I found Huizenga, D’Auria, and Jacobs sitting at the end of the suite’s L-shaped hallway, gathered around a laptop and watching and listening in. Chief Perkins must have said something to Huizenga at the morning briefing, because she just nodded and made room for me at the table.
“Good to have you back,” she said.
“Shh,” D’Auria said, and tapped the screen in front of us.
I could feel the tension in the group. I wasn’t sure how long Creem had been in there, but something told me it wasn’t going well.
Creem was seated on an aluminum chair bolted to the interview room floor. His body language was open, with his hands at his sides and his legs wide. If anything, it looked studied to me. Arrogant, even, as if he were enjoying this—or at least, wanted us to think so.
Valente had pulled in a folding chair of his own and sat with his back against the door. The wedge-shaped table in the corner was empty, and the only pop of color in the room was the red panic button on the wall.
“Dr. Creem, do you recognize this signature?” Valente asked. He’d just taken a sheet out of an accordion file on the floor and turned it around to show Creem.
“That would be one of my intake forms,” he said.
“Yes. For Darcy Vickers,” Valente said.
“I can see that.”
Valente took the form back and stowed it. He wanted Creem looking at him, not the page.
“Her most recent procedure with you was a neck lift,” he said. “Eleven months before she was murdered.”
“A platysmaplasty, yes,” Creem said. “It’s unfortunate. I did some of my best work on her.”
I didn’t know what his exact goal was here, but he’d played the same game with me while he took putts in his backyard. The last thing Elijah Creem wanted us to think was that he cared about anything but himself. He was
going out of his way to make the point.
Valente sat back and crossed his arms. I could tell his patience was running thin.
“It’s a lot of coincidences, don’t you think?” he said. “Your former patient. Your neighbors in Palm Beach—”
“Now, you see there?” Creem said, suddenly more animated. “Why would you need to ask that question, unless you were short on information? I’m no detective, detective, but even I know that you don’t prosecute on coincidences.”
To my mind that sounded a lot like Yes, I’m guilty, but you can’t prove it. One of the most important aspects of any interview is what isn’t said. And Creem seemed to be not saying a lot. He liked us knowing what he’d done, didn’t he? Just as long as he stayed on the right side of that very thin line he was treading. It was a game of thrills for him—the killing itself, but this part, too.
“Okay,” Valente said. He got up and folded his chair against the wall. “Let me ask you a different question. Did you kill Darcy Vickers?”
“Let’s say I wish I’d gotten to her first,” Creem said. “That’s not illegal, is it?”
“Did you kill Roger and Annette Wettig in Florida?” Valente asked.
Creem seemed to consider it. “Same answer.”
“So, you did kill them,” Valente pressed. “That’s what I’m hearing.”
All at once, Creem jumped onto his feet. The two of them were suddenly inches apart. I jumped up, too, but D’Auria held out a hand for me to wait.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Valente said.
“You see this?” Creem held his hands up between them. “No cuffs. Not like the first time you people came after me. That means I haven’t been arrested, and that means I don’t have to be here.”
“Sit down!” Valente barked at him.
“No, I don’t think I will,” Creem said. “I’m ready to speak to my attorney. So you can either give me your phone, or you can let me out of this ridiculous little closet of yours. Either way, this conversation is over.”
The fact of the matter was, Creem knew the score. We were onto him, but every piece of evidence we had was circumstantial. All we could do now was keep peeling the layers away until we found a little more blood on the doctor’s hands.