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  "Not my style."

  "Good, because it would really be gauche. Don't worry, though. It'll all become clear soon enough."

  "What will become clear?"

  "My plan. And I need to tell it my way. I need you to listen, Broome. If you ever had any feelings for me, you'll try to open your mind a little here, okay?"

  "Do I have a choice?"

  "I guess not, what with me having the gun and all. But I'm tired, Broome. It's been a good run, but it's coming to an end. I just want... I want you to listen to me. That's all. Let me start at the beginning and maybe you'll see where I'm going with this, okay?"

  Lorraine seemed so sincere. She waited for him to answer, so he said, "Okay."

  "You know I used to be married, right?"

  "I do, yes."

  "Got hitched right out of high school. I won't bore you with my early years in a small town with an alcoholic dad. It's an old story, and we've seen the results on these streets a hundred times, haven't we?"

  Broome thought the question was rhetorical, but again Lorraine stopped, the gun still in her hand. "We have," he said.

  "I was going to be different though. I had a man who loved me. We eloped and he got a job, and then he lost the job and started beating the crap out of me. Broome, it was bad. You have no idea. He'd hit me once or twice before, you know, when we first got together. Nothing serious, you know how it is. Happens to every woman where I grew up. So I shrugged it off. But men can grow so little so fast, you know what I mean?"

  Broome nodded, not sure what else to do.

  "Life started pissing on my husband like he was the only urinal in the club. And how does my little man react? He pounds the hell out of the one person who still cares about him. Ironic, don't you think?"

  Broome said nothing.

  Lorraine's hair fell over her face. She pushed it away with one finger. "So guess what happened to me next, Broome? Come on, you're a smart guy. What always happens in cases like this?"

  "You got pregnant," Broome said.

  "Ding, ding, ding, correct answer. And for a few months while I was prego, peace ruled the land. All the experts were wrong, I thought--a baby can and will improve a marriage. Then one night, my future baby's daddy complains that the steak is too chewy. He gets all pissed off and I say something stupid and he kicks me in the stomach and I fall down and then he starts stomping on me so bad I lose the baby."

  Broome stared down at the dead man on the floor, still unsure what to say.

  "He stomps on me so bad, the crazy psycho, he actually ruptures my uterus. You know what that means, Broome? Do I need to spell it out for you? No kids. Not ever." Tears came to her eyes. She blinked them away, seemingly angry at herself. "I wanted them, you know. I act otherwise and maybe now, well, I'm a girl who's learned to make the best of my lot in life. But back then, my whole dream was to have a couple of kids and a little yard. Pathetic, right? I wasn't asking for a mansion. Just a husband and some kids and a place we could call our own, you know?"

  Broome inched closer to her, trying to find an angle where he could make a move. "I'm sorry about that, Lorraine. I'm sorry you had to go through that."

  "Yeah, it's a sad story, right?" She raised the gun, and her tone changed. "Please don't get cute, Broome. My intention here is to make the guy on the floor my final victim, not you."

  Broome stopped.

  "Anyway, let's skip ahead a few months. To Mardi Gras night. Mr. Wonderful Hubby gets pissed drunk and takes a tire iron to me. So I killed him. Just like that. And you know what, Broome?"

  "What?" he said.

  "It was the best thing I ever did. I was free and happy."

  "No remorse?"

  "Just the opposite, Broome. What's the opposite of remorse?" Lorraine snapped her fingers when the answer came to her. "Pure satisfaction. That's what I felt. I moved into the city, got a job at La Creme, and well, every Mardi Gras, I celebrated my freedom, if you will, by helping another girl go free. You know the rest."

  "Not really."

  "Oh?"

  "I don't know the part where you decided to celebrate your freedom and pure satisfaction by turning into a serial killer."

  Lorraine chuckled at that. "Serial killer. Ooo. Sounds so... I don't know... Hannibal Lecter or something. But it's a fair point. I could remind you that every guy I killed deserved it. They were all scum, beating girls at the clubs, ruining lives. So, yeah, that was part of it. I could also remind you that by killing those losers, I gave many girls a second chance. No one missed these guys. A couple of the wives even pleaded with you not to find their husbands, didn't they?"

  "That doesn't excuse what you did."

  "No, it doesn't, does it? I mean, I use it as a justification, certainly. We kill innocent animals, right? These guys were worse. I had my outlet. But you're right. It's not really an excuse. I can only tell you this, Broome. You'll think it's odd, but maybe you'll get it. You called me a serial killer before, but my theory is, and, yeah, this will sound strange"--her voice became a whisper--"but there are a lot of us out there."

  The temperature in the room dropped a few degrees.

  "Think of them as sleepers, Broome. Millions of them, I bet. A lot of people are natural-born killers, serial or otherwise. They just don't know it. I mean, how would you ever know, if you never did the deed? I had no idea, see, and then I killed Mr. Wonderful and it was like opening a floodgate. It felt so good. Not just because he deserved it. But the very act itself."

  Police sirens shattered the morning air.

  Lorraine sighed. "We don't have much time, Broome. I guess the rest of the answers will have to wait."

  "Wait for what?"

  She didn't reply. Broome wondered what that meant--what she planned on doing. Surrounding her house with police cars would not be helpful. Broome glanced down at the dead body.

  "Why, Lorraine?"

  "Weren't you listening?"

  "Because they deserved it."

  "Yes. And because I liked it. They needed killing. I needed to kill."

  It was, in the end, as simple as that.

  A bullhorn sounded. "Lorraine Griggs? This is the police."

  Lorraine gestured toward the window. "Our time is up."

  "So what are you going to do now?"

  "Do?"

  "What's your plan?" Broome spread his arms. "Are you going to, what, enjoy one more kill before they arrest you?"

  "Ah Broome," Lorraine said, giving him a smile that shattered his heart anew. "I'd never hurt you. Not in a million years."

  He looked at her, confused.

  The bullhorn again: "Lorraine Griggs. This is the police...."

  "I got it all planned out," she said to him. "This is where it ends. I told you yesterday. I'm dying. I don't want to spend my last days on the lam."

  She spun the gun on her finger. The barrel was now pointed at her.

  Broome said, "Don't."

  "What?" She looked down at the barrel. "You thought I was going to kill myself? Oh, that's sweet, Broome, but, no, that's not my plan."

  Lorraine handed him the gun and held up her hands. "Arrest time."

  "So that's it? You're just going to surrender?"

  "Yep, hon, that's it." She once again gave him the crooked smile. "Stick a fork in me, I'm done."

  Broome just looked at her. "I don't know what to say, Lorraine."

  Her eyes flicked to the door then back to him. "Remember how you said you'd be there when I die?"

  Broome nodded. "Yeah, sure."

  "So here's your big chance to prove you're not a liar." There were tears in her eyes now. "Promise me you won't just leave me. Promise me you'll stay close."

  Epilogue

  TWO WEEKS LATER

  "ARE YOU READY?" the doctor asked.

  Del Flynn nodded. He held his beautiful Maria's hand. The doctor pulled out the feeding tube and disconnected her breathing apparatus. Del knew that somewhere outside this room, the cops were steadily closing in on him and Goldberg, b
ut that was okay. He had already lost whatever really mattered. This--what was going on right here, right now--was all that mattered now.

  Del never left Maria's side. He never let go of the hand. For eight hours, he talked to Maria about the first time he had ever seen her, how he knew even then that they were destined to be together. He laughed about their first date, how he stumbled jumping out of the car to open the door for her. He recounted every second of the day Carlton was born, how he had nearly fainted at the sight, how he had never seen her look more beautiful than when she held her little boy. And in the end, when there were only scant minutes left in Maria's life, he started to sob. He begged her to forgive him. He pleaded for her not to leave him all alone. He ranted and raved, but he never told her what had happened to Carlton.

  Maria died with Del holding her hand.

  BEFORE RAY LEVINE WAS RELEASED FROM PRISON, he agreed to help the authorities try to find the remains of Stewart Green. His lawyer, Flair Hickory, drew up the papers. In exchange for his help, Flair demanded that no charges be filed against his client. The county prosecutor's office quickly agreed. In the end, Ray Levine would only be guilty of disposing of a dead body anyway, a crime where the statute of limitations had long since passed.

  At the request of Sarah Green, Stewart Green's widow, Broome was put in charge of the search party. Ray Levine led them down yet another hidden path--so many hidden paths in this case--to the remote cliff where he had hurled the bundled and bagged body parts into a lake.

  In something of a final shock, the divers found a few of them still intact.

  So now they were all at the cemetery, lowering the remains of Stewart Green into the earth. Sarah, officially widowed now, stood between her daughter, Susie, and her son, Brandon. Broome watched their faces and wondered what next. Sarah had been living in that state of suspended animation for so long he worried that she wouldn't be able to move out of it.

  For others, life had moved on. Ricky Mannion, for example, had been exonerated of the murder conviction and released from Rahway. When he walked out of the gates, no one was there to meet him.

  The casket hit the bottom of the hole.

  Broome had just come from yet another visit/interrogation with Lorraine. She would only talk to him--that was her rule--but then he was free to discuss what he learned with others. At first, he wondered what her game was, why, other than exhaustion and not wanting to be on the lam, she had so easily surrendered and what all that talk about a "plan" was.

  It took some time, but eventually he got it.

  Broome had become Lorraine's confidant and confessor, and while he hated to admit it, he still liked being with her, which, of course, might explain his troubled relationships with women.

  Lorraine knew that he had questions still, so she tried her best to answer them. During their last private meeting, he said, "Tell me about Ross Gunther."

  "He was my first kill," Lorraine, now garbed in that federal-pen orange, told him. "After my husband, of course. I was a little too ambitious, but it paid off."

  "What do you mean, ambitious?"

  "See, I liked Stacy. She was a nice kid who'd been battered down by men her whole life. She had this horrible boyfriend named Ricky Mannion. You wouldn't believe what he would do to her. And then, because sometimes one creep isn't enough, Stacy ends up attracting the attention of a second total psycho named Ross Gunther. So my original plan was to kill both."

  "What went wrong?"

  Lorraine smiled and looked off. "Killing can be a little, well, like sex for most men I know. After you do it once, you kinda lose the urge for a little while. So I killed Gunther and instead of killing Mannion, I found it more interesting to just pin the murder on him. Truth was, killing Gunther alone wouldn't have freed Stacy. I needed to get rid of both of them. It's a funny logic, I admit that, but it works."

  "So that was year one?"

  "Yes."

  Then Broome got to the real heart of it. "And Stewart Green was year two?"

  "Yep. Here's the thing. I never knew what happened to him. I mean, I knew I killed him. I sent Cassie up there because I wanted her to know she was free. I didn't think she'd freak. I should have known. That was a mistake on my part, and I learned my lesson. Anyway, when nobody ever found Stewart's body... well, I never really knew what happened either. It kinda freaked me out. I figured that Cassie hid the body or something. But then she vanished too. I even wondered for a bit if maybe Ray Levine had killed her and hidden both bodies, especially after I spotted him by the ruins a few weeks ago just before Carlton Flynn showed up."

  "Wait, you saw him?"

  Lorraine nodded. "I almost called the whole thing off, but I figured, I wouldn't be alive by next Mardi Gras, so what the hell."

  "So it was you who attacked Ray with the bat and stole the camera. You wanted the pictures he took."

  "Guilty," Lorraine said. "You're not going to charge me with assault, are you?"

  "We can let it slide."

  "Wouldn't look like much next to all those dead bodies, would it? Anyway, where were we? Cassie, right?"

  Broome nodded.

  "I didn't want to mess up her life or anything, but I needed to know what happened. It haunted me. I tried to find her, but she really managed to vanish. Meanwhile I watched you, Broome, chase your own tail trying to find what happened to Stewart Green. You had no idea what happened. Without a body, you really had no case. See, I learned from that. All that confusion. So I decided to change my MO."

  "You decided to hide the bodies," Broome said.

  "Yep."

  "You made it look like maybe the men had gone missing or ran away."

  "Exactly. If I kept leaving dead bodies up there, the cops would be all over it. I'd have to find new spots every year. It'd be too much, you know what I'm saying? But with disappearances, well, in many cases there was nothing to go on."

  "There's one thing I still don't get."

  "Then ask away, handsome."

  Broome shouldn't be enjoying this. "You told Megan--Cassie--that you always knew where she was. How?"

  "Oh, that was a lie," Lorraine said. "I had no idea until recently."

  That surprised him. "I don't get it. How did you finally find her?"

  "The truth is, Cassie--let's not call her Megan, that's not how I knew her--Cassie was the best. I loved her. Truly. And she loved the life. That's the part they don't talk about, Broome. You hear about the drugs and the prostitution and the abuse, but that's not the whole picture. You've seen the clubs, Broome. For some of the girls, this is the best they'll ever get. It's fun and exciting. It's a party every night and in this miserable drone of a life, what's wrong with that?"

  "And Cassie was one of those girls?"

  "Oh, she was indeed. I knew she'd be missing the life. So, that's why, even after seventeen years, I wasn't surprised when she came back to the club for a visit. She told you about that, right?"

  Broome nodded. "She did."

  "She pretended to come down to Atlantic City for some stupid convention, but of course she ended up back in La Creme."

  "And you recognized her?"

  "Yep. So I followed her back to the Tropicana. I got friends at the front desk. They gave me her real name and address. I went up to her place and figured a way to get her back down here."

  "You pretended that you saw Stewart. You acted like maybe he had something to do with Carlton Flynn."

  "Right. And when I saw her reaction, I knew that she didn't know what happened to the body either. So now it's your turn, Broome." Lorraine leaned forward. "Tell me about Stewart Green. That's always been the big mystery to me. Tell me what happened to his body."

  So he did. He told her the whole story about Ray Levine cutting up the corpse. Lorraine listened intently.

  "Poor, sweet Ray," she said.

  "Which begs yet another question," Broome said. "How did Carlton Flynn's Saint Anthony medal end up in Ray Levine's apartment?"

  "I put it there," Lorraine sa
id. "How else?"

  "How did you get in?"

  "You're kidding, right? Ray lived in a basement with narrow windows. I opened one and tossed the medal into the middle of the room. Simple as that. Funny thing, though, about Ray cutting up the body."

  "What about it?"

  "It's like the opposite of what I said."

  "I'm not following."

  "When I experienced violence, I found out I had a taste for it. When poor Ray did, he found out the opposite. It brought me to life. It crushed him. It's all in how we're hardwired, Broome. He was too soft. It wasn't Cassie leaving that destroyed him. It was that he couldn't live with all that blood..."

  Broome wanted to ask more, but she said, "Enough for today, hon. I got a TV thing."

  And that was what Broome had realized. That was her plan.

  She was close to getting caught. They had found the bodies. They had found out about her killing her husband on Mardi Gras. The feds were involved. It was only a question of time, and she didn't have much of that left anyway. But the moment she surrendered, well, a star was born.