“He played poker every Wednesday night. Like clockwork he drove to this mansion in Avon Lake. He usually left around three or four A.M. One morning when he walked out to his Lexus, I was waiting.”

Kate stared at him, her expression braced. She knew what he was going to tell her next. It was like watching a train mow down a stalled car.

“I hit him with the taser. When he went down, I cuffed him, threw him in the trunk and took him to a warehouse I’d rented. Bad neighborhood on the waterfront. I tied him to a chair, and by God I got a confession. Got all the gory fuckin’ details on tape. Torture. Rape. Not just my wife, but my kids. Little girls.”

“Oh, John—”

He cut her off. “I knew that tape would be deemed inadmissible.” He blew out a breath, wiped his wet palms on his slacks. “I didn’t plan to kill him, Kate. All I wanted was the confession. But when he told me what he did to them . . . it was like I stepped out of my body. I watched while someone else doused that sick motherfucker with gas and burned him alive.”

John could feel the tremors wracking his body. His breaths shuddered out like stifled sobs. The sound was inordinately loud in the silence of the house. When he held out his hands, they shook uncontrollably, so he set them on the table in front of him, looked Kate square in the eye and told her what he’d never told another human being. “I watched Vespian burn, and I didn’t feel a goddamn thing but satisfaction.”

She blinked rapidly, but it wasn’t enough to stanch the flow of tears. Her hand shook when she wiped them away.

“Now you know what kind of man you slept with tonight,” he said. “You know what I did. Why I did it.” He shrugged. “Poetic justice? Cop gone bad? Or just plain murder in the first degree?”

For the span of several heartbeats, the only sound came from his quickened breathing and the howl of the wind around the eaves. After a moment, Kate cleared her throat. “Did the cops know you did it?”

“They suspected me from the get-go. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to connect the dots. It didn’t take long for the cops to start sniffing around.” He forced a smile. “But I was careful. I didn’t leave them anything to work with. All they had was circumstantial crap.”

“Enough to put you before a grand jury.”

“Yeah, but it took that jury less than an hour to hand down a no bill.” He smiled. “You see, the real evidence was against Vespian’s partner. I know because I planted it. That wasn’t in the papers.”

“Vespian’s partner was eventually tried and convicted.”

“He’s serving a life sentence in the federal pen in Terre Haute.” He smiled. “Now that is poetic justice.”

“What did you do after that?”