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“Did youintendto kill Paul?” Sitting across from Garret Mulroney once again, I study the guy whose pallor has consistently lost color in the last few days of soft incarceration.
He’s not even in prison yet; just a tank where we typically keep drunks for the night. But he’s being kept in there alone, and a little ways along the hall, Gage spends his time in another.
“Did you mean for it to go this far?”
“Yes.” He slides his tongue along his bottom lip to moisten it. “Yes, we intended to kill him.”
“So it wasn’t a crazy prank that got out of hand?” I clarify. “You weren’t there to just scare the piss out of the guy and walk away?”
He shakes his head and picks up the styrofoam cup of water to bring to his parched lips. “We went in there intending to make sure he didn’t live.” Lowering the cup, he looks deep into my eyes. “We weren’t there to scare him or hurt him. We did what we intended to do.”
“So, cutting off his limbs?” Fletch leans in the corner and casually takes notes. “Not a heat-of-the-moment thing? You intended, before entering that house, to remove his limbs?”
“Yes. We intended to send him into the next world, and we did it in such a way to make sure he couldn’t find his way out again.”
Cold. So fucking cold, I think as goosebumps race along my skin.
“So after Gage finished tying him to the bed,” Fletch murmurs, “first his legs, and after that, his wrists, what happened?”
“Gage tied a rope around Paul’s neck and made sure it was tight.”
“Why?”
“So he wouldn’t thrash around too much.” Garret plays with the rim of his cup, tracing its edge with the tip of his finger and smirking while he looks down. “We wanted him to stay still and quiet.”
“What did you do to make him quiet?” Fletch asks.
Of course we already know. But we ask again and again and again, to make sure their story sticks.
I refuse to lock up a couple of kids who’ve rehearsed a tale for the cops, while some other asshole remains free.
“Cover his mouth with tape?” Fletch supplies.
“Undies,” Garret counters easily. “His own filthy jocks, just so he’d taste that nastiness while he died.” Around. Around. Around, he traces his finger along the rim of the cup. “He deserved to taste his own shit while he suffered.”
“So Paul is on the center of his bed.” I fold my neck to catch Garret’s gaze. This case is unlike so many others Fletch and I have to solve. Most often, we’re on the streets, hunting down a killer and hoping to collect enough evidence to tie it all together. But with this one, we’re sitting a whole fucking lot, and hoping the guys might be inclined to speak a little faster. “His ankles, his wrists, and his neck tied down. He has undies in his mouth. Lights on or off?”
“Off. But there was a little light coming from the bathroom, and there were streetlights outside his bedroom, so we could see well enough.”
“Was he dressed or naked?”
“He was dressed in his tighty-whities and some weird-ass friggin’ muumuu thing. Like a chick’s nightgown, but the pattern was a bit like a guy’s business shirt.”
“Did you cut it off?” Fletch asks. “Did you leave it on?”
“Cut it off after he was tied up. Used the corner of my axe to slice it off, then I threw it to the carpet and left it there.”
Crime scene photos confirm exactly that.
“Did you kill him before chopping him up, Garret?” Bouncing his hip against the wall, Fletch folds his arms and asks a disturbing question in a bland tone that seems so out of place. “Or did you chop him up and let him bleed to death?”
“We flayed his cock first.” Smirking now, he actually chuckles a little under his breath. “Went straight to his cock and made a mess of it.”
“How’d you know how to do something like that?” I set my elbows on the table and lace my fingers together. “That’s pretty intense torture, Garret. You didn’t wanna stick to pulling up the guy’s fingernails?”
“I wanted him to hurt,” he answers instead. “I wanted him to feel every single fucking layer I peeled back. He woulda passed out as soon as I chopped a leg off, so we had to save that for last.”
