Page 20 of Reclaiming his Honor
The bartender apologized, dumped the drink, and started again.
A voice behind him made him straighten. “Damn shame to waste good alcohol like that.”
He turned to find Mike Turner standing in the sand, bare feet an odd juxtaposition from his khaki-colored dress slacks.
Speak of the devil.
Mac gestured to the seat beside him. “Join me.”
“Don’t mind if I do.” He glanced at the TV. “I see the vultures are all over the Godak case again.”
“Can’t say I blame ‘em.”
“I’ll take a double Jim Beam on the rocks,” said Turner.
“Put it on my tab,” said Mac.
“Thanks.”
He was close enough now Mac could smell the liquor in his breath. This wasn’t Turner’s first drink of the day, and Mac found himself wondering how much Turner drank. He filed the question away for another time. “What do you make of all this?” Mac asked, gesturing to the screen above the bar. “Ellie said you worked the case.”
Turner nodded. “I spent two and a half years of my life trying to find that guy. When I finally got enough evidence to nail him, we still hadn’t found a single one of the bodies. But we had enough to convict and get him sentenced to the death penalty. That was enough.”
Mac considered his words carefully. He was suspicious of Turner’s career in the police department, and wanted to see how he’d react. “And now it looks like you missed one of the guilty parties.”
Turner’s voice snapped like a whip. “We didn’t. Godak’s stunt at his execution was just that—a stunt. All he proved was that he knew somebody on the outside who’d go to bat for him.”
He indicated the TV. “All this bullshit about us missing one half of a team of serial killers is a product of Godak’s imagination. He’s playing with the families of his victims from the other side of the grave.”
“Or he was telling the truth, and he really did have an accomplice who got away with murder.”
Turner shook his head. “Are you listening to yourself, O’Brady? I was on the fucking investigation. I, of all people, know this was a one-man job. Every one of those murders could have been committed by a single guy, and that guy died by lethal injection. I know, because I was there. I watched them put that needle into his arm, and I watched him take his last breath. I watched that fucker die because I needed to see it with my own damn eyes.”
Mac froze, and forced himself to relax, to not give anything away by his body language. But he thought back to the execution chamber, the observation room. There was no way he could have missed seeing Turner there. Turner was lying to him, assuming Mac would have no way of knowing the truth. But why? Just to make himself sound like a big man? To come off as being more important than he actually was?
“That must have been something,” said Mac. “To see a man die.”
“I’ve seen lots of people die. You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.”
Mac had seen lots of people die, too, the details of each forever ingrained in his memory. Even Godak, who was the epitome of a monster and a threat to society, had stayed with him. The callousness with which Turner spoke made Mac think Turner had never seen anyone die—or else he was a complete narcissist who couldn’t have empathy for someone else, even as they were dying, and that was fucking terrifying.
The news reporter was describing the manner of death of the victim. She was found naked, floating in the river, but she didn’t drown—she was killed by strangulation with a thin metal cable, still wrapped around her neck. She’d been beaten and sexually assaulted. Because they hadn’t found Godak’s victims until they were badly decomposed, there was no way to tell if the women had been raped. Even the cause of death was nearly impossible to determine definitively. Therefore, the question of whether it was an accomplice or a copycat killer was equally impossible to determine.
“Do you wish you were back there, working on the case?” Mac asked.
Turner shook his head. “Hell, no. I’m done with those dipshits back in Mobile. They’ll probably chase their tails around for a while, then throw their hands up and announce they have no fucking clue who killed her and why.”
He finished his drink and gestured for another. “So, what’s your story? Where have you been while your wife and kids were here with me?”
The switch came out of nowhere, from seemingly friendly to antagonistic.
Turner was baiting him, Mac realized, hoping Mac would get angry. He ignored him, his mind still running through the possible reasons Turner would lie about being at Godak’s execution. “In New York. I run the regional office of a security team called HERO Force. Former military black ops soldiers working in the private sector.”
“Guys like you fucking kill me.”
Mac narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”
“Either be in the military, or don’t. Either be a cop, or don’t. But don’t dress up like a soldier and pretend to be one. Don’t dress up like an officer and expect to be respected, you know?”
