There is a water bottle next to her with a straw. She lifts it to her lips, and her eyes close.
“I became consumed with justice. You, Mr. Lockwood, you worry about stopping bad people before they commit more crimes. What you do is admirable and even practical — you stop crimes. You prevent more people from having to go through the horror of what happened to Frederick and me. But that wasn’t my motivation. I didn’t think or even care if the Jane Street Six did it again. I had that rage. I had that rage — and I had to put it somewhere.”
“Tell me what you did next,” I say.
“Research,” she replies. “Do you research your enemies, Mr. Lockwood?”
“I do.”
“I learned that three of the six came from religious families — Billy Rowan, Lake Davies, and Lionel Underwood. I also figured that they were scared, trying to find a way to come in from the cold. So I made that pitiful religious appeal on television. And I prayed — no joke — that one of them would call me.”
“And one did call you,” I say.
“Billy Rowan. That part was true, just like I told everyone. He came in the kitchen door.”
“What happened next?”
“That baseball bat. A literal one rather than figurative. I hid it next to the refrigerator. Billy was sitting at my kitchen table. I asked if he wanted a Coke. He said yes, please. So polite. Hands folded in his lap. Crying. Telling me how sorry he was. But I had planned this. He had his back to me. I took the bat and whacked him in the skull. Billy’s whole body shuddered. I hit him again. He teetered on the chair and then fell to the linoleum. I hit him again and again. That rage. That burning rage. It was finally being fed — you’ve felt that?”
I nod.
“Billy was on the floor. Bleeding. Eyes closed. I raised the bat over my head again. Like an axe. It felt so good, Mr. Lockwood. You know. Beforehand I’d worry that the actual act would make me queasy. But my God, it was the opposite. I was enjoying myself. I was idly wondering how many more blows it would take to kill him when I suddenly had a better idea.”
“That being?”
Vanessa Hogan smiles again. “Find out what he knows.”
“Makes sense,” I agree.
“I called Nero Staunch. We had met in Lower Manhattan at a meeting for the victims’ families. I asked him to come alone. The two of us dragged Billy down into my basement. We tied him to a table, then we woke him. Nero used a power drill with a narrow bit. He started on Billy’s toes. Then he moved to his ankles. At first, Billy claimed he didn’t know where the others were — they had all split up. Nero didn’t buy it. It took some time. Billy loved Edie Parker. Did you know they were engaged?”
“I did, yes.”
“So Billy tried to hang on, which only made it worse. Inevitably, the truth came out. He didn’t know about the others, but he and Edie were hiding together. They planned on turning themselves in. And you’re correct, Mr. Lockwood — those two didn’t throw cocktails that night. They’d planned to, he admitted, but when the bus went over the railing, they all just ran. Billy and Edie’s hope was that if they surrendered early, they’d be spared the worst of it, especially if one of the parents was willing to forgive them.”
Vanessa Hogan ups the sickly-sweet smile.
“That parent,” I say, “being you, of course.”
“Of course. To be on the safe side, Billy had come alone to feel out the situation, leaving Edie hiding alone at a lake cabin owned by an English professor at SUNY in Binghamton. Nero and I drove up with Billy in the trunk. We found Edie Parker. We made sure she didn’t know anything more — which enraged me. I wanted to find them all, but obviously that wasn’t going to happen quite yet. Then we finished with Edie and Billy.”
“What did you do with the bodies?” I ask.
“Why would you want to know?”
“Idle curiosity, I guess.”
Vanessa Hogan’s eyes are on mine now, probing. A few seconds later, she waves her hand and says, “Oh, why not?” in a too-cheerful tone. “Nero had an alliance with a mob boss named Richie B who lived in Livingston. Richie B had a furnace on the back of this huge estate. We brought the bodies there. That was the end of that.”
Her story is pretty much what I had expected, and she relishes the telling of it.
“So two are dead almost immediately,” I say. “A few years later, Lake Davies turns herself in. She goes to Nero Staunch and makes a deal for Lionel Underwood. Were you aware of that?”
Vanessa frowns. “Nero told me — but after the fact. I wasn’t happy about it.”
“You wanted to get both of them?”
“Of course. But Nero said it wasn’t as easy as you see on TV to kill her in prison. For one thing, Lake Davies was being held in a federal facility. That makes it harder, he said. But between you and me? I think Nero was just an old-world sexist. Killing men? No problem. But his stomach couldn’t handle Edie Parker. I took the lead in that.”
I nod slowly, trying to put it together as she speaks. “So that’s four of the six accounted for,” I say.
“Yes.”
“And then, what, you heard nothing?”
“For over forty years,” she says.
“And then someone — maybe a man named Randy — comes to Nero Staunch with information on Ry Strauss’s whereabouts,” I say. “Nero is too old and sick to do anything about it anymore. He’s in a wheelchair. His power is all ceremonial. His nephew Leo is the boss now, and Leo’s against this kind of vigilantism. So Nero calls you. I can show you three calls coming from the Staunch family craft brewery to your home. Landlines, which, if you don’t mind me saying, is old-school.”
“That’s not proof of anything.”
“Not in the slightest,” I agree. “But I don’t need proof. This isn’t a court of law. It’s just you and I having a chat. And I still need answers.”
“Why?”
“I told you.”
“Oh right.” Vanessa nods, remembering. “The Hut of Horrors. Your uncle and your cousin.”
“Yes.”
“So go on,” she says. “Tell me the rest of your theory.”
I hesitate — I want her to say it — but then I dive in. “I don’t know if the information came to you directly from Nero Staunch or if Staunch sent this Randy to you. That doesn’t really matter. You ended up getting the contents of Ry Strauss’s safe deposit box. That told you what name he was using, where he lived, perhaps a phone number. Ry was understandably panicked about the robbery. You called him and pretended to be someone from the bank. What did you tell him exactly?”
She narrows her eyes, tries to look wily. “What makes you so sure it was me?”
I open the file I’ve brought with me and pull out the first still from the CCTV camera in the basement. “We thought the perpetrator was a small, bald man. But once I realized that the killer could be a woman, one who perhaps lost her hair because of chemotherapy, well, that’s you, isn’t it?”
She says nothing.
I pull out the second still and hand it to her. On it, a man with jet-black hair and a brunette are exiting via the front door.
“This is the CCTV from the lobby of the Beresford. It was taken six hours after the one I just showed you from the basement. The man” — I point — “is a building resident named Seymour Rappaport. He lives on the sixteenth floor. The woman with him, however, is not his wife. No one knows who she is. Seymour didn’t know either. He said the woman was in the elevator when he got in, so she had to have come from a higher floor. We checked pretty thoroughly. There is no sign of this woman entering the building. You were very clever. You wore an overcoat on the way in via the basement. You dumped it in the middle of Ry’s apartment. No one would notice it unless they specifically looked. When you put on that wig, the bald man vanished for good. Then you took the elevator down and exited with another resident. Genius really.”