Chill Factor

by Sandra Brown

  “Listen, Dutch.” Tierney was surprised by the raspy weakness of his own voice. He doubted Dutch could even hear it. In any case, he was in no mood to stop and listen.

  The police chief let fly with a right hook that caught Tierney in the cheekbone. He heard his skin split. His blood spattered Dutch’s face. What the hell was wrong with his face, anyway?

  Tierney deflected a second blow. “Lilly—”

  “You killed her. God damn you!”

  “No! Listen to me.”

  But Dutch was beyond listening. His eyes were ablaze with unmitigated hatred. There was no doubt in Tierney’s mind that if he couldn’t defend himself, the crazed son of a bitch would kill him.

  Drawing from resources he had believed were used up, he began not only to defend himself against the attack but to fight back. He had several grudges against Dutch Burton, and they fueled him with renewed strength. He managed to wedge his knee between himself and Dutch. He pushed with all his strength.

  Dutch rolled aside long enough for Tierney to reach for the pistol he had dropped earlier. But reflexively he reached with his right arm, which was hanging uselessly from the shoulder socket that had been shattered by the rifle bullet.

  He screamed in pain and struggled to stand up, then managed a few stumbling steps.

  Dutch grabbed him by his sprained ankle and yanked his foot out from under him. He went down like a sack of cement. Dutch flipped him over onto his back like a fish he was about to gut. Once again he was on top of him, this time with both hands wrapped around his throat, thumbs digging into his Adam’s apple.

  Dutch’s clenched teeth were smeared with blood, and Tierney was glad to see it. At least he’d landed a few awkward left-hand punches.

  “Did you fuck her?”

  Any compunction Tierney had had against fighting Dutch ended there. What kind of man who had just heard that his wife was dead asked that? He was more concerned about his own damn pride than he was about the fate of a woman he professed to love.

  “Did you?” he bellowed.

  “Dutch, the helicopter.”

  Tierney heard Wes Hamer’s warning shout as though from a great distance, but Dutch seemed not to have heard him at all, or if he did, he wasn’t heeding him. Saliva, blood, and sweat dripped from his face onto Tierney’s. The cerulean sky overhead was growing dark around the edges. Tierney blinked but couldn’t get rid of the black dots that sprinkled his narrowing field of vision.

  He was going to die if he didn’t do something. And now.

  Dutch was straddling his waist, putting all his weight behind his hands. Tierney’s right arm lay useless at his side. His left was almost as ineffectual. The feeble blows it was delivering didn’t faze Dutch.

  Tierney took the only chance he had. Raising his knee, he paused to channel all his strength into his quadriceps, then slammed his knee into Burton’s exposed crotch, hoping to catch him beneath his scrotum.

  Dutch howled. Immediately his hands fell away from Tierney’s neck. Tierney bowed his body and threw the other man off, then rolled on top of him, successfully reversing their positions. He pressed his left forearm across Dutch’s throat like a crowbar.

  With more coordination than he believed he had in his right arm, he picked up his pistol and fired it at Wes Hamer, who was charging across the road toward them. The blast caused Wes to skid to a halt. “Throw down the rifle or the next shot counts.”

  It was a weakly issued threat, but miraculously it worked. Wes dropped his rifle.

  But then Tierney realized that Wes wasn’t afraid of him. It was the helicopter, getting louder, coming closer, carrying witnesses.

  “Who was that on the radio?” he asked Wes in a breathless pant.

  “Ritt. William Ritt.”

  Ritt? Pale, scrawny, William Ritt? That weasel?

  Tierney would sort out the whys and wherefores later. Right now, he bent back over Dutch, whose face looked like that of the villain in a slasher movie, a mix of blood and pus and blind fury. He jabbed the barrel of the pistol beneath Dutch’s chin. “I’ve got several good reasons to kill you. The first being that you hit Lilly. The only reason I’m not going to hurt you is I promised her I wouldn’t.”

  Using the man’s wide chest for leverage, he pushed himself to his feet, staggering in search of equilibrium. Raising his left hand, he pointed at the approaching helicopter. “Either of you shoots me in the back, they’re going to see it.”

  Then, knowing he’d squandered a valuable ten seconds on Lilly’s worthless ex, he clapped his right arm tightly against the side of his body and began a lurching run up the road in the direction of the cabin.

  • • •

  As they were making tight spins around the cabin, one of Collier’s men shouted, “Eleven o’clock.”

  The pilot banked the chopper, and Begley saw what the SWAT officer had spotted—three men in the center of the narrow road. Until now they’d been blocked from sight by a hairpin curve. The chopper swept the treetops toward them.

  Burton was lying on his back. Hamer was standing several yards away. Ben Tierney was leaving a wide trail of blood as he struggled up the incline, away from the other two.

  Collier slid open the door of the chopper and took up his position. “I’ll take the mover,” he calmly said into the headset as he sighted Tierney in his scope.

  “Hold fire,” Begley barked. “That’s not our man.”

  “He’s got a handgun.”

  “Not our man,” Begley repeated.

  Begley looked from Tierney to Wes Hamer, who’d run over to Burton and knelt on one knee. Burton shoved him aside and sent him sprawling. Burton scrambled to his feet, then ran around in what appeared to be frantic circles until he bent down and recovered a semiautomatic rifle lying in the snow. He fired a shot at Tierney without taking aim. Tierney never even slowed down. He kept running.

  “Hit the PA,” Begley ordered the pilot.

  Wes Hamer had regained his footing and started toward Burton again.

  “Keep him out of the way.” Begley issued the order to no one in particular, but one of the tactical officers fired several rounds at Hamer’s feet, sending up geysers of snow. Hamer came to a dead standstill and raised his hands high.

  Burton raised his rifle to his shoulder and put his eye to the scope, a practiced move that took him possibly two seconds.

  “Chief Burton! Hold your fire!” Begley’s voice boomed out of the speaker and could be heard above the clatter of the rotors. “Hold fire!” he shouted again.

  Burton’s head snapped up and around.

  Collier was sitting in the open doorway, his feet on the skid, his scope now trained on Burton. Begley was right behind him, leaning out the open door, testing the limits of his shoulder restraint.

  He could see Burton clearly and read by his expression that the police chief had been unaware of the chopper until that moment. Begley also read something else in the man’s expression that made him ask Collier if he had a clean shot.

  “Got him.”

  Begley shouted, “Burton, hold your fire! Tierney is not Blue! He’s not our man.”

  But Burton didn’t heed him. Instead he aimed the rifle at Tierney’s retreating back and peered through his scope again. “Son of a bitch! Is he deaf?” Begley yelled.

  An innocent man was about to be blown to hell and back, and he would bear the responsibility for that for the rest of his life. In less time than it took him to process these thoughts, he said, “One in the calf.”

  Collier responded, firing instantly. Dutch Burton’s left leg crumpled beneath him. Begley could see the rage in his eyes as he swung the rifle up over his head and fired.

  Collier fell backward into the chopper. The bullet hadn’t pierced his vest, but it had packed a painful punch.

  Burton fired again. The bullet missed Begley by a hair.

  He heard the pilot swear elaborately as he swung the chopper around. Begley felt the pull of his seat belt against his middle and the countertug of
gravity through the open door.

  “I lost my shot,” he heard one of the others shout into the headset.

  The third tactical man had lost his balance when the chopper ascended sharply. He was clambering to regain a semistable firing position. Collier still lay stunned, half in, half out the door.

  Begley was looking down into the bore of Burton’s rifle. He shouted, “Don’t shoot me, you motherfucker!”

  Burton’s face was a mask of agony and madness. “Fuck you!”

  Begley saw the words form on Burton’s lips a millisecond before the bullet pierced his forehead and the back of his skull disintegrated, spraying the snow behind him with a red mist. He fell backward, spread-eagle, a snow angel with a red halo.

  Begley whipped his head around to thank the expert marksman.

  Charlie Wise slowly lowered the sniper rifle from his shoulder and handed it back to Collier. Calmly he replaced his eyeglasses.

  Begley swallowed hard in order to push his heart back down into his chest, where it belonged. “Nice shot, Hoot.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  • • •

  William Ritt removed his hand from Lilly’s mouth, switched off the transmitter, and set it aside. “I told you it was brilliant.”

  “Why?” Lilly asked on a filament of breath.

  “Why did I claim that Tierney had left you here dead? Isn’t the answer obvious?”

  “No, why did you kill them?”

  “Oh. That.” William wrapped the ends of the ribbon around his hands and tested its strength with firm tugs. “I could blame my dysfunctional parents, or low self-esteem, but those are such hackneyed excuses. Besides, I’m not insane. I kill them because I want to.”

  She kept her features composed, but her mind was reeling. Was Tierney dead? Dutch had shot him, that she knew. But he’d said that Tierney was “down.” He hadn’t said that he was dead. If he were alive, he would come back for her. She knew it.

  Until then, what could she do to help herself and keep William Ritt from killing her? She couldn’t get away from him. For hours she had tried and failed to free her hands from the cuffs.

  To show fear would be to give him exactly what he wanted. Instinctually she knew that he enjoyed killing. It gave him an identity, a standing in the community that he wouldn’t otherwise have. He was Blue, the most feared, the most wanted. The persnickety, busybody pharmacist’s alter ego was a lady killer. What a head trip that must be for him.

  He claimed to have low self-esteem, but she thought just the opposite. He had an inflated ego, believing himself intellectually superior. For two years he had outsmarted everybody, but thus far he’d been unable to brag about it. She would give him a chance to boast. Her only chance of surviving was to keep him talking until help—please, God, let it be Tierney—arrived.

  “How did you choose your victims? That’s one thing that’s baffled investigators. The missing women seemed to have nothing in common.”

  “Me,” he said, giving her a chilling smile. “They had me in common. They were all looking at me when they died. Soon you’ll have that in common with them, too.”

  Don’t give him the satisfaction of showing your fear. “Besides you, what did they have in common?”

  “That’s been the beauty of it. Criminal profilers look for patterns. With me, there isn’t one. I killed all of them for different reasons.”

  “Such as?”

  “Rejection.”

  “Torrie Lambert?”

  “Long before her.”

  “There was another?”

  “A young woman at college.”

  “A girlfriend?”

  “No. I wanted her to be, but she laughed at me when I asked her for a date. She’d assumed I was a homosexual. Her teasing was cruel. I . . . snapped. I guess that’s an accurate word for what happened. She was laughing. I was trying to stop her.

  “When I realized she was dead, I wasn’t sorry, but naturally I feared being caught. I made it look like a mugging. Her wallet and jewelry are in a keepsake box under my bed at home. To this day, that homicide is in the cold case file.”

  “No one ever suspected you?”

  “No one. I was so insignificant, you see. Still am in most minds.”

  “Marilee never suspected?”

  He made a scornful sound. “My sister has been too busy guarding her own dirty secret to pay much attention to me. I wish I had killed her when we were children. I thought about it once or twice, but never got around to it.”

  He tested the strength of the ribbon again. “I wonder where Tierney happened upon this.”

  He was still kneeling in front of her, and even though he hadn’t yet laid a hand on her, she was quaking with fear. How much longer could she keep him talking? Where was the helicopter? Where was Tierney? She refused to believe he was dead.

  “You were telling me how you chose your victims. I understand why you killed the girl who laughed at you. But you didn’t know Torrie Lambert, did you?”

  “Not until that day. She’d ventured away from the group and was quite a distance off the trail. I spotted her walking along the western road, near our old homestead, where I happened to be working that day. I engaged her in conversation, listened to her tale of woe, dispensed advice, and then when I tried to comfort her—”

  “Comfort her?”

  “Touch her. She wouldn’t let me.”

  “Did you rape her?”

  His eyes flashed angrily. “I can get it up. Have no doubt about that. If we had more time, I could prove it to you, Ms. Martin.”

  His reaction made Lilly believe the opposite of his claim, but she wasn’t foolish enough to contradict him.

  “To her everlasting regret, Torrie Lambert called me a weird little creep.”

  He was breathing heavily, with agitation. Or possibly excitement, which was even more terrifying. Quietly, she said, “Her hair ribbon became your trademark.”

  “For lack of a better word, yes.”

  “You took it into Tennessee to throw off the trackers. Correct?”

  He frowned with chagrin. “I didn’t realize I’d crossed the state line. It all looks the same. But, yes, I transported it out of the immediate area to throw off the trackers.”

  “Tell me about the other four. Were they also random?”

  “No, they were definitely planned.”

  “How did you choose them?”

  “You have it reversed. They chose me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Carolyn Maddox’s young son is diabetic. She couldn’t afford his insulin, and she couldn’t get health insurance. She came to me practically begging for help.”

  “You gave her the medications her son needed.”

  “Along with comfort and encouragement. But nothing I said or did was ever enough to make her like me. Not that way,” he said, his implication plain. “She had time to stop by the store to pick up her kid’s medicine for free but never enough time to see me alone.

  “She made time for one of the guests at the motel where she cleaned, though. Oh, yes, she had time for him. I saw them together in his car, right there in the parking lot, pawing each other. It was disgusting. She didn’t make it home that night.”

  Her car with the ribbon in it had been found at the side of the road, halfway between her apartment and the motel. Lilly remembered that the motel guest had been questioned, then dropped as a suspect.

  “The nurse?”

  He sneered. “Laureen. Another story entirely. She was fat. I didn’t like her, but I took pity. Call me a softie. I gave her free samples of every diet product to come along. She misinterpreted my kindness and made a pass. Her overtures were blatant and borderline vulgar. I couldn’t imagine touching those revolting globs of flesh and was insulted by her assumption that I would want to. Well, you can figure out the rest.”

  Before she asked, he told her about Betsy Calhoun, who according to him was popping antidepressants at the rate of eight to ten a day. When her
prescription ran out and her doctor refused to refill it, she asked William for more.

  Where was the helicopter? Why hadn’t it come back?

  “I agreed to meet Mrs. Calhoun at the bank parking lot. It was really a mercy killing. I put her out of her misery. Unlike all the others, she put up no resistance. Doped up as she was, she was the easiest to kill. But Millicent was the most enjoyable.” His narrow lips formed a cruel, reptilian smile.

  “Tell me about her.” Was the helicopter transporting Tierney’s body off the mountain? They would think they had Blue. Rescuing her could wait.

  “Millicent was a vain little slut,” he said. “She relied on me to supply her with contraceptives so she could fornicate to her heart’s content—and then she was careless with them. Who did she come whining to when she got pregnant? Me.

  “For years I’d been giving her diet pills and amphetamines to keep her from gaining weight, but she took my generosity for granted. She flirted and teased. Once, just before closing, we were the only two people in the store. She came behind the counter and sidled up to me, rubbed herself against me, and asked if I had any flavored condoms. She said she was tired of the same old rubbery taste. ‘Think about it, William,’ ” he said, imitating a girlish, taunting voice. “Then she laughed and skipped away, like she’d been awfully clever and cute. The last time I saw her, she wasn’t laughing.”

  He stared into near space for a moment, lost in his reverie. “Right up to the end, it was all about her. She kept crying, saying, ‘Why are you doing this to me? I thought you liked me.’

  “As I was driving her up to the old house, I tried to explain that she was a horrible person, that she used people, hurt their feelings for no reason, played games with their emotions. I told her that she was destructive and therefore deserved to be destroyed. But”—he sighed—“I don’t think she ever understood.”

  He was reflective for a moment, then said, “I was about to bury her when I received a call from an electrician that I’d been trying to get up to the house for months. He told me he was on his way. I had to stash her somewhere before he arrived. I knew you had sold this cabin, had overheard Dutch say you’d already cleaned out the shed. It was the closest and most convenient space I could think of on such short notice.