Death Notice (16 page)

“Chuck will tell us soon enough.”

“Do you think he would cover for Lucas?”

Kat shook her head. “He’s not that type.”

When she entered the bar, a bell over the door started to chime. That was soon joined by another ring, but of the cell phone variety. Nick touched his jacket, feeling the vibration of the phone inside it.

“It’s probably Rudy or Vasquez,” he said, stepping back outside. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

Kat headed inside, where the bar’s interior failed to be much of an improvement over the exterior. Sepia-toned photographs of Perry Mill and its blank-faced workers covered the walls. The other patrons at the bar—all two of them—looked just as weary and lost. They could have stepped directly out of one of the photographs.

A bartender waited to hit them up with another round. His name was Chuck Budman, and his barrel gut and tattooed forearms made him look like one tough customer. But Kat,
who had known him all her life, frequently saw his soft side. He ran a toy drive every Christmas and volunteered monthly with Meals on Wheels. A Vietnam veteran, he rode his Harley to Washington, D.C., every Memorial Day.

When he saw Kat, a friendly smile appeared above his ZZ Top beard.

“A bit early to be drinking, ain’t it, Chief?”

“Even though I could use one, that’s not what I’m here for.”

“It’s about George, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Kat said. “And about one of your regulars.”

“You think someone from Perry Hollow had something to do with his murder?”

“Maybe. That someone would be Lucas Hatcher. He said he was here the night George was killed. Is that true?”

On the bar behind Chuck was a small television turned to CNN, where a perky anchorwoman talked away. Kat normally would have ignored it, but that day she heard something that caught her attention—her own name.

“Chuck, turn that up.”

The bartender raised the volume, catching the anchorwoman in mid-spiel.

“Chief Campbell confirmed the presence of the coffin, but declined to give any more details.”

“Smack me with a chainsaw,” Chuck said. “Your name was just on TV.”

As was news of George Winnick’s murder. On national television. Kat checked the clock over the bar—a slab of pine outfitted with hands and numbers—and saw it was eleven. Her prediction of national exposure was an hour early.

“Now what about Lucas?” Chuck Budman asked after lowering the TV’s volume.

“Was he here Sunday night?”

The bartender chewed over the question like a cow did cud. “He was here. He’s here every night.”

So Lucas wasn’t lying about that, which was good for him, bad for Kat and the investigation. Still, his presence alone didn’t guarantee innocence. There was still the matter of when he was at the bar. According to Alma Winnick, George checked the barn at about ten thirty. He was probably abducted soon after that. The fax sent to Henry claimed George would be dead by ten forty-five. That meant Lucas could have done all that and still made it to the bar a little after eleven.

“Do you remember when he showed up?” Kat asked.

“Actually, I do,” Chuck said. “I was looking at the clock when the bell over the door rang. It was about ten thirty.”

“Are you sure?”

Chuck pointed to the clock. “That’s what the clock said. The clock don’t lie and neither do I.”

His extended index finger guided Kat’s gaze to the saw clock, which declared the time was five minutes after eleven. Her eyes then moved to the TV, where the time next to the CNN logo said it was five after noon. Finally, Kat checked her own watch, which verified the television’s time.

“Chuck, did you change your clock Saturday night?”

The bartender scratched at his beard. “What do you mean?”

“Daylight saving time went into effect then. You were supposed to set your clock an hour forward. You know, spring ahead and all that crap.”

From the way Chuck scrambled for the clock, it was clear he hadn’t. The time in the Jigsaw had been wrong for more than two days. Which meant that Lucas Hatcher hadn’t shown up at ten thirty the night George was killed. He actually arrived at eleven thirty. And that meant only one thing—Lucas Hatcher had no alibi.

Kat thanked Chuck before heading for the door. Her plan was to tell Nick the news and then return to the cemetery to bring Lucas in for official questioning. Hopefully, he’d sense the seriousness of the situation and fess up.

Outside the Jigsaw, Nick was ending his call. He tucked his phone into his jacket and turned to Kat, looking slightly dazed.

“That was Vasquez, just like I thought.”

“Did they find something?”

“They did,” Nick said. “A half hour ago, a man was arrested in upstate New York. He was speeding, probably making a run for the Canadian border. In his car, they found a fake passport, needles, and black thread. That’s when he confessed.”

“To what?”

“Being the Betsy Ross Killer.”

The news was as surprising—and as jarring—as a bullet to the chest.

“They caught him?”

“Apparently,” Nick said, disbelief never leaving his voice. “He confessed to killing four people. And one of them, believe it or not, was George Winnick.”

The man was plain-looking and soft-spoken. His eyes were brown. So was his hair, albeit in a lighter shade and receding a bit. He was neither large nor small, handsome nor ugly. He was the type of person you wouldn’t remember two minutes after meeting him.

His name was Ken Miller, but to the rest of the world, he was known as the Betsy Ross Killer. And finally, after four months of silence and four months of waiting, Nick Donnelly was about to talk to him.

“Good afternoon,” Ken Miller said. “Thank you for agreeing to come today.”

“Thanks for finally talking.”

The man nodded, as if Nick had actually been trying to be complimentary. “I figured it was about time.”

After his very chatty arrest, in which he confessed to killing four, Ken didn’t speak another word. It was like a radio that had suddenly gone silent during the final minute of a tied football game. Everyone wanted to know the score, but there was no voice telling them the final outcome.

They tried to get him to talk, of course, doing everything the law would let them get away with. But Ken Miller remained silent as days, then weeks, then months passed. Finally, a guard delivering his dinner was greeted with four words. “I’m ready to talk.” He followed that with a date—“Fourth of July.”

That was two days earlier. Now it was just he and Nick alone in a heavily secured room at a federal prison outside Binghamton. Nick sat at one end of a steel table. Ken Miller sat at the other, hands and wrists cuffed. Beyond the door was an armed guard. Beyond him were two more.

“Why did you pick today to talk?” Nick asked.

“I thought it would be appropriate,” the Betsy Ross Killer said. “Considering the nickname I was given.”

“How do you feel about the name?”

Nick normally carried a pen when he interviewed a killer. A notebook, too. But since no one knew exactly what Ken Miller was capable of, no one wanted to take any chances. That meant no pens. No notebooks. Nick was forced to stash Ken’s response—“Ambivalent”—in a corner of his brain reserved only for the Betsy Ross Killer.

“You do know why you received that name, don’t you?”

“Of course,” Ken said. “My sewing skills.”

“Who taught you how to stitch so well? Your mother?”

Ken put his hands on the table in front of him, the tips of his fingers pressed together and forming a pyramid. “My father.”

Nick knew it had to have been one or the other. No matter what kind of sick shit people did, it usually all went back to the parents. Edgar Sewell was one example. Now Ken Miller was another.

“Where was your mother in all this?”

“Gone. Ran off with a family friend to live in sin. That left just me and Papa. I was twelve.”

“Did he abuse you?” Nick asked.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? That way you’d have an easy answer to explain what I’ve done. But it isn’t that easy, Lieutenant. Not everything can be sewn up so tidily. Pun intended.”

“Is your father still alive?”

Ken shook his head quickly. “I killed him on my eighteenth birthday. Stabbed him three times. Before burying him in the backyard, I sewed the wounds shut, to show him just how much I had learned.”

This brought the Betsy Ross Killer’s total to five. Nick filed the number away, right alongside “Ambivalent.”

“So he was your first victim?”

“Yes. Then there was the one in Philadelphia. After that was the friendly gentleman in Lake Erie. And then that camper.”

Every murder and location he mentioned coincided completely. It might have taken him four months, but Ken Miller was now confirming his kills.

“And that brings us to Perry Hollow,” Nick said.

The pyramid of fingers Ken had kept aloft suddenly collapsed in a jumble of overlapped knuckles on the table.

“I’m afraid I don’t recall that town.”

“Your final victim,” Nick prompted. “George Winnick. You stitched his mouth shut.”

“Oh, that.” Ken swatted at the air, dismissing the crime as casually as if it were a dropped nickel or an unmissed lover. “I heard about that on the radio as I was driving to Canada.”

A knot formed in Nick’s stomach. “
Heard
about it?”

“That was the guy in the coffin, right? It was so inventive I remember wishing I had come up with it myself. So I told the police I did that one, too. For shits and giggles, as they say.”

The knot in Nick’s gut tightened, twisting hard enough to force him to clutch at his abdomen. His heart hammered deep in his chest, an insistent pounding that echoed all the way up to his brain.

“You didn’t kill George Winnick?”

“No,” Ken said. “Sorry to say, I didn’t.”

Nick felt sick. Sick that the man sitting across from him was sorry he didn’t commit a fifth murder. Sick that although
George Winnick’s death clearly didn’t match the ones Ken Miller committed, everyone had been fooled into believing otherwise. And, most of all, sick that George’s true killer was still out there, somewhere, most likely waiting for the perfect moment to strike again.

From where she was sitting, Kat had a clear view of Main Street. Instead of cars, the thoroughfare was packed with hundreds of pedestrians braving the July heat. They roamed the street, stopping at the craft tables and food stands that lined it. Many people were gathered in front of the bandstand erected just outside Big Joe’s, where a fife and drum corps played patriotic tunes. The music floated up the street, creating a soundtrack for the festivities taking place there.

The only downside to Kat’s view was that she was looking at it from inside the PTA’s dunk tank. She had never been to a PTA meeting—she didn’t have the time—but because she was the police chief, the supermoms that ran it had made her an honorary member. Apparently, the honor was being forced to spend the final half hour of the Fourth of July street fair inside the booth’s chicken-wire cage, perched on a plank over several gallons of water.

Wearing denim cutoffs over a modest bathing suit, Kat peered out of her watery prison at Lisa Gunzelman, the PTA president, who stood on the other side of the chicken wire. Lisa sported a stars and stripes T-shirt that matched the sun visor pressed into her hair. Because she was president, Lisa didn’t have to serve time inside the dunk tank, which made Kat resent her just a little. The matching outfit didn’t help. Nor did the zeal Lisa displayed when trying to lure potential customers.

“Dunk the police chief!” she yelled, while holding up the baseballs that could send Kat plummeting into the water. “Only one dollar a toss!”

First up was Jasper Fox, who handed Lisa three dollars. He threw his pitches with a ruthless gleam in his eyes, which Kat suspected came from the fact that she had never found his stolen delivery van. It was long gone, probably taken out of the county and sold for scrap. Jasper had purchased a new one in April, the Awesome Blossoms logo as prominent as ever. As for the gun he had kept in the old van’s glove compartment, Kat hoped it never returned to Perry Hollow.