Karen Rose - Kill for Me

“There you go,” Steven said. “Have at it, boy. I’ll call you if we pull up Dr. Cassidy.”

Atlanta, Monday, February 5, 9:35 a.m.

Susannah’s stomach churned as she stood outside the interrogation room in which Garth Davis waited. “I’m scared, Luke,” she murmured.

He slid his arm around her waist. “You don’t have to do this. I can talk to him.”

“No, I do need to do this.” She drew a deep breath. “Let’s get it over with.”

Chloe was waiting inside the room, along with Garth Davis and his lawyer.

“Garth,” Susannah murmured and sat in the chair Luke pulled out for her.

“Susannah,” he said warily. “It’s been a long time.”

“Yes, it has.” She studied his face, not with the eye of a prosecutor, but with the eye of a woman whose life had been turned upside down for way too long. Garth looked drawn, haggard. At barely thirty-two years old, he looked… old. As old as she felt.

Garth looked up at Luke. “You found my sons. Thank you.”

Beside her, Luke nodded once. “We said we would.”

“I saw the news. I swear, I didn’t know what Barbara Jean had done.”

“She tried to kill me yesterday,” Susannah said.

Garth met her gaze, his eyes haunted. “I know.”

“Did you know she hated me?”

“No.”

“Did you know she was Arthur Vartanian’s daughter?” she asked.

His eyes widened in shock. “Really?”

“Yes.” And then she knew what she wanted to ask. “Did you rape fifteen girls?”

“Garth,” his lawyer warned, but Garth held up his hand wearily.

“Enough. It’s enough already. I’m not getting out of this. They have pictures, a journal. My sister is dead, along with half of Dutton. Enough people have died for the sins of a handful of stupid boys.”

“My original offer stands, Mr. Davis,” Chloe said. “Fifteen years.”

“The deal sucks, Chloe,” Davis’s lawyer said. “He was a juvenile, for God’s sake.”

“He was seventeen.”

“Only for half of them,” the lawyer argued, and Chloe rolled her eyes.

“There’s a mandatory sentence for every count. If a judge orders those served consecutively your client would be in prison for the rest of his life.”

“But no judge would,” his lawyer scoffed.

Garth shook his head. “Stop, Sweeney. You can’t get me out of this.”

“We’ll request a change of venue,” his lawyer said, and Garth laughed bitterly.

“Where? To Mars? There is no place that doesn’t know the Richie Rich Rapists.” His mouth twisted. “I’m going to take Miss Hathaway’s deal. I’ll get out in time to see my grandchildren. Yes, Susannah, I raped fifteen girls thirteen years ago. I was caught up in this game… this idea that it would make us men. But I swear, I did not rape you.”

She believed him. Still… “Maybe you were left behind once.”

“I don’t think so.” He shrugged. “The others would have bragged. Everyone wanted you then. You were cool and sophisticated and… unattainable.”

“I was withdrawn and traumatized,” she said evenly. “I was a rape victim.”

“I’m truly sorry. But it wasn’t me or the others. I’m telling you they would’ve bragged, especially Jared O’Brien.” He paused, sighed. “It could have been Granville.”

“Why do you say that, Mr. Davis?” Chloe asked.

“He was always the one in charge and we knew it, although no one ever said it. Everyone was too afraid of Simon to say he wasn’t the leader. But it was Toby Granville calling the shots. He picked the girls, the dates, the places.”

“But that doesn’t explain why you thought Granville did it,” Chloe said.

He closed his eyes. “I don’t want to say this.”

“Mr. Davis,” Chloe said harshly, “if you’re angling for a better deal, then-”

“I’m not,” he snapped. “Dammit. We always wanted to do Susannah, all right?”

Susannah tensed and Luke offered his hand. She grabbed on tight, listening now, because Garth had seemed to forget she was in the room, addressing Chloe instead.

“What stopped you?” Chloe asked him coolly.

“Granville. Simon would say ‘Not my sister,’ like he was protecting his turf. Turf, my ass. We always said Simon would do his own mother because he could. And had.”

Horrified, Susannah stared, barely registering Chloe’s warning glance.

“Are you saying Simon had a relationship with his mother that was inappropriate?” Chloe asked, still cool.

“Yes, that’s what I’m saying, because that’s what Simon said. And he had pictures ,” he added in disgust. “Simon didn’t care about Susannah. He only cared about Simon.”

“But still the rest of the boys wanted to choose Susannah,” Chloe said evenly.

“Yeah. Finally one day Granville pulled us aside one at time. Told us to stop asking. He said, ‘Susannah is taken.’ ”

“By whom?”

“By him . Toby Granville. It’s what we understood him to mean.” His shoulders sagged and he turned back to Susannah. “I’m sorry. We thought you were Granville’s. That you knew. When I heard you’d accused me, I was stunned. And that’s the truth.”

She was breathing too rapidly because there didn’t seem to be enough air in the room. And not a single word would come. Luke’s hand tightened around hers.

“I have a few questions, Mr. Davis,” Luke said. “First, do you know where your wife is hiding?”

“If I knew, I’d tell you. She could come and take my boys and I’m stuck in here. I can’t protect them. So, if I knew where she was, I would tell you to protect my children.”

“What about her friends?” Luke asked.

“She was tight with Marianne Woolf, but my lawyer told me Barbara abducted Marianne, too. She had a weekly hair appointment at Angie’s. You could ask Angie who she talked to. She said she had friends in Atlanta. She used to have lunch with them pretty frequently.” He gave them some names and Luke shook his head.

“Those are the names of clients we found in her computer.”

Garth shrugged. “She had lunch with clients often. That makes sense.”

“What kind of clients did your wife have?” Chloe asked carefully.

Garth looked from Chloe to Luke. “She had an interior design business.”

The man had been so deluded, Susannah thought. Had he not been such a monster himself, she might have felt a stirring of pity.

From the set of Luke’s jaw, Susannah could tell he felt absolutely no pity for Garth, either. Luke ripped off a sheet of paper from his note pad and, still holding Susannah’s hand, drew the swastika she wore on her hip. “Do you recognize this?”

Garth’s eyes flickered. “Yes.”

“Well?” Luke asked.

Garth looked at Chloe. “Before I say any more, I want a concession. I’ll allocute. But I want to be able to be sentenced somewhere close by, so I can see my sons.”

“Depends,” Chloe said. “We already know Granville had the symbol on his ring and on a pendant. Do you have anything different?”

“Yeah,” Garth said. “I do.”

Chloe nodded. “Then I can petition you serve your time more locally.”

“ ‘More locally.’ ” His lips twisted at her evasion. “Lawyers,” he murmured. “Gotta love us. I didn’t know Granville had a ring, too. But my wife had one. It was big, a man’s ring. I only saw it once. She said it had belonged to her father. I told her I didn’t want it in my house, that I didn’t think it was good for the kids. She agreed, said she’d get rid of it. I never saw it again.”

“Describe it,” Luke said.

“Heavy, silver, I think. Raised design.”

“How big was it?” Luke asked. “The raised part.”