Binding Ties (27 page)

“I'll talk to you. Tell you whatever you want to know. Start to finish, okay?”

“I'd appreciate that.”

“But just you, Captain. I don't …” Dayton looked back at Warrick and said, “No offense, but you aren't anything to me. The captain and me, we go way back.”

“No offense,” Warrick said.

Brass nodded and Warrick did, too, and went out. The CSI would be on the other side of the two-way mirror and the uniformed man would still be just outside. Dayton had no more fight in him.

He just wanted to talk.

“I hate that guy,” Dayton said.

“Warrick?”

“What, that tall guy? No, no—that goddamn attorney of my dad's. He's the one who got me sent out to Sundown, and that place was a nightmare.”

“Really.”

“Locked up, doped up, no TV after ten, monitored
everything you read—cancelled my
Hustler
subscription!”

Forcing any irony from his voice, Brass said, “Sounds like cruel and unusual punishment to me, Jerry.”

“You know what the worst part was?”

“Tell me.”

“Nobody there but crazy people. Everybody was a damn … loon! Do you know what it's like to deal with
loons
all day long?”

“I can imagine.”

“I don't think you can.”

“But your father and his attorney, they got you out. Why are you mad about that?”

Dayton was shaking his head, staring into nothing. “I told Deams what my father did to me, and he said he believed me, but I don't think he did. Otherwise he wouldn't have sent me back … there.”

“Tell me about your father.”

“Do I have to?”

“No. But it might help me understand you better.” Brass sat forward. “We're connected, you and me, Jerry—you said so yourself. I think you understand me—I needed to stop someone who was very smart and clever, who was taking victims. It's my job to stop that kind of thing.”

“Sure. I … I was only mad at you because … I don't mean to insult you, Captain.”

“No, Jerry. We can be frank with each other.”

“I don't do well with … authority figures.”

“Like your dad?”

Dayton leaned his elbows on the table and put his hands on his face, looking out between his fingers, handcuffs jingling. He blew out a long breath. “Let's just say he was a hard man to please.”

Brass nodded. “Yeah—I had one of those.”

“Your father was mean to you?”

“Strict. And like you said, Jerry, hard to please.”

“Not like
mine,
I bet!” He assumed a sterner posture, pointed across the table at Brass with the index fingers of his bound hands. “ ‘You're a disappointment, young man, a disappointment.'” His eyes glistened with tears. “ ‘We give you everything, and every opportunity, and you keep disappointing us! You're nothing but a weakling … a weak little girl. You know what weak little girls need, Jerry? Do you know what they need?'”

All the while the forefingers pointed and accused and waggled, and Jim Brass had no need for a court-appointed psychiatrist to explain the killer's fetish for taking his victim's forefingers as grisly souvenirs of his triumph over them.

The prisoner fell back in his chair, spent, the tears spilling, making wet ribbons down the narrow hawkish face.

“He beat you?” Brass asked. “On your … bare bottom?”

Dayton laughed bitterly. “Oh, is that what your ‘hard' daddy did to you, Captain? You had it
easy!
Oh, but I had to bend over, all right … I bent over for Daddy, so many, many times….”

Brass frowned; Catherine and Nick had reported to him what the Sundown doctor had said about Dayton's stories of sexual abuse.

“Your father … violated you?”

“That's a nice word for it.” He sat forward and screamed:
“He made me his bitch!”

Brass shook his head.

Then he said something he never imagined to hear himself saying, much less truthfully: “Jerry, I'm sorry for what you suffered.”

The killer's father, Thomas Dayton, had been a pillar of the community for decades, with nary a whiff of deviant behavior. Not that that was unusual—some of the most important people had kinks buried beneath their decent surfaces; bigger the secret, deeper the cover-up.

And as Brass recalled Tom Dayton, from the few times he'd met the man—once at the mayor's annual prayer breakfast—the detective suddenly realized that this heavyset white male had been the template for every one of CASt's victims.

“Your victims,” Brass said. “They
were
your father.”

“Yes … yes. Those bastards, I made every one of them
my
bitch.”

“But you stopped. When you came back home, from Sundown. Did your father stop abusing you, was that it?”

“He did stop. I was too big. And, well … he knew what I'd done, after all; he was afraid of me, in a way … at least I had that much satisfaction. But they kept me on those meds, and I was like a dog with a shock collar, y'know?”

“Is that why you stopped, Jerry? The meds?”

“Maybe. And the doctors. I mean, I never came out and talked about what I'd done, not really. But like you said, I'm smart and I'm clever. I could find things out by just talking to them, hypothetically. And I came to learn something, from the therapy.”

“What was that?”

“That I couldn't make it right, I couldn't make what my father did not have happened, even if I made a thousand of him my bitches.”

“Did you ever think to do it to … him?”

“Captain, haven't you been listening? Every
one
of them was him!”

“I mean … the real ‘him,' Jerry. You never thought of killing him?”

“Killing Daddy?” Dayton blinked; he seemed confused. “How could I do that? He was my daddy. Didn't you love your daddy, Captain?”

“I did, Jerry. I did. But even if killing a thousand pretend daddies didn't help you heal, maybe … talking about it will be a start.”

“To you? You're not a doctor!”

“Is that who you want to talk to, Jerry?”

Dayton snorted. “Not hardly. I can make them jump through hoops.”

“Then talk to me.” Brass shrugged. “Can't hurt. Look, we both know you're going away for a long time. You want it to be a hospital or a prison? Maybe I can help you choose.”

“Hospitals,” Dayton said with a derisive laugh. “I've already been down
that
road…. Do they let you subscribe to what you want to subscribe to in prison?”

“Depends on the facility. Did you say your father knew what you'd done? That you were CASt?”

“Of course he did.”

“How?”

“He was … bawling me out about something. He'd stopped doing the … act … with me, I was too big, too old, too much stronger than he was. But he still, you know … told me what to do, told me what a disappointment I was. So I'd had enough of that and said, ‘You better watch it, old man,' but he just laughed at me. So I told him. Showed him.”

“Showed him?”

“The fingers. In the jars? I had four, I think, when I told him.”

“So he knew.”

“He knew, all right.”

“And he and your attorney made arrangements to have you put away, where the law couldn't touch you.”

“Yeah. See, the old man thought you were getting too close. That you were going to catch me. He said you were a really good, smart detective, that you were
from back east where cops were tough. And that's one thing I agree with him on—you're good. So is that guy Grissom.”

“Thanks. Was your father … upset with you, for what CASt did?”

Dayton closed his eyes. “He knew what I was doing, I think he figured out why I was doing it, but the only thing he gave a damn about was the ‘potential scandal.' You know—the shame? So, he put me in that … that hellhole till the heat blew over.”

“Then he took you out again, quietly.”

Rocking gently now, Dayton said, “Yes. It was voluntary committal, so that wasn't hard.”

“Did anyone besides the doctors know you were getting day and weekend passes?”

Dayton thought about it. “Deams did, for sure; I mean, he helped the old man get me out—the doctors were against it.”

“But they didn't know about your hobby?”

“Please don't demean what I do by calling it a hobby, Captain. It's a statement, and a kind of … catharsis.”

“Sorry, Jerry.”

“No, the doctors didn't know I was CASt. I did tell them about what my daddy did to me, but I don't think they believed me. Who would
you
believe? One of the biggest men in town, or his sick-in-the-head kid? Anyway, they just thought I was too ill to be outside yet—you know, until they had a better handle on what was wrong with me.”

Brass was putting certain disturbing pieces together. “And of course your father wanted you out as soon as possible, because he didn't want the doctors to know the reason behind your illness.”

Dayton finally opened his eyes. He had a slightly startled look. “Is that why?”

Brass sighed. “Jerry, I appreciate your frankness.”

“I've been straight with you, haven't I?”

“I would say so.”

“Have I earned the right to ask you a question, Captain?”

“Okay.”

“Were you the one?”

“The one … what?”

“I mean, you're smart. Really good. But I always had trouble believing you were the, you know … one.”

Brass sat up. “I
don't
know, Jerry. Honestly.”

Dayton sighed. Smiled. “Good. I wouldn't have liked that.”

“Jerry, please explain what you're talking about.”

Rubbing a wrist where the cuffs were chaffing, Dayton said, “Some cop knew about me. I mean, must have known, because the old man? For years he bitched about having to contribute to what he called ‘the widows and orphans fund.'”

Brass's belly tightened. “What did you think that meant?”

Dayton shrugged. “Somebody, one of you people, figured out I was CASt, hell, years ago … and the
old man paid that person off. For years I thought it was you, Captain. And I'm glad it wasn't.”

Brass felt something dying, deep inside.

“Anything else I can tell you, Captain?”

“Why did you come back? And kill Perry Bell?”

“You know why. Somebody was stealing something very precious to me—my identity. My … like Superman! Secret identity.”

“Why choose Perry?”

“Well … I'm not a smart detective like you. I work the other side of the fence, I guess. But I thought I had it figured out. I thought Perry was the copycat.”

“But he wasn't.”

“My bad,” Dayton said. “Want to hear about it?”

Brass wanted to say no, but said, “Yes.”

“I can't feel too terrible about the mistake,” Dayton said. “After all, Perry Bell was a fat old drunk with no pride. What little he had in life, I gave him … because he picked up the fame I spilled, with that book of his. He didn't have the
strength
to do what I do.”

As CASt emerged and Jerry Dayton receded, the killer sat straighter, his eyes bright, and for the first time since entering this interview room, Brass felt he was facing the blood-streaked fiend who had stabbed him.

“He begged for his life, of course,” CASt said, voice cold, detached. “Said he was innocent, someone else must have done it. Funny thing is, he
knew
who the copycat was, but the damn drunk didn't even
know
that he knew.”

“I'm not sure I understand.”

“Well, he didn't suggest that the copycat might be Brower, until I helped him … focus.”

“How did you do that?”

“How do you think? Cut his finger off. It's what I do.”

“… Why did you continue, Jerry—when you knew Bell wasn't the copycat?”

“Captain, would
you
leave a job half-done? I hated Bell for the things he said about me in his trashy book. He made it sound like I was out of my mind.”

“The book helped make you famous.”

“True. And perhaps that's why I took it so easy on him…. You found a key card at a murder site, didn't you?”

This CASt introduced as blandly as if asking the detective to pass the salt.

“Yes,” Brass said.

“Bell's, of course. It wasn't until he and I were discussing my problem that he realized that Brower must have been the one who'd taken it.”

Brower had been Bell's assistant; the card would have been easy enough for him to swipe.

“Why did you suspect Bell, and not his collaborator, Paquette? He cowrote
CASt Fear,
after all.”

CASt shook his head. “Bell was out stirring things up with speaking gigs and trying to peddle that old
crap book. Paquette was successful, he'd moved on. Anyway, I always suspected my father had paid him off, too, like that cop.”

“Your father never mentioned who it was, this cop.”

“No. But we both know, don't we, Captain?”

Brass said nothing.

CASt slumped in the chair and became Jerome Dayton. He looked exhausted.

Brass could hardly blame him, feeling drained himself.

“I fill in everything you need?” Dayton asked.

“You did fine, Jerry.”

“You're not disappointed?”

“No. I may want to talk again. There's a lot of ground to cover, so many old cases.”

“No problem. I like talking to you.”

Brass said, “Good. I'm glad.”

“You know what I really like about you, Captain?”

“What's that, Jerry?”

“You never point your finger at me.”

“And Jerry,” Brass said, “I never will.”

The attending physician reluctantly granted Grissom and Catherine access to his patient. Despite a considerable loss of blood, Brower could talk without endangering himself. The doctor did limit the visitors to two, so Nick remained in the hall with the uniformed officer stationed outside the private room.