I can see it on their faces, the revulsion. This case would need to be heard halfway around the world on a remote island to find a jury that doesn’t already know the gruesome details.
“Don’t make eye contact with them,” my lawyer instructs. “Not yet. I’ll advise.”
Not a problem. There’s only one gaze I want to look into.She’ll be here. Her expert testimony won’t be heard until later, but London is usually present for her patients throughout the trial. I’m not a typical patient, though. She’s punishing me for my behavior—for knowing her sins.
My hands fist beneath the table.
My lawyer looks at me. He’s young. “I won’t bring up the footage used in the previous trial unless we have to,” he says. “That likely won’t work in your favor, but just to be clear—” his eyes stare into mine, searching “—there are no recordings of these victims, correct?”
None that were recovered by the authorities. “There are no recordings,” I answer him.
“Good.” He straightens his tie and stands.
Only minutes into the trial, and the prosecution has wasted no time getting to the shock-and-appall portion of this performance. Enlarged crime-scene photos are propped along thewall, displaying the victims in graphic detail.Victims, the prosecutor repeatedly stresses, beating it into the jurors’ minds.
I suppose referring to the victims as deviants would be too uncomfortably ironic.
No matter, they’ve already been tried, condemned, and served their consequences.
“Detective Foster, how was this new evidence discovered?” the lawyer asks the graying, stocky man on the stand.
The detective looks at the jury when he responds. “Technically, it was old evidence. We just had no basis for comparison. The defendant wasn’t in any database at the time.”
I admit, I was sloppy. My first kill was executed under extremely taxing andrelentlesscircumstances. By the time I gave in, I was damn near defeated, worn down from fighting the compulsion, theneedthat refused anything but complete surrender.
I wanted the desire to end. Yet I never imagined it would be so exhilarating, an addiction in the making, that I’d have to feed the craving again.
Once I killed the sick fucks who called themselves my parents, I thought the dark thoughts would finally cease. Since I was their creation, that part of me had to die with them. But even changing the scenery to the States in my youth didn’t stop the cravings. Nothing did.
I fought it for too many years. Weary, hollow.
The first kill happened too fast. It wasn’t until my second that I learned to be cautious. I had to be in order to continue. But I always knew my first reckless act would haunt me, and here I sit, being tried for that sloppiness.
But, oh, the fucking rush.
You can never replicate your first. Like two lovers in the throes of passion, clumsily feeling their way through that awkward first encounter—and yet it’s the most erotic, carnal experience.
“The perpetrator left a partial palm print on the murder weapon,” Detective Foster states, breaking into my thoughts as he points to the enlarged photo of a pulley shaft.
Fuck. The evidence couldn’t be more damning. I remember the night I rigged the contraption, my gloves getting caught in the axle.
“After so many years, a case goes cold,” the lawyer says, a little leading. “What prompted you to run the search again on the partial palm print?”
“The MO,” Foster says. “That is, the method and distinct pattern of the Angel of Maine killings were similar to the murders here in New Castle. It was worth a try, to see if there was a match.”
“And was there a match, detective?”
“Yes.” He turns his attention to a diagram of the palm print in question, where numbered points of comparison confirm that it is, without a doubt, a match to mine.
“No further questions, Your Honor.”
My lawyer rises from our table. “Detective Foster, there’s no dispute that the print matches my client, and therefore can place him at the scene. However, do you have any additional evidence?”
The detective frowns. “How do you mean?”
“I’m sorry, let me clarify. Aside from this print, was there any additional evidence recovered at the scenes linking Mr. Sullivan to the crimes he’s being tried for today, or is this print the sole piece of evidence connecting him to all four homicides based merely on the similarities between the murders?”
Foster straightens his back. “This is the main evidence, that’s correct.”
