Andrea had not really thought about Wexler as a psychopath until now. He fit the criteria: lack of shame or remorse, grandiose sense of self-importance, manipulative, poor impulse control. She was intimately familiar with the list because she had noted the same attributes in her father.
“All right,” she said. “But we have to have some kind of plan or framework or—”
“No lesson plan for this, partner.” Bible shrugged, as if it was inconsequential. “You’re just playing hopscotch, all right? Throw a rock onto the square, wait for Wexler to jump to it.”
Andrea didn’t want another homily. She wanted details. “So—what? We let him lecture us on fava beans and hope he says by-the-way yeah I committed a bunch of fraud where do I sign my confession?”
“That’d be great, but I don’t think that’s gonna happen,” Bible said. “We steer the conversation. We keep nudging him along the way. Eventually, he’ll get to the right square.”
“I can’t do metaphors right now, Bible. This is too important. Every time you’ve thrown me into the deep end, I’ve figured out how to swim. This time is different. I need broad strokes.”
“Okay, I hear ya,” he said. “Let’s plan this out. I’ll take the lead in the interview. That good by you?”
Andrea had expected as much. “Yes.”
“Then ol’ Dean comes in and he says, ‘I’ll only talk to her.’” Bible pointed his finger at Andrea’s chest. “So, I get up and leave you two alone. Then what?”
Andrea chewed her lip.
“Or we decide you’re gonna take the lead, right?” Bible didn’t expect an answer. “And ol’ Dean says, ‘Nope, not talking to that girl. I only talk to men.’ And you have to get up and leave.”
“Then we both—”
“We both spend the next two hours getting our heads on straight,” Bible said. “That’s how we prepare. That’s the strategy. We can’t anticipate what he’s gonna say. We think he’ll wanna talk about the farm? Maybe he wants to talk about Emily. We think he wants to talk about Emily? Maybe he wants to talk about how his mama never loved him or his daddy shot a mockingbird.”
“So we just let him talk about whatever he wants to talk about?”
“Correct,” Bible said. “You heard the Boss. Talking is exactly what we want him to do. We get him wound up, we give him an audience, he makes a mistake. We can only keep in mind where we need to end up. And where is that?”
“Jesus.” Andrea wasn’t up for the Socratic method, either. “The blackmail. The bogus land deal. The labor board case. The conservation easement. The tax evasion. The bogus charity. Emily fucking Vaughn.”
“We just need one of those.” Bible held up his finger. “We get him to admit to one bad thing. Then we walk him through it, and we get him to another bad thing. Then another bad thing. Throw the rock, jump to the square. That’s how we win. It takes time.”
She told Bible, “I’m so fucking tired of all this hurry up and wait.”
“It’s the nature of the beast.”
“It’s fucking annoying.” Andrea’s frustration gave way to anger. “Wexler either raped and killed Emily Vaughn or he knows who did. He’s terrorized Esther’s family for forty years. He’s got his foot on Star Bonaire’s neck. He’s pushed Melody Brickel to the brink of bankruptcy. Alice Poulsen killed herself to get away from him. He’s got at least a dozen more girls who are living corpses on the farm. Every fucking thing that guy touches either withers away or dies and he always manages to get away with it.”
Bible studied her carefully. “Sounds to me like you’re making this personal.”
“You’re damn right I am.”
Andrea had been too impatient to wait around for a ride back to the motel. She’d walked the short distance from the hospital, the bag marked PATIENT BELONGINGS swinging from her hand. She shouldn’t have bothered. Her clothes could not be saved. Her waterlogged service weapon was being sent back to Baltimore and she wouldn’t get a replacement until tomorrow morning. Her Android was still in her backpack in Bible’s SUV. Her iPhone was so damaged that parts of the guts were showing through the broken glass. Even her shoes were trashed. Pool water squicked out with every step.
The longest, hottest shower in the world had finally made her feel clean, but nothing could clear Andrea’s mind of Dean Wexler. She kept silently going back over what Esther Vaughn had told her. Not about the blackmail and fraud, but about losing her shit when she’d found Wexler holding Judith in the garden. At a molecular level, Andrea understood that kind of terror. She also understood what it felt like to think of yourself as one kind of person, then have trauma split you into another.
As with Laura, as with Esther and Star and Alice, Andrea had led two different lives: the one before she had met a psychopath and the one after.
She walked over to the window and peered through the curtains. The road was empty, the forest behind was cast in total darkness. The surveillance teams would be set up by now. Six Marshals would be guarding all the roads leading into and out of the farm, watching the activities, trying to ascertain the locations of Wexler and Nardo. The strike team would be en route from Baltimore. The warrants would be in process, maybe already signed. There was nothing for Andrea to do but try not to pull out her hair while she waited, waited, waited.
She looked at the clock: 11:10 p.m. She had at least ninety more minutes before she was face-to-face with Dean Wexler again.
Andrea pressed her forehead to the cold glass. Bible had told her not to plan, but she had to plan. She didn’t have his natural self-confidence, let alone his decades of experience. She conjured up the cramped interrogation room at the back of Stilton’s police station. She tried to imagine herself sitting across from Wexler. Instead, she found herself back in the farmhouse kitchen. Star assembling the ingredients for bread. Wexler droning on like a televangelist. The self-satisfied look on his face. The long pause he had taken before allowing Star to place his glass of water on the table.
He liked being in control. He liked other people witnessing it.
Which meant he would want both Andrea and Bible in the room.