Stay of Execution (26 page)

 

Chapter Eighty

“W
ELL, WOULD YOU
look what the cat dragged in. Everyone's favorite hero, the great detective.” Baldwin raised a finger, pointing toward Spradlin. “It's about time you got here,” he said, his tone turning serious. “He was about to shoot me.”

Rain dripped from Cancini's spiky hair onto his nose. He wiped it away, blinking in the semidarkness. Baldwin stood in the center of the old cabin, his arms hanging at his sides. Leo stood at the back, rifle trained on the mayor.

Baldwin gestured toward Leo a second time. “Turns out you were right to question his release after all. We were both right.”

“Oh?” Cancini asked, looking back and forth between the two men.

“I've been doing a little investigating, too. I had to. You know how I feel about my town and all the good folks here. It's my responsibility to protect them. I had to find out who'd been hurting those girls.”

“I see.” Cancini scanned the cabin. No sign of Julia, her bag, or her phone. “And this is where your investigation led you?”

Baldwin nodded. “Exactly. I came out here to confront Spradlin. Good thing you got here when you did. As you can see, he was going to shoot me.”

Cancini glanced back at Spradlin. He held the rifle up at his shoulder, gripped the barrel with one hand, and touched the trigger with the other. He had not moved since Cancini entered the cabin. “Is that true, Spradlin? Were you going to shoot him?”

“Yep.”

“See,” Baldwin said. “I told you. Thank God, you're here now. It's police business now. You take care of him, and I'll wait outside.” He took two steps toward Cancini.

“Stop.” Leo's toneless voice interrupted. “I told you there was only one of two ways this could end, Teddy.”

“You wanted it over, Leo. Now, it's over. Like last time.”

“You leave me no choice,” Spradlin said, taking aim at Baldwin's heart.

Cancini raised his pistol. “Don't do it, Spradlin.”

“He won't.” Baldwin smiled. “He can't.” He took another step and then another.

The explosion shook the cabin, the blast nearly drowning out the second, sharp thwack. When the shots faded, Julia screamed and screamed.

 

Chapter Eighty-­One

“J
ULIA.”
C
ANCINI RUSHED
to the bed and dropped to the floor. “It's okay. Shhh. It's okay.” He tried to calm her, speaking softly, until her screams petered out. Reaching under the bed, he took her hands. They shook in his careful grasp. Slowly, she crawled out, her bandaged wrists still bleeding. Sitting on the floor, her head to her chest, she took deep breaths, exhaling slowly. He stayed crouched next to her, one hand resting on her back, the other holding the pistol, still pointed at Spradlin.

“Is she okay?” Leo asked. He sounded tired, his voice strained.

Spradlin sat in the chair, one arm in his lap, the other dangling toward the floor. The rifle lay at his feet.

“I'm okay,” she said, her voice ragged.

Cancini stood slowly, staying close to Julia. Baldwin lay crumpled on the ground, his blood spreading across the floor. Cancini shifted his stance to block her view. With his free hand, Cancini pulled out his phone, dialing quickly. He requested an ambulance with backup. Nodding toward Spradlin, he asked, “What about you? Is it bad?”

“It hurts.”

“Sorry.”

“No, you're not.”

“You're right. I'm not. I'd do it again. You shot a man in the back.” Cancini looked down at Julia. She still sat against the bed, her body shaking. He touched her shoulder with his hand and squeezed. His eyes swept over the dead man and back to the Spradlin. “Why? Why'd you do it?”

Spradlin shrugged. “I had no choice.”

“That's a load of crap. You always have a choice, Spradlin, like Baldwin had a choice. If he hadn't started up with the college girls again, you'd both be free men. He had a choice, too.”

“He made the wrong choice.” Spradlin grunted, his breath raspy. Red drops dotted the wooden floor underneath his arm. “When did you know?” he asked.

“I didn't for sure, until today.” Cancini hesitated before admitting, “The old case kept bothering me. In spite of the DNA evidence, I knew you were involved. It finally came to me. You didn't rape those girls. That was someone who couldn't control their emotions. You only killed them. Once the idea got in my head, I knew there was only one person who could've been the rapist, but I didn't have any proof.”

“Baldwin.”

“Right. You guys were always together back then. And his testifying at your trial . . . that never sat right with me. I came across some stories about his old man. The tendencies were there.” Julia got to her feet; Cancini steadied her, taking her arm. Her face pale and her legs unsure, she stood only a moment, then sat on the bed. “He made a mistake this time. He attacked a girl this morning, but she didn't die.” Julia gasped. “She identified Baldwin. You didn't need to shoot him. He was going away anyway.”

Spradlin shook his head. “It doesn't matter. It needed to end.”

Cancini sighed. “Look, I'm not gonna say I like it, but you were a free man. You couldn't have been retried on the first series of murders. But now?” He turned his palm upward. “You shot an unarmed man in the back—­a man who would have gone to prison anyway. You could have walked away. Why?”

“You said it yourself. I killed those girls. I don't deserve to walk away.”

Cancini frowned. “C'mon, Spradlin. Since when did you start having a conscience? You just killed your best friend. Hell, for a while, he was your only friend. You had the same choices any of us have.” When Spradlin said nothing, Cancini felt the urge to cross the room, grab the man, and shake him. “Whatever,” he muttered, repressing the urge. Distant sirens broke the heavy silence hanging between the two men. Cancini steadied his gun. “Okay, when they get here, I'm going to arrest you for the murder of Teddy Baldwin. They'll take you to the hospital, and then it'll be up to the locals and the FBI.”

“That's fine.” Spradlin nodded at the cabinets against the wall. “Julia has some documents for you and some audiotape. There's a tablet in my backpack I took from Baldwin. All of that may help.” She drew in her breath. “You can use them however you want.”

Spradlin was helping him? He'd shot the one man who could have guaranteed his freedom. He might've been an unwanted man in Little Springs, but he would've been free. The sirens came closer. His fingers tightened on the pistol. Spradlin hadn't moved since the shooting, but he couldn't take any chances. Not with Julia.

“There's something wrong with me, Mike,” Spradlin said, breaking the silence. “You're right. Nothing means anything to me. Life. Death. Meaningless. It wasn't hard to kill those girls. It meant nothing. I felt nothing.” Cancini looked into the empty eyes of the man in front of him. He'd recognized the deadness even when they were young. It was one of the reasons he'd initially suspected him. “Feeling nothing. That's not normal. I didn't know it at first, but, later, I did. I couldn't change it, so I accepted it.” The sirens blared louder, only a few miles from the cabin. “Teddy. He was the opposite. Whatever I lacked in emotion, he had, and then some. When we were young, he couldn't control them. I think he got better at it maybe. But he was sometimes manic. It wasn't his fault.”

Cancini's eyes narrowed. What the hell was Spradlin talking about? “It wasn't his fault? The rapes? Is that why you killed those girls? You were protecting him because it wasn't his fault?”

“Yes.”

“But you didn't protect him this time?”

“No.”

Cancini stared, then shook his head. “I don't understand.”

The bumping of cars on the narrow, dirt road rumbled the cabin's windows. The sirens were almost upon them.

“I think I can explain,” Julia said, looking between Cancini and Leo. Spradlin nodded at her. She turned to Cancini. “When Leo went away to prison, he was worried about Ted, but Ted promised he'd get help. He promised he wouldn't attack any more girls.” She spoke louder over the sirens. “As far as Leo knew, he'd kept those promises. The rapes stopped. But at some point, he realized Ted hadn't stopped. He'd only gotten more careful.”

Julia stood. She was nearly shouting now. “Ted had snapped. He was mad. Leo warned Ted he was coming back and that he wasn't going to pretend anymore. Ted begged him to leave the past alone. Leo agreed if Ted promised to stop. But Ted lied. He used Leo's release to start again. All Leo wanted was for everything to stop—­all of it. They had to end the line with them. It was the only way.”

Cancini watched Spradlin. Outside of the piercing eyes, his face was impassive, his features as set as those in a mask. “What do you mean ‘end the line'?”

Julia moved close. She placed her hand on his arm and her lips near his ear. Brakes and slammed doors nearly drowned out her words. “Bloodline,” she said, her breath warm. “End the bloodline. Leo and Ted were brothers.”

 

Chapter Eighty-­Two

C
ANCINI PUT THE
newspaper down and reached for his coffee. He glanced out the diner window. The sun barely over the horizon, folks streamed out from the subway station on the corner. Women and men, young and old, political types and bankers, all starting another day in downtown D.C.

“Julia did a good job on the articles,” Talbot said, scooping up a mouthful of scrambled eggs.

Cancini returned to the paper he'd set aside. Baldwin, wearing a suit and a smile, stared out from the front page. His picture was that of an average man, not unlike many of the men plodding from the subway to their offices. He might have a two-­story house in the suburbs, a wife, and 2.4 kids. He looked normal, not like a rapist or killer. Then again, what did one look like? They didn't all come with warning signs or tics or strange behavior. Maybe that's what made the truth so hard to see.

He had read the other two articles Julia wrote in a three-­part series about the Blue Hill crimes. She had pulled from Mrs. Spradlin's journals and from the tapes she had made in the cabin. The rest came from interviews and old files. She deserved the three days of front-­page coverage. The newspaper brass must have thought it had prize-­winning potential. He agreed.

“Yeah,” Cancini said, and took another swig of coffee.

“Are you gonna see her?”

He set the cup on the table. It was the same question his father had asked him the night before.

“You like her, don't you?” the old man had asked. “I'm not trying to push you, but I don't want to see you end up alone, like me. Your mother wouldn't have wanted that.”

“Dad,” he'd said, swallowing a lump in his throat. “There's no rush. It's not like you're going anywhere.” His father was alive, but the doctors were only prolonging the inevitable. His breathing was better, but a nurse would now come in every day to take care of meals and baths. The old man hated it. Cancini felt sorry for the nurse.

“Maybe. Maybe not. Are you going to ask her out or not?”

“Not right now,” he'd said, sighing. “She needs to figure things out. Her husband wants to reconcile. And everything that happened in Little Springs was a lot for anyone. She needs some time.”

He repeated the same answer to Talbot. He did like her, though. A lot. But chances were, she didn't have room in her life for a cranky, hardheaded detective. He understood. Probably better than most. Besides, he'd been alone a long time. He wasn't sure he knew how to be anything else.

Cancini changed the subject. “What happens next?”

Talbot pushed away his breakfast. He wiped at his mouth and tossed the crumpled napkin onto the plate. “The evidence, such as it was, has been recovered, logged, and filed. Baldwin's car contained quite a bit of usable DNA evidence. Presumably, Baldwin was planning to plant that evidence in Spradlin's house. We were also able to confirm the men were brothers; they shared the same father. Apparently, Mrs. Spradlin was one of President Baldwin's victims. She married William Spradlin when she found out she was pregnant.”

“And she kept that secret from Leo?”

“Yes. It's not clear how Leo discovered the truth, but it explains President Baldwin's interest in him. Unlike his son, the old man did feel some guilt and remorse for his actions. Particularly after Professor Simon's fiancée committed suicide.”

“So he tried to clean up his messes, right a few wrongs.”

“Maybe. According to a few sources, the male side of the Baldwin family struggled with a history of violence, mostly sexual assault as far as we can tell. Theodore Baldwin, Teddy's great-­grandfather who built the college, was a religious zealot, used his religion as a shield, maybe justifying and covering his own weaknesses. Who knows for sure? Either way, since the shooting at the cabin, the locals have been coming out of the woodwork, happy to share.” He rubbed his hands together. “It's taken weeks, but the statements are finally finished.”

“That's longer than you thought.”

“Yeah, well, everyone who ever knew Baldwin wanted to come in and give their two cents. Most of it's useless, except for shedding some light on the family history. With all the testimony, the journals, and the tape, both cases are closed.”

Cancini nodded. His captain had insisted he return to D.C. shortly after the shooting in the cabin. Not that the detective had minded. Baldwin was gone. Spradlin had confessed. All that remained was the bureaucracy. A waitress slipped by their table, refilling their cups.

“And Nikki? How is she?”

“Good. Doctors say she's fine.” Talbot grinned, his eyes crinkling. “She came by my office yesterday. Bit of a surprise.”

“Oh?”

“Wants to be an agent.” He shrugged, smiling broadly. “She's got some fire, that girl.”

“You'll help her then.”

“Sure. Why not? She's smart enough.”

Cancini agreed. She had determination and spirit, in spite of her father's best efforts.

“And Spradlin?”

The smile faded from Talbot's face. “No trial, of course. He's already waived any future appeals, requesting the death penalty as soon as possible.”

Leaning against the bench seat, Cancini frowned. He should be glad. The man was guilty of horrible crimes. No matter his motives, he had murdered innocent girls, calmly snuffing out their young lives. He hadn't flinched when he shot his brother in the back. He hadn't shed a tear. Now he was pleading guilty. Did he feel guilty? Cancini doubted it. By his own admission, he was incapable.

“Everything will be expedited. His admission to the previous murders makes it a slam-­dunk. It's somewhat rare, but I've been told the execution could be slated for as soon as spring.” He sipped the steaming coffee. “And the governor has officially entered lame-­duck status. The party won't touch him.”

Cancini's eyes wandered back to the front page of the paper. Smaller pictures of the dead girls ran underneath the larger shot of Baldwin. The case of the Coed Killer had come full circle. Cancini hoped the town and its ­people could find something approaching peace in the aftermath. Maybe now, there could be closure. Outside, the sun shone down on the city from a cloudless sky. “It's over now.”

“Yes. It's over.”