“Do you own a gun?”
“What did you want to warn me about?”
“Tell me something I can believe.”
He was defiant at first, then giddy, then tearful, and sometimes he just went mute. As the hours crawled by, Stark took over to ask Keith if he knew the victims of the recent homicides.
Keith admitted that he knew them all.
He also knew nearly every person who lived in Half Moon Bay or had passed through his little gas station at the crossroads, he told us.
“We have a witness,” said the chief, putting both of his hands on the table, giving Keith a stare that could have bored through steel. “You were seen, my friend, leaving the Sarducci house on the night of their murder.”
“Come on, Pete. Don’t make me laugh. That’s so lame.”
We were getting nowhere, and at any minute Keith could say, “Charge me for the knife and let me out of here,” and he’d be within his rights to post bond and walk away.
I stood up from the table and talked to the chief over Keith’s head, my voice colored with compassion.
“You know what? He didn’t do it, Chief. You were right. He doesn’t have it in him. Look. He’s not too bright, and he’s not exactly mentally stable. I mean, I’m sorry, Keith, you’re a pretty good grease monkey, but it’s crazy to think you have the chops to do those murders. And without leaving a clue? I don’t think so.”
“Yeah, we’re wasting our time,” the chief said, following my lead. “This little punk couldn’t get away with stealing dimes out of parking meters.”
Keith swung his head to the chief, to me, to the chief again. “I get what you’re doing,” he said.
I ignored him, continuing to direct my remarks at the chief.
“And I think you were right about Agnew,” I continued. “Now, there’s a guy with balls enough to knock off people at close range. Watch them squirm. Watch them die. And he has the brains to get away with it.”
“Right. Him being connected and all,” said the chief, patting down the back of his hair. “It only makes sense.”
“You shouldn’t be talking this way,” Keith muttered.
I turned back to him with a questioning look.
“Keith, you know Agnew,” I said. “What do you think? Is he our guy?”
It was as if a timer had tripped and a bomb had detonated far underground. First there was a tremor, then a rumble, then everything broke loose.
“Dennis Ag-new?” Keith spat. “That dick-for-brains freaking porno has-been. He’s lucky I didn’t kill him. And believe me, I’ve thought about it.”
Keith clasped his hands together and brought them down hard on the tabletop, making the pens, the notepad, the soda cans jump.
“Look. I’m a brighter bulb than you think, Lindsay. Killing those people was the easiest thing I ever did.”
Chapter 130
KEITH WORE THE SAME coldly furious expression he’d shown me when I’d put my gun to his neck. I didn’t know this Keith.
But I needed to.
“You’re totally wrong about me, both of you,” he said. “And even if you’re playing me, that’s fine. I’m sick of the whole deal. Nobody cares.”
When Keith said “Nobody cares,” I sat back hard in my chair. The Cabot kids had spray-painted the same words on the wall where they’d killed their victims. And so had the killer of John Doe #24, ten years ago.
“What do you mean, ‘Nobody cares’?”
Keith fixed me with his hard blue eyes. “You’re the smart one, right? You figure it out.”