Ridley Pearson - The Art of Deception

Lieutenant Boldt comes by the bank and you have no problem talking to him, do you? But a woman? Am I confusing you now?

You’re feeling anger toward me, aren’t you? I can sense that, Per. It’s all around me, that anger. Because you know what I’m going to say next, you know who I’m going to mention, don’t you?” His eyes went increasingly wider, increasingly whiter.

“And you don’t want her mentioned, do you? You want her left out of this. Her dark hair, her sending you mixed signals. What was it she did to you to deserve this?” she asked, touching the second of the crime scene photographs. “Criticize you, no matter what you did? Dress you up like a little girl and show you off to her friends and laugh at you? Take baths with you? Showers?

When you were old enough to respond to that-to her-in ways you didn’t want to respond but couldn’t help responding, she laughed at you-at it-didn’t she? She thought it was funny, cute. Didn’t she? But it wasn’t funny, not at all. It was humiliating. It was awful for you, her laughing like that. Or maybe it was her walking around in panties and underwear, showing way too much to a boy your age. Maybe that’s why you like looking through windows now. Or was it her slipping in beside you on those cold nights, or the ones with thunder and lightning, or was it that she’d had a little too much to drink and wanted the company? The same way you want company now.”

Vanderhorst didn’t answer with words, but she had his face in a sweat. Boldt looked as if he wanted to stop her, or wanted to leave the room himself, but he sat calmly beside her, his pencil taking down notes on a legal pad as if writing a grocery list.

She addressed Vanderhorst and said, “You never wanted any of it, did you, Per? Never volunteered for any of it. She teased you in front of her friends, in front of your friends; she cut you off from everyone around you. You brought a friend home, she made a fool of you. And you, you loved her all the more for it. Loved her like nothing else in this world. And this proved the most confusing of all.” His rheumy eyes seemed ready to spill tears. He was no criminal animal but a poor, pathetic creature who’d lost sight of the out-of-bounds markers. She felt Boldt’s precious minutes slipping past. “Later,” she said, “when you were older-what, fourteen, fifteen? — she was still coming into your room at night, only now for things unimaginable to you a year or two before. Now you ran, didn’t you? You hid. First the closet. But she found you. Then the bathroom … but she found you.” With each statement she looked for any unintended response on his part-a shortening of breath, a twitch to his eyes, a dilation of his pupils, using these as her signposts. “And finally … the basement,” she said, knowing in advance she would score a direct hit. Indeed, he looked away and to the floor, wearing his shame. “The one place she never did find you. Tell me I’m wrong, Per. Tell me you didn’t unscrew the lights down there and hide in the dark, because you knew she was afraid of the dark and that she’d never find you.” She based this on the discovery of the underground lair. The location of that hideout was no accident.

“That’s where you feel the safest, isn’t it? In the dark. Alone.

Your back pushed up against a cold wall.” She worked from her own experience in the Shelter. “The musty smell-it’s almost like perfume to you. You brought them down there, and you did those things to them-those things she did to you-and then you felt bad about it, didn’t you? Then you wanted to keep them alive, if you could. In the dark. Locked in the room. There when you needed them.”

It hadn’t been about torturing his victims but trying to save them. His mistake had been hanging them from the wall-he’d unintentionally crucified them. She suspected that if she could travel back in time to his mother’s apartment she would find Jesus on the cross in nearly every room. She’d read about extreme cases of APD, the Per Vanderhorsts of this world; she’d just never interviewed one.

She wondered how any of this could bring a sense of excitement, of fulfillment for her, and yet it did.

She said, “It’s easier now that it’s over, isn’t it? There’s nothing to hide any longer.” In point of fact they knew almost nothing. It was far from clear if they had enough evidence to convict Vanderhorst. The DNA blood evidence and the semen collected from the corpses might put him away, but without that evidence firmly in hand (and it was still a day or two away), she knew that Boldt needed a confession.

Boldt said, “You’re about to be traded back and forth like a pro ball player, Vanderhorst. Texas uses lethal injection. You know that, right? Capital murder equals capital punishment in that state, and you killed a woman in Fort Worth, and you need to think about that. The U.S. Attorney’s office has the authority to move your trial to Texas, and they’ll argue for that because they’re going to want you on death row. This attorney general is tough on crime-you understand that, right? But they’re basically good guys, better guys than you’d think. They won’t take you away from us if we have a better case to make against you here. You see how this works?” He added, “Or maybe it doesn’t work-the system. Not all that well. But it’s what we’ve got at the moment, and you’re square in the middle of it.”

Worry crept into the man’s eyes.

“What’s it going to take?” Boldt asked Matthews in a familiar game to them.

“I think he knows,” Matthews replied.

“You see where this leaves you?” Boldt asked him.

Matthews said to Vanderhorst, “You and I both know you’re of sound mind, fit to stand trial. That’s not an out for you, Per.

We’ll run the usual tests, of course, but you’re going to pass them. The decision you need to make now, before you lose the chance, is who is going to control your destiny. If you want it in the hands of the feds, that’s up to you.”

Boldt said, “You’re curious about those last two photographs, aren’t you?”

Vanderhorst eyed him suspiciously.

“Go ahead, take a look,” Boldt said.

Vanderhorst didn’t move a muscle.

“Curious about how we got the key, I’ll bet.”

Vanderhorst narrowed his eyes, both angry and unnerved, and Matthews saw the opening Boldt had given her.

She said, “We thought you’d worked them alone, Per. The ATM machines. The basement of the bank. That was one of our mistakes-one of the things that took us so long to catch you-this idea you were smart enough to plan this on your own.” She leaned across the table-Vanderhorst reared backward, overreacting, and nearly went over-and rolled the second to last sheet, revealing Ferrell Walker’s head shot from central booking.

“This is the man who gave us the key to that room. He says that he planned it all-that it was his brains-but that you did the actual killing.”

“I don’t even know this guy,” Vanderhorst said.

“He says you do.”

“He gave us the key to that room,” Boldt repeated.

“He stole it.”

“The key?” Matthews asked.

“That’s right,” Vanderhorst said, dipping his toes into the confessional waters.

“Stole it from where?” Boldt asked.

Vanderhorst continued to sweat profusely. He viewed Boldt with suspicion but didn’t recoil into himself as Matthews feared.

She repeated, “He’s claiming he’s the brain behind this.”

A confused Vanderhorst pointed to the first three images on the table. “Then who did these? I suppose this guy did these as well? Millicent Etheredge. Tanya Wallace. Anita Baylock. He’s lying to you.”

Their suspect had just stated the names of the other three victims, names that had not been mentioned in this room. There were explanations a good defense attorney could use, including the absurd amount of press most such cases received. But the context of his answer combined with the determination in his voice would go a long way toward convicting Per Vanderhorst.