Chapter 12
Mac sat in the tiki bar waiting for Sloan and Moto to arrive, listening to a news program on the TV instead of to the waves some hundred yards away.
It was a primetime special dedicated to the Mobile, Alabama serial killer, Arnold Godak, and the mystery accomplice who must have murdered for him on the day of his execution.
“Another?” asked the bartender. Mac nodded.
So far, a forensic scientist had gone over all the evidence they had of Godak’s guilt taken from various crime scenes and from the bodies themselves. The program highlighted certain pieces of evidence that suggested more than one person could have been involved in the killings.
In Mac’s professional opinion, most of it was bullshit.
They were speculating on things that couldn’t be known, making assumptions that would sabotage a real case just to get ratings.
That was what happened when a serial killer collided with Sweeps Week, and network executives put the most enthralling stories front-and-center.
The public was excited by Godak’s letter and the mysterious killing that someone carried out on his behalf.
It didn’t mean the authorities knew anything.
The bartender put Mac’s tonic and lime in front of him.
Now Turner—that was the man Mac wanted to talk to about the crime. If he’d been the head detective on the case, he’d been privy to information no one else had.
Turner had left that behind when he left Mobile, sure. But he must be wishing he was back now, and able to delve back into the case. Able to handle this new murder that was clearly connected to the others.
Or at least that’s how Mac would feel in Turner’s shoes.
He picked up the drink and sniffed it, the familiar tang of gin tickling his nose. A moment’s temptation was like a spark, and he stamped it out before it could turn into a fire.
“You put gin in this.” He pushed the glass back across the bar. “Just tonic and lime, please.”
The bartender apologized, dumped the drink, and started again.
A voice behind him made him straighten. “Damn shame to waste good alcohol like that.”
He turned to find Mike Turner standing in the sand, bare feet an odd juxtaposition from his khaki-colored dress slacks.
Speak of the devil.
Mac gestured to the seat beside him. “Join me.”
“Don’t mind if I do.” He glanced at the TV. “I see the vultures are all over the Godak case again.”
“Can’t say I blame ‘em.”
“I’ll take a double Jim Beam on the rocks,” said Turner.
“Put it on my tab,” said Mac.
“Thanks.”
He was close enough now Mac could smell the liquor in his breath.
This wasn’t Turner’s first drink of the day, and Mac found himself wondering how much Turner drank.
He filed the question away for another time.
“What do you make of all this?” Mac asked, gesturing to the screen above the bar. “Ellie said you worked the case.”
Turner nodded. “I spent two and a half years of my life trying to find that guy. When I finally got enough evidence to nail him, we still hadn’t found a single one of the bodies. But we had enough to convict and get him sentenced to the death penalty. That was enough.”
Mac considered his words carefully. He was suspicious of Turner’s career in the police department, and wanted to see how he’d react. “And now it looks like you missed one of the guilty parties.”
Turner’s voice snapped like a whip. “We didn’t. Godak’s stunt at his execution was just that—a stunt. All he proved was that he knew somebody on the outside who’d go to bat for him.”
He indicated the TV. “All this bullshit about us missing one half of a team of serial killers is a product of Godak’s imagination. He’s playing with the families of his victims from the other side of the grave.”
“Or he was telling the truth, and he really did have an accomplice who got away with murder.”
Turner shook his head. “Are you listening to yourself, O’Brady?
I was on the fucking investigation. I, of all people, know this was a one-man job.
Every one of those murders could have been committed by a single guy, and that guy died by lethal injection.
I know, because I was there. I watched them put that needle into his arm, and I watched him take his last breath.
I watched that fucker die because I needed to see it with my own damn eyes. ”
Mac froze, and forced himself to relax, to not give anything away by his body language.
But he thought back to the execution chamber, the observation room.
There was no way he could have missed seeing Turner there.
Turner was lying to him, assuming Mac would have no way of knowing the truth.
But why? Just to make himself sound like a big man?
To come off as being more important than he actually was?
“That must have been something,” said Mac. “To see a man die.”
“I’ve seen lots of people die. You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.”
Mac had seen lots of people die, too, the details of each forever ingrained in his memory.
Even Godak, who was the epitome of a monster and a threat to society, had stayed with him.
The callousness with which Turner spoke made Mac think Turner had never seen anyone die—or else he was a complete narcissist who couldn’t have empathy for someone else, even as they were dying, and that was fucking terrifying.
The news reporter was describing the manner of death of the victim.
She was found naked, floating in the river, but she didn’t drown—she was killed by strangulation with a thin metal cable, still wrapped around her neck.
She’d been beaten and sexually assaulted.
Because they hadn’t found Godak’s victims until they were badly decomposed, there was no way to tell if the women had been raped.
Even the cause of death was nearly impossible to determine definitively.
Therefore, the question of whether it was an accomplice or a copycat killer was equally impossible to determine.
“Do you wish you were back there, working on the case?” Mac asked.
Turner shook his head. “Hell, no. I’m done with those dipshits back in Mobile. They’ll probably chase their tails around for a while, then throw their hands up and announce they have no fucking clue who killed her and why.”
He finished his drink and gestured for another. “So, what’s your story? Where have you been while your wife and kids were here with me?”
The switch came out of nowhere, from seemingly friendly to antagonistic.
Turner was baiting him, Mac realized, hoping Mac would get angry.
He ignored him, his mind still running through the possible reasons Turner would lie about being at Godak’s execution.
“In New York. I run the regional office of a security team called HERO Force. Former military black ops soldiers working in the private sector.”
“Guys like you fucking kill me.”
Mac narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”
“Either be in the military, or don’t. Either be a cop, or don’t. But don’t dress up like a soldier and pretend to be one. Don’t dress up like an officer and expect to be respected, you know?”
This guy was a real piece of work. What the hell did Ellie see in him?
Granted, Turner was drunk—possibly very drunk—but his true colors were the same no matter his sobriety level. Sloan appeared in the distance, and Mac raised his hand to tell him to stay put. He didn’t trust Turner, and didn’t want the other man to know HERO Force was here.
Turner was prattling on about people pretending to be more important than they were.
Mac was pretty sure the monologue was meant to be insulting to him, but he didn’t care, and besides, he had something more important to turn over in his mind.
Was Turner just trying to make himself sound important by saying he was at Godak’s execution?
What other possible reason could there be?
The TV reporter droned on in the background. …have looked at several suspects, checking each of their alibis…
Alibis. When they were strong enough, they could exonerate someone despite all the evidence in the world to the contrary. Mac had seen some doozies in his day, even some that had seemed iron clad until they fell apart in an instant.
Alibis.
Take Turner, for example. What if he said he was at the execution so he couldn’t have been somewhere else? Like strangling their Jane Doe and dumping her in the river?
No one would have questioned it. He was the detective in charge of the case. He had every right to be at the execution. And if he said that’s where he’d been, who would even check to be sure he was telling the truth?
He pinched the skin between his eyes. It had been a long couple of days, and now he was mentally accusing a former law enforcement officer of murdering a woman on behalf of a serial killer. He interrupted Turner’s rambling, losing patience for the other man. “I gotta hit the head. ‘Scuse me.”
He walked past Sloan and Moto, knowing they would follow him to the john. When they did, Sloan checked the stalls before talking. “You’re not going to believe this, Mac. We did some checking, and your friend Turner isn’t a real police officer.”
Mac cocked his head. “He’s a detective.”
“Not by a long shot,” said Moto. “He’s an ex-con from Tulsa. He worked as a department store clerk in Albuquerque for three years before making up this fictional police detective and planting himself in the Mobile PD.”
“And guess who his cellmate was in Tulsa?” asked Sloan with a smile. “Come on, guess.”
“Arnold Godak,” said Mac, understanding crystallizing in his brain.
“Yep,” said Moto. “Godak was serving five years for B&E while Turner was in for passing bad checks from a dead man. Looks like they forged a friendship that lasted.”
“Turner was running the serial killer investigation. He could have steered everyone in the wrong direction, keeping Godak from getting caught,” said Mac.
Sloan scoffed. “Hell, he could have been killing women with Godak, for that matter. Anything’s possible.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Mac. “What if he was?”
Everything he knew about the case flew through his mind. “Godak stalked his victims for weeks before abducting them.”
Godak had stalked Ellie, but on the night he decided to take her, he’d gotten Ursula instead.
What if it wasn’t Godak doing the stalking? What if it had been Turner all along?
“Ellie. I have to find Ellie,” Mac said. “You two stay on Turner. No matter what, don’t let him out of your sight.”
They left the men’s room, and got the tiki bar in sight. Mac’s heart flailed as fear doused his bloodstream with adrenaline.
The tiki bar was empty.
Turner was gone.