Angel of Darkness (11 page)

A door slammed in the back of the house, startling Maggie and Calvano, but it was only the grandmother. She ambled out of the back hallway dressed to the nines, hair teased high and make-up troweled on. Clearly, both women planned to be on the news that night.

‘Don't even think about it,' Belinda Swan warned her mother. ‘I'm the one they want to interview.'

I felt a flash of impatience at their self-centeredness. They had lost a child, and from what I had overheard from the kids on Michael's ward, Darcy Swan had been trying as hard as she could to rise above her circumstances. She was going to school, she was paying attention in class, she was trying to find something she was good at it and she was working a job after school on top of it all. She deserved better than what these two women had to offer her memory. But I also felt bad for the two women before me, if only because the bed they had made would be a tough one to lie in going forward. Judging from their hair, their make-up and their attire, their entire lives revolved around attracting the attention of men. Neither one realized that they had long since grown invisible to the male species. They would keep trying to regain their glory, to no avail, until the day they died.

Calvano dealt with the stand-off by patting the cushion on the other side of him and inviting the grandmother to sit. She perched next to him and crossed her legs conspicuously – I had to give it to her, they were damn fine legs for a grandmother – then promised her daughter that she would just sit quietly in a chair once the newscaster arrived unless a question was specifically asked of her.

Had Maggie and Calvano not been there, I have no doubt Belinda Swan would have taken her mother to the mat. As it was, she agreed somewhat ungraciously and once again told Maggie to make it quick.

Maggie and Calvano led the two women through a series of questions. It soon became apparent that neither one of them knew a damn thing about Darcy's life. They lied about it, too, inventing details, I was sure, because they were vaguely aware that they should be ashamed of knowing so little about her. No, they told Maggie and Calvano, Darcy had never known Otis Parker and, they assured them, neither had either one of them. They seemed titillated by the thought of knowing a notorious killer, but were smart enough to realize that he could not have killed Darcy since everyone knew he was locked up in Holloway. They did not know the names of Darcy's friends, nor even the names of her teachers, and while they were sure she had boyfriends – all the women in their family always had plenty of boyfriends, they assured Maggie and Calvano – they didn't know their names or how long they had lasted nor if Darcy had anyone special in her life. They knew Darcy brought home at least $30 in tips per night when she worked at the diner, since the girl had given them $100 a week for room and board ever since the two older women had locked Darcy out of the house once, when she failed to give them the full amount, ‘to teach her a lesson in responsibility.'

Nice – charging your teenage daughter to live in her own home and then throwing her out on the street when she couldn't cough up the cash. My burgeoning sympathy for them disappeared. I had visions of them going up like torches, their hairspray fueling a mighty conflagration that would startle even the most seasoned residents of Hell.

They weren't even sure what kind of grades Darcy had made, but the mother bragged proudly that no disciplinary notes had ever been sent home with the girl. No doubt. The school officials probably didn't even know Belinda Swan existed, or if they did, they knew that Darcy had been far more responsible that her mother.

Maggie and Calvano left hurriedly once the interview was over, anxious to leave the house before the TV crew arrived. They knew Gonzales was serious about his orders to keep things out of the press, and Maggie had learned that the only way to keep Calvano out of trouble was to keep him out of sight.

SEVENTEEN

I
knew Maggie was furious at the two older Swan women for their selfishness. I sat in the back seat, enjoying the crackles of energy Maggie gave off when she was mad. She was like a pinwheel spinning off droplets of life as she whirled.

In her anger, she drove too fast toward their next stop, and sent Calvano banging against the dashboard more than once when she had to stomp on her brakes to keep from ramming the car in front of her. About the fourth time this happened, Calvano turned to her and demanded to know where the hell they were heading in such a hurry.

‘To get you a tetanus shot,' she said, keeping a straight face. ‘I don't know how you could sit that close to those two women.'

‘Sometimes you just have to take one for the team.'

And I was part of that team, I told myself, even if they didn't know it.

We were heading toward Holloway and I knew what it was probably all about – the time had come for Maggie to meet Otis Parker for herself. She was ready.

Otis Parker was brought into the interview room by one of the same orderlies who had guarded him during Calvano's first interview. The dead orderly, Vincent D'Amato, had been replaced by a new guy who was easily as tall and muscled as Parker. Like Parker, he was stone-cold white and his head was shaved. It gleamed beneath the room's fluorescent lights. He had numerous gold studs and hoops in his ears and colorful tats decorated both of his truly massive arms. I spotted an angel tattoo, a dolphin leaping from blue waters, a bright yellow sun and a rose-framed heart with ‘Mother' etched across it in flowery script. I had never seen such happy tattoos in my life. But the new orderly's most distinguishing feature was a red beard that dangled in a series of six small braids from his chin. A tiny brass bell tinkled at the end of each braid. He looked like a modern-day pirate dressed in hospital scrubs.

Something told me that Otis Parker had met his match.

The new orderly didn't ask Parker to sit. Instead, he shoved Parker into place and strapped his feet tightly against the legs of the metal chair while the other orderly shackled Parker to the arms of it.

‘Is that necessary?' Maggie asked.

‘Yes,' the new orderly said and tightened the straps. He was a man of few words.

‘You are built like a brick shithouse, mamma,' Parker said to Maggie. ‘Come back alone and I'll show you what a real man can do to you.'

The new orderly moved quickly. He slapped his palm hard against Parker's ear. It made a sound like a gunshot. Parker flinched in pain. It had been a well-aimed blow. The other orderly looked startled, but said nothing. They both suspected Otis Parker had orchestrated Vincent D'Amato's murder and they were going to get their revenge any way they could. Parker had killed one of their own.

Maggie took it all in her stride. She was used to scumbags and while she preferred to take care of such situations herself, she knew she might need both of the orderlies in the hour ahead. She was happy to let them take the initiative.

‘She was a sweet soft thing unsullied by others,' Parker said suddenly. He smiled at Maggie, awaiting her reaction. ‘Those high school girls always are, at least if you get them young enough.'

‘So you're admitting that you knew Darcy Swan?' Maggie asked mildly.

Parker back-pedalled immediately. ‘Naw, man. I've just known a million girls like her,' Parker boasted. ‘They're always looking for a firm hand and I provide one.' He sat back and smiled just as the white orderly bounced another hard blow off his ear.

‘There's your firm hand,' the orderly said, then lapsed back into a watchful silence as if nothing had happened.

Parker had slumped to one side. I could feel the anger rising in him like boiling water but he sat up straight again if it were no big deal. He did not want to give the other man his due.

Honestly, I appreciated the orderly's violent chivalry. Maggie deserved more than the filth that spewed from Parker's mouth. I was pretty sure that the orderly felt the same way and planned to slap the crap out of Parker each time anything approaching an obscenity escaped his lips.

‘Thank you,' Maggie murmured faintly and it was hard to tell if she was talking to Parker or the orderly. ‘You know who I meant when I asked you about Darcy Swan. How is it that you knew I was talking about her?'

‘Hey, I'm not an idiot. I watch the news. I saw her photos and I know her kind. Darcy Swan was just another piece of white trash and she deserved to be taken out with the rest of the garbage.' Parker smiled. ‘Whoever did that to her deserves a medal for helping to clean up the streets.'

His attempts to shock Maggie would do little good. She had dealt with worse than Parker. ‘She sounds just like your type,' Maggie said mildly. The orderlies snickered – and Parker did not like that one bit.

‘My type? You know, I've never been able to decide what I like best,' Parker shot back. ‘Brunettes, blondes or redheads? It's tough to decide. Especially when they all seem to like me.' He stared at Maggie's brown hair like a connoisseur trying to decide what brand and year of wine to buy. ‘It's a shame you keep yours cut so short. Though I suppose I could make an exception.' His gaze lingered on Maggie's legs, but that did not fluster her either and that seemed to anger Parker. ‘Of course, I don't like them to be cold bitches, either. At least not at first,' he added. His peculiar high giggle followed and just like that it was on the wall behind him – the flicker of something dark and terrible, of wings unfolding.

Just as quickly, it was gone.

‘But I've been inside for a while, so I think I'll go for a blonde instead,' Parker said with a smile. ‘First chance I get, of course.'

‘That'll be in about six hundred years,' Maggie assured him.

The air around Parker vibrated with something dark and angry.

Maggie saw that Parker was rattled and tried to throw him off further by changing the subject. ‘I understand that you and Vincent D'Amato were close.'

Her sarcasm was wasted on Parker. ‘Not close enough for me to have killed him,' Parker answered. ‘Though I'd like to thank whoever did the job for me.'

This time, the white orderly bounced a punch off of Parker's midsection, causing him to double over in pain. The orderly stood back up and calmly folded his hands in front of him, like he was in a choir waiting to sing. No one said anything. The silence was broken only by Parker's wheezing as he attempted to regain his breath. When he finally straightened back up, I could see his dark shadow on the wall behind, twisting and craning, its long neck stretching outward as if it were trying to get at the orderly.

With supreme effort, Parker regained control. The shadow disappeared.

‘Vincent D'Amato was a punk,' Parker said defiantly – but he could not keep his eyes from shifting to look at the new orderly. He wanted to see it coming this time. ‘He was one of those punks who gets a little authority and then has to lord it over you because he knows he's a loser and a worm. I hated the guy, but you can't pin his murder on me. I was locked up in here.'

‘Did you ask someone else to murder him for you?' Maggie asked.

‘How would I do that?' Parker answered. ‘I haven't had a visitor in over a year and I can count the phone calls I've made on both hands, all of them to my lawyer. You can check the records if you like.'

Now,
that
was interesting – Parker spoke of this record of isolation as if he had deliberately built it, as if he had known he would need to bring it up one day.

‘Yes, I see that you have had no visitors for nearly a year and no requests for visitors, either.' Maggie looked down at a sheet of paper in front of her. ‘Not a lot of fans in your corner?'

‘I have plenty of people who would come see me,' Parker said, smirking. ‘I have women all over America sending me money and begging me to let them come here so they can suck my—' The white orderly cocked his right arm and Parker shut his mouth abruptly. ‘I tell them not to come. I tell them I'll be out of here soon enough.' He grinned. ‘They can't wait for me to be on the outside.'

They were the only ones, I thought to myself, and they'd change their minds soon enough if it ever actually happened.

‘You have no family?' Maggie asked.

‘My family's dead,' Parker asked. ‘Good riddance to them.'

More likely, he was dead to them. My guess was that there were probably plenty of members of his family alive trying to escape into the anonymous sea of Parkers who did not have serial killers hanging from their family tree.

‘Are you particularly close to another inmate?' Maggie asked. I knew she was trying to figure out if Parker was sending orders to someone through another patient, but Parker, predictably, took her meaning to be sexual.

‘I'm not a fag, if that's what you mean,' Parker said, a smile growing over his face. ‘Want me to prove it?'

The white orderly moved toward Parker, but a look from Maggie stilled him. ‘I can easily find out from other people,' Maggie explained. ‘I'm just giving you a chance to cooperate.'

‘Cooperate in what?' Parker asked back. ‘What exactly is it you're here about? No, wait – scratch that. What I really meant to say was that I want my lawyer because it sounds an awful lot to me like you're investigating a murder.'

‘Two murders, actually.' Maggie's voice was calm, almost sweet. ‘And it sounds an awful lot to me like you miss the attention from being the center of a murder investigation. Locked away in here with all the other crazies, just another patient like they are, just as forgotten as they are . . .' She shook her head. ‘I'm guessing that must be pretty hard for you. You seem to really need attention and validation from other people.'

This time, the shadow bloomed across the wall behind him with an almost radiant intensity: dark jagged wings spread wide and instantly disappeared as, with monumental effort, Parker fought his true nature.