Interview
by Ross Willard
The detective pulled a photograph out of the file in front of her and slid it across the table. “Talk.”
The small, thin man with receding hair and an orange jumpsuit glanced down at the picture and snorted. “He’s dead.”
“Really?” She leaned back in her chair and tried to exude more confidence than she felt. In the course of her career, Elizabeth had dealt with a variety of perps, but no one with the reputation, or body count, of the man in front of her.
“Very dead.” He replied, his voice dry and disinterested.
“You two were friends, though, weren’t you?”
“No.” The small man leaned forward far enough to scratch his nose with one manacled hand. “We worked together. I respected him. But we were never friends.”
“Why not?”
He smiled. It was an ugly, cruel smile. “Because there was always a chance one of us would fall out of favor.”
“Oh.” Elise swallowed.
The man she was interviewing, Steven ‘Scar’ Tepps, had spent all of his adult life, and a good chunk of his childhood, in organized crime. He’d started out running drugs around the city, but had quickly moved into enforcement, despite his small size. By the time he reached twenty his disturbing proclivities and unquestioning loyalty had earned him a position as an interrogator.
“That’s why I avoided making any friends in the organization.” The small man’s smile slipped away. “You don’t want to have to do those kinds of things to a friend.”
“But you two did work together? In the same field, I mean?”
“Oh yes. Jim was a hot and cold man. Owned a restaurant, used to keep people in the freezer for a while before he took a torch to them. Very different style from mine, I’m more a knife and power tools kind of guy.”
“Yeah, I picked that up from your file.” Elise tried not to look too effected by his words. “But back to Jim. What can you tell me about his death?”
“He died about a month before I got pinched. So, almost a year ago. And he died . . .” briefly, so briefly that the detective almost missed it, the man’s jaw clenched. “Badly.”
“I should say so.” Elise flipped a few pages in the file and pulled out a half-dozen crime scene photographs, pushing those across the table. “Evisceration, decapitation, most of his skin removed, fingers cut off, burns, frostbite. There wasn’t much that wasn’t done to him.”
“Yeah.”
“You know, technically, his murder was never solved. Not that anyone looked too closely, of course. I believe the question running around the station was whether there was anyone deserved it more.”
“Yeah.”
“I remember overhearing a few of those debates. I remember your name coming up.”
The man said nothing, no trace of emotion showing on his face.
“Your name also came up when they were trying to figure out who might’ve done it. In fact, you were on the short list.”
“I always figured it was the family of one of the guys he worked over.”
Elise shook her head. “I don’t know, it looks pretty professional to me. In fact, it reminds me of a few kills that you confessed to.”
The prisoner scoffed. “You want to blame me for his death, fine, put it on the list. Just one more trial to go to. One more life sentence, because they don’t have the balls to kill me and be done.”
Elise shook her head. “I don’t think you killed him.”
“Oh? Why? Does it seem out of character?”
“No.” The detective leaned forward, getting as close as she dared. “Because I don’t think he’s really dead.”
Steven stared at her blankly for several seconds, then burst out laughing. “You don’t think he’s dead? What, did he pull his skin back on, restart his heart, and climb out of the cement tomb they buried him in?”
Elise scowled and slid back into her seat. She’d been hoping for a different reaction. It didn’t mean she was wrong, but she wasn’t completely sure she was right, either.
“Oh, wait, did he pull a Jesus on us? Resurrect himself on the third day? Was Jim the Second coming?” Steven laughed so hard that he turned purple and lowered his head to the table.
“The body was horribly mutilated. Beyond recognition, in fact, and among the body parts that never turned up were his fingers, and a few of his teeth. Our forensic team spent days piecing together as much of him as they could find. They were confident it was Jim, but nobody is infallible. I think you and your friend--.”
“We weren’t friends.”
“I think that you and your friend found somebody who looked like Jim, somebody with his blood type and the right hair color, and you mutilated him so badly that nobody would ever be able to prove, with certainty, that he wasn’t Jim. Not without a dna sample to compare it to.”
Steven pursed his lips, contemplating the scenario. “Actually, that makes a lot of sense, or it would have, if he had a reason fake his death, or if I had a reason to help him.”
“So you’re absolutely certain that he’s dead?”
“Yes.”
“One hundred percent?”
The sadist glowered at her. “Yes.”
“No doubt in your mind?”
This time he just glowered.
“So if I told you that we found his prints at a recent crime scene, you wouldn’t have any idea how they got there?”
Steven blinked at the detective. “What?”
“Your friend? Your dead friend? His fingerprints were found at a recent crime scene.”
The prisoner shook his head in bewilderment. “That’s impossible.”
“Is it?”
He ignored her question, staring through her, through the wall behind her, his mind locked on an incomprehensible mystery. “His hands weren’t steady enough for that kind of knife work. And there wasn’t anyone he trusted enough to work with.”
“Nobody but you.”
The killer across the table from Elise snarled and moved forward as far as his chains would allow. “They’ve got enough on me to put a hundred men away for hundred lifetimes. You think I give a damn about what you know I did? I’ve killed, I’ve raped, I’ve murdered, I’ve tortured. You’d be hard pressed to find a crime I haven’t committed, or a line I haven’t crossed, and if I had the chance, I’d happily do it all again, so believe me when I say that if I deny doing something, it’s because I. Didn’t. Do it.”
Elise managed not to jerk back, but only just barely.
“But he must’ve.” Steven shook his head and sank back down into his seat. “He must’ve managed. Somehow.” He looked up at the detective.
“What did he do?”
“Pardon?”
“His prints were found at a crime scene, what was the crime?”
“Breaking and entering. Theft.”
“Where?”
“A veterinary clinic. He stole a bunch of surgical equipment. Why?”
“Surgical equipment? That isn’t his style.” Steven licked his lips and stared through the table in front of him.
Elise cleared her throat and gathered her file along with her composure. “Well, however it happened, get rid of some company, because I’m going to catch him. And he will be joining you in here.”
Steven ignored her, his mind still reeling as the guards came in to take him back to his room.
***
Steven sat, still and calm, as the guards manacled him to the table and left. They backed out of the room, neither willing to take their eyes off him until they were out of the room with the door locked.
He’d only killed two people since his arrest, one in a riot, and the other in the cafeteria. Neither of the murders could be traced back to him, but everyone knew, and everyone gave him his space.
Elise slipped into the chair across from him. She was tired. Exhausted, actually. She’d never learned to leave her cases at the office; if anything, she lived them. Her home was a constantly shifting shrine, dedicated to whichever horror was on her plate at the moment.
She set the new file down in front of her and stared at Steven for almost a minute without speaking. He frightened her less, this time. Perhaps it was having survived her first meeting, or perhaps it was the turn the investigation had taken.
She interlaced her fingers and set her hands on top of the closed file. “Little Bill.”
Steven shook his head. “I’m not giving you anything on him.”
“You don’t need to.” She opened the file in front of her and spread a set of photographs in front of the inmate. “We’ve spent years building up a case against him. Low and behold, at the last minute, somebody beat us to him.”
Steven stared, his eyes wide with shock. “This is Little Bill?”
“What’s left of him. At first we thought he might’ve pulled switch like Jim, but we had some of his DNA on file. That’s him. Definitive match.”
Steven lifted one of the pictures, an mournful expression on his face as he ran a finger lovingly over the image. “Oh, Bill. Who did this to you?”
“Funny you should ask. Our medical examiner gave him a thorough post mortem. According to him, this was done with the same kind of equipment that Jim stole from that veterinary clinic last month.”
Steven shook his head. “No, not Jim. Jim wouldn’t do that to Little Bill. Actually, he couldn’t. It told you the last time you were here, he doesn’t have the hands for it.”
“Then maybe he’s working with somebody.”
“But why?” Steven shook his head and stared at the picture. “Jim and Little Bill never had a problem.”
“That you knew about.”
“I would’ve known.” He set down the picture he was looking at and scanned the others. His eyebrow twitched at one. The sadist stretched his hands as far as they could go and dragged the picture close enough that he could pick it up. “His tongue was cut out?”
“Among other things, yes.”
“Did they find it? His tongue?”
Elise stared at the inmate for a long moment before shaking her head. “No. We collected most of the pieces, but the two things we couldn’t find were his tongue and --.”
“And his right ear?”
Elise went still for a moment, looking Steven over, trying not to give anything away. “Yeah. His right ear. How’d you know that?”
The convict looked pale, he looked frightened. “It’s him.” Steven shook his head. “But it couldn’t be.”
“What couldn’t be?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head. “It’s nothing.”
Elise waited for a few seconds, watching the convict. “It doesn’t sound like nothing.”
“It’s just, Jim, whoever killed him cut off his fingers.”
“Oh, so now he is dead?”
Steven hesitated, then shook his head. “No. No. Jim’s alive. He has to be. Unless . . . unless they’re carrying his fingers with them. Leaving the prints on purpose.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“It’s just, the week before Jim was killed. I mean, the week before he . . . before that body was found, there was this guy. He . . . he said he’d take it back.”
Elise shook her head. “You’re losing me.”
Steven grimaced. “There was this guy. He pissed off Little Bill. A lot. Me and Jim both got called in. Worked him over in shifts.”
“That wasn’t uncommon, was it?”
“Both of us working a guy over? No. Usually, though, Little Bill left us to it. This time, he watched. Even did a little cutting himself. Cut off the guy’s right ear before we got started, said he wanted to keep it as a souvenir. Then, a day or two later, cut out his tongue. Said he was tired of hearing him talk.”
“You mean scream.”
Steven shook his head slowly. “No. Tired of hearing him talk.” The convict raised his eyes to the detective, his face tight with fear. “This guy, there was something wrong about him. Like, scary wrong.”
“Scary wrong?”
“When we got started, I thought he was just another guy. He pleaded, cried, howled, everything you expect. We were about an hour in, though, and something changed. It was like . . . it was like something else took over. I was in the middle of peeling the skin off his arm with a grinder, and all the sudden I realized he wasn’t screaming anymore, he was laughing. I had a grinder pressed up against his skin, and he was laughing at me.”
Elise gritted her teeth and kept her eyes locked on Steven. “He was laughing? You’re sure about that?”
Steven nodded.
“That does seem a bit creepy.”
“We took a break then. When we came back, he was back to normal. Jim spent some time on him, burnt his fingers off. About halfway through the second hand, it happened again. This time he just sort of watched us for a while, then smiled. He said we were doing him a favor. He said that we were removing the parts of him that made him weak.”
Elise swallowed her disgust and nodded for him to continue.
“Little Bill got pissed off about that. He had me take a bat to the guy, to get him to shut up. Thing was, it didn’t work. You ever seen someone laughing while they’re laying on the ground, bleeding all over the place, bones broken, face swelling? It’s eerie.”
“That’s one word for it.”
“Anyhow, we spent some time on him, a couple of days. The more time we spent, the less time he spent screaming. Every day he was creepy for longer. Every day he would tell us that we were cutting out his weakness. And then he started talking about how he was going to return the favor. He was going to take from us everything we took from him. That was when Little Bill cut out his tongue.”
“What was his name?”
“Don’t know. Didn’t come up. I remember he owned some antique store or something, but that’s about it.”
“And what happened to him?”
Steven shrugged. “We killed him and dumped his body where the animals could get to it. He was gone the next day. I went back to be sure.”
Elise scratched her left ear, a nervous habit that lost her more than a few poker games. “And how many people knew about this? About what he said, I mean.”
“That I knew of? Just the three of us.”
Elise raised a disbelieving eyebrow.
“Admittedly, Little Bill usually liked word to get out about what we’d done, and who we’d done it to, but this one was different. Otherwise we would’ve dumped the body somewhere it would’ve been found.”
“So, you didn’t tell anyone about it? Nobody at all?”
Steven shook his head.
“Well, somebody must’ve found out. Tell me everything you remember about him.”
***
Steven was squinting and stumbling as the guards brought him into the room.
Elise waited patiently as his manacles were connected to the table, and the guards left the room.
“I hear you’re in solitary.”
Steven shrugged.
“You maimed one of the other inmates?”
“Some fish, fresh off the bus. He probably thought that if he didn’t mess someone up on the first day he’d end up a bitch.”
“So he went after you?”
Steven grinned. “Didn’t know who I was. I had to explain it to him.”
“Yeah.” Elise crinkled her nose in disgust.
“So, what is it this time? Figure out who’s doing the slicing and dicing?”
“No. That’s the problem.” She leaned across the table, careful not to get too close. “The guy you killed, his name was Gideon Creek. He was an orphan, no children, he had a few friends, but not the kind who capable of this level of violence.”
“So it must be Jim. He’s got to be the one who killed little Bill. Maybe he’s got an accomplice.”
“I don’t think so.”
“No?”
Elise leaned back in her seat. “The thing is, it wasn’t an antique store.”
“Huh?”
“He didn’t own an antique store.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
Elise grimaced. “He owned an occult shop.”
Steven stared at her, blankly.
“He sold books on black magic, Ouija boards. He had séances in the back room. According to some of the people I talked to, for the right price, he could whip up some nasty curses.”
“So he was fucking crazy. So what.” Steven glowered at the detective. “What does that have to do with Jim and Bill dying?”
Elise hesitated. “Before Little Bill had you and Jim work Gideon over, Little Bill was having a lot of medical problems. Backaches, migraines, diarrhea. He was bedridden for almost six weeks.”
“Yeah. And?”
“After Gideon disappeared, Little Bill stopped making appointments with his doctor. He started going out. He got better overnight.”
“You think Gideon was the real deal?” Steven snorted. “You think there really was a curse?”
“I don’t know.” Elise stared at the murderer in front of her. “Last time we talked I wouldn’t have even considered it, but now, I just don’t know.”
“Great.” Steven rolled his eyes. “A superstitious cop.”
“I visited his shop. You know, five businesses have started up there since he left, every one of them left. Twice, the owners committed suicide. I talked to the other three. They said it was a prime spot, but it felt wrong. Customers never came in more than once, and the owners, and any employees they hired, would get the creeps whenever they were there for more than an hour or two. I went into the back room . . . there’s something wrong with that place. Something evil.”
“You’ve got to be joking.”
She sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t sleep so well anymore. Some of the stories I heard this last week . . . a lot of the people who knew Gideon thought he was possessed. When he disappeared, they didn’t post any signs, or call the police, they just prayed he didn’t come back.”
“Great, tell that to the judge, maybe he’ll have one of my life sentences removed. In the meantime, what are you doing to find the real killer?”
Elise rubbed her face with both hands. “I didn’t come here to discuss the case with you. I came here to warn you. The things I’ve heard, the way his neighbors talk about him, I just want you to know, I don’t think bars are going to protect you. Not from this guy.”
With that she stood up, signaling the guards to let her out.
Steven considered telling her what he thought of her theory, what he thought of her, but decided against it. It wasn’t that his life could get any worse, it was just that, as hard as he protested against a paranormal explanation, when he thought about that man, when he thought about the way his eyes, his posture had changed . . . when he remembered that laugh, that horrible laugh, he couldn’t quite convince himself that it was a human looking at him. Laughing at him.
The guards escorted Steven back to solitary, locking him in the cell and removing his cuffs before they left, muttering quietly between themselves about how they should get paid more for dealing with that kind of psychopath.
Steven sank to the floor of his cell and rubbed his eyes with his palms and sighed.
“Finally. We get some alone time.”
Steven’s heart froze in his chest. “Who’s there!”
“Oh, I think you know.”
Steven shot to his feet and pressed his back against the wall as footsteps moved across the room towards him.
“What do you want?”
The voice chuckled quietly. “Funny you should ask. I have list. And item number one is a left eye.”