Abandoned in Death (In Death, #54)(110)

“Careful selection. I selected them carefully. All they had to do was meet the criteria, and they would have been housed, clothed, fed.”

“You gave each of them the tattoo your mother had, the same body piercings.”

He sighed, wearily. “Of course. They could hardly be her without them.”

“Why did you kill Lauren Elder?”

“She didn’t meet the criteria! She refused to cooperate. She shouted at me, called me vile names. She slapped me! She made me very angry. She wasted my time, my good work. But even then, I took care of her. I bathed her, and dressed her, did her hair, her makeup, her nails. I made her perfect. I took her where mothers take their children.”

“You left a sign on her. Bad Mommy. Why?”

He sighed again. “She didn’t meet the criteria,” he repeated. “The mother who left me was bad. The one who’d stay would be good.”

“Okay, let’s go back. Tell me how you selected Lauren Elder.”

His eyes glinted. “Maybe I’m too tired and thirsty.”

“We can put you back in a cell. Solitary, I think. Suicide watch?” Eve glanced at Mira.

“Yes, I’d recommend that.”

“Or we can get you another soda, and you’ll walk us through it.”

“I want grape this time. And some ice cream. Chocolate.”

“Fine. Peabody, will you take care of that? Peabody exiting Interview. Now, tell me about Lauren Elder.”

He was a man of details and precision, and relating all those details took a long time—as well as two more sodas, ice cream, gummy candy, and a bag of chips.

He bounced back and forth a few times, back to that little kid twang, but they got every detail on record. A full confession.

Eve didn’t miss the sly look he snuck toward her as she arranged to have him taken back to his cell.

“He thinks he’s going to cop to insanity, get off with a few years—even up to ten—in a minimum-security facility, with therapy, regular evals, and all that. He’s crazy,” Eve said to Mira. “When this started, I figured something along the lines he’s thinking—though a solid twenty to twenty-five inside a supermax.”

“You don’t think that now.”

“I’m hoping you’ll tell me in your expert opinion you don’t, either.”

“He’s a psychopath. I suspect if his mother hadn’t left him as she did, he’d have grown up to embrace his psychopathy much sooner. He buried it—primarily out of fear of abandonment—and strapped himself into the world of science, of rules, of logic. But as we see, he never made or kept friendships, relationships. If you develop relationships, you risk abandonment, disappointments. These are intolerable for him.

“He’s a psychopath, one with obsessive-compulsive tendencies, a malignant narcissism he releases through the persona of the child he was. He isn’t sane, but while we’ll do other, deeper evaluations, in my opinion he won’t reach the threshold of legal insanity.”

“If he got the chance, he’d search for, select, and kill his mother again.”

“I have no doubt of it, and so I’ll say in my report. You handled him well, as did you, Peabody.”

“He thinks he played us. I could see it.” Peabody rolled her tired shoulders. “He didn’t.”

“Go home, get some sleep. I’ll write it up.”

“No, I’ll write it up. You get to deal with…” Peabody nearly said Dickhead before she remembered they still sat in Interview. “Berenski.”

“Right. You write it up. I appreciate you coming in for this, Dr. Mira, and sticking.”

“A fascinating interview from my end. I’ll write up my initial evaluation. I suspect he’ll call for a lawyer once he realizes he didn’t win this game.”

“Yeah, but it won’t matter. He’ll get the ward for mentally defective, but in a supermax, and for three life terms—or at least two and a solid twenty for Covino. That’s what matters.”

Eve rose. “I’ll text Reo so she does her own lawyer thing in the morning. Good work, all around.”

She stepped out and walked up to Observation. It surprised her to find Roarke with Berenski, then realized it shouldn’t have.

They sat drinking what she knew from the scent was real coffee. And Berenski looked exhausted.

Roarke stood. “I’ll leave you two alone.” He brushed his hand over Eve’s arm as he left the room.

“Decent son of a bitch for a rich bastard.” Then Berenski waved a hand. “Sorry.”

“He is decent, he is rich. And he can be a son of a bitching bastard when he wants.”

Berenski let out a short laugh before he scrubbed a hand over his face. “Nearly half my life I’ve known Andy. I never saw what was in him, never saw what I saw in that room when you took him apart. I’d’ve sworn on a case of prime Kentucky bourbon Andy Dawber wouldn’t hurt a fricking fly.”

“He broke. Whatever chains or restraints or control he wrapped around what was in him broke. Maybe if his mother hadn’t tried to do what she thought was right in the end, they’d have stayed in place. He wasn’t right, he was never right. I don’t think he was right before she left him at that church. And he just couldn’t hold it back anymore.”