Part 4 (1/2)

When their supervisor told them that she and Danny would not be going back after today, Rainey was secretly elated. She'd had enough of Dalton Chambers to last a lifetime, but she couldn't let him know that. Once Danny was out of the room, she began her final attempt to get some truth out of Dalton about the young girl and any of the other murders he was suspected of committing. If he admitted to the rapes, well, that was just icing on the cake.

”Dalton, he's gone now. Just focus on me. Don't give the guards a reason to hurt you, okay?”

Dalton took his focus from Danny in the hallway and moved his blue eyes back to Rainey. She watched his face reform from murderous intent to charming. In another life, he could have been a movie actor. He had the looks and the ability to transform into whatever he wanted others to see. Dalton was an actor of sorts, playing out his fantasies, as star and director of his own sick plot.

Dalton smiled easily. ”I don't know how you work with that guy. You're much too nice to have to deal with that every day and a whole lot better looking.”

”Thank you, Dalton. It isn't easy. He loses his temper so often, I wonder if he should be doing this job.” Rainey knew Danny could hear her through the speaker in the hall.

Dalton made a show of deep concern. ”You should ask to be given a new partner. You shouldn't have to put up with him.”

”I'll do that. He really is a pain in the a.s.s,” Rainey said, chuckling.

”So, what do you want to talk about today, pretty lady?” Dalton was pouring on the charm, as if they were going to talk about the weather, not the heartless murders and rapes he committed.

Rainey pretended that she was being forced to ask the questions. ”I don't really want to bring this up, because I know you don't like to talk about it, but my supervisor insists that I get the answers to some questions. He said that if I didn't get answers today, he is going to take me off the case.”

”I don't want to talk to anyone else. Tell him, I'll refuse to see them. I requested you from the beginning, remember. The only reason I let McNally come today is because you were with him.”

”I appreciate that, but I'm afraid it won't do any good. The Special Agent in charge says there is no reason to send me back here, if I can't get what he wants.”

”If I answer just a few of his questions, will they let you come back? You're the only person who comes to visit that I really want to see.”

Rainey saw the opening and jumped. ”What about your parents? Don't you enjoy their visits?”

Dalton displayed his uncanny ability to mimic real human emotion. Psychopaths could feel fear, anger, even sadness in the moment, but not remorse or guilt for what they've done or are about to do. He dropped his head, trying to appear ashamed. ”I hate to see them. They are so hurt by this. I can't stand to see my mother cry like that.”

”You told me your relations.h.i.+p with your parents was good when you were growing up. Don't let your mistakes ruin that.” Trivializing Dalton's crimes as mistakes almost made Rainey choke. She tried to move the conversation toward her goal. Rainey lowered her voice and said, softly, ”If we could just move on from this confession stage, put it behind you, and start the healing part of your recovery, I think you would feel better.”

She saw his eyes measuring her. He whined, ”If I tell you everything, you won't come back. You would have no reason to come see me.”

Rainey laughed faintly. ”Oh Dalton, we will be studying you for years.” Which wasn't a lie. They would study him, but they had nearly everything they needed and wouldn't need to interview him anymore. She continued, ”People will always want to come see you and ask questions. You're one of the youngest, most successful serial murderers we've ever encountered. People want to know what turned such a nice boy into a killer. There will be thousands of words written about you. You are special.”

This puffed Dalton's ego sufficiently. ”I would like to help in any way I can. If studying me helps prevent this from happening, at least I will have done some good. I don't know why I turned out this way. I think my brain is wired differently than normal people.”

”No question about that,” Rainey thought silently. Dalton didn't give a rat's a.s.s about helping anyone. He was in it for what he could get out of it personally. She kept her feelings covered by saying, ”I know, deep inside you are truly remorseful. You wouldn't have helped us this much if you weren't. I hope that we can help you come to terms with what triggered the change in you, so we can help you move on.”

If Dalton truly loved anything, it was talking about himself. He responded, eagerly, ”I've been thinking about that. My dad made me help slaughter cows at the ranch. Do you think that had anything to do with it?”

Cattle ranchers slaughter cows every day and don't turn out to be serial killers. Rainey knew Dalton was looking for an excuse to blame his behavior on someone else. She ignored his question with her own.

”Did it excite you s.e.xually when you partic.i.p.ated in the slaughter?”

”No, that's sick. I didn't like it. Too much blood.”

Dalton was lying, again. Rainey interviewed his parents and siblings after his arrest. They reported that Dalton asked to partic.i.p.ate at a very early age. He always got excited during slaughter time. He was extremely happy and agreeable afterwards.

”But Dalton, your murders were b.l.o.o.d.y. Why do you think the blood didn't bother you then?”

Rainey watched as Dalton began to reminisce about his crimes. He visibly became more relaxed, sliding down in the chair, getting comfortable. He looked beyond Rainey, acquiring a glazed over quality to his eyes. Rainey knew he was reliving some young woman's death, reveling in it, becoming s.e.xually excited as he did. She had no choice but to let him.

After a moment, Dalton began to speak. ”When you chop off the head, the heart still beats for a while. It's just a muscle. Without the brain, it has no idea that it's supposed to be dead. The blood pumps out of the neck in spurts, like the body's gettin' off, you know. It settles down to oozing in just a minute or two.”

Rainey didn't react. He was trying to get her to show fear or horror, his favorite emotions from a woman, but that would turn the game they played. He would then focus all his energy on terrifying her and be less likely to tell her anything of value that she and her team didn't already know.

In the same tone she would use in a casual conversation, Rainey asked, ”Did you do anything with the blood? Your mother told me she found you with blood smeared on your face and hands after a slaughter. You told her it was something you saw on TV, some ancient ceremony to thank G.o.d for his gift of the beef. That wasn't true, was it?”

Instead of being upset that Rainey knew this about him, Dalton smiled. ”She came up after I had put my clothes back on. I was twelve. I had been running naked in the pasture, covered in blood from head to toe.” He laughed at the memory and then continued, ”I was walking to the river to wash off my body when she found me. I had to make something up. She's so religious, if I told her it was in the glory of G.o.d, she would have let me cut her head off.”

Rainey carefully worded her response. ”So, what you said earlier about there being too much blood, that wasn't true either. Come on, Dalton. I thought we were beyond your lying to me. I want to help you, remember?” Rainey paused, and then began again. ”You were the All-American kid, with the idyllic life. Tell me when it changed. When did you know you were different, special?”

Rainey was leading him to the first murder. Dalton no more wanted help than he wanted to be in prison. If he could, he would leave today and begin killing tomorrow. A true psychopath, when asked if he would like to be cured, would say, ”Cured from what?” Dalton didn't think there was anything wrong with him. He couldn't care less about the victims or Rainey. They were all the same, just things that crossed his path. Remorse was a foreign concept to Dalton. His ego, however, was inflated. He believed himself to be smarter than anyone he met. He believed he was steering the conversation he was having at the moment. Rainey let him think that and fed his ego, keeping him off balance enough to show her his real thoughts.

Dalton took the bait. ”I knew early that I was smart, around nine or ten, I think. I found out pretty young that I could talk my way out of stuff. People are really stupid, you know. Like my mom, I could tell her anything and she believed me. Dad wasn't so easy to get around, but then mom would convince him he was wrong. I kept my secrets to myself, so no one ever suspected me.”

”Your secrets, like why you covered yourself in blood?”

Dalton was distracted by his own thoughts and answered without thinking. ”I did that with the girls, too.”

This was new information. Rainey took advantage of Dalton's willingness to talk about it. ”So this part of your ritual came to you early, before you actually started killing the women you raped?”

”Yes, the blood on my skin felt empowering. It did the first time I saw myself in the mirror after we killed some cows. I didn't want to wash it off, but they made me. It looked like war paint, you know.”

”Did you smear your first victim's blood on you? Was it more powerful than the cows blood?”

With his guard down, he answered her question. ”Yes,” he said enthusiastically. Caught up in the rush of just thinking about the blood, Dalton wanted to talk about it now. ”You have no idea how it feels to let someone's blood pump out onto you. It was like electricity, cranking me up to a high I could not have imagined.”

”Is that when you got your s.e.xual release, when their blood spurted on you from the neck?”

Dalton showed just a touch of his true s.a.d.i.s.tic self. His eyebrows lowered, he stared into Rainey's face. His right eye twitched. ”Yes,” he said, and that was all.

Characteristically, when they got to his activities after the beheading he grew cautious, evasive even. Rainey suspected he did things to the bodies after the girls were dead, but they couldn't prove it.

She asked, ”Then why did you gut them, as you call it? If you had your release, why do that?”

Dalton's voice was cold, when he answered, ”That's what you do to cows.”

Rainey felt the color in her cheeks begin to rise. She couldn't let him focus on her steadily growing anger and disgust. She said quickly, ”And you were completely naked, as I recall from your previous statements. You then took the head to the river and went 'swimming with it,' you said.”

”Yes, but you don't actually swim in rapids. I tied a rope to a tree and around my waist. I waded out to let the water wash the blood off, then threw the head in.”

”Why did you throw the head in the water? Was it to make the ID more difficult?”

The darkness crept across Dalton's face. ”Yes.”

Rainey pressed. ”You knew there were other ways to identify them easily. So, there had to be another reason.”