Jessup turned his attention again to the envelope.
Although David opened the clasp, he did not withdraw the ten photographs. “You told me the last time there were others in addition to the twenty-seven in your confession.”
“That’s only the truth.”
“If Emily Carlino turns out not to be in that lower room, could she have been among those murders to which you didn’t confess?”
“No.”
“How can you answer so quickly? Your memory isn’t what it once was. That’s what you told me, Ronny.”
When the killer looked up, his gaze had a far harder, sharper quality than before. “She weren’t ever one of the others, and that’s all I’ll say.”
“How many others were there?”
“She weren’t one of them.”
Time to push hard. No more playing by Ronny’s rules.
“I’m in a very bad place, Ronny, a desperate place. I don’t have time to fence with you. If you want that extra five hundred each month—hell, if you want to continue receiving the first five hundred every month—you’ve got to tell me everything, nothing can be withheld. I’m at my wit’s end, I’m on a ledge, a cliff, and I’m not going to take your shit anymore. I can’t. I’m sorry if this makes you angry or hurts your feelings, but that’s the way it is. Besides the twenty-seven, how many others were there?”
Blood rose in Jessup’s face even though his lips paled. He was angry. But this wasn’t a pure anger; it was alloyed with something else that David couldn’t identify. With evident reluctance, Jessup said, “Two.”
“Two others in addition to the twenty-seven.”
“Yes.”
“Are they dead?”
“Yes.”
“Was one of them Emily Carlino?”
“No.”
“Who were they?”
Jessup closed his eyes. His jaws clenched. His pulse became visible in his temples. When he spoke, no anger colored his voice, only self-pity. “You’re embarrassing me here.”
Incredulous, David asked, “How am I embarrassing you?”
Shaking his head, Jessup said nothing.
David withdrew the ten photographs of Emily from the envelope and arranged them on the table, facing the killer. In addition to the two that he’d brought previously, including the one of her in a bikini, he had chosen eight others that he felt conveyed her charm, her warmth, the intelligence that shone in the clarity of her eyes, the character evident in the directness of her stare, the tenderness that would have made her some child’s cherished mother.
“What I’m going to do now, Ronny, is embarrass myself, shame myself. I’m cutting open my heart for you, so you can see just what a stupid, deceitful, selfish shit I’ve been. I give this to you, I know it’s the kind of thing you like. I know you get off on other people’s anguish. So I give it to you—and in return, you tell me whatever it is you’re ashamed of, whatever it is that’s keeping you from answering my questions as fully as I need them to be answered.”
Jessup opened his eyes and scanned the photographs arrayed in front of him. His bright button eyes were now half-lidded, and his tongue moved slowly between his lips like that of a blood-thinned lizard languishing in the hot sun.
“You see this woman, Ronny?”
“The real pretty one you showed me before. That is some girl, Mr. Thorne.”
“Emily Carlino. I loved her, Ronny. I loved her more than I can put into words, loved her so much more than I even realized at the time. I adored Emily. She wasn’t just the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, she was also the finest person I’ve ever known. She was honest, caring, good to the bone. She completed me. We were together more than five years, and I never cheated on her, never even thought of cheating on her, never had the slightest urge—and then I did.”
| 65 |
Raising his fevered eyes from the photographs, Ronny Jessup said, “Cheated on her? Who with? Did she know, did she cry?”
“Shut up, Ronny. Just shut up and listen. I’ll tell it my way, it’s my little walk through Hell. She had this good girlfriend who lived in San Luis Obispo. Name was Nina. Nina had this sudden cancer scare, as young as Emily, just twenty-five, and so afraid. Emily wanted to go to San Luis to be with Nina through the tests and exploratory surgery, just four or five days. She wanted me to go with her to keep her spirits up so she could be the best possible cheerleader for Nina. Usually I’d have gone. We went everywhere together, everywhere. It was only maybe two hundred fifty miles up the coast. But this time there was this other . . . this situation.”