Smokin' Seventeen: A Stephanie Plum Novel (Stephanie Plum Novels)

breath away.
    “You killed Lou Dugan, didn’t you?”
    He grinned. “I’ve been waiting for you to figure it out. I ran around the car just for you tonight. I knew you’d watched the tape from the crime scene. Pretty cool, right? And the bodies I addressed to you. Did that freak Morelli out?”
    “Yeah.”
    He gave a bark of laughter. “I’ve had really crapola luck lately. My life hasn’t been a lot of fun. Lost my house, my dog, my car, and my job. Lost my wife, but good riddance to that one. Went to jail for a while. Not a good experience. And to add insult to injury I had to move in with my parents. So I’m feeling pretty down. I’m working at a shit job. Had to kill mycousin to get it. Plus I’m busting ass killing all those fucking poker players. And one day, like a gift from God, my mother presents me with you. She meets your mother in the checkout line at the market, and it’s ordained from that moment on that you’re mine. And life is fun again.”
    “Has it occurred to you that you might be crazy?”
    “I don’t feel crazy.”
    “You killed five people!”
    “Actually it was seven. No wait, there were two in Georgia. Nine.”
    “Doesn’t that bother you?”
    “No. It was easy. I guess I just have a talent for killing people. I’m good at it. I snap their necks. No blood. Okay, sometimes they spit up a little, but it’s not like getting shot.”
    I’d faced down my share of crazy killers, but never someone this cold. I did my best to keep it together. I didn’t think Dave was the sort of guy who would respond well to drama. “Ick!”
    “The hard part is getting rid of them. I buried the two in Georgia in a cornfield. No one’s found them. I drove my cousin and her boyfriend down to the Pine Barrens and set the car on fire. I was worried about DNA, but honestly I don’t think DNA is all it’s cracked up to be.”
    “You did it to get a job?”
    “Yeah. Smart, right? Not only did I get her job, but she’d lifted money from the company safe, and I got the money, too.”
    “And Lou Dugan?”
    “I was sort of in business with Dugan. I went to schoolwith his son, and I was over to his house a lot when I was a kid. When I moved to Georgia I stayed in touch with Lou. He was a sharp businessman. I learned a lot from him. I was making foreclosures at the bank, and Lou saw a way to make money on them. I’d foreclose on some loser’s house, and Dugan would buy it for way under market value through one of his holding companies. And then we figured out how we could get creative, and by manipulating some paperwork we could snatch houses right out from under people. Problem was we yanked a mortgage from some whiner who didn’t just roll over when he lost his house.”
    “That’s when you went to jail?”
    “I was only in jail until my bail bond was set. I got out and started cleaning house. I got rid of the two men under me who knew what was going on. They could have testified, and I would have been sent away for a long, long time.”
    “The cornfield?”
    “Yeah. And then Lou got nervous. I got my kickback from him in cash, but he was sitting there with all these hot properties in his holding companies.”
    “Do you still have the money?”
    “The lawyers have the money. Trial lawyers and divorce lawyers. I should have been a lawyer. The only money I have came from the stash my cousin stole.”
    “So you killed Lou because he was nervous?”
    “He’d transferred a load of money into a Buenos Aires bank, and he was getting ready to disappear. Asked me todrive him to the airport. He was taking a red-eye. I had a feeling he was going to kill me, so I killed him first.”
    “Just like that.”
    “Yep. Came up behind him, choked him, and broke his neck. And then I had the same stupid body problem. I was driving him around in his car, thinking it was like that movie
Weekend at Bernie’s
. And I drive down Hamilton Avenue and see the backhoe sitting out in the bonds office lot. It’s three in the morning. No traffic. As dark as a witch’s heart. And there’s a backhoe waiting to dig a grave.
    “My mistake was that I didn’t dig it deep enough. I buried Lucarelli deeper, but they found him anyway. Then I decided to have some fun with Juki and Kulicki. I knew the security people installed video. What did you think of the Frankenstein mask? Good touch, right?”
    “I understand why you killed Dugan. I don’t get the other murders.”
    “I had to clean house. Lucarelli was