by Rachel Lee
“I don’t need it anymore,” she said quietly. “Problem solved. The psychologist was right. He’s a manipulative psychopath. He manipulated me when I was a kid, and given that psychopaths don’t outgrow it, he probably hasn’t changed for the better. Maybe he got smoother, but nobody could supply him with empathy. It’s impossible.”
He stood, wincing as his knees shouted at him, then pulled the other, more battered, desk chair over from the corner so he could sit beside her. He didn’t know whether all this was a good sign or a bad one for her. Her psychologist had diagnosed George as a psychopath, but had her psychologist ever interviewed George? Was the diagnosis simply based on the things Dory told her? What if it was wrong?
But cautious as he might be about things like that, it remained they couldn’t afford to assume George wasn’t exactly that: a manipulative psychopath. He’d met plenty of them in the course of his career, people who were simply incapable of any genuine feeling for another human being. Some were good at pretending. Quite a few never got in trouble with the law and were very successful because they were also very smart.
Then there were the others. The stone-cold rip-off artists and killers. Oh, so charming, but dead inside.
She turned her head toward him and said abruptly, “How did you know about my inheritance?”
He stiffened, watching the matchsticks of the bridge of trust they had just started building waver and maybe begin to tumble. “I looked up the murder after I gave you Flash.”
“Why didn’t you mention it before tonight?”
Yup, he thought, he’d blown it. So he might as well light the final fuse. “I also checked on George’s whereabouts. He vanished from the halfway house two nights after he arrived there, and his whereabouts are currently unknown.”
“And you didn’t think I should know that?”
“Honestly,” he said, rising, “I wasn’t sure you needed to know. Why add to your fear unless it became necessary?”
“Then what changed your mind? Why should I trust you enough to let you sleep in my house?”
He’d shattered their fragile trust, but he didn’t want to add to it by getting into a fight about it. Time to go. “What you told me about him. Good night, Dory. I’ll keep watch from my car out front. You know where to find me.”
With every step away, he kept hoping to hear her call him back. She didn’t.
* * *
A PSYCHOPATH. AS suspicious as Cadell was of long-distance diagnoses, the more he thought about it, the more he thought that psychologist had been right. As Dory had said, it brought the puzzle pieces together, matching at last.
If George was indeed a psychopath, then trouble was on its way. Standing on her front porch, he considered what he and the rest of law enforcement around here might be able to do. Sure, strangers stuck out. But George might be smart enough to stay in the shadows once he saw how small this place was. Heck, he could probably figure it out by looking up this area online.
Being a psychopath, he had no limits on what he would do. He’d proved that once before. Now, if he felt Dory had taken his inheritance, he’d do anything necessary to get it back. Coming out of prison with nothing might have exacerbated an old resentment, a feeling he’d been robbed. While Dory wasn’t responsible for that, she still held his entitlement. What if he believed her death would leave it all to him, trust or no trust?
If they were lucky, he’d call and demand his share. But Cadell’s neck itched with a certainty that he wouldn’t do that. Whatever he’d been denied by his parents that had brought him to the point of a vicious murder, he had showed his stripes. If murder was the easy way, he’d take it.
Wishing vainly that he could locate George was a waste of time. The guy had finished his sentence. Nobody now had a reason to keep tabs on him, so unless he crossed paths with law enforcement because of a misdeed, he might never pop up on the radar again.
Damn it! What the hell had he been thinking? Sure, he wanted Dory to feel safe. She desperately needed it, and that’s why he’d given her Flash. The woman had been terrified, and while at the time he’d thought she’d never really need Flash, the dog would be a comforting presence and protector to have around.
Now here he was standing in the ruins of a budding relationship with a woman who’d quite frankly told him she couldn’t trust and preferred to be a hermit.
Well, he’d pushed himself into her life, and now it was time to back out. Let her be. She had Flash to look out for her.
Forgetting Dory for the moment, he sat on the top step, wished he hadn’t quit smoking ten years ago, and thought about everything he knew.
The image on her computer was stamped into his brain now, like a piece of evidence, and he wasn’t particularly concerned about whether her memory had been faulty. It still told him things.
So, George had been stealing from their parents and subtly manipulating Dory to keep her quiet about it. He might have taken more than money out of a purse or wallet, leading to the fights Dory had mentioned. Creating tension.
But that scene in the kitchen, the wounds Cadell had read about...that was no impulsive murder. The heat-of-passion argument had been enough to prevent a life sentence, but Cadell was no longer buying it.
Rising, he climbed the step and rapped on Dory’s door. “Dory, it’s me.” Then he opened the door and stepped in.
Flash came charging at him.
Chapter Eight
“Flash, no,” Dory snapped just before the dog reached Cadell. She hadn’t put him on guard, but she honestly wasn’t sure if he was attacking or greeting. “Stay.”
Flash immediately halted, and only then did she note that his tail was wagging happily. Then she looked at Cadell, part of her still burning angrily and part of her honestly glad to see him.
She was annoyed that he hadn’t told her he knew something about George that she didn’t, but on the other hand...well, Cadell was obviously protective.
“I thought you’d gone,” she said.
“I didn’t get all the way off your porch. The cop kicked in. Is there any chance you can recover that image of the murder? Because I’d like to look at it.”
She hesitated. She’d had the sense that he’d been horrified that she’d drawn such an image in so much detail. “What changed?”
“Like I said, the cop kicked in. Some things struck me, so I’d really like to study it.”
She nodded slowly. “I can recover it.” She paused, then asked, “Want a soda?”
“Any chance of coffee?”
The faintest of smiles lightened her face. “Of course. Just let me start the recovery and then I’ll make it.”
* * *
WHEN SHE REACHED the kitchen, she had to grip the edge of the counter and lean on it. Her knees felt weak, and she was shaking from head to toe. Had it mattered so much to her that he’d walked out? That he’d come back? Hadn’t she been mad at him?
But all of that had vanished in the contradictory realization that he hadn’t left. Now he wanted to see her rendering of the murder scene. Maybe she’d been wrong in thinking that she had repelled him with it.
Drawing several deep breaths, telling herself she was overreacting, whether to Cadell’s return or the idea that there was a good reason for George to seek her out, she didn’t know. Too much. She’d lived with too much for a long time.
The coffee didn’t take long. She seemed to remember that he took it black, so she carried a mug to him. She didn’t want any herself. She was already wound up and simply relieved to have stopped shaking.
The picture once again filled the screen, every detail clear.
“You can turn it?” he asked, then thanked her for the coffee.
“Yeah, but you have to understand I couldn’t see it from any other direction, so you get the reverse of what you see here, plus
the other side of the kitchen as I recall it.”
“Every little bit helps. Can I rotate it myself?”
“Not easily.” She pulled a chair over, and he scooted to one side while she called up a menu. She highlighted a box from the graphics software. “The problem with this is you’re not really moving the picture, you’re moving cameras around it. It can get awkward.”
He nodded and picked up the mug, drinking, his gaze intent on the screen. “Turn it ninety degrees, if you can.”
Well, that was easy enough. She hated this view, though, looking straight at her brother as he stood over their parents. It didn’t look like him, of course. He was a morph, but she knew exactly who it was—an unrealistic face didn’t change that.
He spoke. “The kitchen behind him. That’s what you remember should have been there?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, give me another ninety in the same direction.”
She did. There was the dining table, the doorway, the little girl standing at the foot of the stairs. Her brother partially blocked the view, though.
“Do you have a drawing of the kitchen without him in it?”
“Of course. That’s where I had to start.”
“Can I see it?”
At least the shakes were gone, she thought as she reached for the mouse and switched to another image. The kitchen. Empty. The way it should have been that night at that hour.
“A back door,” he muttered. “A knife block all the way over there, with the table in between.”
“In between what?” she asked. Her heart was accelerating as she wondered if he’d seen something there that she hadn’t.
He rubbed his chin and leaned back in the chair. It creaked, but he said nothing as he continued to stare. Finally he stabbed his finger at the screen, pointing out the knife block. “All the knives are there.”
“Well, of course,” she said. “Until he used one.”
“I want you to look at this whole picture, Dory. The whole thing. For now just use your imagination to put the figures in it.”
“Okay.” That wasn’t hard to do, considering that she’d looked at it until she hardly needed it anymore.
Her parents lying on the floor between the table and a wall of dish cabinets. George standing over them.
“The police report said he killed them with a ten-inch chef’s knife,” he said.
“Yes,” she whispered, then opened her eyes in spite of his instructions.
“From that butcher’s block.”
“Yes.”
He swiveled, and suddenly she was fixed by his gaze. “This was premeditated.”
* * *
IT HAD TURNED into a night of shocking revelations. She didn’t even want to know how he’d reached that conclusion, not at first. Giving up all thought of sleep and peace, she headed for the kitchen and got herself a cup of coffee. Cadell wasn’t far behind, refreshing his own mug.
“I’m sorry, Dory. But the more we know about him...”
“I get it,” she interrupted, not caring if she was rude. “I get it.”
Oh, yeah, she got it. He was saying that her brother hadn’t been overcome by a blind rage, driven to an act he might never otherwise have committed. He was saying George had intended to kill them. That he’d planned it. Who knew how long he might have been planning it? Subtly bribing her and making her love him, then reinforcing their parents’ dictum that she mustn’t come downstairs after she was sent to bed.
Considering how many rules he’d broken, it was weird that he hadn’t wanted her to break any.
“God,” she whispered.
“Maybe you should sit down. I don’t want you to faint again.”
“I don’t know if I can, and anyway I think my blood pressure is through the roof right now. Cadell, how can you be sure?”
He nudged her over to the table until she was sitting. “If you can stand to, think about that kitchen. How likely is it that he could have taken both your parents by surprise if he’d gone to get a knife? He’d have had to round the table, go to the knife block and come back around that table... Don’t you think at least one of them would have run at that point? Getting the knife was a deadly threat, not some innocent act like getting a glass. The fact that they’re lying beside one another... He was already armed. He took them utterly by surprise, and he knew exactly how he was going to do it.”
Somehow she had moved past feeling shocked. In place of all her fears was the feeling that she was receiving repeated blows yet again, anger surging in her. Fury at George. Fury at what he had done and the scars and terrors he had left her with.
She closed her eyes, clenched her fists and wished he was there to scream at, to pound, to tell him once and for all that he’d killed part of her, too.
But George didn’t care. He’d never cared. Manipulative psychopath. The brother who’d been so sweet to her had merely been using her. Then a strange calm came over her, leaving her feeling as if she were standing outside herself, observing from miles away.
“I have my answers now,” she whispered.
“So it seems.” He was quiet a moment, then said, “I guess I should leave. I’ve given you enough shocks and bad news for one night. You’re going to hate the very sight of me.”
Her eyes snapped open. Her voice emerged tonelessly. “I’m going to have nightmares if I sleep. I’m going to wake up screaming.”
He stood there, his face creased with concern, his hands opening and closing as if he didn’t know what to do. “Do you do that often?”
“A lot since I heard about George’s release. I can feel it coming, almost like I’m already half-asleep. He’s going to stalk my dreams.”
“God,” he muttered.
She looked down as she felt something on her thigh. Flash. He’d rested his head on her, his eyes peering up at her.
“Cadell?”
“Yeah?”
“I can’t stand to be alone in the dark when I wake up screaming.”
He shifted, then slid into the chair he’d pulled closer earlier. “I’ll stay. I told you I’d stay tonight. I just figured after what’s happened, you might want me gone. Being the bearer of bad news and all.”
Still feeling oddly detached, she lifted her gaze and studied his face. “You didn’t tell me anything new. Not really. Well, I did get angry when I found out you hadn’t told me those things. Then you left.”
“Not exactly,” he admitted. “Didn’t make it three steps. But I reckoned you felt betrayed, and for someone who says she can’t trust... I figured all the bridges between us had been burned.”
She shook her head slowly. “For a minute or two... Well, I’m glad you came back. And I’m glad to know for sure now about George. No questions left. You answered them. All the time I stared at my representation of that awful scene, I felt like there was an answer there somewhere. You found it.”
“I’m sure that’s thrilling you,” he said tautly. “Good old Cadell, bringer of more bad news. I’m a great one for making people feel worse.”
Her head jerked up at that. A sliver of feeling pierced the cold detachment that had overtaken her. “Brenda?”
“What?”
“Did your ex make you feel that way?”
She watched him consider it for a few minutes. “Yeah, in part. But being a cop brings a lot of that on, too. How many times have I had good news to deliver? Not many.”
“I never thought about that,” she confessed. “Never thought about what it could do to you and other police officers. My memory of the police is all warm and good. They took such good care of me back then. All of them. I’ve never forgotten it.”
“I’m glad you feel that way.”
Impulsively, surprising herself, she reached out for his hand and wrapped hers around
it. “You’re a good man. I keep thinking about how awful all this has been for me, but tonight can’t have been fun for you, either. I’m surprised you came back after the way I reacted earlier.”
He shrugged slightly. “Like I said, the cop kicked in. You told me you’d been looking for answers in that graphic, and while I was out on the porch doing a decent job of beating myself up for sacrificing your trust, I thought about what you’d said about seeking answers in that picture. You have an artist’s eye, but I have a set of cop’s eyes, and a thought occurred to me. I’m sorry it was so bad.”
“The whole thing was bad.” Some of her detachment was easing, and she wished she could hang on to it. She doubted she was ready to start feeling anything yet. Unfortunately, she knew she would. She always did. That night had been haunting her for over a quarter century. If she could have become ice, she certainly would have done it by now.
“Look,” he said after a moment, “you really need some sleep. For that matter, so do I. It’s awfully late.”
So much had happened since he’d arrived with dinner that time had flown. Looking at the clock, she started. “Wow. Don’t you have to work in the morning?”
“I’m off tomorrow. Maybe, if you can find time, you and Flash could come out and check on the ostriches with me. I’m certainly going to need a shower and a change.”
The smallest of smiles cracked her frozen face. “Sure. Why haven’t you named them?”
“The birds? Because I don’t want to get attached. I’m trying to get rid of their ornery butts, remember?”
He turned his hand over and tugged her gently. “Bed. Flash will keep me in line. If you have a bad dream, I’ll be right there.”
At last, she nodded and felt the tension that had been building for hours let go. She wouldn’t be alone. And while she was sure Flash would protect her, he wasn’t the same as having someone right there she could talk to. During the time with Betty, she had learned how much that could mean. Since moving into this house, she had realized how much she missed having someone there.
