“She didn’t tell you that.” The man seemed surer now. “She would never disobey me.”
“Then why do you suppose she threw those things the night I came to see you?” Mark pressed on inexorably. “First the book, and then she unscrewed the lightbulb to smash. She was trying to get my attention. She’d finally worked up the courage to defy you and risk it all one last time for escape.”
Sims slowly clapped his hands, a derisive sound of applause. “That is quite a story. Unfortunately, you can’t prove any of it.”
“I’ve got Betsy’s written statement and Whitney DeVries’s testimony.” It would be all they needed to put this psychopath away for good. Mark wasn’t certain he believed in an afterlife, but if one existed, he hoped that somehow Kelsey Willard knew her killer would be punished. That all the other girls he’d murdered could feel a measure of vindication for his capture.
“I think all your victims would enjoy the irony of you spending the rest of your life in a cage.”
“I saved them,” the man roared, sitting upright, a vein throbbing in his temple. “I gave them a real parent. I gave them purpose.”
Mark nodded at the guard who’d pushed open the door to investigate the outburst. The man slowly faded into the hallway again. “In other words, you were the father you never had? And Betsy would be the mother you wished yours had been. Fourteen victims.” It was an effort to keep the rage from his voice. Lives lost. Families shattered forever. Sacrificed to one man’s delusion. “But two survived. They’re all we need to make sure you’ll never feel the sun on your face again.”
Sims fell back against the bed as if suddenly exhausted. “I’m still holding all the cards, Foster. You think you have undiscovered victims? Guess who can lead you to them?”
Mark snapped off the recorder. Picked it up and prepared to leave. Sims’s voice trailed after him.
“Imagine the publicity if the BCI puts its own interests ahead of the families of those poor girls. The state attorney is probably writing my plea bargain as we speak.”
The taunt followed him as Mark pushed open the door and started down the hall. There might be a kernel of truth in Sims’s claims. Everyone wanted to provide closure to the families of crime victims. But the man was insane if he thought he’d skate on any of his offenses.
Eschewing the elevator, he opted for the stairs. One step at a time. That’s how they’d build the rest of the case. And that’s how he’d fix his marriage. It was Saturday. Bowling Green was only a couple of hours from Columbus. He could stop by headquarters in London for an hour or so, and then be on his way. Surprise Kelli and Nicky. And when he and his wife put the boy to bed, they’d go somewhere they could talk. Just the two of them.
Mark headed toward the exit of the hospital. He didn’t fool himself that the upcoming meeting would be easy. But it was a start.
He pushed out of the hospital doors and walked rapidly across the parking lot. The weather had returned to a relatively balmy forty degrees. Too warm for the winter jacket he wore. He switched the recorder from one hand to the other as he shrugged out of the garment.
It would be a long time before he forgot the names of Luther Sims’s victims. Longer still before their faces would stop haunting his sleep. Young girls who’d had their dreams stolen from them. Girls who would never finish school. Fall in love. Have children. But Mark figured the best way for him to pay homage to the victims’ lost futures was for him to stop screwing up his own.
At least, he was going to do his damnedest to try.