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Bree said, “Why would he do that?”
“Because Tull is killer, like me. But he is different. Tull, helikesto kill.”
Across the table in the interrogation room, Tull snarled, “This is bullshit. I’ve—”
I said, “Wait for it.”
“How do you know that?” Ellis said.
Volkov cleared his throat. “Because he kills two of my girls, one last year, one the year before, and pays me to keep quiet.”
Bree asked, “Why do you think Tull needed an alibi from you that night?”
“Not difficult to see. He was killing someone that night, taking pleasure in it.”
“An entire family,” Bree said.
“I say it again. Thomas Tull, he likes to kill people.”
CHAPTER 105
I SHUT THE RECORDINGoff and gazed at Tull.
The smug smile was gone. “You put Volkov up to saying that. And I’ve never killed any of his girls.”
I leaned across the table. “He says you did and we believe him, you cold, evil bastard. Did you kill every one of the victims in your books?”
“Never.”
“We think you did. We think you murdered most if not all of them. We think you framed the men in prison just so you could lay down the stories of your homicidal fantasies the way you wanted them told and make sure you never faced justice.”
“This is all nonsense and hearsay and you know it,” Tull snarled. “Show me one concrete thing that ties me to the Family Man murders that isn’t linked to Lisa Moore. Just one thing.”
Sampson smiled. So did Mahoney. And so did I.
Ned held up his cell phone. “We have agents out in Gaithersburg inside Haps Premium Meats and Cold Cold Storage. They’ve opened the meat locker you rent there, the one Lisa Moore figured out you had.”
The writer blinked, frowned, and stared into the distance as if trying to revise a sentence or a plot point in his mind.
Before he could spin the story another way, I said, “But there wasn’t meat inside your locker, Thomas, was there?”
Mahoney turned his cell phone to show Tull a picture of two anodized black boxes, each about the size of a small microwave oven. “These were in your locker, Thomas.”
Sampson said, “State-of-the-art jamming equipment stolen from the U.S. military and repackaged like this.”
“Funny thing about these jammers,” I said. “They eat a lot of power and they like to be kept cold. The colder the better, especially if you’re trying to jam the entire area around one of your kill sites. Or keep your home in a total blackout.”
Tull said nothing although his lips were moving, as if he were mouthing words, trying to put them in the correct order.
“Why did you have to kill whole families?” I said.
The writer did not reply.
“I know why. It’s because no one cares about yet another series of people dying in some gruesome manner anymore. Every book has to be bigger, more lurid, more sensational or it won’t make the bestseller list. Isn’t that true, Thomas?”
Tull finally focused on me. He snorted. “Of course it’s true, Dr. Cross. That’s the way publishing works these days.”
CHAPTER 106
