The 8th Confession (Women's Murder Club 8)

“That’s hope. That’s a chance that maybe you’ll walk free before you die.”

Johnson covered her mouth. She was thinking long and hard, and as the silence did a few laps around the room, I couldn’t even guess what she would do.

Parisi looked at his watch and pushed back from the table, his chair legs screeching like the brakes of an 18-wheeler.

“I’ve had enough, Lieutenant,” Parisi said to Jacobi. “Wrap it up.”

“My father,” Norma said softly.

“Christopher Ross was one of the victims,” I said. “He knew the killer?”

“He was the killer,” said Pet Girl. “Daddy told me. He did them all.”

Chapter 103

PET GIRL HAD just ratted out her dead father as the 1982 high-society killer. If the story was true, then her father had been a serial killer.

She’d followed his example by becoming one, too.

Was that really the truth?

Or was it all a desperate fiction to help herself?

I wanted to hear her say it again — and then she did.

“He told me who he killed and why. Daddy hated those phonies who sucked up to him because he was rich. He loved my mother because she was real.”

Pet Girl reached into her blouse and pulled out a locket, opened it with shaking hands, and held it out to show Parisi the photo of Christopher Ross.

Parisi never shifted his eyes. He simply torched Johnson with his fearsome Red-Dog-will-rip-your-throat-out stare and said, “An allegation is worth nothing. You want the deal? I need proof.”

Pet Girl twisted her head toward me for the first time since Jacobi and Parisi entered the room.

“My keys are in my handbag,” she told me. “It’s red ostrich skin, and I think I left it on the console table in the foyer.”

I nodded, said, “Red bag. I’ll find it.”

“Look for a brass key with a round top, goes to a padlock on my storage unit,” she said. “Bay Storage, unit number twenty-two. I’ve got all of my father’s papers stored there. Inside one of the boxes is a file marked ‘Natajara.’ ”

“Is the box numbered? Labeled?”

“Should be right in front. I think second or third tier on the right-hand side —”

I was inside my head, thinking about how I would run upstairs to get a search warrant for Johnson’s apartment, when my cell phone rang — Brenda, our squad assistant, shouting into the mouthpiece, “Lindsay, two old guys —”

The interview-room door flew open, and two distinguished-looking gentlemen burst in.

Bill Tarbox was in blue seersucker and a red-and-white polka-dot bow tie, looking as if he’d left his Panama hat out in the Rolls. Fenn’s haircut was so sharp, you could cut yourself on his sideburns.

Fenn glared around the room, identified his client, and said, “Norma, stop talking. We’re your lawyers, and this interview is over.”

Chapter 104

I WAS WITH CONKLIN in his private hospital room with its view of the parking lot. He looked pale, his hair lying damp across his forehead, but his smile was strong and he was cracking jokes, all very good signs.

I angled the reclining chair toward his bed.

“You’re not mad, are you, Rich?”