Corey Ziegler’s face froze as if he’d been blindsided.
“Now would be a really good time for you to tell me exactly how and why you killed Marzena Wolski.” Maggie paused, then continued, “And Ronda Wingfield. And Sarah Jacobs. And Annie Nakamura. And kidnapped Zoe McCabe.”
“You bitch.”
“Why don’t you start with Wolski. She’s the one who’s going to send you up the proverbial river for the rest of your pathetic life.”
“I should call a lawyer.”
“Fine. You can call any lawyer you want. Just give us a name and we’ll contact them for you. Or let you call them yourself if you prefer.” Maggie paused for a second. “However, given the hard evidence we’ve got against you . . .”
“What evidence? I told you I was just dragging the bag out of the way . . .”
“Dragging the bag’s just the soft evidence. It’s the hard evidence that’s gonna put your cute little ass in prison.”
“That’s bullshit. You have no hard evidence.”
Maggie gave him a sweet smile. “Oh yes, we do.”
Ziegler stared at her in silence. “What hard evidence?” he finally asked.
“I’ll be happy to tell you. But before I do, I’m just curious about a few things. About the actress Marzena Wolski. I was just wondering. Were you planning to spend the night in the park fooling around with her dead body? Are you that much of a creep? Into necrophilia and all that?”
Dead silence from the other side of the table.
“Y’know, just looking at your creepy face, I bet you were. I bet you’re the kind of guy who likes having sex with dead women. I’ll bet you like the dead ones maybe because an asshole like you can’t get it up with any woman who’s still alive. Any woman able to tell you how revolting you are. Jerk like you couldn’t possibly attract any woman who has a say in the matter, can you, Ziegler? No. You’ve got to kidnap, rape and murder them.”
“Fuck you, bitch.” Ziegler’s words sounded like a screech of pain.
“Fuck me?” Maggie shouted back at him. “You want to fuck me? What a joke. You don’t have the balls to fuck me. You know something, Little Corey? Even if I gave you a chance to do that, I don’t think you could pull it off. I don’t think you have the balls to even try having sex with a gorgeous woman like Wolski without kidnapping her and tying her up. Or with Jacobs. Or Wingfield. Or Zoe McCabe. Or me, for that matter. None of us would go near a disgusting creep like you.”
“They loved me!” Ziegler’s voice rose to an angry shriek. “They all loved me! Told me I was the best they ever had, so take that, you fucking cock-sucking bitch!”
“Sorry, Corey. Not one of them would ever go near a creep like you unless you had them tied down.”
“Every one of them wanted me. They all said so. So stick that up your stupid ass!”
“So you admit you fucked them all. And then you killed them? Isn’t that right?”
“I didn’t kill them.”
“Of course you killed them,” said Maggie. “And, like I told you, we’ve got the hard evidence to prove it.”
“What kind of hard evidence?”
“Deoxyribonucleic acid.” said Maggie.
Ziegler said nothing. Just looked confused and shook his head from side to side.
“Don’t know what that is? Well, maybe you know it better by its initials. DNA? D for David, N for Nancy, A for Asshole. Remember how we swabbed your cheek when you were arrested tonight and sent the swab out to the lab?”
“Won’t prove a thing, bitch. I gave her a bath before I packed her. I didn’t leave a speck of anything in that bag.”
“Sorry to have to tell you this, Mr. Ziegler. There’s an old saying among forensic scientists: Wherever you go, whatever you touch, no matter how well you try to clean it, you always leave something of yourself behind. There were a few, more than a few actually, hairs and skin cells inside Wolski’s body bag. Hair and skin cells that didn’t belong to her. And we haven’t even gotten the rape kit back yet.”
“You’re lying.”
“Sadly for you, I’m not. You may have washed and cleaned Wolski’s body carefully before you put her in the bag, but when you did, well, that’s what tripped you up. And since, unlike with Jacobs and Wingfield, you never got a chance to dump her out and take the bag home, your hairs and skin cells are still in there. Plus maybe a few from Jacobs and Wingfield as well.”
Ziegler sat silently, narrowing his eyes to slits, staring across the table as if through sheer force of will he could make Maggie take back what she’d told him.
“And, you know,” she said with a gotcha tone, “I’m willing to bet when we get the results back from the lab, we’re going to be able to prove that all those skin cells and the hairs our people found inside the bag that weren’t Wolski’s came from you. That, my friend, is what any judge and any jury would call hard evidence. So I’m afraid you’re screwed. In fact, you’re so screwed that when you do ask for a lawyer I’m going to bet he or possibly she, though I can’t imagine any woman would ever be willing to defend a creep like you, anyway, your lawyer will probably advise you to cop a plea. Admit what you’ve done and try to convince the court that when you acted you were temporarily insane . . . driven by irresistible impulses. And hope for a lesser sentence or maybe commitment to a psychiatric facility. But I don’t think any jury will buy it. Especially if there are any women on the jury, which there surely will be.”
“What about my press conference?”
“I wouldn’t bother if I were you. You’ve brutalized and killed what? Four women? Maybe five? Nah,that just doesn’t add up to fame. Just a tiny footnote on the list of the world’s ugliest assholes. On the other hand, if you tell us where you’ve got Zoe McCabe stashed away, well maybe . . .”
“Four women? Maybe five? What the fuck are you talking about? There were only three . . .”
“That you killed?”
“I’m not saying I killed them . . .”
“No. But the DNA will.”
“There were only three.”
“What three?”
“Jacobs, Wingfield and Wolski.”
“Did you kill them?”
Ziegler looked down. He looked beaten. Maggie pressed her advantage. “Look, you miserable bastard, we’ve got your DNA to prove what you did. Showing some contrition might be the only chance you have for any leniency.”
“There were only three,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper.
Maggie narrowed her eyes. “Does that mean Zoe McCabe is still alive?”
“Zoe who?”
“Zoe McCabe. The young actress you abducted the night before last. You killed her neighbor, a woman named Anna Nakamura, while you were in the process of hauling Zoe away.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“But you just admitted you did kill the other three.”
“Yes. I was able to get close to them because two were clients of the Caswell Agency. The dancer I met at a party at MOMA.”
Jesus, thought Maggie, how in hell did the NYPD miss that common factor?
“But I don’t know anything about anybody named Zoe McCabe.”
“Is it just that you haven’t killed her yet? Perhaps she’s still alive.”
Ziegler shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I know nothing about anybody named Zoe anything.”
It suddenly occurred to Maggie that Ziegler might be telling the truth. That Zoe’s disappearance, despite the similarities, might be unconnected to the three that came before. Which pushed that investigation right back to where it was before.
“Where did you keep them? The other three. Before you killed them?”
Ziegler looked Maggie in the eyes and smiled his thin smile. “In a secret place.”
“Where?”
“I’m not going to tell you unless you let me talk to the press like you promised. I want my own grand press conference. Everybody will be there. I’ll admit everything. How I caught them. Where I kept them. How and why I killed them. But first I want my moment in the sun.”
“Your moment in the sun?”
“Yes. I want people to know me. To hate me. To fear their daughters will someday meet somebody like me.”
“You tell us about how you killed Annie Nakamura and kidnapped Zoe McCabe or there won’t be any press conference.”
“I never heard of anybody named Annie Nakamura or Zoe McCabe. I only go after big names. The stars. The brightest lights. Not some nobody.”
Maggie’s gut feel was that Richard Ziegler was telling the truth. And that meant Zoe might still be in jeopardy. Being held captive maybe by some copycat killer mimicking the so-called Star-Struck Strangler. She had one more tack to try. A long shot, but she had to try it.
“You think maybe your friend Tyler might have been copycatting you? You are buddies with Tyler, right?”
“Tyler? Tyler who?”
“You know the Tyler I’m talking about.”
“I only know one Tyler and I haven’t seen that crazy asshole for years. Not since he got his ass kicked out of Hadley and Bradshaw for beating up one of the other associates. Wanted me to vouch for him. That stupid prick.”
“Really? Tyler just told us that you confided to him that you were kidnapping those women and killing them. In fact, Tyler’s the A-list guy I told you about that we have in the other room.”
“Tyler fucking Bradshaw? What I told him when we were having drinks one night after work was just this fantasy that I’d had for years. At least at the time it was a fantasy. As for being A-list? That crazy loony tunes isn’t even Z-list. He’s off the fucking charts. Like I told you, I haven’t seen him in years.”
“Thank you for your help,” Mr. Ziegler,” said Maggie. “FYI, there is a press conference scheduled for noon. Sadly, I don’t think you’re going to attend.”