Aberration

by Lisa Regan

  I had an inkling in that moment of just how strong denial could be. I’d heard of so many cases where a husband, boyfriend, father or son was doing horrible things—abusing a child, killing people, raping women—and their loved ones never had a clue. Naturally once the person was caught, the rest of the world looked on objectively and said, “How could she not know?”

  Now I got it.

  It was the ultimate mind-fuck. I stared at the man I thought I knew, the man I had trusted so implicitly. He was not at all what he appeared. “How?” I gasped.

  Dale forced me the two steps to the truck and pushed me into the drivers’ seat. The moment he started around to the passenger’s side I got out and ran. He caught up with me easily and with the barrel of the gun drew me back to the truck. We did that dance three times before he figured out to push me in through the passenger’s side while keeping the gun on me.

  I never wanted my own gun so badly in my life.

  “Drive,” he instructed, poking my stomach. The baby moved around inside me, kicking away.

  I was close to hyperventilating. I had to concentrate hard on slowing my breath. My baby needed air. I put the truck in drive and pulled out of the parking lot. In the rearview mirror I saw Linnea run out of the store, one hand wielding her Glock, the other hanging dead, blood streaming down her front. She ran after the truck, aiming her gun, trying unsuccessfully to get a good shot. At that distance, with one of her arms useless, aiming at a moving target, any shot she took could have disastrous consequences. She could accidentally hit me or cause the truck to crash. Finally, she stopped. I saw her stumble and sit down on the curb, her ash gray face receding into the distance.

  I was on my own.

  I drove slowly, in spite of Dale’s repeated urging to go faster. He told me where to turn, although I had the sense he didn’t really know where he was going. I had to think. My heartbeat thundered in my ears.

  “You can’t be Blake Foster,” I said. “Your father—he has Alzheimer’s. I went with you to visit him in the nursing home. He had your picture. The whole staff knew you.”

  Dale chuckled. “Smoke and mirrors. That man was my neighbor in Baltimore. His son’s name was Dale. His son was a junkie. He got out of the military and couldn’t keep it together. He stole from his father. Jim’s Alzheimer’s was pretty advanced by then. When I left Baltimore I took him with me—put him in a facility nearby where I could keep an eye on him.”

  I swallowed, looking ahead of me. We were weaving through a series of residential blocks. Each one looked exactly like the last. Dale kept giving me instructions: “Left here” or “Take a right”, but he didn’t seem to be going in any one direction.

  “You stole Dale Hunter’s identity,” I filled in. “What happened to the real Dale Hunter?”

  When he shrugged, the barrel of the gun pressed into my belly. My heart beat faster.

  “Who knows? He’s probably sleeping next to a dumpster in downtown Baltimore, sucking cock for his next fix.”

  I don’t know why, but I felt relieved that the real Dale Hunter hadn’t been murdered. We came out of the residential area and got into a more widely-used thoroughfare. It was two lanes in each direction. Traffic was moderate. I continued to drive as slowly as possible. I had to think of a way out of this—one that didn’t involve Blake Foster slaughtering me and my unborn child.

  “How did you do it? Linnea saw you the morning of the Wilkins murder here, next door to my house.”

  “She saw me at six a.m. as I was on my way to the airport. I caught a nonstop flight. Five hours. Plenty of time.”

  “What about all the times you watched my dogs?”

  “There is a very nice kennel a half hour from our neighborhood. I tip very well.”

  Under other circumstances, this news would have upset me, but at that moment I was just trying to distract him—keep him talking so he’d be off guard when I tried to escape.

  We were coming to a traffic light. I prayed for it to turn red. I slowed even more.

  “Go faster,” Dale said.

  “Your house—where did the blood come from?”

  “What?” He too was watching the light. “Speed up.”

  “The words were written in blood. Whose blood was it? How did you do it?”

  I chanced a peek at his face. He looked genuinely baffled. “Words? What words?”

  The light turned red. I came to a stop at the white line, and in one fluid motion, I opened the door and got out. As soon as my feet hit the asphalt I ran. The truck continued to roll forward. I heard Dale curse and the gears of the truck slam into park. I kept my eyes straight ahead. There were about seven cars behind us in each lane. I ran between them, along the dotted line. Half the drivers stared at me blankly. The other half stared straight ahead refusing to acknowledge my presence.

  Dale caught up with me and wrapped a forearm across my throat. He pulled my weight back onto him and dragged me along. This time he pressed the gun into my cheek. I struggled against him. One or two drivers got out of their cars. One of them, a woman, was on her cell phone, hopefully calling the police. The other, a man, came toward us and shouted, “hey.”

  Without the gun against my abdomen, I was bolder. I tried to remember some of the hand-to-hand combat I had learned in the academy. It seemed like someone else’s life. I wrenched downward on the arm across my throat and backed my rear up under his hips. I bent my knees and used my body to flip him over my shoulder onto the ground in front of me. It wasn’t a good hip throw. It was sloppy and awkward, but it gave me access to the gun. I bent his pinky back and he relinquished the weapon with a yelp.

  I put one foot on his chest, aimed at his head and pulled the trigger.

  The ineffectual click of the gun misfiring was the loudest noise I’d ever heard. I fired again to the same sound. Again. Click. Again. Click.

  On the ground beneath my foot, Dale smiled. “Love, there were only two bullets in there which I used on those two cunts back at the store.”

  I stared at the gun as if it were an extra appendage, some mutation afflicting my hand. “What?”

  He swept my leg out from under me. I wobbled and he rolled to his knees, knocking me on my behind. He caught the gun before I dropped it. “There were only two bullets,” he repeated. “One for you and one for me.”

  He hit me twice with the handle of the gun. Right on the side of my head. The first blow dazed me. The second knocked me out.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  WYATT

  November 29th

  Blake knew Kassidy had struggled valiantly. He could tell by the large bruise on the side of her face, although he didn’t remember hitting her. The blackouts were coming faster. He kept going in and out. It was a matter of minutes now instead of hours or days. It was hard to keep up. He had come to in the cab of the Ford pick-up truck—he had no idea where he’d gotten it from or what had happened to the Camry.

  Then he was dragging Kassidy across the parking lot toward the old truck, the Smith and Wesson pressed to her belly. He tried stuffing her into the drivers’ side of the truck, but she kept getting right back out. Flustered, he had chased her three times before getting her behind the wheel. He told her to drive. He was relieved when she started asking questions. If he could keep her talking, she might not notice how confused he was. He just had to get his bearings. He had meant to take her, and clearly he had. He had no idea where they were, where he’d gotten the truck, why he’d switched vehicles or what he had done to get Kassidy, but he had her. He knew he had done something to Linnea because Kassidy had cried out her name, but he had no idea what. He hoped he hadn’t killed her.

  He had resisted the urge to ask Kassidy what had happened to Linnea. Instead, he tried to project as much confidence as he could, make her think all of this was going according to plan. Make her believe it
was all seamless. He gave her directions now and then as if he knew exactly where they were. She drove so damn slow. He knew she was doing it on purpose. She looked as flabbergasted as he felt.

  He looked her over as she drove. It didn’t look like he had hurt her. He wondered again what he had done to get her to come with him. He flashed back to his parents’ room, coming back to himself after the murders, standing at the foot of their bed, knife in hand. The knife was in his left hand, which was odd since he was right handed. It was a detail he’d never thought about before. This time in the memory Sarah was there. She stood in the doorway. She too, was covered in blood.

  Blake shook the memory off and focused on Kassidy. His plan. He had to get her to safety so he could think. Finally she turned onto a road he recognized. He knew where they were. Relief flooded through him like a warm balm coursing through his veins. It froze when she started asking him something about words. Something to do with his house—Dale Hunter’s house.

  “The words were written in blood. Whose blood was it? How did you do it?”

  He had no idea what she was talking about. Then she got out of the truck. He threw the truck into park and raced after her.

  Then he was in the motel room he’d rented over the weekend. Kassidy was knocked out on the bed. She snored, all curled around her stomach. The side of her face was badly bruised. He stood beside the bed and watched her sleep. He touched her face where it swelled like a bruised plum. He felt a thrill as he touched her warm skin. He leaned down and smelled her hair. He had been this close to her before as Dale Hunter. There had been a handful of times that she’d hugged him or squeezed his arm when he was Dale, but he had never had access like this before.

  He fingered her hair momentarily, and then the orgasm doubled him over where he stood. She didn’t even stir. Quickly he changed his underwear and went outside. The truck was not in evidence. Across the street was a gas station mini market. Blake bought a bag of ice. Kassidy would need ice for her face when she woke up. He remembered the baby and her ravenous appetite. He picked up some snacks too. He checked his cell phone. Almost two hours had passed since he’d blacked out in the street.

  Kassidy was still out when he returned to the motel room. He turned on the television to see if there was any news about him. The five o’clock news had a composite. They didn’t name him. They only said that “this man” had kidnapped a federal agent at gunpoint after carjacking a man and shooting two people at a Woodbridge mini-market, one of whom was an off-duty DEA agent.

  “What the fuck?”

  He sprang up and banged on the television as if the news story had been the result of a bad reception. He flipped to another station, which also carried the story. Apparently he had walked into the mini-market wielding his gun and immediately shot a female customer, who was now in critical condition. He had then shot an off-duty DEA agent—Linnea obviously--who tried to intervene when he kidnapped Kassidy. The DEA agent was in stable condition. The newscaster recounted his “rampage” with an interactive map on the screen next to her. Small red Xes marked the locations of his various crimes along with the time of day that he had committed them.

  Apparently he’d gotten into a fender bender with an elderly man and carjacked him, taking his Ford pickup. That guy sustained minor injuries. Then the shooting at the minimarket and finally the scene at the intersection where he’d last blacked out.

  “Holy shit.”

  He rested his head in his hands. He wished he’d seen the news before he went out for ice. The composite wasn’t great, but there were a couple of grainy photos that people at the intersection had taken with their cell phones. Plus the police had the Camry which meant they had the name George Harbison. They’d be watching the Harbison accounts.

  “Shit,” he muttered.

  Harbison was the last of his active aliases. It would take time and resources to create a new identity. Now the feds were looking for him. They had Wyatt Anderton and George Harbison. They thought Dale Hunter was missing. Blake was running out of money and options. He glanced at Kassidy. She sat up. She stared at him, one hand probing gingerly at the side of her head. She winced as she touched the center of the bruise.

  “Where the hell are we?” she asked.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  KASSIDY

  November 29th

  I watched Blake Foster curse the television for a full five minutes before he realized I was awake. It was difficult to look at him and not see Dale, my neighbor and friend. He seemed genuinely surprised by the newscast. I remembered his expression in the truck when I’d asked him about the bloody words scrawled across the living room wall. He didn’t know what I was talking about. The more I thought about it, I could see the subtle changes in his personality between the mini-market and the truck. Even between the truck and the point where he hit me in the head. Something very strange was happening to him. My brain worked frantically to think of all the psychology I knew.

  He could have dissociative identity disorder which was the new name for multiple personality disorder. MPD drew a lot of attention in the world of entertainment and in the media, but usually the portrayal was inaccurate. All that was required for a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder was two or more distinct states of personality emerging in the same person—each with its own unique perceptions of and reactions to the world around him. Gaps in memory were common. The Blake I had met at the store was colder, more callous than the one who sat before me now, looking more like a scared teenage boy than a serial killer. If he did have dissociative identity disorder it would certainly explain the disparities in the crime scenes, particularly the later ones.

  When Blake turned to me, I blinked and touched the side of my face as if I’d just woke up. I still saw Dale. My mind was having a difficult time accepting the fact that the Dale I had known and trusted for over four years was a fake, a charade. I couldn’t let myself think of the implications—of how deeply I had let Blake Foster into my life under the guise of Dale Hunter. Every innocent moment I had spent with him replayed itself in my head. My heart thumped so hard it rattled my rib cage. Vomit rose in the back of my throat. I remembered how he’d come to check on me the night Jory came to my house. He hadn’t been looking out for me, he’d been spying. A shiver ran through me.

  My mind was too full. I had to focus. I had to figure out how to get out of this room alive. The pregnancy made me vulnerable. There was no way I could risk an ugly physical struggle. The smallest thing could result in my losing the baby. I could not risk that. Struggling, fighting, trying to overcome him physically was out of the question. That only left two options. I could wait for the cavalry and hope they showed up before he did something horrible to me, or I could try to outwit him.

  I was a behavioral analyst. And this particular UNSUB I knew almost as intimately as a member of my own family. We had a shared history stretching back to our childhoods. I knew his delusions and motivations. I would have to manipulate him.

  “Where the hell are we?” I asked.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  KASSIDY

  November 29th

  My head throbbed. My mouth felt dry as if he’d stuffed it with cotton. My voice came out raspy. Blake stood abruptly, as if I’d caught him doing something he didn’t want me to see. He went into the bathroom and came out with a handful of ice cubes wrapped in a white towel.

  “You’ll need this,” he said as he handed it to me.

  Grateful, I applied it to the side of my head.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “About your head. Are you hungry?”

  Inexplicably, I was hungry. It was the baby. Otherwise I would have no appetite in this situation. I told him I wasn’t hungry, but he laid a smorgasbord of snacks across the bed in front of me. Combos, Ritz Crackers, granola bars, Doritos and pretzels. I opened the crackers and stuffed two into my mouth. He watched me, star
ing at me like I was a beloved pet. The look of adoration on his face made me nauseous.

  “Water,” I said, crumbs spilling out of mouth. I stroked my belly with my free hand, still holding the ice to my head with the other. Silently, I urged the baby to move. I hadn’t felt anything since I woke up.

  “Oh right,” Blake said. From the top of the dresser he pulled a bottled water. I put the ice down and drank down half the water in one swig. I nearly cried out when my baby kicked hard on the right side of my abdomen.

  “Where are we?” I asked again.

  Blake turned the volume down on the television. “We’re safe,” he said.

  My first instinct had been to ask him why he was doing this, but it seemed like a pretty stupid question. Then I was going to ask what he wanted, but that too, seemed like a ridiculous question. Clearly he wanted me and that was why he was doing this. I didn’t want him in an adversarial position. I wasn’t quite sure yet how I was going to get out of this. I had to choose my words carefully. I asked him a more benign question that would tell me a lot just by his reaction to it. “What’s your plan?”

  He wouldn’t look at me. He paced beside the bed, glancing at the television every few seconds. He was nervous. He didn’t have a plan.

  “I’m going to take you away from here,” he answered. “Where we can be alone and be together.”

  “What makes you think I can trust you now after you lied to me for four years? You pretended to be someone you’re not. How can I believe anything you say?”

  Now he did look at me, the worried lines in his face softening. He dropped to his knees beside the bed, hands outstretched to me like a supplicant. “No, no, no, no. You don’t understand. I did that to protect you.”