Retribution (22 page)

‘Really? Well, best of luck on that.’ His blue eyes searched hers. ‘I know it’s a real stress case, with all the media attention and all.’ His voice raised slightly when he said ‘all’ as if it were a question, and she knew he was giving her an opening.

She nodded, and focused on her lap. It had been several months since she had sat in this chair. After so many years it was time to see if all the counseling had actually worked, if the chick could fly, if she could handle it alone in the world – make it past the memories that kept trying to pull her back to where she had just been. In this endeavor, with excuses of too much work and too little time, she had slowed her scheduled biweekly appointments to an occasional visit, finally stopping altogether in the spring. Now here she was back again knocking on his door for help.

‘Are you trying it with anyone else from your office?’ He sounded like her father, concerned that she wasn’t eating right or getting enough sleep.

‘No. Just me so far, unless Jerry Tigler appoints someone else.’

‘Who’s the lead, Dom Falconetti?’

‘Yes. And Manny Alvarez with the City.’

‘I know Manny. Great detective. I worked with him on a quadruple homicide in Liberty City a couple of years back. I believe I met Agent Falconetti at the Forensics conference in Orlando last year.’

Greg Chambers’s black hair was sprinkled with gray, but it was a vibrant, shiny gray, and it accentuated his
kind blue eyes, and added some character to his otherwise plain-looking face. The unavoidable march of time had feathered deep wrinkles across his brow and out from his eyes, but they also helped to distinguish him, and C.J. guessed that he was probably a better-looking man in his late forties than he had been in his teens or his twenties. Then she thought of her own tired lines reflected back in the mirror yesterday. Men aged so much better than women. It wasn’t fair.

‘You’ve got me more than a little worried, C.J. I could tell from your voice last night that something was wrong. What’s up?’

C.J. shifted her legs again and recrossed them. Her mouth was dry. ‘Well, it’s actually about the Cupid case.’

‘Oh. Do you need some professional advice?’

Therein lay the problem. In addition to being her off-again, on-again psychiatrist for the past ten years, Gregory Chambers was also a professional colleague. As a criminal forensic psychiatrist he regularly assisted the State Attorney’s Office and the police departments on violent-crime cases. On dozens of occasions he had testified for her office as an expert in complicated murder and domestic-violence cases, where the core issue that needed to be explained to the jury was simply, why? Why do men do the evil that they do? The same characteristics that made him easy to talk to as a psychiatrist also made him easy to listen to as an expert. With his soft face, easygoing smile, and extensive, impressive credentials, Gregory Chambers would explain the unfathomable in layman’s terms: Grown men prey sexually on innocent children because they are paedophiles; boyfriends hunt their girlfriends down with AK-47S because they are psychopaths; mothers kill their children because they are
bipolar; teenagers gun down their classmates in cold blood because of a borderline personality disorder.

His diagnoses were always right on target. The police trusted him, respected him, as did the private community. Which, of course, explained his thriving private practice in posh Coral Gables at $300 an hour; when you’re rich, you can afford to be crazy. C.J. fortunately got the law-enforcement discount. He had never testified in one of C.J.’s trials. She was always careful to draw a line, so there would never be a conflict in court. She had given tutorials by his side at law-enforcement conferences and seminars, and had sought his professional opinion off the record in some of her own cases. In those roles, he was both her colleague and her friend, and she recalled how she had addressed him in those instances as simply Greg.

Today, however, he was Dr Chambers.

‘No. I’m not seeking your expert opinion. I wouldn’t have called you at nine o’clock at night if I needed that.’ She smiled weakly.

‘I appreciate that, but others have not been as courteous, C.J. Jack Lester has called me at one A
.M
. before.’ He smiled a knowing smile. ‘And I don’t mind a bit.’

Jack Lester was also a Major Crimes prosecutor. C.J. despised him.

‘Jack Lester is a pompous, arrogant jerk. And you should have hung up on him. I would have.’

He laughed. ‘I’ll keep that in mind for the next time, and I’m sure there’ll be a next time.’ His face grew serious again. ‘If it’s not my professional expert opinion, then…’ His voice trailed off in a question mark.

Again, she shifted in her seat. The seconds ticked off in her head.

When she spoke, her voice was barely a whisper. ‘You know why I started coming here. You know why I see you… as a patient.’

He nodded. ‘Is it the nightmares? Are they back again?’

‘No, I’m afraid it’s worse than the nightmares.’ She looked desperately around the room, and then ran both hands through her hair. God, she needed a cigarette.

He frowned. ‘What is it, then?’

‘He’s back this time,’ she whispered, her voice shattering. ‘But this time it’s for real. He’s real. William Bantling is the one. Cupid! He’s the one!’

Dr Chambers shook his head, as if he didn’t understand what she was saying.

She shook her head, and the tears that she had held back for as long as she could began to stream down now from her eyes. ‘Do you understand what I’m telling you? Cupid is the one! He’s the man that raped me! He’s the Clown!’

31

Dr Chambers stiffened, then slowly exhaled the breath he had been holding and said simply, in a calm voice, ‘What makes you think that, C.J.?’ He was a psychiatrist, and his job was to take things in stride.

‘His voice in court. I knew his voice the second he started yelling at Judge Katz.’ She was sobbing, but trying to stop. He reached across his desk for a tissue, and grabbed the whole box.

‘Here, here. Take a tissue.’ He sat back now in his wing-backed chair, his hand covering his mouth, pulling down on his chin. ‘Are you sure, C.J.?’

‘Yes. I’m positive. You can’t hear a voice in your head for twelve years and not recognize it when it’s spoken again. Besides, I saw the scar.’

‘The one on his arm?’

‘Yes. Right above the wrist, while he was pulling on Lourdes Rubio in the courtroom.’ She finally looked at him. Her eyes were filled with tears and desperation. ‘It’s him. I know it. What I don’t know is what I should do.’

Dr Chambers sat and thought for a long moment; C.J. used the pause to compose herself. Finally, he spoke. ‘Well, if it is him, then that is, in a sense, good news. You now know who he is, where he is. You can finally have some closure to all of this, after all these years. I’m sure a trial in New York will be tough, but –’

She cut him off right there. ‘There’s not going to be a trial in New York.’

‘Now, C.J. After all you’ve been through for twelve years, you’re not willing to testify against this man? There is no reason to be ashamed. No reason to want to hide any longer. You’ve coached enough reluctant witnesses in your career to know –’

She shook her head. ‘Oh, I would testify. I would. In a heartbeat. But there won’t be any trial because the statute of limitations has run – seven years ago. So, now do you understand? He
can’t be
tried for raping me, for trying to kill me, for, for… butchering me.’ Her arms were folded, her hands cupped around her elbows. She hunched her body lower, curling them now protectively over her lower abdomen. ‘He can’t be tried. No matter what.’

Dr Chambers sat very still for a few moments, and blew out his breath very slowly through his hand, which still covered his mouth.

‘C.J., are you sure? Have you talked to the New York authorities?’

‘The original detectives on my case are retired and dead. It’s in Cold Case now. There was never any suspect, any arrest.’

‘Then how do you know you can’t go forward?’

‘I spoke with the Queens DA’s office, the Extraditions Unit, and a prosecutor told me. I should have thought about the statute of limitations before, but I… I just didn’t. It didn’t even cross my mind that when I finally found him, there would be nothing I could do. Nothing.’ The tears started falling again.

There was another long silence in the room. For once, in the ten years she’d known him, Dr Chambers was actually speechless. Finally, he said in a low voice, ‘We’ll get you through this, C.J. It will be alright. What do you want to do now?’

‘That’s
my problem. I don’t know. What do I want to do? I want to fry his ass. I want to send him to the death chamber. Not just for me, but for the eleven women he’s killed, and the countless other victims I’m sure he’s left out there in his wake. And I want to be the one to put him in that chair. Is that wrong?’

‘No,’ said Dr Chambers quietly. ‘It’s not wrong. It’s a feeling. A justified feeling.’

‘If I could, I
would
send him to New York. I would tell the world up there that he’s the fucking son of a bitch and then I would have put him away up there. I would have looked him in the eye and told him, “Fuck you, you bastard! You didn’t beat me! Say hello to your new roommates, for the next twenty years, because that’s the only piece of ass you’ll be seeing!”’ She looked up at Dr Chambers. Her eyes were pleading for an answer. ‘But I can’t do that now. What I’ve been waiting to do for twelve goddamn years. He even took that from me. He even took that from me …’

‘Well, there is always this case, C.J. He’s facing death in the murders of those women, isn’t he? It’s not looking like he’s going to walk away from this a free man.’

‘Yes, but that’s what I’m struggling with. I know that I can’t prosecute him, but if I tell Tigler, the whole office conflicts out, and then we get some neophyte from Ocala out of law school three years trucking down to try his first homicide. And I get to watch on the sidelines while somebody once again fucks this up for some reason and he walks!’

Be assured, we are actively pursuing the investigation, Chloe. We hope to have a subject in custody soon. We appreciate your continued cooperation.

‘There has to be some solution. Maybe Tigler can get
the Seventeenth or the Fifteenth to take it?’ The 17th Judicial Circuit was Broward County. The 15 th was Palm Beach.

‘Tigler has no say. It’s potluck, and I am not willing to take that chance. I just can’t. You know how complicated serials are. Especially with ten dead bodies and no confession or incriminating statement. And, we’ve really only got him so far on one. He hasn’t even been charged with the other nine murders. It’s easy to make a mistake. Too easy.’

‘I understand that, but I’m concerned about you. Very concerned. I know that you are strong, probably one of the strongest women I’ve ever met, but no one, no matter how strong her character or steady her conviction, should have to prosecute the person who has brutally attacked her. I think the issue is that you don’t want to let go.’

‘Maybe I don’t, until I am offered a viable solution. One that I can trust.’

‘How about passing it to another prosecutor in your office? What about Rose Harris? She’s good, and is very good at DNA and expert testimony.’

‘How do I pass this to another prosecutor without everyone flipping out? Especially at this late stage of the game? You tell me! Everyone knows how much I wanted this case – shit, I worked at it for a year! I’ve seen every single bloated, decomped body, met every family member, seen every autopsy photo ever taken, read every lab report, practically written every warrant – I
know
this case. How do I suddenly tell the office and the media that I
don’t
want it? Short of being diagnosed with a terminal disease, everyone who knows me knows I wouldn’t give it up. And even then I probably wouldn’t.

‘So bring on the “whys” and the “how comes” and the “what happeneds”, because they will be next. And the media will dig and dig and dig until they find something, anything. And someone will find out about the rape, and hence the conflict that was never revealed but should have been, and I will see that same schmuck from Ocala come down to try
my
rapist,
my
serial homicide, and I’ll get to watch him fuck it all up and watch Bantling walk. Only I’ll get to watch it on the TV at home since I won’t be a lawyer anymore because I’ll have been disbarred. So you tell me, Dr Chambers, how I
can
do it and I’ll do it, but only if I can have a guarantee that he’s going to get convicted, that he’s going to pay for what he’s done. Nobody, nobody can give me that. So if this case is going to get screwed up – I’
ll
be the one taking the blame, thank you. No one else.’

‘What are you saying, C.J.?’ She could see he was being careful with her as he chose the next question. ‘I’ll ask you again, what do you want to do?’

She sat silent for a few minutes.
Tick-tock, tick-tock goes the clock.

Her words sounded deliberate, determined, as if she had just thought of an idea and was testing it out, but liked the way it was sounding. I have to indict within twenty-one days, or else file a felony Information within twenty-one. Either way, the witnesses all have to come in and give a statement, the reports have to be gathered, the evidence reviewed… ‘ She paused, and then her voice was even more determined. ‘I think it’s too late to change pitchers now. I have to finish out the inning. So I think that I should at least take it through to indictment. Then maybe I’ll bring someone else on board, maybe Rose Harris, to try it with me. If all goes well, I’ll quietly
hand the reins over to her and bow out with a mysterious sickness when I feel she’s up to speed and can handle it all. When I trust her. When I know that she can and will do the right thing.’

‘What about the office’s conflict of interest on this one?’

‘Bantling was so busy trying to save his own ass in court that he did not even recognize me. It’s almost ironic, considering everything he’s done, he barely even managed a glance in my direction,’ she said quietly, then continued. ‘He has probably fucked with so many women that he’s lost count. They don’t even have a face anymore. And God knows I don’t look anything like I did back then.’ She smiled a wry and bitter smile and pulled her hair back behind her ears. ‘Only I know what he did. And if it comes out later, I can just say I wasn’t sure that it was him. That I didn’t know. He can’t be tried in New York anyway, so it’s not as if I am sacrificing my own case by saying I can’t ID. I don’t have a case to make in New York anymore anyway.’ Her voice had conviction now.