think she might have grabbed them. “Don’t you see, Lynch knows the details of the case so well. If he didn’t do the killings I’ll bet he knows the man who did. Lynch could lead us to the man who really killed Jessica Robertson. A man who at any point might start killing again.”
If she was right, she was absolutely right, and I really disliked that. I had one objection left. “Do you realize my being involved is not a benefit? Have I indicated that Morrison and I share anything but a mutual disgust?”
She ignored that, her face allowing itself to finally reveal just how stricken she was by the load she’d been bearing by herself. “Agent Quinn, I wanted Floyd Lynch to be the Route 66 killer so bad. I want it as much as anybody does. It would make the rest of my career, being the one who interrogated him. But I just can’t get his expression out of my mind, when I asked him about the ears, I mean. I saw a different man. More pathetic than psychopathic. I think about it in the middle of the night. It’s like there’s this ton of evidence that says he’s guilty, but I can’t let go of the one piece of evidence that makes me doubt he really is. I’ll do anything to get to the truth and it’s driving me a little crazy. Has that ever happened to you?”
I didn’t respond, and Coleman took it for yes. She said, “All I’m asking for is your expert opinion on whether the case deserves to remain open. That’s all. If you think I have a point, I’ll find the corroborating evidence and somehow force the issue, get Lynch to recant before he officially pleads guilty—I don’t know how.” She tried to give me a good hard stare, but her eyes drifted off. “And if you say I’m fucked up on this at least I’ll get some sleep again.”
“You don’t have much time. Days?”
Coleman nodded and pushed the report the rest of the way across the table. “Promise you won’t make up your mind until you’ve looked at the video.”
Even in this case, the lure of the unknown was too much for me to resist. I put the report in my tote bag and told her I’d call her in a couple of days. All right, all right, the following day.
Eleven
I spent the drive back up to Catalina thinking about the day, about watching Zach hiding his grief, and standing over Jessica’s desiccated corpse, and how what I thought would be a nice unwinding at the bar threatened to reopen the wounds I thought could finally heal. My emotions had been jerked around considerably in the past several days.
Carlo must have seen that I was preoccupied and offered to take me to Bubb’s Grubb for ribs. I didn’t want to tell him I’d already had the taco salad with Coleman so I wrenched my mind into the kitchen, bent on being that trifecta of Betty Crocker, Donna Reed, and last year’s centerfold. I could do it; while during my career I was all fast food and TV dinners, cooking had gotten easier, once I’d had the epiphany that spaghetti isn’t made with ketchup.
I made another salad with shrimp, walnuts, dried cranberries, and crumbled blue cheese on it (mine a lot smaller than his) and we ate in front of TV, which turned out to be not such a good move. We watched part of a program on the History Channel about the Etruscans, which I never would have watched on my own but kind of enjoyed. Then Carlo toyed with the remote (Carlo may be a genius but he’s still a guy) and stopped at the local headline news: “A thirteen-year-old cold case solved in Tucson, Arizona. Serial killer confesses to bizarre string of murders.”
Shit. “Want some pineapple sherbet?” I asked.
“I’ll get it in a minute. Let me see this,” Carlo said.
There it was, including Morrison preening at a podium, fielding questions from the press, the answers to which I already knew. Abducted girls. Torture. Death. Mummies in trucks. Belinda Meloy, the local anchor who was as close to Robin Meade as you could get without cloning, came on.
“Have you noticed how female broadcasters are wearing skimpier clothes these days?” I asked, still trying to distract him. “That spangly thing looks like something I’d wear to a cocktail party.”
Belinda said, “Floyd Lynch was arrested by the Pima County Sheriff’s Department seventy-five