The Purrfect Murder

in.
    “State prosecutor will get him.” Big Mim hoped so, anyway. “Sixty-two thousand dollars in cash and all that jewelry. And he cataloged every single woman he had taken money, jewelry, and panties from. It’s so bizarre. Why catalog?”
    “Possession.” Tazio, with insight, said, “He still felt he possessed them.”
    “The panties. How can anyone live that down?” Gretchen laughed.
    “He’ll be living it down in jail. And maybe this time he’ll be the victim.” Tazio felt a flash of genuine hate for Mike.
    “Noddy will bring him soap on a rope so he doesn’t have to bend over in the shower.” Gretchen laughed.
    “Gretchen.” Big Mim pretended to be scandalized.
    “Noddy will divorce him if she has a grain of sense.” Tazio shook her head.
    “I can’t imagine the humiliation she feels.” Paul glanced at the article again.
    “He was probably complicit in Will’s murder, but it will take a great deal of work to prove it. The rub is proving he killed Carla. He was absent from his table, but so were others.” Big Mim folded her hands on her lap. “Rick will crack it. I have faith in him.”

34
    M ike McElvoy, in the cell next to Jonathan Bechtal’s, talked to him over the days. When he was talking to him, he listened to Jonathan’s delusions about being the hammer arm of God.
    Neither man particularly liked the other.
    A week had passed since Mike’s arrest. Noddy refused to visit him. The guard gave him the daily papers. Each day his shame deepened—not guilt but shame.
    “You’re cooked.” Jonathan cheerfully read the papers, too.
    “Shut up.”
    “Don’t tell me to shut up, you pervert. What do you do with those panties? Jerk off into them?” Mike ignored this. “Couldn’t get enough from your wife. She’s dumped you, too.”
    “Shut up. No one visits you.”
    Jonathan’s face darkened. His beard, now straggly since he wasn’t allowed any grooming implements, made him look fiercer. “My angel can’t visit me. No one must know.”
    “Married, is she?” Mike crossed his arms over his chest.
    “You shut your filthy mouth. She’s a pure, sweet angel. She’s not married. She’ll never marry. She’s married to our great cause of saving lives. They’ll kill me eventually, but I die a martyr. I die for the unborn.”
    “She’ll open her legs before your body is cold.” Mike could give as good as he got.
    Jonathan slammed up against the cell bars between them. “I’ll strangle you if you get near enough.”
    “Yeah. Yeah.”
    As it was Monday, the usual medley of drunks from the weekend had been released. Only the two of them were incarcerated.
    Jonathan, clever in his way, lowered his anger and his voice. “Why didn’t you take the money and the jewelry and run?”
    Mike got up, pacing. “Never thought I’d be caught. Every one of those women had something to hide. Affairs. Drinking or drug problems. The usual. I’d drop a few knowing hints, looks, and wait for a guilty flush. You’d be surprised how easy it can be. And you know, a few wanted it. Bored with their husbands.”
    “You shouldn’t sleep with a woman if you don’t love her, if you don’t marry her.” Jonathan truly was a Puritan.
    “You say. You miss a lot, buddy.” Mike smiled sarcastically. “Why didn’t you run? You might have gotten away with it. Killed more doctors.”
    “I wanted to be caught. I wanted to be heard.”
    “People think you’re nuts.”
    Jonathan’s anger welled up again; he forced it down. “Saving lives, that’s crazy now. You said you were a member of Love of Life. What’s the matter with you?”
    “I do think it’s murder.” Mike paused. “And I didn’t kill anyone.”
    “I did,” Jonathan solemnly declared. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.”
    “You helped it along.” Mike started to say, “And you hurt our cause,” but he didn’t, because they’d had that discussion before, at high decibel level.
    “I’d do it again. We planned it. We gathered a lot of money for the cause, and my angel is keeping it. Love of Life doesn’t know of our great plan to shut down every abortion clinic and doctor in America. Those were my letters after I was in jail. I’d written them before. My angel thought of that so we’d get even more money for our cause. Killing Will would open their bank accounts to us. It would scare the money right out of them. We’d get everything out of those murdering women.”
    “One of them turned out to be braver than