Black Princess Mystery (34 page)

“Then one
night you saw Natalie on the Internet, didn’t you?”

“By sheer
chance I happened across a site that sold mannequins,” McNab said. “One of them
was the most beautiful creation I had ever seen. I printed her picture and
jotted down a simple note: ‘Man-Becter-Nat.’ Days passed and I couldn’t get her
out of my head. I looked up the site again, called to make sure she was still
available, then drove sixteen hours to the store and bought her.”

“Finally a
wife you could count on,” Tasheka said with understanding. “One that would
never cheat, never betray you.”

“She is my
princess. Since we have been together, no other man had ever touched her or
even gazed upon her face. She was mine, mine alone, unlike every other woman I
had ever trusted. But then Tim Murphy broke into her room.”

“And he
touched her.”

“And he
touched her,” McNab said with hatred in his eyes. “He touched her breast.”

“With his
right hand.”

“With his
right hand,” McNab confirmed, nodding. “He defiled her. He put his filthy hand
on my wife. It was like watching her being raped.”

“You had
it all on video.”

“Yes.”

“You spent
years in surveillance and learned how to use all that equipment,” Tasheka
resumed. “You probably got it for free, utilizing what the department no longer
needed. You have microphones, too, and you bugged Thorston’s office and home.
That’s how you knew we were talking.”

“You
should have been a cop yourself,” he said. “I did bug his office, car and
house.”

“Something
that really caught my attention,” Tasheka continued, “was our little discussion
over the chess game. We talked about serial killers and trophies. Do you
remember?”

“Yes, of
course,” he said in a very calm and measured way, as if they were talking about
the weather.

“Right
now, in your house, I’m sure the freezer in your basement has body parts in it,
including the hand of Father Tim Murphy.” She paused. “People were walking
right past that freezer this evening to use the downstairs bathroom and not one
of them had the slightest idea what you are storing.”

He
laughed. “I do have Murphy’s hand, and many other people’s body parts, too.”

“Also a
bloody hatchet?” she inquired.

“And a
bloody hatchet,” he conceded. “Actually, Ms. Green, I’m quite impressed with
you. Well done. Apparently not all women are incompetent bitches.”

“How many
men have you killed?”

“Six.”

“You cut
off Father Tim’s hand because he defiled your mannequin wife,” Tasheka said,
“but why did you kill him at Dead Man’s Oak?”

“What do
you think?”

“Ease of
access? You were able to park unobserved across the lake and come wait for him
in the dark.”

“That’s
part of the reason. See if you can guess another.”

“You knew
others had a connection to that spot and the mere location would implicate
them. That’s why you planted the golf club at Matt’s. How better to keep the
light off yourself than to have people mulling over a bunch of red herrings. To
everyone else, it wasn’t a question of who killed Father Tim, but who among the
suspects. When you flirted with bringing my mother into this, I knew you were
desperate to hopelessly bury the real killer under a mountain of innocent
scapegoats.”

“Good,”
said McNab, nodding. “The one thing you failed to learn is that I first met
Murphy at Dead Man’s Oak. I was thinking about becoming a member of the golf
club and was touring the grounds with another member when the priest joined us
right there. In time, we were talking about the anti-drug group and our
relationship began.”

“I see.
Since that was where your friendship started, it became a sore point for you.
You felt that by killing him there, you were somehow going back in time and
erasing the tragedy of him raping your beloved Natalie.”

“When I
first brought Natalie into my home,” McNab said, his hand shaking, “I wondered
if I would ever start talking to her.” He laughed strangely. “That seemed to be
the touchstone. If I spoke to her, was I losing my mind?”

“Did you
speak to her?”

“Yes,
almost immediately. Then the question became whether she would start speaking
to me?”

“I know
she does talk to you, Bill.”

McNab
nodded with sick, drawn eyes. “There was a drug dealer who was in and out jail
for years. He sold dope to everyone, even kids in junior high. One day I found
out a youngster north of here had hung himself. The police investigated and
found out the kid had died while using crystal meth that this creep sold him. I
told Natalie about it and she spoke to me for the first time. She told me to
kill the drug dealer and cut off his feet so that even his ghost could never
again walk to another school yard.”

“The
serial murders started to occur in the summer,” Tasheka said, “just after you
became estranged from your mother, the one woman in your life you could count
on. It was a huge turning point in your life.”

“I never
had a mother,” he said viciously.

“Was that
drug dealer your first murder, or were there others before him?”

“It was
the first and in some ways the best.”

“Why?”

“Why?” He
smiled eerily. “Because that piece of filth wanted to live so badly.” His eyes
almost rolled back into his head. “When I kill, the more they want to live, the
greater is my pleasure in taking away their lives.”

“You were
able to avoid detection because you are a top cop and you understand the
mistakes murderers make. If there’s an individual who could keep a crime scene
clean, it’s you. You left no clues to Father Tim’s murder and I suspect the
drug dealer wasn’t missed by too many.”

“Not at
all,” said McNab. “The detectives there checked for a couple days and concluded
it was just an inside drug hit. Case closed and who gives a damn, right?”

“How do
you feel about killing men in cold blood?”

“The first
one gave me the biggest thrill and I thought it would never be matched, but
then along came Tim Murphy. I knew Murphy and had invited him into my home, but
when he defiled my wife, I hated him. The others I hated in a general way
because they had become leeches on society, but the priest personally betrayed
me and violated Natalie. She hated him, too, and told me that many times. I
never blamed her, you know, because he forced himself on her.”

Tasheka
listened to the man with intense fascination.

“So with
him it was special,” McNab said lowly. “I enjoyed it more than any of the
others, though it was much different. Natalie was ecstatic when I came home and
showed her the hand. She cried and I’ve never seen her so happy.”

“Did you
make love with her that night, Bill?”

“A
gentleman never discusses those things,” McNab snapped in aggravation. “I’m
surprised you asked.” He smirked, obviously offended. “I’m very efficient now,”
he continued, his eyes crazed. “I commit holy murders and I’m a regular veteran
at purging the evil and eliminating the sinful ones. The science of the kill is
always the same, yet the pleasure I got from the Murphy kill—the revenge—that
was the sweetest. I felt like I accomplished something wonderful with that
nine-iron.”

“What now,
Bill?” Tasheka asked.

He took
out a gun. “Now I have to kill you, Ms. Green.”

Tasheka
seemed remarkably relaxed. “How will you explain it?”

“I won’t.”
He looked right into her eyes. “It will be an unsolved murder, a robbery at the
rich girl’s house. Your death will not be tied to the others because I will
leave your body intact. I’ll take your jewelry and money instead. The media
will probably call it ‘The Black Princess Mystery.’”

“How
gracious,” she said drily.

“It’s a
quirk of female serial killers that they usually kill men,” McNab said, “but
male serial killers almost always kill women. I have killed only men and that
makes me different than most, an enigma of sorts. But I have always wondered
what it would be like to kill a woman. It’s the ultimate taboo. Men kill each
other in war without a second thought, but in war, in organized crime, in
almost all facets of our paternalistic society, it is the ultimate wrong to kill
a woman or child.”

“Children
next?” Tasheka challenged.

“I will
never harm a child,” he snapped angrily. “Never! But I am going to kill a woman
right now.”

“Sorry,
but you can’t do that.”

“And who
is going to stop me?”

“You,
Bill. You are going to stop yourself.”

McNab
shook his head with deadly resolve. “Stop myself?” he said in a mewling tone,
pointing the gun right at her head. “Why the hell would I do that?”

“You said
you wouldn’t hurt a child,” Tasheka explained, “but now you’re planning to kill
me. You can’t do that, Bill.” She saucily pointed her finger at him and wagged
it with the reproachful look of a mother scolding her young son. “You see,
Bill, there’s a problem. A big problem.” She smiled. “I’m pregnant.”

He
furrowed his brows. “What?”

“I’m
pregnant, Bill. Tasheka Maria Green is pregnant with Father Tim’s child.”

He stepped
back with a loud guffaw. “Liar!”

“No, it’s
true,” she said. “He was a priest, I was a university girl, and he got me
pregnant from our one and only sexual encounter on Halloween night at the
renowned
Paradise Motel
. Not long ago
he drove me to an abortion clinic and dropped me off. I planned from the
beginning to have my baby, but I wanted to see what he would do. I even took
his money.” She stared into McNab’s eyes, the barrel of the gun pointed right
at her forehead. “I have a confession for you, Bill.”

“Make your
peace!” McNab said harshly.

“When I
saw that hand and that ring, for one fleeting moment, I wanted it to be him,”
Tasheka said, her lower lip quivering. “I wanted him to be dead. I wanted him
to have his head crushed, to have his hand cut off. I wanted him to suffer,
just as he had made me suffer by dropping me off and leaving me all alone in
front of that abortion clinic with his stolen money rolled up in my hand.”

“You’re as
guilty as I am,” McNab said with a strange laugh. “Ivana Karamazova.”

“Very,
very good, Bill. Excellent. But what separates me and you, Bill, is that my
hatred faded. When I learned the dead man was actually him, I felt sorry for
the human being who would never see his child. My hatred didn’t grow like
bacteria or ferment like rotten apples. It didn’t scurry away from approaching
light like vermin in a cellar. It died, Bill, just as he died, and it was gone
forever.”

McNab bit
his lip.

“I’ve already
picked out a name for my baby, a nice Russian name. If she’s a girl, I’m going
to call her Natalya. Isn’t that a coincidence, Bill? It’s very similar to your
Natalie.”

He
tentatively lowered the gun. “You fucking slut,” he said.

“Slut or
not,” she returned, “there is a baby inside me, Bill. Kill me and you will not
be committing a so-called holy murder by ridding the world of a drug monster or
a rapist. Murder me and you become a baby killer. Is that what you want, Bill?
You’d be another Raskolnikov. He wanted to kill a nasty old woman and give her
money to the poor, but he was forced, by sheer chance, to kill the old woman’s
innocent and downtrodden sister. And she was pregnant, too, Bill, just like me.
Kill me and you become Raskolnikov, the man who thought he was extraordinary, a
man free of conscience.”

“Do you
expect me to go to the crossroads and bow in shame?” He shook his head. “What
separates me from Raskolnikov is that I have no conscience. I am free.”

“That’s
where you’re wrong, Bill. You are a great cop, highly decorated, liked by your
co-workers. You’ve served the public well for many years and you winced when
you saw Father Tim the morning I took you to the body. No, Bill, you may have
killed, but you are still a man. You are still a human being.”

“What
would you have me do?” he asked with great interest. “Turn myself in?”

“No, Bill,
I don’t want you to do that.” Tasheka paused for several seconds. “I want you
to put the gun in your mouth and pull the trigger. I want to hear the bang. I
want to watch your skull explode and your brains splatter all over the wall. I
want to watch it, Bill. I want to see the shards of bone on the floor and the
pool of blood. I want to watch you tensing and shaking and fading into
oblivion, just like you watched Father Tim die. Front row seat. Suicide
solution, Bill. After all, what’s the option? Kill a young, pregnant woman and
go to prison? How long would the top cop last, especially considering that you
put lots of those men in there yourself?”

“I have no
intentions of being caught.”

“No,
you’re just like the criminals you track. They sneak around in the dark, like
rats, and commit little terrorist attacks behind people’s backs.”