by Willow Rose
“I don’t know what happened,” she said, crying. “I set them up as usual; nothing was different.”
“Was anyone in here?” I asked, looking around the room where the patients had been. “Did anyone touch the dialysis lines?”
“No one who wasn’t supposed to.”
“But maybe someone who wouldn’t cause suspicion. Like a surgeon or a doctor?”
She shook her head. “Only Clark.”
My eyes grew wide, and my heart dropped. “Clark?”
She nodded. “Yes, he was here briefly, helping out. He’s new around here, so I didn’t really know him till he told me today.”
“What was his name more than Clark?”
“I don’t remember. I didn’t get a good look at his ID badge. His last name was something with a T.”
“Was he alone with the patients?” I asked. “Did you leave at any point?”
She shrugged. “I went out to get some more magazines for them. Some patients like to read while they wait for the treatment to be over. It’s a long time that they sit there. There isn’t much to do.”
I turned around and scanned the area, then spotted the jug leaned up against the wall in the back, a syringe next to it. I literally felt the blood as it left my face.
“What’s going on?” Matt asked.
I hurried to the jug and knelt next to it.
“Bleach?” Matt said. “Care to explain?”
“He injected it into the dialysis lines. That’s what caused them to go into cardiac arrest.”
“He did what?” he said. “But why?”
“Because he knew I would find out. He even left the jug of bleach like she did.”
Matt gave me a look. “Like who did? I think this is the time when you fill me in.”
“Back in two thousand and eight, there were nineteen deaths at a dialysis clinic in Texas in just four months. Most of them suffered cardiac arrest while still in dialysis. Two witnesses told the police they had seen a nurse inject bleach into the lines of those patients and an investigation was started, running across several state lines. This nurse had worked many places in the country over the previous ten years, and at all of them, there had been a spike in deaths while she was there.”
“I think I heard about that,” he said. “The killer nurse. She was sentenced to life with no parole; wasn’t she?”
“She was only convicted of five deaths and five serious injuries, but we believed she had killed many more than that. I had at least ten cases that we just didn’t have evidence enough to run with.”
“So, the case was yours?” he asked.
“Yes, and the woman’s name was Nancy Clark.”
Matt stared at me. “Clark?”
“A fake name, I assume, but it’s a message, as is all this. Our killer is trying to tell me something.”
“How do you figure?” he asked.
“Well, there is the old case of the guy removing the girls’ eyes, like Molly.”
“Yes. We established that.”
“And then Ave Morales was found in my mattress, beaten to death.”
“Yes,” he said. “And?”
“There was another case I worked on back early in my career. A woman had been attacked in her own home by someone ringing her doorbell, pretending to be from the local water company, there to check on her faucets. She let him in, and he attacked her, wanting probably to rape her, but she was strong. She knocked him out with a meat pounder. To her surprise, he was dead when she went to check on him. This woman panicked, thinking she was going to jail and hid the body inside of her mattress so her husband wouldn’t find him. I know, it’s crazy, but reality out there is often a lot crazier than you think. Anyway, the smell naturally stunk the house up, and she was discovered. But the point is that the finding of Ava Morales felt very familiar to me; it was also like a case I once worked. My first case was the kidnapping of three girls in Cleveland. You see a pattern yet?”
“I see what you’re saying. The three girls, Molly, Ava Morales, the dialysis patients. This guy is making you relive all your old cases?” Matt asked. “He reenacts them.”
I nodded. “And not only that. He’s also using my theories. It’s all from my book, the first one I wrote. This guy is toying with me and my knowledge of serial killers. He’s following my theories and years of study leading to my book where I was examining the association among four serial killer typologies: lust, anger, power, and financial gain. Molly was raped; that’s the first one. Ava Morales was beaten to death in anger; that’s the second. And the third one is this here, the patients succumbing to a man with high authority and who holds the power of life and death, as doctors do. He is speaking to me through his choice of victims and how they’re killed. Now, we haven’t seen financial gain, but that would be his next move.”
“So, you’re saying that this guy read your book, and he’s using it to send you a message?” Matt asked.
“Not only did he read the book. He knows me very, very well.”
Chapter 61
THEN:
“I’m terrified. What if he doesn’t show?”
Gary stared at his boss. Peterson was holding the package with the fake money inside the newspaper. This was their fourth try at handing the kidnapper the money. He hadn’t shown up at any of the drop-off points so far. Every time, he had called afterward and given them new instructions. Gary and Iris’s home had been turned into a war room, and they had a handful of agents constantly sitting in their living room. Some were sleeping on the couch, others tapping away on their computers, talking loudly on phones, eating their food in the kitchen, and drinking their coffee. All while trying to find the guy who had taken their son.
Meanwhile, Gary and Iris were barely sleeping or eating. Their son had been gone for fifteen days now, and they had no idea if they would ever see him again. Peterson kept reassuring them that they would, that all this guy wanted was the money, but Gary couldn’t—for the life of him—figure out why it had to take so long. Why didn’t the guy just show up and take the money so they could get this over with? All he wanted was for life to return to normal, or at least as close to normal as humanly possible. He wanted to spend Saturday mornings with the baby on his stomach, trying to give Iris some much-needed rest from being up all night breastfeeding. He wanted to be tired because he had been woken up by the baby’s sounds and crying all night. He wanted to be annoyed because he was falling apart from having to take care of a family and a demanding job at the same time. He wanted all those things back. He didn’t want to be exhausted because he didn’t know where his child was. This was supposed to be the happiest time of his life. This was supposed to be the time that people told you to cherish because it would never come back.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
“He will,” Peterson said. “He needs money. That’s why he took Oliver in the first place.”
“But he didn’t show up those other times.”
“He’s scared. He sees the press or even suspects that there might be police or reporters there, and he wets himself. You know these types.”
Peterson was still insisting on this guy being some addict who accidentally passed on the street and saw an opportunity when Iris went in for her bag and left the baby alone. But Gary wasn’t so sure anymore. Something told him that this guy was smarter than they gave him credit for. But what he couldn’t quite figure out was why he had chosen to take the child of an FBI agent, if he was so bright.
“You’ve got this,” Peterson said and put his hand on Gary’s shoulder when someone entered the room.
“Peterson, you need to take a look at this.”
“Give me a sec,” he said to Gary. “I’ll be right back. You just keep practicing how to hold your son ‘cause you will in a very short while; you hear me?”
Gary exhaled tiredly as Peterson left. He sat down in his recliner and studied a picture of his son on his phone, trying hard to remember what he smelled like. He had loved that smell
more than anything in the world.
Soon, Peterson came back in and closed the door, a serious look on his face.
“We have an ID on our guy. It was the handwriting that helped us. The handwriting on the ransom note is very similar to that of a guy in a probation file.”
Peterson’s eyes lit up as he looked at Gary.
“We’ve got him.”
Chapter 62
“We’ve searched the entire area. No sign of our guy.”
Chief Annie gave me a disappointed look that mirrored exactly how I felt. I had a feeling he wouldn’t be there, that he would have taken off from the hospital grounds, but a girl is allowed to hope, right? I desperately wanted us to find him and get this over with. But of course, it wasn’t going to be that easy.
“We should keep the hospital on lockdown for a little while longer, just in case he’s hiding somewhere in the building,” I said.
“How about surveillance cameras?” Matt asked.
“I have a couple of officers going through them in the basement,” Annie said. “But there is something else that you need to take a look at. A nurse came to me and said they had taken in a girl at the ER. She claims to be one of the three that were kidnapped. It might just be a hoax since it has been all over the news, and you know how weird people get, but could you check it out?”
“Sure.”
Matt and I took the elevator down to the first floor that held the ER ward and then found the front desk.
“Detectives Thomas and Miller here to see about a girl who claims to have been kidnapped?”
“One minute,” the woman said and grabbed the phone. She spoke in it for a few seconds and then looked at us.
“The nurse who spoke to her will be right out.”
A few minutes later, a small woman in scrubs came out to us. She looked terrified.
“What can you tell us about the girl, ma’am?” I asked.
“She was outside when the alarm went off. The doors were locked, and the alarm was blasting so loud that I think I was the only one who heard it.”
“Heard what?”
“The shot being fired. I’m pretty sure she was shot right out there on our front step. I didn’t see her till it was too late, but I heard the shot. I talked to my colleagues, and they say they didn’t hear anything, but I went there to look, and then I saw her. She was in a pool of blood. I know I’m not supposed to since we were on lockdown, but I opened the sliding doors and rushed to her. I dragged her inside and locked the doors once again. I know I’m not supposed to do that, but I could hardly leave a poor girl out there bleeding to death.”
“Did you see anything?” I asked. “Anyone run away from the scene?”
She shook her head. “I focused on the girl and getting her inside. Then I called for assistance, and they came with the stretcher. Right before she was rushed down the hallway, she told me to call the police and said that she was one of the kidnapped girls.”
“Where is she now?” I asked. “Can we talk to her?”
“She’s in surgery. She was shot in the stomach. She’ll be lucky if she survives.”
“Did she tell you her name?” I asked.
“Carina I believe she said her name was. Carina Martin, yes, that was it.”
Chapter 63
“Anything on the surveillance cameras?”
I walked up behind the two colleagues sitting by the computers in the security room of the hospital. The hospital’s own guard was helping them. Chief Annie was sitting with them. She nodded.
“We found the girl,” she said and pointed at the screen. “There she is running toward the back ramp behind the ER where the ambulances usually come in. You can see she is running up the ramp and there is someone behind her. There, can you stop it, please?”
The officer clicked the mouse, and the footage stopped. I stared at the screen, getting really close, but it was so grainy and murky I couldn’t make out a face.
We can get video of the birth of a star in outer space, but see if we can make a decent surveillance photo that isn’t grainy? It makes no sense.
“Is this the best you’ve got?” I asked.
Chief Annie ran a hand through her bangs. It was hot in the security room with all the electronic gear, and the AC seemed to have trouble keeping up. “He does come a little closer if we run it for a frame or two more.”
The officer did, and the man moved closer, but still not much. Now the girl was trying to get inside, walking up to the sliding doors. But they didn’t open. My heart dropped as I saw this. Next thing, the girl turned to look at the man again, and that was when the shot was fired, and the girl fell to the ground, rag-doll limp.
“Geez,” I said and turned away, clasping my mouth. “She tried to get in but couldn’t. Because of the lockdown.”
I lifted my glance and met Matt’s eyes. He pulled me into a hug. “You can’t beat yourself up over this.”
“Why not?” I said. “I ordered the lockdown, didn’t I?”
“Thinking you were protecting more people from getting hurt by stopping a killer. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
“It’s all my fault,” I said, pressing back tears. “All of it. Don’t you see? He’s doing this to get back at me. He’s hurting all these people to get to me.”
“Because he knows you’re the type of person who would give her life if it meant saving someone else,” Matt said and looked into my eyes. He touched my cheek gently. “He knows this will hurt you terribly. But you can’t let him win, Eva Rae. It can never be your fault that he’s a sick bastard. Just like it can’t be your fault that someone gets cancer and dies.”
I sent him a smile, knowing he was talking from personal experience. Matt’s dad had died from cancer when we were teenagers. It had taken him years to realize there was nothing he could have done to change it. He kept telling me he knew his dad wasn’t well, that he knew it was too long before he even went to the doctor and that if only he had encouraged him to see a doctor sooner, then maybe they would have caught it and maybe his chances would have been better.
“Why didn’t people react?” Chief Annie asked, staring at the screen. “A naked girl wrapped in a blanket runs across the parking lot, chased by a man. It’s a pretty well-trafficked parking lot. Someone ought to have seen them. Why didn’t anyone call for help or run inside to get the guard?”
Matt let go of me, and I approached the screen. “For the same reason that no one reacted when he walked into the dialysis room and injected the lines with bleach. He’s wearing a scrubs and a doctor’s coat. He looks like he is the one who belongs here. It’s the power of the role he is playing. But you are onto something,” I said. “There have to have been witnesses. Someone must have seen him. Maybe we could find them. We also need to have a list of newly hired doctors, especially surgeons at this hospital.”
There was a knock on the door, and an officer entered. He spoke quietly with Chief Annie for a few minutes, then left. Annie approached us.
“I have news,” she said. “They believe he came in through the back entrance, the one that the employees use, and on the list of people that have entered through there today is a name that we know.”
“Who?” Matt asked.
“Charles Turner.”
“Mr. Turner? Leanne’s dad?” I asked. “But he’s not a doctor? I checked everyone in the families of the kids involved, including Leanne’s family. No one had a doctor’s degree.”
Chief Annie shook her head and put both hands on her hips. “Nope, but he does work here as a Registered Nurse. And according to this, he entered the hospital today at ten forty-five a.m. using his ID card.”
“Well, I’ll be…Let’s bring him in,” I said addressed to Matt. He nodded in agreement.
“How are the patients?” I asked Annie as we were about to leave, and she walked with us toward the exit.
“One has died,” she said. “A Brad Williams, age twenty-nine. The three others, they were able to revive. Two more have falle
n ill, but not gone into cardiac arrest.”
“And Cooper? How’s he holding up?”
“He’s hanging in there,” she said. “He had the skin transplant, so now we’re just waiting. It’s gonna take some time. He’s also looking at having his leg amputated from the knee down. I don’t know when.”
I swallowed the guilt and anger that were rising up in me, seeing the trail of death and destruction this guy was leaving behind, all because of me. What I just couldn’t figure out yet was the reason why.
I hoped Charles Turner would be able to give me some clarification on that.
Chapter 64
Charles Turner was in the back, working on his boat when we pulled up. Besides Matt and I, we had brought two other patrol cars just in case this situation escalated. We walked around the house and approached him, hands on our weapons. He was sitting in his boat on the canal and looked up as he spotted us.
“Mr. Turner?” I said.
It is often stated that cops have instincts, that we somehow know that people are up to no good or that something is off when we enter a situation. This was one of those times. I can’t explain what it was; it might have been in his eyes, but I just knew this guy would make a run for it.
And I was right.
Charles Turner gave us one quick glance, then made his decision. His eyes scanned the area for possible ways out, and then fired the engine up and took off.
“Darn it,” Matt said and pulled his weapon.
As Charles roared down the canal, he pointed it at him. “Get back here, Mr. Turner,” he yelled. “Or I’ll have to shoot.”
But Charles Turner didn’t. He was already long gone, exiting the canal and driving the boat into the intracoastal waters.
“He’s getting away!” I yelled. The two other officers we had brought with us came running down to the canal.
“I can barely see him anymore. We need boats in the water,” Matt said. “And choppers in the air.”
