked, “Are you all right?”

“I’m okay. How about you?”

“I’m fine. I don’t have a key for those cuffs.”

Gilroy shrugged and watched the flames leaping into the dark, early-morning sky.

There were sirens in the distance.

Vining said, “Chief, even if I could unlock those cuffs, I wouldn’t. I’m arresting you as an accessory to the Cookie Silva murder.”

Gilroy’s steely gaze returned. “Do what you need to do but you need to know something. I did not frame Axel Holcomb. I did not coerce a confession from him. Decisions were made based upon evidence.”

“Did you take that necklace off Cookie’s corpse?”

Gilroy looked unblinkingly at Vining, seemingly oblivious to her own sliced face. “I’m not discussing this with you further.”

Vining dropped it for now, while thinking that poor Axel Holcomb was in for a pleasant surprise.

As neighbors stepped from their homes in robes and slippers, fire trucks and emergency vehicles poured into the street. In the midst of them was a dark Crown Victoria that swerved erratically to the curb and stopped. The door flew open and out ran Jim Kissick

Vining leaped to her feet when she saw him.

He was out of breath as he rushed to her. “I was on my way to the Foothill Museum when I heard a broadcast about a fire at Eight-three-five El Alisal. I just had a feeling.”

They embraced in the middle of the street.

After breaking from their kiss, he examined her all over, looking for injuries. “Are you okay?”