Page 66 of Vicious Hearts

"Were you friends?" I ask. It's bizarre to be having a conversation like this, but I've no choice but to roll with it. "I found the photo of you and Graham in your office. Believe it or not, I know what it's like to find out that someone you've known for a long time is a completely different person. You tried to cover for him, and I get it. But Tate, the guy's a child-killing freak. You can't make that go away. He tried to kill Roxy too, and you know it."

Hillard pulls the gun away from my face and holsters it. He picks up mine and tosses it away, sending it skittering across the concrete. Without saying a word, he releases me and sits down, his back against the container.

"I'm fucking tired, Benedikt," he says. "I've been in this game a long time. When did the world get so fucking ugly?" He takes out a pack of cigarettes and offers it to me. I decline, and he lights up, drawing deep. "You always know things, don't you? Even before you realize it, you have it figured out. I'm not that way. I'm a grunt. Not to say I ain't good at my job, but I have to work at it."

"Just tell me what's going on, Tate." I shuffle and sit beside him. "It's gonna end badly for you either way, you know. Farraday isn't crazy, and Roxy has his wife in a safe place, ready to go and see him. When he has his family back at his side, he'll sing loud and long until his name is cleared, and every person with a hand in this mess will go down for a long time. Make it easy on yourself."

Hillard closes his eyes.

"I swear before God, I believed Farraday was guilty," he begins. "He walked into my station, asked to speak to me, and told me he was The Dollmaker. We'd had a few cranks try that trick, so I was initially skeptical, but when I took a statement, he knew things. Things that were never made public. I took a break after an hour and had to throw up. Can you believe that?"

He takes another drag, blowing out of the thin stream of smoke. He seems relieved to be finally talking about it.

"So he said he could take me to a body, and sure enough, there she was. Some nameless little soul. We found his prints on her. Her fingers were found at the Farraday home. Lois had to be sedated when she found out."

I'm watching Hillard as he speaks. I have years of experience reading people's tells, but I detect no false notes. The man's eyes are still closed, and he's talking like he's miles away. No narrative building, no need to convince, no glances at me to see if I'm buying it. He's letting the words flow as they come, with no tension or strain. If he can lie this convincingly, he's the scariest fucker I've ever met.

"So we intended to charge Farraday with six counts of murder, per his confession. But the only physical evidence pertained to the final victim. He refused to tell us what he did with all those fingers he took, and beyond that, there was nothing. I refused to accept the possibility that his defense would argue him down to the one charge—they were hoping to duck the M'Naghten card, and had they succeeded, he'd have a fixed prison sentence and normal appeal rights.Parole, even."

M'Naghten is the test applied to establish whether a person is legally insane and, therefore, can't be held criminally liable. That little doozy gotmeinto a cozy psych ward and prevented me from being tried for murder.

"Right up to the day Farraday walked through the door, I was playing it straight. Everyone was leaning on me, ensuring I knew it'd be my neck if I didn't catch the killer. I couldn't afford to wait for the FBI-appointed profiler to find time to do the work, and that's why I hired you, not knowing you were just another leech."

"I resent that," I say. "Okay, so you got played. The Bratva has never knowingly let a weakness go unexploited. But no one wants a serial killer running around, including the Bratva—we have children too. The profile was sound. Why didn't you use it?"

"Because I junked anything that contradicted the notion that Farraday was The Dollmaker." Hillard stubs his cigarette out on the ground between us. "I raided the evidence store, demanded secondary post-mortems, anything I could think of. Planted some material at Farraday's home. Just fibers, that kind of thing." He looks at the ground. "I felt filthy at the time and every day since, but I thought the right man had gotten what he deserved. Roxy wanted the case reviewed, so he could appeal and have a proper retrial, but the man was too unstable. When she came to me saying she'd been attacked, I thought she was full of shit. I wasn't willing to see what was in front of me."

I get to my feet. "Tate, we gotta find Graham. Did you get to the Fisher Pharma container?"

"There's a padlock on it. I was about to check, but I heard you coming down here."

I retrieve my gun, and we approach the container in silence, being as light as we can on our feet. It seems impossible that Graham might be hiding in here after all the commotion we caused, but no good getting caught off guard.

The padlock has been cut. I shift it carefully, the cold steel heavy in my palm. Hillard covers me, his gun pointing into the darkness as I open the door.

A stink of piss hits me. Graham Fisher's feet swing uselessly, his head slumped forward. The noose is fashioned from a thin wire like the Gestapo used to use. He is very dead, a wet patch darkening the front of his slacks.

A savage pleasure hits me to see him this way, tempered by regret that I didn't get to kill him. The man who killed six innocent children, one of them his own. And dared to hurt the woman I love.

Hillard stoops to the ground and turns on his flashlight. The floor of the container is littered with Polaroids.

"Children," he says, shaking his head. "Kids he liked the look of. Maybe some of them are the ones he killed already, but not all. He was building up to a whole new killing spree."

There are cardboard files strewn around, some with red stickers on the covers. I pick one up and open it.

It's a form. Parts of the text have been blanked out with a black marker pen, but what's there is weird.

Referral made re. unknown male, approx. age 7. Seen alone in Mott Haven by a street outreach team but ran away when approached.

I hear a helicopter overhead. When I go outside to look, I'm dismayed that it's the WABC news team. No doubt, vans are pulling up right now.

"I'm gonna go to my car and call it in," Hillard says. "It's a shame we won't see the bastard on Death Row, but he can't hurt anyone else."

* * *

Roxy

I'm standing in Ali's garden, enjoying some fresh air and avoiding the oppressive atmosphere in the house. When the phone rings, I almost drop it in my haste to answer.

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