Cutting Edge

by Allison Brennan

  “I didn’t. I gave you a recommendation. You knew that.”

  “Right. FBI Special Agent Nora English,” she mimicked sarcastically.

  “It was just a letter of recommendation!”

  “You didn’t mention you were my sister.”

  “I don’t know what that has to do with anything.” Nora’s head was spinning. The entire conversation had gotten out of control.

  “It has to do with you trying to control my life. From the minute you put Mom in prison.”

  From the minute you put Mom in prison? “Lorraine is the one who broke the law, not me. She committed hundreds of crimes before she got caught.”

  “Why do you call her Lorraine?”

  “Because she told me not to call her ‘Mom.’”

  “She said it was because you refused to.”

  That was the last straw. “I’m telling you the truth. I don’t care if you believe me, but Lorraine has fed you a crock of shit. Hell, she probably believes it! Maggie O’Dell, the woman you call your sister, is a murderer. She’s killed six people. Six. Starting with Jonah Payne. She tortured him and killed him because he had slighted her father in some way. She poisoned three college students with jimsonweed. They are dead. She killed Professor Cole by injecting him with heparin and cutting his arms and chest so he slowly bled to death. The woman is seriously disturbed. She’s going to be caught. I want to catch her before she claims another victim. Before she comes after me, or you.”

  Quin stared at her with wide, disbelieving eyes. Her mouth opened and closed. “Wh-why do you think Maggie is involved? It’s not like her. I don’t believe it.”

  “I can show you all the evidence and lay it out for you like I would the U.S. attorney before an indictment. Or you can believe me.”

  Quin turned away.

  Nora’s heart broke. That Quin doubted her sliced her to the bone. She said quietly, “Maggie attended Rose College for three semesters. Her roommate was Anya Ballard, who we believe was one of four arsonists in the fires you investigated. We have evidence from her room, and a journal we’ve proven is her writing. Based on our investigation so far, Maggie recently returned to Roseville and joined Anya and two young men in the arson fire of Butcher-Payne. We have a witness who identified her boyfriend Scott Edwards’s truck parked at Jonah Payne’s Lake Tahoe residence. Dr. Coffey right now is comparing the truck bed liner with the marks found on Payne’s body. Not with Edwards’s truck—it’s been missing since he was murdered—but against a similar make and model.

  “What tripped her up, however, is her thinking she was going to outsmart the police. She planted a suicide note with a poor attempt at copying Anya’s handwriting. Ironically, there were no prints on the iced tea jug that the poisoned tea came in. Whoever poured it wore gloves or wiped it clean. She or Scott Edwards slit the neck of her old high school friend Russell Larkin, who was the I.T. guy for Butcher-Payne. We’re not sure how, but they retrieved codes off Larkin’s computer that enabled them to get into Butcher-Payne without detection. I have agents in Paso Robles where Maggie grew up trying to locate her. I have an agent at the college interviewing students who knew her. I have another agent poring through property records, and Duke Rogan is reviewing all background information one more time in the hopes of finding out where she is hiding.”

  Nora stopped, her heart racing. Quin still didn’t look at her. Nora felt like she’d irrevocably damaged her relationship with Quin. She ached for her sister, wished she could take back the harsh words, wished she could understand. Maybe she’d been wrong keeping Quin from Lorraine. All she’d wanted for her small family was stability.

  “Quin—we’ve been friends now as well as sisters. Please. Look at me.”

  Quin slowly turned. Her face was splotchy, her eyes red. “Leave me alone,” she whispered.

  “I can’t. I fear for your safety.”

  She laughed, the pitch high and fake. “Maggie? Even if you’re right, she would never hurt me.”

  Nora didn’t believe that for a minute, but knew it would be fruitless trying to convince her now. “Do you know where she is?”

  Quin shook her head. “I saw her in June. I didn’t know she was in Sacramento. If she’s still in Sacramento.”

  Nora tried not to let her words sting. “If you hear from her, you need to let me know immediately. She’s dangerous.”

  “I’ll take it under advisement.”

  Quin walked out the door. Nora sank into the chair behind Duke’s desk and put her head in her hands. She had to believe that Quin would see reason when she calmed down. Quin wasn’t stupid, she was just hurt, upset, and confused.

  Tears never came easily for Nora, but her eyes burned and she squeezed them shut. She knew better than to let the guilt in. If regretted, every decision, including those she made about Quin, would be threatening a flood of remorse. Quin, things she’d done as a child, her resentment of her mother—even turning state’s evidence, though the right decision, weighed down her heart. She’d protected Quin because it was all she had to cling to, Quin was all she had that kept her strong when too often she’d wanted to disappear.

  She couldn’t lose Quin, but could she accept her sister’s relationship with Lorraine? How could she constantly battle the lies from Lorraine’s mouth? She didn’t want to defend herself and her decisions, right or wrong, for the rest of her life. She felt defeated and alone.

  Duke entered his office after he saw Quin run out, obviously upset. Nora had her head on his desk, her shoulders slumped and quivering with tension and restrained emotion. He ached for her, wanting to wash away her anguish.

  Walking over to her, he put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed. “I’m sorry. That must have been hard.”

  She sat up, leaning back into his hands as he rubbed her tense shoulders. “She’s believed Lorraine’s lies about so many things—I don’t know where to begin to set her straight. I lost her long ago and I didn’t even see it. I was in over my head and didn’t know it. I wish to God I could take back some of the things I said.” Her voice cracked and she bit her bottom lip.

  “Quin’s smart. She just needs to think it through.”

  “She thinks I’ve been lying to her about important information. Like her father.” She rubbed her eyes. “I can’t believe I’ve been so blind. She’s resented every decision I’ve made.”

  Duke wished he could do something, but this was between Nora and Quin. All he could do was stand with her.

  “Did Jayne have anything for you on the security tapes from Butcher-Payne?” she asked him.

  “I know how they messed with the video. Actually quite smart. They brought in a computer that directed a completely different feed into the digital recording, essentially recording blanks over the actual images. I think that’s how they corrupted Russ Larkin’s computer as well. It’s impossible to get the true recording, but I’m glad Jayne figured out how they did it. My security system had a fatal flaw, now I can fix it.”

  “It’s not your fault,” she said.

  He spun her around in the chair, his face inches from hers. Her big round eyes were filled with heartache. “And it’s not your fault that Quin is having problems accepting the truth.”

  He heard a rattle on his table in the corner. “Your cell phone is vibrating.” He walked over to the table and brought the phone to her.

  “Thanks.” It was Lindsey Prince, one of the agents in San Luis Obispo.

  “I got news for you,” Lindsey said in a rush. “First, a photo of Maggie O’Dell from high school. We’re at Kinko’s now, scanning it in, and will email it pronto.”

  “Terrific. Send it to both me and ASAC Hooper. He’ll need it for the APB and I’ll distribute it to my team.”

  “There’s more. We talked to the local sheriff and he knows Maggie O’Dell very well. She was quite the juvenile delinquent. Mostly vandalism and petty crime, and her parents always paid restitution when she was caught. It’s a small town, they didn’t do anything more about it.
Except, the sheriff has long suspected that she killed her boyfriend. He just can’t prove it.”

  “How?”

  “Hemlock.”

  “Hemlock?”

  “Specifically, water hemlock. But she denied even seeing him that day, no one saw them together, and her father vouched that she had been sleeping most of the afternoon because of a flu bug.”

  “Was he lying?”

  “The sheriff thought so, but had no physical evidence to tie her to the death. Some people thought the kid accidentally ate the hemlock. Others thought he was killed. His parents received a substantial amount of money from an insurance policy they had on him. But even so the sheriff always suspected Maggie. From the start, her reaction didn’t fit for him. But she didn’t rattle.”

  “How did the boyfriend ingest water hemlock?”

  “The autopsy was unclear—there were no undigested leaves or roots in his stomach. But the pond nearby had a considerable amount of water hemlock growing near the shore. There have been documented cases of cattle being poisoned from drinking water that had been saturated with the plants. The sheriff, under pressure from the family, closed the case as an accidental poisoning. Because he couldn’t prove murder, there was the possibility of suicide, and the insurance wouldn’t pay on self-termination.”

  It fit Maggie O’Dell’s M.O.—there had been no traces of jimsonweed leaves in the Rose College students; the water had leeched the poison from homemade, deadly tea bags.

  “And,” Lindsey continued, “the victim was supposed to picnic with another girl that day, but her grandfather died the night before and she left the state. The victim’s mother said that he’d broken up with Maggie weeks before, and wouldn’t have gone to see her.”

  “That probably didn’t sit well with Maggie,” Nora said. “Anything on Russell Larkin?”

  “He was Maggie’s neighbor, though graduated several years before she started high school. His younger sister was in O’Dell’s class. I want to talk to her next, but she’s on a plane now, flying in from Northwestern for Larkin’s memorial service.”

  “Down there?”

  “Yes.”

  “If you can get to her tonight or tomorrow morning, find out what she knows about Maggie O’Dell.”

  “Will do. Watch for the photo.”

  Nora hung up and said, “I’m getting a photo of O’Dell.”

  Duke watched Nora’s phone. A few seconds later, a message came in. She clicked it.

  The photo loaded fairly quickly. In ten seconds, they were staring at a stunning girl with long brown waves of hair and huge, round brown eyes. The shape matched Nora’s, but nothing else resembled her. Nora didn’t know why she was relieved.

  Maggie looked a bit familiar. Not just because of the eyes, but …

  Duke snapped his fingers. “She was the girl who threw the soda at you on Monday.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  There was a tap on Duke’s door and J.T.’s stellar administrative assistant, Heather, walked in, sharply dressed in a pricey business suit. “We found an apartment,” she said, handing Duke a folder.

  Duke opened the thin red folder.

  5100 College Blvd., #A124, Roseville.

  Rented to: Margaret Lovitz.

  Landlord: Ted Albany.

  “Heather, you’re incredible.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Do you need anything else?”

  “Not right now, but thanks.”

  Nora looked at Duke, weary, her fight with Quin draining her.

  Duke tried to offer a reassuring gaze. “I had our staff call every apartment building in Placer County starting with those near Rose College. Bingo—I found one. Rented to Margaret Lovitz.”

  “How did you find it?”

  “I gave Heather a list of likely aliases—O’Dell, Wright, Plummer, Lovitz—and a time frame: rented after June of this year.”

  “I’ll call Hooper to get a search warrant.” She stood and smiled. “Thank you. For this—and everything.”

  He caressed her cheek. “Anytime,” he said slowly. “For you, anything.”

  Maggie bolted upright in bed, panicked. Where was she?

  Quin’s house. Quin’s bed.

  She let out a long, quiet breath and listened. Something had woken her up. Finally, Quin had to be home.

  She glanced at Quin’s simple, old-fashioned alarm clock, the kind with the bells on top and a traditional clock face. It was only four in the afternoon. Had she left work early? Why?

  Someone was moving around downstairs. Into the kitchen, the creak of the linoleum a slightly different, louder sound than the soft carpeted footfalls. Water running. Turning off. Footsteps again.

  Maggie swung her body out of bed, picking up the knife. She wished she hadn’t cut herself so much. Quin was going to see the blood. But that couldn’t be helped.

  Now was the time to convince Quin that they should be a team. Just the two of them.

  On the stairs, Maggie coughed twice and cleared her throat.

  It wasn’t Quin she glimpsed downstairs. It was a man.

  Maggie scurried to the closet, grabbing the comforter on her way. She practically threw herself inside and closed the door.

  And was very, very silent.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Maggie O’Dell’s apartment would alone convict her.

  At first, Nora saw nothing out of the ordinary in the small ground-floor garden apartment. In fact, it was virtually empty: The living room had a secondhand couch; the dining/kitchen area a small table with two chairs; and the bedroom a mattress on the floor with sheets and a blanket pulled tightly around the corners. But as she dug deeper into the dark crevices, Maggie’s crimes became clear.

  The pristine kitchen concealed death well. A container in the refrigerator matched that one with the fatal iced tea in Anya Ballard’s dorm room. This one, too, was full. Nora didn’t know if it was poisoned, but they would find out.

  In a drawer, jimsonweed was spread on paper towels, drying. In the drawer next to it, a set of knives, handmade, perfectly aligned in a special tray that appeared to have been built for this set of knives.

  One knife was missing.

  Nora wondered if one or more of them would test positive for blood.

  It was the bedroom closet that had Nora most on edge.

  The closet was a walk-in, nearly as large as the bathroom. The few articles of clothing hung far to the left side. Every inch of the walls was covered with photos and articles. For a moment, Nora thought she’d walked onto a cheesy movie set when she saw a picture of Jonah Payne taken from a distance at his Lake Tahoe house. Written in black permanent marker across the top:

  You’re dead.

  Pictures of Maggie with Scott, with Anya, with Quin. Quin. What was going on? Nora resisted the urge to pull them down, and swallowed, focusing on the unspoken message Maggie was leaving.

  The captions were everywhere. You’re dead. I hate you. I want you to beg. I hate you. Slut. Pervert.

  There was a picture of Anya Ballard in a naked embrace with Leif Cole, taken from outside a window. A picture of Quin with … Danny? Yeah, Danny. Whoever was the guy before the new one, Devon. They were at a house Nora didn’t recognize, probably Danny’s. The woman was a voyeur.

  The picture of Maggie and Quin bothered Nora the most. Centered on the wall with a big heart around them. She recognized Quin in the picture. It was taken three or four years ago when Quin had gone through a short-hair phase and sported a sleek bob. They both were smiling, Quin’s arm slung over Maggie’s shoulder. The image unnerved Nora. Quin trusted Maggie, and that trust could get her hurt, or worse.

  “Nora,” Duke said quietly.

  She turned around. He’d closed the door. On the back side was a violent shrine dedicated to Nora.

  Traitor. Bitch. Traitor. Murderer. I hate you I hate you I hate you.

  Over and over, covering pictures of Nora taken while she worked, w
hile she went to the store, while she was sunbathing in her backyard earlier this summer.

  One of the pictures had her head cut off. Another, her throat slit with what looked like dried blood around the edges. And another had her heart cut out.

  “Oh God,” she gasped.

  Steve Donovan called her name from the bedroom.

  She opened the door with a shaking, gloved hand.

  “Donovan.” She motioned him to go inside while she stepped out.

  “Holy shit,” he said.

  “She doesn’t stay here,” Nora said, looking around. “It’s too dark, too barren. No privacy. This is her stop-ping-off point. A place to hide, to regroup, to keep her supplies close. Donovan, we need every photo analyzed to see where it might lead us. Every nook and cranny and hiding place. She has another house. It’s private, no neighbors. That’s where she’s living.”

  She stepped outside, close to being claustrophobic in the sterile apartment. She dialed Quin’s cell phone. With each unanswered ring, Nora’s fear grew. She should never have let Quin leave Rogan-Caruso without an armed guard. What had she been thinking? About her own pain and guilt, forgetting that she was dealing with a killer who had a connection to her family. Her only family, Quin. If anything happened to her sister it would be her fault.

  Voice mail picked up, Quin’s cheerful voice proclaiming, “Hello, buttercup, this is Quin Teagan, I’m not available—ha ha—but leave a message and I’ll call you when I’m free.”

  Nora said, “Quin, call me as soon as possible. Wherever you are, stay there. Let me know where. You need police protection.” She hung up and bit her bottom lip.

  “After seeing that you think she’s going after Quin?” Duke sounded both angry and scared. “Did you see what she did to your pictures?”

  “But—”

  “You’re the one who needs protection.”

  “She knows she can’t get to me, not easily. Especially now—you’ve hardly left my side, I’ve been working, I haven’t been alone. Quin is my Achilles’ heel. Maggie knows I’d do anything to save her.” And Nora would. She’d delivered Quin nearly twenty-nine years ago. She’d been terrified of hurting the baby, certain from her mother’s screams that Lorraine was dying. Then she held her, wrapped in a towel, and knew true love.