Chapter 26
The request came through Adrian Hale's attorney on a Tuesday morning.
His client wished to speak with the lead investigator. Marcus King, specifically. No other law enforcement present. No recording unless agreed upon in advance. His client had information he believed would be of interest to the investigation.
Marcus had read the request twice and handed it to Haven without a word.
“He wants an audience,” she said. “Do you think there are any more? Any that we haven’t connected to him?”
He was quiet for a moment as he considered the question.
“Wheeler says the documented victims are consistent with his known service history.
There's no gap in the timeline that would suggest undocumented activity beyond what we've already accounted for.” He paused. “But we don't know what we don't know.”
She handed the request back.
“I'm coming with you,” she said.
* * *
The interview room at CID was the same room where they'd sat across from Robert Lane. Same table. Same chairs. Same one-way glass on the north wall. The same quality of light that made everyone look slightly unhealthy and tired.
But not Adrian Hale. He looked exactly like his photograph.
That was the thing Haven noticed when they walked in.
She'd been looking at his photograph for weeks.
She'd been looking at the face she'd seen for less than a second on a trail in the low gray light. She’d reconstructed his face from memory and described it to sketch artists and then run that image against photograph arrays.
She'd been certain when she'd seen his photo in that stack of pictures Webb had placed on the desk.
She was even more certain now.
He was sitting with his hands flat on the table in front of him. Cuffed. His attorney, a man named Garrett who had the demeanor of someone being paid very well to be there, sat to his left. He was actually a public defender, so the attitude was interesting. Adrian looked up when they came in.
His eyes went to Marcus first.
Then to Haven.
Something moved in his expression. Not surprise and not recognition exactly. The look was like a man cataloguing a variable.
She stared at him.
Thirteen victims. Two attacks on her. A package on her doormat. Two coral nails in a white velvet box. All of the thoughts flew through her mind as she looked at him. She felt the ice cold that her anger couldn’t melt. The thing in front of her was a serial killer, and he was … ordinary.
“Detective Stone,” Adrian said. His voice was even. Clinical. The voice from the note. The voice she'd been hearing in her head since the morning she'd read it. “I'd prefer to speak with Detective King alone.”
“I'm sure you would,” she said. She pulled out a chair and sat down.
Adrian looked at her for a moment. Then he looked at Garrett.
Garrett cleared his throat. “My client's request was specific—”
“Your client's request was for Detective King,” Marcus said. He sat down across from Adrian. “Detective Stone is part of this investigation. She stays, or we both leave.”
Adrian looked at Haven.
She stared at him, not giving him any emotion to hold onto. She knew how to face this man, and she was going to do it. He wouldn’t get the best of her. Ever.
He looked at the table.
“Fine,” he said.
Haven settled back in her chair. That was a win.
She’d take it. And she’d take the win when this bastard was put in jail for the rest of his natural life.
She resolved not to look at the mirror. She wasn’t going to think about Reyes, Carver, Paulson, and Webb on the other side of it.
She was going to stare at Adrian Hale and listen to every word.
She would detail every part of this investigation and be precise, efficient and present.
Very present. She wanted him to see her and to know he’d failed.
He wasn’t going to have a victory. Not today.
She picked up her pen.
* * *
Marcus advised the man of his rights with his lawyer present.
That was also recorded by the camera in the interview room.
Adrian started with clinical precision, no emotion, which was what Doc Wheeler had predicted.
Adrian sat with his hands flat on the table and his voice in a tone of a man recounting data rather than experience.
He talked about his methodology with the detached precision of someone presenting a research paper.
The surveillance windows. The confirmation process. The preparation of sites. The staging. The documentation.
He didn't use the word victims. He used the word subjects throughout. Marcus noted that and didn't comment on it.
He let Adrian talk.
He was good at letting people talk. The most useful thing you could do in an interview was nothing. You gave a person enough silence, and they filled it with the thing they actually wanted to say, which was never the thing they led with.
Adrian talked about precision for ten minutes.
Marcus leaned forward. “Then you’ve admitted to murder.”
“I am not guilty of murder.” Adrian shook his head. “You of all people should understand I did not murder any of these women.”
“What do you call it, then?” Marcus asked.
“You will see at the trial.” Adrian drew a deep breath and then cocked his head slightly. “There are others,” he said.
Marcus didn’t let that information phase him, although his heart rate increased
“Beyond the ones you've documented,” Adrian said.
“Significantly beyond.” He kept his voice level.
The clinical tone was still intact, but underneath it, something else was present.
Something made Marcus feel that Adrian wanted to be in this room and be seen and be understood in the way he'd always believed he deserved to be understood. “You have a fraction of the work.”
Marcus said nothing. The recording was evidence. He’d give Adrian enough rope to hang himself.
“The early period,” Adrian said. “Before I refined the methodology. Before the documentation became systematic for future publication.” He looked at Marcus with the pale eyes that Haven had described. “You haven't found them. You don't know where to look.”
“How many?” Marcus said.
Adrian sat back slightly. The question had landed where Adrian wanted it to land. He felt he was in control again. “More than you've accounted for.”
“That's not a number,” Marcus said.
“No,” Adrian agreed. He almost smiled. Not quite. “It's not.”
Haven was very still beside Marcus. He could feel it without looking at her.
“Where?” Marcus said.
And that was where it started to come apart.
Adrian leaned forward again. The clinical tone was still there, but the grandiosity was bleeding through the edges of it now, the inflation of a person who’d been the most controlled entity in every room for eleven years.
He was now in a room where any control he’d once felt was gone.
Adrian was trying to reconstruct it through the only currency he had left, which was information that other people needed.
“Kansas,” he said. “Western Kansas. A county road outside of Dodge City. There's an abandoned grain elevator.” He described it in specific detail. Road markers, distance from the nearest interstate, the quality of the land around it.
Marcus wrote it down.
“Oregon,” Adrian said. “Outside of Bend. A decommissioned logging operation.”
Marcus wrote that down, too.
He wrote down four more locations over the next twenty minutes.
Each one was described with the same detail.
Road markers. Land characteristics. The kind of transitional edge land that matched Hale’s dump site profile perfectly.
The kind of description that sounded like a man who’d been to those places.
Haven wrote beside him without saying anything.
Marcus looked at what he'd written.
Six locations. All of them outside the documented corridor. All of them described with the specific geographic precision of a man whose professional life had trained him to know land and access routes and the spaces between things.
He looked at Adrian.
Adrian stared back.
Marcus put his pen down.
He leaned back in his chair.
“You're full of shit,” he said.
The room went very still.
Garrett started to speak, but Marcus spoke over the lawyer.
“These locations don't exist,” Marcus said.
“Not the way you're describing them. The grain elevator outside Dodge City. The logging operation near Bend. None of them.” He kept his voice level.
Factual. “You've been in custody for three weeks.
You've had time to think. And what you've been thinking about is how to be significant again. How to be more than what the evidence shows. How to be the thing you believe you are rather than the thing you actually are.”
Adrian's jaw tightened.
It was the first involuntary movement Marcus had seen from him.
“The documentation is complete,” Marcus said. “Thirteen subjects, eleven years, a specific corridor that matches your service history exactly. That's what exists. That's what happened.” He picked up his legal pad. “There are no others.”
Adrian scowled. “You don't—”
“I do,” Marcus cut him off. “I've been building this case from the evidence. I know what's there, and I know what isn't.” He stood up. “We're done.”
He picked up his jacket.
“Bend,” Adrian said.
Marcus stopped.
“The logging operation,” Adrian said. His voice had a quality it hadn't had at the start.
An edge. The edge of a man who needed to be believed and could feel the belief leaving the room.
“Forty-two miles northeast of Bend on the 20.
There's a fire road on the left side, unmarked.
Half a mile in. You'll find what I left there.”
Marcus looked at him for a long moment.
Adrian looked back. The pale eyes were very still.
Marcus put his jacket on. “No, we won’t,” he said.
* * *