Pink narrowed his eyes, considering. “What are you, twenty-nine? Thirty? You’re too young to have been on the Huntsman taskforce. Huh. Yeah. I know you.” He smiled. “I never forget a face. It’ll come to me.”
The skin prickled between Jason’s shoulder blades. But then that was no doubt intended as intimidation. Image was everything in the serial killer business.
He kept his voice flat and unemotional. “I understand you’re allowed television and radio in your cell. You must be aware of the situation in Kingsfield. You’re not going to pretend you didn’t know the Huntsman—the real Huntsman—has returned?”
“The real…” Pink stopped. He laughed. A high breathy sound that raised the hair on the back of Jason’s neck. Pink stopped laughing. “Some little girl’s boyfriend breaks her neck, and you think that’s the work of the Huntsman?”
“This offender has the exact same MO.”
“This offender,” mimicked Pink. “Says who?”
“This offender has knowledge of things no one but the genuine Huntsman and law enforcement could know about those crimes.”
“The genuine—” Pink got control. He smiled again. “Maybe I have a-a disciple.”
Jason laughed. Maybe Kennedy was right. Maybe he did have a flair for the dramatic. “Yeah, right. Maybe you were the disciple.”
“No.”
Jason shrugged.
Pink’s eyes narrowed. “He doesn’t know everything. This brand new Huntsman of yours. I’ll bet money on that.”
Jason looked amused. “What do you think he doesn’t know?”
Pink watched him, as though trying to read Jason. He was probably very good at reading people. Jason stared right back. And again, he couldn’t help thinking Pink simply did not show the mental wear and tear prolonged solitary confinement typically inflicted. It was kind of depressing. Jason would have liked to know that Pink was suffering.
“It’s personal, isn’t it?” Pink said suddenly.
Jason felt a flicker of unease. “Yeah, personally I loathe psychopaths.”
Pink sat back in his chair, smiling knowledgeably. “Yep. It’s personal.” He clasped his hands, gently shaking the manacle chains as though he liked the sound of the links clinking. “I’ll tell you what this other Huntsman doesn’t know: the things you don’t know. The things that fucker Kennedy and the cops didn’t notice.”
“Like?”
“You’re fishing.” Pink’s rosebud mouth pursed scornfully.
“You’re faking.”
Something bright and inimical lit the empty depths of Pink’s eyes. “No, you little squirt. I’m not. You tell Kennedy to go over all his reports. All his files. All his notes. All his crime scene photos. His autopsy reports. He missed something ten years ago. Something he should have seen from the start. Something they all should have caught. You tell him to look again and look good. And then come and see me himself. I’m not wasting my time with the B Team.”
Jason nodded, picked up his file and rose. Pink watched him with cold satisfaction.
“Oh, wait.” Jason turned back. As though the idea had just struck him, he said, “Could you be talking about the mermaids?”
There was no clock, but he could hear the moments ticking by in the resounding silence.
Pink seemed genuinely stricken. Still as a statue, he stared at Jason. He didn’t seem to be breathing.
Jason smiled. “You don’t know what I mean, do you?”
Pink stammered, “Y-you—they—how do you know? No one ever—”
It was sort of fascinating to watch Pink’s confidence crumble. He’d been clutching that secret to his black and twisted heart all these years. So sure that in the final analysis he had outsmarted everyone even if only on this one point.
To him it would have been a major point.
Jason said, “There was already so much evidence against you. The trophies you took from the victims. The DNA splattered all over that van. All that hard forensic evidence. And the last thing anybody wanted to do was romanticize those homicides. So that piece of information was withheld until such time it was needed. Except it never was needed. It didn’t take that jury even eight hours to convict you.”