Pretty Girls Dancing(112)

Larsen had been right, Mark realized slowly. DeVries had as many skeletons in his background as David Willard. But it wasn’t Whitney’s father who was the focus of the former profiler’s rage. It was Kelsey’s . . . affection for the victim . . .

It’d been difficult for Mark to wrap his head around that, but surely it was one reason Sims despised Willard. Sims had wanted to cast blame on Kelsey’s father and increase his suffering. His hatred of the man was fed by his own feelings for his captive.

“Besides Betsy, you kept her the longest, didn’t you?”

Sims pressed his lips together and looked away.

“Long enough to start to consider that she was yours, right? She was special. Everyone says so. Pretty. Clever. Engaging. You were everything her real father wasn’t, and she should have loved you, not him.” Unconsciously, Mark leaned forward in his chair, certainty fueling his words. “Family. That’s important to you.” He had Whitney’s recollections of her conversations with her kidnapper. They had Kelsey’s writings. Betsy’s statement. “What kind of family life did you have with no father figure in it? A single mother would have been scandalous nearly seventy years ago. Maybe a single mother who was forced to abandon her dream of dancing for the New York City Ballet was resentful of the child who caused that.” They were still searching for relatives who might be able to fill in some blanks on Sims’s childhood.

“Is this an attempt to analyze me? You’re out of your league, Foster.”

Maybe he was. But Mark sensed he was also on the right track. “And then along comes a sister. Still no father, so there’s just the three of you. But your mother isn’t so resentful anymore because now she has a daughter to mold into her own image. One she can teach everything she knows about dance. One who might achieve the dream your mother had to abandon.”

“We’re done here.”

“Margaret wasn’t really your sister. Half, right?”

Sims glared at him. “Family is defined by more than blood. There’s shared duty and obligation. A commitment to the common good.”

“So how old was Margaret when she defied that commitment?” Mark sat back with feigned nonchalance, hooking one ankle across the opposite knee. “What was it? Boys? Teenage rebellion? Or did she just stop paying attention to her dance lessons?”

“Dance is an important tool for teaching the merits of discipline. It requires total focus. Margaret ran away because she was spending too much time thinking about a young hoodlum she’d met at school.”

“Bet that was hard on your mom.”

The man stared at Mark stoically.

“Probably harder yet when your mother discovered that her daughter hadn’t run away. You’d killed her.”

Sims reared back as if Mark had landed a blow.

“Maybe you didn’t mean to. Could be when you choked her, you were just trying teach her a lesson. But she died. And then you hid her body somewhere. Not in Wayne National Forest that time—no, not that first time—but somewhere close to home. We got a warrant a few hours ago for your old home place. I’m guessing they’ll find her body in an old well on the property. A barn. Perhaps you buried her. But even as we speak, they’re getting cadaver dogs ready to search the place. I’m certain they’re going to find Margaret—the sister who disappointed you so.”

“Turn off the recorder. We’re done here.” Sims pressed his call light. A moment later, the door to the room swung inward, and one of the officers stepped inside. “I want him out of here. Summon my doctor. I’m feeling dizzy. Faint.”

“Sure, I’ll go.” Mark stood but made no move toward the tape recorder. “But don’t you want to ask about Elizabeth first?”

Sims froze.

“What attracted you more to your first victim, I wonder? The fact that she bore a resemblance to your mother? Or the fact that she danced and bore her name. Elizabeth. But everyone called her Betsy, didn’t they? Betsy Graves.”

The man’s lips were moving silently, as if in argument. Finally he muttered, “She’s my wife. We met after my mother died. It was love at first sight. Elizabeth adores me. I’ve taken care of her.”

That’s obsession, not love, Mark thought. Possessiveness, not affection. And a sadistic level of rage when met with less than total obedience. “How do you take care of her, Luther?” he asked, not even attempting to keep the disgust from his tone. “By surrounding the cabin with motion detectors that would alert you if any of your captives escaped? Or disguising her so she’d look your age? By breaking her fingers for the slightest infraction? Smashing her feet with a hammer the one time she tried to run away? Or by choking her so hard, she’ll never speak again?”

“That’s not true. None of it.”

Mark walked closer to the bed. Bent over the man lying in it. “It’s true. Every word. Elizabeth—or should I call her Betsy?—wrote it all out for us. She’s in this hospital right now, receiving treatment for your years of abuse. She told us how you’d tell her each girl was a potential daughter for you both, to complete your family. But all ended up disappointing you, right? The same way Margaret did.”

“She didn’t tell you that.” The man seemed surer now. “She would never disobey me.”