“Why did you take one of the hookers with you?”
He chuckled. “Kenny-Two says we got to get a mommy home with the kids before the ceremony can begin.”
I thought about that and what I’d heard in the root cellar and said, “Tell me about that night, the first time the ceremony was performed.”
Carney gazed without expression at me for several seconds before his eyes got lazy and his head bobbed. When he lifted his chin, his manner had turned feminine once more.
“Mama said she’d had enough of us,” he said, sounding like Kelli again. “She gave us all cough medicine and told us we were going to take a bath. Kevin and I took the cough medicine like any good baby would. Kenny-Two spit it out.”
“So you don’t remember what happened?”
Carney’s face looked haunted. “I remember seeing her smoking from a glass pipe and crying when she picked up Kevin and said she was going to give him a bath. When she came for me I remember looking for where my twin brother was and Mama said not to worry, that he’d had his diapers changed and gone to bed. Mama said it was time for my bath.”
“And then what happened?”
No more than two beats passed with Carney’s eyes shivering before he surfaced once more as Kenny-Two.
“She pushed Kelli under the water while I screamed at her, begging her not to do it,” he said. “I’d seen her put Kevin back in his crib, all naked and wet and blue. I’d seen her pour the cleaning liquid on him. I knew what was happening.”
“Because you didn’t take the cough syrup?”
“Being contrary keeps you alive, ever notice that?”
“Or it kills you,” I replied, and tapped my pen on my notepad. “Where was your father during all this?”
“Smoking glass somewhere on his way home,” Kenny-Two replied in disgust. “He told the court he got to the apartment all wired, saw Kevin lying in his crib soaked in citrus cleaner my mom brought home from the massage parlor.
“Then my dad heard me screaming in the bathroom, pushed open the door, and seen what she’d done to Kelli, and what she was trying to do to me. My mom started crying, telling him everything was cleaner this way.”
“Your dad snapped.”
He nodded. “Choked my mom to death with the cord to her bathrobe while I watched.”
I sat there a long while, trying to absorb it all, thinking about what drugs, a sordid night, and a traumatic brain injury had spawned. Sixteen dead men, women, and children in Albuquerque, Tampa, and DC. Every one of them had left behind lives torn apart as harshly as Carney’s.
Aside from the senseless killings, the worst thing about it all was the fact that a few minutes later, Kenny-Two faded and the eager young man who’d fought for his country and dreamed of being a homicide detective resurfaced.
I gave him a summary of what his other personalities had told me and had to watch it torture him into wretchedness and despair. Carney hung his head and sobbed like an innocent man wrongly accused and doomed for it.
I stood, put my hand on his heaving good shoulder, and said, “I think it’s time we took a break, Kenny. I’ll be back to see you on Monday.”
The young officer didn’t acknowledge me, just conti
nued to cry from deep, deep inside. I sighed and moved toward the door.
“Detective Cross?” he called after me in a trembling voice.
I paused at the door and looked back. “Yes?”
“Can they give the death penalty to someone like me?” he asked.
With more than two decades of police work behind me, I’d thought I’d grown calloused when it came to dealing with killers, insane and otherwise. But that moment devastated me because Carney’s tone was desperate, wishful.
The poor bastard was asking me if there was any hope for a quick end to his suffering. And I had to shake my head and listen to his gut-shot moaning as I left.
Chapter
91