Pretty Girls Dancing(111)
The man had been out of surgery for two days, and between overconcerned hospital staff and the man’s steadfast refusal to speak to anyone, no one had gotten a word out of him. Several from BCI had tried, Mark included.
“I just got a call from one of the guards we have stationed at his room. Sims has been asking for you for the last hour. Only you. He made that clear. You ready to take another run at him?”
Anticipation raced through him. It would be a pleasure to hit the man with everything they’d learned that day. “I just need to go out to my car to get the recorder.”
“You do that. And Mark? We’ve already got him wrapped up pretty tight. Put a bow on it for us.”
“Foster.”
Mark pushed Sims’s hospital door farther open and walked into the room. “Luther. I hear the operations were considered successful.” The man looked stronger than he had a day out of surgery. But heavy bandages showed beneath the hospital gown, swathing his torso and shoulder. Mark guessed the man’s thigh was dressed similarly.
The links manacling one of his wrists to the bed rails jangled as he raised a hand, making a dismissive motion. “They say there will be some permanent damage.” His tone didn’t indicate interest one way or the other.
There was a certain satisfaction in seeing the man in chains, much the way he’d secured his victims. As much satisfaction as he got from looking at the two wounds Whitney DeVries had inflicted on his face a week earlier. He was hoping they’d scar, leaving the man with a permanent reminder of his sins.
Mark had left his coat and weapon outside the room with the guard stationed there. He set the tape recorder on the small table between the bed and a straight-back chair. He turned it on, stating the date and their names.
Sims’s mouth twisted. “You aren’t going to need that. This isn’t an interview. I just wanted to ask you a question.”
“Okay. And then you’ll answer one of mine.”
Ignoring Mark’s response, the man said, “What happened to David Willard?”
“He went free. You admitted to planting DNA on his daughter’s body to incriminate him. It’s the reason you changed dump sites. It’s even why you chose to place her in a body bag instead of exposing her to the elements. You wanted to make sure the DNA didn’t erode or blow away.” He pulled out the chair and sat. “It’s why you put the necklace in the bag. You wanted Kelsey Willard found and ID’d.”
“I didn’t admit to anything. You fabricated that, and there were no witnesses to our conversation to prove otherwise.”
That was true enough, Mark silently acknowledged. But the word of a current BCI agent weighed a lot more heavily in a court of law than that of a former one who’d been found with a badly abused missing girl locked in his basement. Another kidnap victim confined in his bedroom.
“There was a breakin at the lake house three years ago. That’s when you hid the body, isn’t it?”
“It’s obvious that Willard attempted a copycat crime. He deserves punishment.” There was a glitter of hatred in the man’s gaze. “Men who betray the trust of their families don’t deserve to have them.”
He’d said something similar once, Mark recalled, at their first meeting. That all the victims had a parent who was deficient in some way. After long conversations with Larsen, Mark realized the talk was all part of the man’s rationalization for a decision he’d already made when he’d selected their daughters. Using his own twisted logic, he was rescuing the girls from his perceived failings of their parents. But there was more at work than that. Paraphilia often had its roots in childhood. And Sims’s childhood had apparently had some very dark corners.
“Maybe so, but the law doesn’t always provide for punishing people’s bad choices.”
“So flippant.” Sims pressed the button that would raise the head of his bed more, wincing at the changed position. “The man’s a liar and a cheat. Ask him about the lake house and how he used it to meet up with that young Realtor he was banging. While you’re at it, ask him about the time Kelsey followed him on her bike and walked in on the two of them.”
Mark struggled to keep his face impassive, but something in his expression must have given him away. Sims gave a nod. “You swallowed every line of BS he spun, didn’t you? He gave her money when she threatened to tell her mother. A thousand dollars. What kind of man hangs that kind of guilt on his kid for something he did?”
“A shitty father,” Mark allowed. “A cheat and a liar. But then again, you lied, too, didn’t you? About being at Berlin Lake when Whitney DeVries was kidnapped. Clever to leave the SUV out with the canoe on top, even though there was plenty of room to park it in your double garage.” A garage where they’d found a black van matching Kelsey’s and Whitney’s descriptions. Between the DNA they gathered from the basement and that van, Mark hoped they’d be able to tie several more victims to the man. “David Willard isn’t the criminal here. You are.”
The cord in Sims’s neck was visibly throbbing. Coupled with his heightened color, he looked to Mark on the verge of a heart attack. “He lacks moral fiber. A man capable of deceiving and betraying his family is capable of any number of things, some of them surely illegal. Do your fucking job, Agent. I guarantee if you dig into Willard’s life, you’ll discover a law that’s been broken. Then make. Him. Pay.”