Then Norma Johnson said, “That’s not good enough.”
“That’s all we’re offering.”
I gathered my papers and buttoned my jacket, pushed away from the table.
Pet Girl piped up, “What will you take off my sentence if I give you the person who killed those richies in nineteen eighty-two?”
I choked down my surprise — and my excitement.
I turned to the one-way mirror, and a second later, Jacobi opened the door, poked his head into the interrogation room.
“Hang on,” he said to me. “I’m getting Parisi on the phone.”
Chapter 102
THE INTERROGATION ROOM got smaller as the combined four hundred fifty pounds of Red Dog and Jacobi came in.
Parisi is six two, has coarse red hair, pockmarked skin, a size-50 waist, and a smoker’s baritone. He could be funny, but if he wanted to, he could scare his own mother into a heart attack.
Jacobi is another unique terror if you don’t know and love him as I do. His unreadable gray eyes are like drill bits. And his large hands are restless. Like he’s looking for a reason to ball them up and strike.
The two hulking men dragged up chairs, and I saw Pet Girl’s snotty demeanor waver.
“Now I think I should have a lawyer,” she said.
“That’s your right,” Parisi grumbled. He said to me, “Boxer, take her back to her cell.”
As I got to my feet, Norma Johnson shouted, “Wait!”
“I’m not here to entertain myself,” Parisi warned her. “So don’t waste my time.” He flapped open a file, fanned the morgue shots out on the table, asked Pet Girl, “Did you kill these people?”
As Johnson’s eyes slowly panned the photos left to right and back again, I realized that she’d never seen her victims dead.
Was she repentant?
Or was she freaking impressed with herself?
Her eyes still on the photos, Johnson asked Parisi for his promise that she’d be exempt from the death penalty if she told him about her part in McKenzie Oliver’s death, and when he agreed, she let out a deep sigh.
“I killed them all,” she said, her voice breaking on her own self-pity, a couple of tears trickling down her cheeks. “But I caused them less pain in their deaths than they caused me in one day of my life.”
Didn’t Pet Girl know that tears were unnecessary? That all we cared about was her confession? That all we wanted were the words?
She wiped away her tears with the backs of her hands, and then she asked if the videotape was rolling. I told her it was, and she said she was glad.
“I want there to be a record of my statement,” she said. “I want people to understand my reasons.”
More than an hour passed as Norma Johnson fleshed out her motives, detailing the victims’ lives as only an obsessive voyeur could, describing their “unspeakably insulting behavior” toward her, none of which she deserved, and she told us how she’d painlessly put her victims down.
After she described stalking McKenzie Oliver, getting him into bed for a good-bye tryst, then stabbing him with the fangs of a krait, Parisi had what he wanted. No frills required.
He cut off her narcissistic rant midsentence, saying, “I have to be in court, Ms. Johnson. Tell me about the nineteen eighty-two murders if you want us to consider a reduction in your sentence.”
“What are you offering me?”
“Right now, you’re looking at six consecutive life sentences without possibility of parole,” he told her. “Give us the nineteen eighty-two society killer, and you’ll get to tell a parole board how sorry you are after you’ve served some time.”
“That’s all?”