Page 53 of Girl, Remembered

‘As if five victims weren’t enough, you had to murder Johnny Cash too.’

Creed let out a full belly laugh, even though there wasn’t much of a belly on that emaciated frame. ‘Good one.’

‘I suppose you and Sue had a few things in common. His dad disappeared too, but not before giving his son a stupid name.’

‘Yup. Left me with a deadbeat mom, a dead farm and a dumb name. Thanks, Dad.’

‘Did you ever see him again?’

‘He came crawling back when I was seven, and my dumbass mom took him in. But within six months…’

Luca had begun this as a manipulation tactic but actually found himself enjoying the conversation. It was fine, he told himself. To understand the psychopathic mind, you had to throw yourself into it.

'Within six months, what?'

Creed shrugged. ‘He gone and disappeared again.’

Until Luca had arrived at Mount Olive, he had considered himself ignorant of the finer details of Austin Creed’s life story. But he’d spent the past several hours reading Creed’s file on his laptop and now knew more than he cared to remember.

‘No trace of him was ever found,’ Luca said.

‘Correct.’

‘This is all off the record, by the way.’

‘What’s that mean?’

Luca indicated the lack of technology in front of him. ‘You see a tape recorder? This is just me and you. Whatever you say, I can’t use against you. Not that it matters, anyway. You could tell me you were the second gunman on the grassy knoll and I couldn’t do anything about it.’

Creed grinned again. It was an alarming sight, and not just because he had teeth the color of urine. ‘You trying to get me to confess to something?’

‘Nope. The Bureau sent me here, and I don’t really know why. They wanted me to chat.’

‘Chat? About nothing?’

‘Some days you’re the bitch, some days you’re the butch.’ Luca gestured broadly. ‘Well, maybe not in here.’

Another chuckle from Creed. ‘You might be disappointed to learn that that doesn’t happen as often as you think. I’m still… pristine.’

‘Wish I could say the same. You’ve met Ella, haven’t you?’

Creed rocked back as far as the chains let him, which wasn’t far, and laughed again. ‘Yes I have. She seems nice.’

‘Nice?’ Luca raised an eyebrow. ‘The woman who caught you is nice?’

‘If she hadn’t caught me, someone else would have. She did me a favor. I remember at my trial she talked for a long time on the stand. She talked so much I started to get bored. Anyway, where were we?’

Luca had found his flow. If Creed wasn’t a murderous scumbag, Luca could see himself being friends with him. It was a sobering thought. ‘You were saying how your dad disappeared.’

‘Ah, yes. Well, funny we should be talking about backsides.’

‘Why’s that?’

That got another chuckle out of him. ‘That’s where my old man ended up. On the business end of an ass. I used to play A Boy Named Sue right next to that spot. Isn’t that funny?’

Luca froze mid-breath. In psychological therapy, there existed a phenomenon known as abreaction. It was the point in a conversation where rapport got far enough ahead of a subject’s defenses that a story would spill out faster than the person’s own filters could catch up. Therapists spent careers trying to engineer it deliberately. Some got there by accident.

He rapidly tried to piece together what Creed was saying without breaking the flow.