Mortal Sin (67 page)

Their disappearance coincided with Adam Bachman’s killing spree. There were many similarities. Just like the other five victims, the Palazzolos disappeared on a Tuesday (Bachman had Tuesdays and Wednesdays off from his bartending job), they were tourists from out of state staying at a hotel in Times Square, and they had at one point during their vacation gone to the bar where Bachman worked.

The police focused only on the
differences
: that the other victims were kidnapped while alone, they were under forty years of age, and their bodies had been found within a week of their disappearance, dumped in one of a variety of empty buildings in Queens.

It was partly because of the Palazzolos that Max had been banned (she would argue temporarily) from every NYPD precinct in Queens. She’d been detained for trespassing twice while searching abandoned buildings, looking for their bodies. That the Assistant Chief in Queens already hadn’t liked her contributed to her temporary banishment. But there were hundreds of places and thousands of nooks and crannies in those places. The police argued that the other victims had been relatively easy to find—discovered by people who worked or lived in the area, or in one case teenagers who went into an abandoned cannery to get stoned.

And the other key difference was that the Palazzolo’s had checked out of their hotel room and had been seen on security cameras driving out of the parking garage. They weren’t reported missing until one of their kids started looking for them when they didn’t arrive home on schedule.

But Max’s gut told her there was something here. It was a series of events and comments after Adam Bachman was arrested that convinced her. She’d interviewed his former neighbors, his professors, one of his college roommates, and his best friend from childhood who was in the Army. She wanted to understand him better because that would help her convey the true Adam Bachman to her viewers. And in the back of her mind, she thought this case might be right for her next true crime book. There were so many compelling facts, particularly because Bachman was so
normal
. He was clean, well-groomed, articulate.

One of her sources at the crime lab who’d processed his apartment told him he kept his place immaculate, almost obsessively clean, which confirmed what Max had learned from others and what Riley learned from his former roommate. The guy was fastidious. Bachman also had many books, mostly biographies, and appeared to be an avid reader. In addition to his job as a bartender, he was taking on-line classes in pursuit of a Masters in History.

“I’m not going to go through all the preliminaries I usually do on an interview—I have your background pretty well documented. I’ve already talked to people who know you. Anything out in the public that you wish to correct?”

He shook his head, that secretive smile still curving his lips.

“Until your arrest last July, you had never been in trouble with the law. Correct?”

“Not even a speeding ticket,” he said.

His voice was quiet and clear. He maintained eye-contact, almost to the point where it was creepy. Likely an intimidation technique.

“You pled not guilty to all charges. How optimistic are you that the jury will acquit you?”

He shrugged.

“Do you think there’s enough reasonable doubt that the jury won’t issue a guilty verdict?”

“You’ll have watch the trial. I have no idea.”

He continued to stare at her, and while Max had faced far more violent predators than Adam Bachman, this focus was unnerving. He was pale, to the point of appearing gaunt. But his eyes were sharp. Assessing her.

Max had read and analyzed all information that had been released to the public, and picked up a few details that hadn’t been released through eavesdropping and talking with key contacts. While the deaths were tragic, they weren’t particularly brutal—he didn’t sexually assault his victims, for example. Based on what had been revealed, Bachman kidnapped the victims—drugging them to the point of unconsciousness—and took them to another location where he kept them alive up to twenty-four hours before suffocating them. His “killing ground,” as Charlene said a bit too grandiosely at a press conference, had never been located, and Bachman hadn’t talked. Police believed Bachman killed his victims in Brooklyn then moved the five bodies to a different abandoned building in Queens. According to the forensics report, Max had bribed a CSI to show her, Bachman had moved their bodies immediately after death. To Max, that told her when they were dead, he was completely done with them, wanted him out of his sight. Perhaps to make way for the next victim.

Bachman had been apprehended because of a series of unfortunate events—the drugs he’d given what would have been his sixth known victim had worn off because he hadn’t dosed her right, and then he was stuck in traffic because of an accident on the Queensboro Bridge. Because of the accident, police were managing traffic. The victim, twenty-four-year-old Ava Raines, had been tied up in the trunk. She screamed, the police opened the trunk, then arrested Bachman. He didn’t resist and had since been a model prisoner.

Max needed to push him. She’d initially thought that he’d agreed to the interview because he wanted to talk—so she asked open-ended questions in the hopes that he would ramble. But he wasn’t talking. He was just staring at her with that know-it-all smile.

“Mr. Bachman, you agreed to this interview. Is there anything you want to say?”

“I’ve seen your show. The camera loves you.”

She ignored the comment. “So you know what I discuss on
Maximum Exposure.”

“Yes. I’ve seen every show. Multiple times.”

It was his tone, as if he was trying for seductive. Or possibly admiring. But it failed. It was almost sneering. She kept her face passive.

“Your mother will be in the courtroom. She’s been supportive of you from the moment you were arrested and told the press that this is a misunderstanding. Have you seen her recently?”

“My mom visits me every week.”

“She’s expected to be in the courtroom for the duration of the trial. How does that make you feel?”

He laughed. Odd response, and he didn’t comment further.

“According to your neighbors in Hartford, your childhood wasn’t all cake and parties. Your father left when you were a toddler, and your mother’s second husband was abusive. She filed and won a restraining order against him when you were thirteen.”

“I’ve already talked to the government psychiatrist. I have no interest in talking about my childhood. It’s irrelevant.”

“Some people believe that the past shapes the future.”

He tilted his head. “Do you think that?”

She couldn’t allow him to ask questions.

“Maybe,” she said vaguely. “Some people find solace in getting help from the outside. A teacher, a friend, a therapist. What about you? According to a friend of yours from college, you left to get psychiatric help because of problems adjusting to living on campus.” She had totally made that up, but wanted to give him something to refute. “What was that like?”

He reddened. “Who said that? They’re lying!”

His first real reaction was a big one.

“People want answers,” she said. “It drives human nature to seek explanations for the unexplainable. Did you battle violent tendencies even back then? In high school? College?”

His jaw clenched. “I’m. Not. Violent.” He swallowed, gathering his composure.

Not
I haven’t killed anyone
or
I’m innocent.

I’m not violent.

Max had interviewed killers who enjoyed bragging about their crimes. She’d interviewed killers who’d denied their guilt even faced with overwhelming evidence. When she covered the trial of a city manager who’d been accused of embezzling millions of dollars from the city pension fund, he’d tried to justify his actions—essentially, that he was trying to make the city
more
money through his high-risk investments that, ultimately, ended up with him getting rich and hundreds of employees losing their retirement.

But Adam Bachman was different. She couldn’t put her finger on why.

“Did you admit yourself into a private psychiatric facility while you were in college?” she asked bluntly.

“I don’t have to answer that.”

“You don’t have to answer anything. You agreed to talk to me, but right now, you’re not saying anything that’s of interest to me or my viewers.”

He reddened again, and that’s when she saw it. The ego underneath the calm. She used that.

“You’ll be a mere footnote in criminal justice classes, if that, because you’re letting everyone else define you. Define yourself. Tell me why you’re here. Why you wanted to talk to me.”

He didn’t answer right away. He rolled his head and shoulders, a technique she used when tense and trying to relax. He leaned forward and over-enunciated, “Do you think that anyone is capable of taking a human life?”

“Mr. Bachman, why—?”

“Call me Adam,” he interrupted. “I mean, you’re
older
than me. Why call me
mister
?” He smiled, a hint of his charm coming out in his expression, but his eyes were cold and shrewd.

“If you’re going to play games, I’ll leave. I have more than enough background information to write ten articles. I don’t need your input.” She was trying to make him angry, push him into giving her something quotable.

“But you want it,” he said with a shrug. “
You
want to know the truth.”

She didn’t react, but his comment hit her dead on. She always sought the truth. It defined her, it drove her. It wasn’t a big secret—if he’d seen even one episode of
Maximum Exposure
as he claimed, he’d know that the truth was more than a little important to her. But the way he said it sent a chill up her spine.

“Yes,” she said, keeping her voice even. She couldn’t let him know he’d gotten under her skin. “I want to know the truth. I want to know if you killed those five people all by yourself, or if you had someone help you.”

He shifted, just a bit. It wasn’t a physical movement so much as a tightening of his muscles. A slight twitch in his jaw line. She was right. She knew it.

Another killer was still out there.

Then he said, “I see what you’re trying to do. If I say I didn’t have help, you’ll write that I admitted to killing those people. If I say I did have help, I’m admitting to killing those people.”

“The people I’ve spoken with use the words
sweet
,
considerate
,
clean
and
meticulous
to describe you. Those are the people who like you, who are surprised at your arrest. The people who don’t like you? They call you
anal retentive
,
obsessively neat
, and
fastidious.
One woman you worked with said you washed your hands after touching money every single time without fail. That you have a phobia about germs. That you kept a gallon-sized bottle of hand sanitizer in your locker.”

“Melinda,” he said, looking behind her, as if picturing his chatty co-bartender. Melinda Sanchez had been one of the few people who told Max that hands down, she thought Adam was creepy from the minute she started working at Fringe, six months before Adam was arrested.

“Adam, right now I have a piece running on the wire that will be printed in every major newspaper and website. I can choose to quote your colleague, or your childhood best friend who said you helped him graduate high school by tutoring him in math. What’s your spin on this trial? What do you think will happen this week? Tell me what you wanted to tell me. Tell me why you agreed to talk.”

He refocused his attention on her and leaned forward. That damn half-smile returned.

“Have you ever gone fishing?” She didn’t answer, but tilted her chin up in a sign to continue. There was a light tap on the window; she prayed time wasn’t up.

“You hook a fish. It’s not supposed to hurt them, but who knows because fish can’t talk. You put them down and they flop around, their gills trying to get air, but they can’t. Flop, flop, flop. Slower and slower. Until they are lying there, unmoving, except for those little flaps on the side of their head. If you throw them back into the water, they’re disorientated for a minute, then they swim away. Only to be hooked again. They don’t learn from their mistakes. They still see the bait, they want the bait. In the back of their little pea brains, they might even recognize there’s a danger, but they dismiss it. They get hooked every time.

“Eventually, if you leave them out of water long enough, they die. But I was always mesmerized by that time between, from panic to resignation. And I always wondered why they didn’t learn.

“Like you.”

He stared at her, his dark eyes darker than they were at the beginning of the interview, as if he were excited. He whispered, so low she didn’t think her tape recorder would pick it up.

“You’ll never find them. And it’ll eat you up forever.”

“You’re talking about the Palazzolos.”

“I’m not the violent one,” he whispered.

She wasn’t certain she’d heard that right. “Excuse me?”

He smiled and didn’t say anything. “Five, four, three, two, one.”

There was a knock on the door and the guard came in. “Time’s up.”

“I
will
find them,” she said, her voice hitching just a bit.

He smiled wider as if he had a victory. Her stomach flipped. She’d screwed up. She’d reacted to his story, to his near-confession. He’d reeled her in like the damn fish he was talking about. He’d told her he’d seen her show, how she craved the truth. Then he dangled the truth out there and snatched it back, giving her nothing. And her reaction let him know he’d hit her button.

She picked up the recorder and notepad and left.

Damn, she was usually better than that.

# # #

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The Seven Deadly Sins Series