by T. R. Ragan
He stared blankly ahead.
“OK, that’s it.” She came to her feet again, reached through the bed rails and took his hand in hers. “I’ve said what I came to say. I won’t be coming to see you anymore. I tried and now I’m done.” She leaned over the railing and kissed him on the cheek one last time, wishing things could have been different, but knowing they could never be. “Goodbye, Dad.”
CHAPTER 46
Four days after Kitally had been admitted to the hospital, Hayley walked next to the nurse as she pushed Kitally in the wheelchair through the halls, down the elevator, and to her car. After easing Kitally into the passenger seat, she strapped her in. They had been driving for five minutes before Kitally attempted to say something.
“Your words are coming out garbled. Can you speak up?”
“Everything hurts,” Kitally managed. “I don’t feel good. I’m gonna barf.”
“Well, hell, don’t do it yet. Give me a minute.” Hayley pulled over to the side of the road, jumped out, then ran around the front of her car. Another car honked and she flipped him the bird. She opened the passenger door not a moment too soon. Kitally leaned out and then there was barf everywhere. Thankfully not on Hayley’s boots, since she’d jumped back in time. When Kitally was done heaving, Hayley handed her some tissues.
Most of Kitally’s head was covered in bandages. Hayley could see just enough of her to see that one eye was still swollen shut. Her face was black and blue and swollen. It was like looking at a Picasso. All the right features were there—they just weren’t aligned correctly.
“What do I look like?” she asked after Hayley climbed in behind the wheel.
“You look like shit, worse than shit. I wouldn’t look in a mirror for a few weeks if I were you. You know, because you care about shit like that.”
“Shit like what?”
“Like looks: fingernail polish, clothes, hair. You know . . . that kind of shit.” Hayley merged back onto the main road, keeping her eyes focused ahead.
“You really don’t care about any of that?”
Hayley ignored her.
“Maybe your friends are right. Maybe it’s time for you to change things up and start tending to yourself. Maybe think about—”
“Stop right there. I’ve already been lectured by Lizzy and Tommy . . . I don’t need anyone else telling me how to live my life.”
“Where are we going?”
“My place,” Hayley said.
“Who’s going to help me with these bandages?”
“I am.”
“And what about my painkillers?”
“I’ve got it all taken care of.”
“I can’t drive for another week.”
“Not a problem.”
“What if I need something?”
“Like what?”
“Who’s going to wash my hair?”
“That would be me,” Hayley said. “Do you have a problem with this setup?”
“I guess not.”
“Good.”
“What if those guys come back?”
“I’m counting on it.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Me and you are going to spend the next few days, maybe weeks, getting ready for them.”
“I don’t think I’m ready to pick up my machete, though I do want it close by.”
“You have one good eye. I need you to do some research and order a few things.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“I’m going to get the guys who did this to you,” Hayley said.
“I don’t think you’ll see them again unless you do something to provoke them.”
“That’s exactly what I plan to do. Brian is obviously watching us. When he realizes I’m determined to find him and have no plans to give up, believe me, he’ll send someone else, and this time we’ll be ready.”
“I need a few days to recuperate.”
“I need time, too,” Hayley said. “I want to surprise Brian and his friends with something so explosive it will literally blow their minds.”
“Sounds good,” Kitally said as she reached for her water bottle, tilting it just enough so the water dripped into her mouth.
CHAPTER 47
Killing was addictive. Who knew?
As he waited for Madeline’s hairdresser, Megan Vos, to return home after a long day of cutting and styling, Seth sat inside a small room, a basement of sorts that Megan used for storage. There was a heavy chair and a foldable table. There were boxes stacked and set against the wall that were labeled with things like “kitchen items” and “ski clothes.” There were also high stacks of books and magazines. As he flipped through one magazine after another, he happened upon an article about the psychology of murderers. Hello. Interesting. It contained a list of the reasons someone might commit murder. Number-one reason: easily frustrated, limited impulse control. Not true. I have full control. I know exactly what I’m doing. Number two: frequently expresses anger. Sure, yeah, maybe I’ll give them that one. Number three: resents authority, insubordinate. Definitely. Number four: a killer would never admit to it, but extreme pleasure is derived whenever they are able to express their irritation or fury. Right again.
He inwardly laughed at the ridiculous mind games he often played to keep himself occupied in times like this. One thing the article didn’t mention was that becoming a predator of sorts, no matter the reasons, could be lonely at times. So much waiting. So much work, keeping his mind busy.
He lifted his head at the sound of her footsteps upstairs.
The wait was over. She was home.
He rubbed his fingers and had to stop himself from cracking his knuckles so she wouldn’t hear him. It wasn’t easy. His guess was that she didn’t come downstairs very often. Boxes were stacked up against one wall. No washer or dryer or second freezer. She kept her suitcases down there, which was why he hadn’t brought one of his own this time. This wasn’t the first time he’d come to her house. He wanted to experiment with Megan. He had a lot of new toys he wanted to try out and his excitement threatened to ruin everything. He was eager to just run upstairs, stick her with the syringe and get started. He was considering doing just that when he heard another voice—a man’s voice.
His jaw twitched. He needed to stay calm. Think. Think. Think.
Looking around the room, he tried to figure out how he could deal with two people in such a small space. He didn’t like last-minute changes, but it didn’t matter; he needed to figure this out. He had only one syringe. He looked through his bag, examined all the stuff he’d been gathering for weeks now: stun gun, hammer, Mace, knives, box cutter, ropes, and duct tape. He’d thought about bringing the blowtorch, but decided against it at the last minute. He put the syringe in the front pocket of his shirt, grabbed the hammer, and began to pace. This wasn’t part of the plan. He should leave, but he knew he couldn’t. He was too excited.
“This is Madeline’s fault,” he said as he walked up the stairs and opened the door, surprised to see that nobody was in the main room.
He looked around as he made his way to the kitchen. Nobody was there.
Music. Music sounded from another room. For Christ’s sake, what was Megan doing? He headed that way, walked right into the bedroom, and didn’t hesitate to bash the hammer into the guy’s head. “Madeline’s fault,” he said over and over, oblivious of everything around him until he suddenly realized he needed to shut the hairdresser up before she alerted the whole fucking neighborhood.
There was blood all over the bedsheets. He grabbed the woman and choked her until she passed out. For a minute there, he thought he might have killed her, but then he put two fingers to her wrist and felt a pulse. He did the same for the man and felt nothing. He pushed the woman off the bed and made quick work of using the pillowcases to wrap the man’s caved-in head. After wrappi
ng the man’s body in the sheets, he ran around the room collecting the guy’s stuff—his clothes, wallet, shoes. He tossed it all in a heap on top of him before rolling him up in the bed cover.
More blood splatter on the headboard, a few spots on the mattress, but all in all it wouldn’t be too difficult to clean up. He dragged the rolled-up sheets to the floor. Thunk. Thankfully the guy weighed well under two hundred pounds; he dragged him through the kitchen and into the garage. Megan’s car was parked in the garage—all part of the plan—but he needed her keys so he could open the trunk.
Back in the house, he was looking around for her purse when he saw the hairdresser crawling across the floor to the front door. What the hell had he been thinking leaving her in the bedroom? Fucking idiot. Shit. Everything was turning to shit.
He reached her in time to grab a fistful of hair and yank her back into the house just as she opened the door. She tried to scream, but he covered her mouth and used a back kick to shut the door behind him.
She was clawing at him, her fingernails raking across his face and neck. She was strong and he had to use every bit of strength he had in him to keep her down. He reached for the syringe, but she slapped it out of his hand and it flew across the room.
They were both breathing hard.
He straddled her to keep her from going anywhere.
She was screaming again. Her long, sharp nails continued to rip into his chin, desperately reaching higher, trying to claw his eyes out. She was a fighter. She wasn’t going down easy. He needed to forget about the damage she was doing to his face and shut her up. He rammed his knee into her stomach.
She gasped for breath.
He did it again, harder this time. “Don’t fuck with me,” he told her.
Her hand fell limp across her chest.
He took a moment to collect himself and that’s when she went for his eyes.
The bitch had been playing dead.
Big mistake. He’d told her not to fuck with him and he’d meant it.
CHAPTER 48
Before Lizzy could ring the doorbell, Madeline’s neighbor opened the door and invited her inside. James Whitton was the man who had passed out a flyer warning the neighborhood to be on the lookout for a silver Honda Civic. According to Madeline, he was a retired military-police officer and his wife, Teresa, was a retired teacher.
Mrs. Whitton offered her a seat on the couch in the living room and didn’t waste time with small talk. These people were serious about keeping their neighborhood safe.
“Your neighbor Madeline Blair showed me the flyer you passed around, and I was interested in learning more about the car you saw. It says on the flyer that it was a silver Honda Civic, but every few years the look of that particular make and model changes, so I brought you some photos to look at.” Lizzy laid six pictures across the coffee table. “Do any of these look like the car you saw?”
Mr. Whitton pointed to the 1990 model. “It looked just like that. One of the back windows was partly rolled down and there was water damage in the backseat. There was a lot of stuff back there, too—clothes, trash, empty cans of soda pop.”
“Did you speak to the driver?”
“I certainly did. He was male, probably in his midforties to early fifties. He wore eyeglasses, too.”
“Could you give me specifics? Color of hair, things like that?”
“He had a lot of gray and his hair was thinning. His hands were trembling. It was freezing cold outside but he was perspiring.”
“Would you say his hair was dark brown or blond?”
“Light brown peppered with dull gray. No sideburns or facial hair to speak of. He had on a dark jacket and some strange-looking pants.”
Lizzy lifted a questioning brow.
“You know . . . blue . . . those papery things that doctors wear.”
“Scrubs,” Lizzy offered.
“That’s right. Why would a man in scrubs be sitting in his car for that long? Definitely odd behavior.”
“So that’s when James played a trick on the man.”
Mr. Whitton nodded. “I asked him if he needed help with something. He appeared to give the question some thought before he told me his mother had passed away recently. He then gestured toward Dr. Blair’s house and said he used to live there and was just going down memory lane or whatever.”
“But James didn’t believe him,” his wife added, obviously proud of her husband for being extracautious.
“So what did you do?” Lizzy asked.
“Although we’ve only lived here for a few years, I pretended to know who used to live in Dr. Blair’s house. I made up a name, I can’t remember exactly—”
“I remember,” Mrs. Whitton cut in. “You came right into the house after the man drove off and told me you asked him if he was one of the Johnson boys, to which he replied, yes, he was one of the Johnson boys.”
Lizzy smiled at Mr. Whitton. “Very clever.”
Mrs. Whitton agreed wholeheartedly. “James told the man to go ahead and take his time, figuring he could go inside and call the police,” she went on, “but that’s when the man said he needed to get home to his wife, who was probably worrying.”
“He left before you could call the police?” Lizzy asked.
“He hightailed it out of here,” Mr. Whitton said.
“Did you get his plate numbers?”
He shook his head. “That was my plan all along, but the back plate was missing. I would have taken a look at the front of the car if he hadn’t taken off so fast.”
Frustrated, Lizzy looked over her notes. She needed a name, a license plate, something that might tell her who was after Madeline. “Anything else?”
“I’d appreciate it if you told us what’s going on. My wife saw the police gathered at Dr. Blair’s house last week, but she was afraid to step out of the house. I thought I had some clout with the department, but the only thing they could tell me was that everything was under control and there was nothing to worry about.”
“Look,” Lizzy said, “I can’t pretend to know what the police know. They have protocol on when to contact the public and I’m not privy to that information, but I can tell you that Madeline Blair has reason to believe she has a stalker.” Lizzy truly didn’t want to scare these people, but they were Madeline’s neighbors and they might be her best hope of seeing something and reporting back. “This vehicle you saw could very well belong to the man who’s been causing her a lot of grief.”
“He hasn’t physically harmed her in any way, I hope.”
“He broke into her house, which is when you must have seen the police cars.”
Mrs. Whitton gasped.
“I don’t mean to scare you, but at least two of Madeline’s friends have gone missing. As far as I’m concerned, this man you spoke to could be dangerous.”
“Nobody came knocking on our door,” Mr. Whitton said, clearly upset. “Are you saying the police know that her friends are missing and yet they haven’t warned us?”
She nodded. “I’ve asked Detective Chase for twenty-four-hour surveillance in the area, but nothing has been done.”
“Do these friends live close by?” Mrs. Whitton asked.
“I do know that one of the missing persons happens to live a few blocks from here.”
Lizzy knew she was stirring up shit, but she needed all the help she could get. She had a feeling Detective Chase would be getting an earful as soon as she left.
CHAPTER 49
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because I have to.”
“Please, let me go.”
“I will,” he said. “Give me a minute.” He picked up the Taser he’d bought online, examined it, made sure the cartridge was loaded and then set it aside while he untied the ropes from her arms and legs. He’d brought Megan downstairs over an hour ago. The minute he untied h
er, she bolted for the door. He grabbed the Taser, pulled the trigger, and sent an electric charge through her body before she could get the door open. She went to the ground; her body twitched once or twice and that was it. She couldn’t move. He dragged her back to the chair and tied her up again. By the time he was done, he was sweating.
It took a while, but she came back to life. “Where’s Brent?” she asked.
He figured she must be in shock. Or maybe the volt of electricity had caused her to experience a bit of amnesia. Brent was in the trunk of her car. Hadn’t she seen him drag him out of the bedroom? Maybe not. “He’s gone. Maybe he went to get help.”
She didn’t look convinced. “What do you want with me? Take my money,” she said, “my car, anything you want—just let me go, please.”
“You all say the same thing. Let me go. Please. I won’t say a word. Do you realize how that sounds?” He gave her a moment to answer. His hands rolled into fists. “It sounds like bullshit and I hate bullshit.” He cracked his knuckles. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I just might let you go if you tell me everything you know about Dr. Madeline Blair.”
“Madeline? This is about Madeline?”
He got a thrill out of seeing her surprise. It was like an explosion of colorful fireworks going off inside his head.
“Does Madeline know you?”
He smiled. “Better than most. I used to be a figment of her imagination, but that woman brought me to life.”
“What do you want to know?” she asked.
There weren’t a lot of things people wouldn’t do to get out of a tight predicament, and Megan wasn’t any different than most. “Tell me something Madeline might have told you in confidence, anything you think that not too many people would know about her.”
“I don’t understand,” she said, her voice excessively squeaky. “Why do you have to tie me up to ask me these questions?”
Because you’re my guinea pig, he thought but didn’t say.
“Let me go and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
