Killer Instinct
Page 44

Redding’s voice was silky, his delivery of those words impossible to ignore.
“Why I’m asking these questions doesn’t matter. What matters is that I can make your life significantly less pleasant if you don’t answer them. How would you feel about a transfer? I hear there are some federal facilities that are lovely this time of year.”
“Now, now, Agent Briggs. There’s no need to resort to threats. I think we both know that given even the slightest opportunity, you’d throw me in the deepest, darkest hole you could find. The fact that you haven’t already means that you can’t.” Redding leaned forward, his eyes on Briggs’s. “I wonder—do you ever get tired of the things you can’t do? Can’t catch every killer.” Redding’s voice took on a pouting tone, but his expression reminded me of a hawk, sharp-eyed and merciless, focused on one thing and one thing alone. “Can’t keep a wife. Can’t keep from coming back here. Can’t get me out of your mind.”
“I’m not here to play games with you, Redding. If you can’t give me something, I have no reason to stay.” Briggs leaned forward. “Maybe you’d prefer I left,” he said, his voice as low and silky as Redding’s.
“Go ahead,” Redding replied. “Leave. I think we both know that you’re not my type. Now the delectable Agent Sterling, on the other hand…”
A muscle in Briggs’s neck visibly tensed, but he didn’t snap. Instead, he pulled a photograph out of the file folder and laid it on the table. He pushed the photo forward, keeping it just out of Redding’s reach.
“Well,” Redding said, mesmerized, “this is an interesting turn of events.”
He reached for the photograph and Briggs pulled it back. He placed it back in the folder and stood up. It took me a moment to realize what had just happened. This interview had been taped shortly after the first victim had turned up dead. I was willing to bet a lot of money that Briggs had just showed Redding a photograph of Emerson’s body.
I could see in the killer’s eyes that he wouldn’t be able to tamp down the desire to see it again.
“They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” Redding’s gaze was no longer on Briggs’s face. It was on the folder. “Where was she found?”
Briggs took his time answering the question, but ultimately doled out the answer—just enough to whet Redding’s appetite for more. “Colonial University. The president’s front lawn.”
Redding snorted. “Showy,” he said. “Sloppy.”
His eyes were still on the folder. He wanted to see the picture. He wanted to study it.
“Tell me what I want to know,” Briggs said evenly, “and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
Briggs was counting on Redding’s narcissism. He assumed the man would want to know everything he could about this imitator. What Briggs didn’t know—and what we knew now—was that Redding wasn’t criticizing the work of an imitator. He wasn’t looking to see his infamy reflected in this girl’s body.
He was a teacher, evaluating the performance of a prize pupil.
“I’m not interested in anything you have to say.” Redding managed to pull his gaze from the folder. He leaned back in his metal chair, as far as he could with his wrists chained to the table. “But it’s possible that I have some information that could be relevant to you.”
“Prove it.” Briggs threw down the challenge—to no avail.
“I want to talk to my son,” the killer said flatly. “You’ve kept him from me for five years. What reason could I possibly have to help you?”
“Basic human decency?” Briggs suggested dryly. “If there were anything human or decent in you, maybe your son would want to see you.”
“‘Doubt thou the stars are fire,’” Redding responded in a singsong tone. “‘Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar….’”
Briggs finished the quote for him. “‘But never doubt I love.’ Shakespeare.” He stood, gathering his things and slamming the door on the conversation. “You’re not capable of loving anyone but yourself.”
“And you’re not capable of letting this go.” Redding smiled again, equal parts serene and smug. “You want me to talk? I’ll talk. I’ll tell you who’s been writing to me, and who’s been a very, very bad boy. I’ll lay out everything you want to know—but the only person I’m talking to is Dean.”
The screen went black. Redding and Briggs were gone, replaced a moment later by an eerily similar scene, except that this time, Dean was the one sitting opposite his father, and Briggs sat adjacent to Dean.
“Dean.” Redding relished the word. “You’ve brought me a gift, Agent Briggs,” he said, never taking his eyes off his son. “Someday, I will return the favor.”
Dean stared at a spot just over his father’s shoulder. “You wanted me here. I’m here. Now talk.”
Redding obliged. “You look like your mother,” he said, drinking in Dean’s features like a dying man in the desert. “Except for the eyes—those are mine.”
The way Redding said the word mine made my stomach roll.
“I didn’t come here to talk about my mother.”
“If she were here, she’d tell you to get your hair cut. Sit up straight. Smile every once in a while.”
Dean’s hair fell into his face, his eyes narrowed to slits beneath it. “There’s not much to smile about.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve lost the taste for life already, Dean. The boy I knew had so much potential.”
A muscle in Dean’s jaw twitched. He and Redding sat staring at each other. After a full minute of silence ticked by, Dean’s eyes narrowed, and he said, “Tell me about the letters.”
This was where Agent Sterling and I had come in the first time around. It was harder to watch the second time: Dean trying to get his father to part with some scrap of information, Daniel Redding sparring with him verbally, bringing the topic back to Dean again and again.
“I want to know about you, Dean. What have those hands been doing the past five years? What sights have those eyes seen?”
You knew Briggs would come to see you as soon as the first body turned up. You knew that Dean would come if you refused to talk to anyone else. You planned this, step by step.
“I don’t know what you want me to say.” On the screen, Dean’s voice was getting louder, more intense. “There’s nothing to talk about. Is that what you want to hear? That these hands, these eyes—they’re nothing?”
“They’re everything.” This time, I could see a manic intensity in Redding’s eyes. He looked at Dean, and the only thing he saw was himself—a god, not subject to man’s laws, above things like empathy and guilt. I thought about the card that Briggs had found in Trina’s pocket—the king of spades.
Redding wanted immortality. He wanted power. But more than anything, he wanted an heir.
Why now? I thought. Why is he doing all of this now? He’d sat in that prison for five years. Had it taken that long to find someone to do his bidding on the outside, or had something happened to push him into doing this?
On the screen, Dean’s father had just asked if there was a girl. Dean denied it. Redding called him “son,” and Dean said the five words that triggered the man to lash out.
“I am not your son.”
Even knowing it was coming, the sudden rush of violence took me off guard. Redding’s fists were buried in the front of Dean’s shirt. He jerked him close and told him that he was and would always be his father’s son.
“You know it. You fear it.”
This time, I saw the instant Dean snapped, the moment when the anger that Michael had told me was always present beneath the surface bubbled up and overflowed. Dean’s face was like stone, but there was something wild in his eyes as he grabbed his father, pulling him halfway across the table, as far as the other man’s chains would allow.
This time, as Briggs broke up the fight, I saw Redding smile. He’d gotten what he wanted. A hint of violence. A taste of Dean’s potential.