Page 64 of All He Takes
"No..." Harrison whimpered. "No, it can't be over... I wasn't done... I needed to take more pictures..."
"You'll never take another picture again." She kept her gun pointed at him, along with her deadly gaze.
"I didn't... I never understood why they all liked my father's work so much, but wouldn't even look at mine... why? Why? Why wasn't I good enough?"
A key trait of narcissism was a deep insecurity at one's core. Nicky knew that was what they were dealing with here.
"We make our own worth in life, Harrison," Nicky said. "You chose to live in your father's shadow. You could have been your own person, but you wasted your life."
"It wasn't supposed to be like this..." Harrison continued. "I was supposed to be the great one... I was supposed to make them all feel the way they made me feel..."
"A lot of people don't get the recognition they think they deserve," Nicky said. "But it doesn't make them evil."
"I'm not evil... I'm not..."
"Of course, you are," Nicky said. "You killed four people. Four innocent women who had lives and hopes and dreams. Do you know what that makes you?"
"I... I can't go to prison..."
"You're a murderer, Harrison," Nicky said, her voice full of disgust. "You're a sick, twisted, evil person."
She watched him lying on the ground, a look of fear on his face. He was defeated. She could tell. He wasn't going to get up again.
"I'm not evil..." Harrison's voice was soft now. He was struggling to stay conscious. "I just... I just wanted to be taken seriously... I just wanted..."
Nicky had enough of this. "Get up," she said, "or I'll shoot you right now."
He looked back at her. He was defeated. She could see it in his eyes. He was done.
Slowly, he lifted himself up. He was holding his stomach.
"Put your hands behind your back," she said.
She watched as he did it. She cuffed him, then she grabbed him by the arm and started dragging him to her car.
"You're going to jail," she said. "I'm taking you in. Don't say another word."
She opened the door and made him get inside. Then she slammed the door and walked around to the driver's side.
Harrison Smith was a deranged lunatic. He'd killed four women, maybe even more.
But now, he'd never hurt anyone else again.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
When Nicky walked into the briefing room at the FBI HQ in Jacksonville, she was surprised to see no one was there. The morning light slashed through the windows and fell across the floor, reflecting off the shiny surface and blinding her eyes. The long table of the room, with its many chairs, brought back so many memories for her. Memories of when she was first put in charge of the task force to find those missing girls.
Memories of her successes--and her failures.
Harrison Smith had been taken into custody. The amount of evidence against him was overwhelming, and Nicky knew this trial was already done and over with before it even began. He was a killer.
He'd get life.
The bodies of the girls he'd killed were found in his basement, stuffed into boxes and left to rot, as though they weren't human beings at all. The entire thing made Nicky want to crawl into herself and hide forever; she was grateful to have stopped Harrison but devastated she hadn't been able to save the girls he'd killed.
Paris Conner was on their list. If they'd looked sooner, or tried harder, would they have been able to prevent her death?
Nicky knew it was pointless to dwell on things she couldn't change. Dr. Graham would tell her that, of course, but she had to remember it herself sometimes, too.
