Conklin reached across the bed and grabbed Nicole by her thick dark hair; he pulled her across the bed and onto the floor. He stepped on her right hand and yelled, “Drop it!” until the knife was lying on the ground.

He kicked the knife away, and then, Nicole’s hair still wrapped around his hand, he forced the woman to her feet.

Janet was screaming, “Stop! Nicole didn’t do anything. It was me. I killed all those women. It was me. It was me.”

The shrieking was about to take off the top of my head. I cuffed Nicole as her mother pleaded, “You have got this wrong. I’m the one. It’s me.”

Nicole was regaining her equanimity. She said, “Mom, stop the hysterics. They’ve got nothing on you, and they’ve got nothing on me.”

I said, “Nicole Worley, you’re under arrest on suspicion of murder.”

I stepped behind Janet, told her to put her hands behind her back. I cuffed and arrested her too, read both of them their rights.

I said, “Mrs. Worley, we’ve got plenty of murder charges to go around. So no fighting for credit, okay?”

Nicole was laughing, but I didn’t find her amusing. She was one of the scariest people I’d met in my life.

Conklin took charge of Janet, and I gave Nicole a shove toward the door.

I was desperate to get her alone in the box.

Chapter 111

Chapter 111

CLAIRE WAS IN the basement of number 2, standing with Clapper in front of the chest-type freezer. They’d been staring at it for at least a full minute. She said, “What are you waiting for, Charlie? Christmas?”

“It was Christmas for someone. See how nicely the presents are wrapped?”

When the condensation blew off, Claire could clearly see that the freezer was packed to the brim with body parts. There was no order, no organization. Parts had been loaded into the chest helter-skelter, all loosely wrapped in plastic.

Clapper said, “I’m going to be the first to state the obvious. This killer had no respect for the dead.”

“What brass to leave all of this right here in an unlocked chest. I just hope we’ve got proof positive of whodunit in here. I’m praying.”

“We’re going over this freezer for prints as soon as you’re done here. There will be prints. I can almost see them with my naked eyes. We’ll swab for DNA too.

“And listen, Claire,” Clapper added, “you’re not going to like this, but we need to know how many bodies we’ve got here. So can you go through it here? Count the pieces?”

It was better to load the freezer onto a flatbed truck and then take it and its contents back to the lab. But if counting pieces was a priority, it had to be done.