by K. J. Dahlen
Oscar chuckled. “I didn’t want to miss your reaction.”
Sable took a deep breath and tried to calm the rage inside her. She could see what he was doing to her, and she felt it was time to take back some of the power he held over her head. “Did you have to kill my parents?” Sable asked calmly.
Oscar hesitated before he answered. “Those people were not your parents. Besides, they had something I wanted, and sometimes you just have to take it back anyway you can.”
Sable sobbed. “What did they have that you wanted that could have cost them their lives?”
“They knew where you were and wouldn’t tell me,” he told her plainly. “Found them already huh? Well I knew you would eventually, I just didn’t think it would be this soon.”
“You bastard, you murdered them and then set the house on fire. What did you expect?” Sable growled.
“Quite frankly I thought the fire would destroy the bodies,” Oscar admitted.
“It didn’t. The fire department responded faster than you thought they would.”
“Yeah, well I won’t make that mistake again,” Oscar told her as he hung up the phone.
Sable replaced her receiver and took a deep breath. She could barely contain the rage she was feeling. She glanced up at the sound of another phone ringing. It was Nick’s phone and she waited while he spoke to the other person. When he hung up, she asked, “Did they find her? Is she alive?”
Nick took a deep breath and nodded. “They found her. He messed her up pretty bad. If he hadn’t called when he did, she would have been dead in the morning. The doctors are working on her right now.” He looked at his blotter and asked, “I wonder when he put that there?”
Nobody answered.
Sable stood up. “I have to go see Elisa.”
Nick grabbed her arms and swung her around to him. “That might not be such a good idea.”
“Why not?” Sable asked defiantly.
“I think you should wait, that’s all.”
“What did he do to her?” Sable braced herself for the worst.
“We need you here to help us find Oscar.” Nick refused to say anything about Elisa.
“If she’s going to die, I want to be there for her,” Sable told him quietly.
“Her family is there and they might not want you there. He messed her up pretty bad,” Nick told her.
Sable closed her eyes and felt weak. She felt Nick pull her into his arms, and she let him hold her for a moment. Taking a deep breath she pulled herself away and told him in no uncertain terms. “I’m going to the hospital. I don’t care what her parents want or don’t want.”
“Then I’ll drive,” Nick volunteered. He glanced at the others, “While we’re gone I want you to tear this office apart and see if he left anything else.” He stood aside and let Sable lead the way.
A few minutes later they entered the hospital. Nick led her to the elevators and pressed the button.
“I hope you understand why I had to come,” Sable asked.
Nick nodded, “I do.”
When the doors opened, they stepped out and they could see the entire intensive care unit from where they stood. To the right was the waiting area and that’s where Nick headed. Sable walked to the nurse’s station and asked where Elisa was. The nurse pointed to a cubicle, and Sable made her way over to where the nurse had pointed. Pushing aside the curtain she gasped at what she saw.
Elisa was lying on the bed hooked up to a number of tubes and monitors. Her face and head were bandaged but she could see bruises everywhere. Elisa’s left eye was swollen shut and her jaw was wired shut. The monitor that showed the heart rate was barely registering a heartbeat. Sable moved to the side of the bed and took Elisa’s hand in hers. Raising it to her lips she pressed a soft kiss into her friend’s bloodied fingers.
“I am so sorry,” she whispered. “I wish this hadn’t happened to you. No one deserves this kind of brutality.”
“Sable,” she heard Elisa try to speak.
“I’m here.” Sable squeezed her fingers.
Elisa tried to turn her head. “He wanted me to give you a message.”
“Who did?”
“The man you call Oscar.” Elisa frowned in pain. It was hard for her to talk, but she knew she had to tell Sable what he said.
“What was the message?” Sable bent over to hear what Elisa had to say.
“He said he was going to take care of some unfinished business, and then he’s coming after you. You won’t know when or where but he coming after you.” Elisa’s voice was little more than a whisper and when she finished speaking her heart monitor started beeping. A nurse rushed in the cubicle and told Sable she would have to leave.
Sable stepped outside and watched as the doctors rushed in to help her friend. She looked at the waiting area and saw Elisa’s mother cradled in her husband’s arms. Both looked not at Sable but at the team of medical personal working on their daughter.
Nick broke away from the group and walked over to Sable. “There is nothing that we can do here, maybe we should go.”
Sable nodded and turned away.
“I hope you find the bastard that did this to my sister. I hope you find him and kill him.” The harsh words came from a young man to Sable’s right. She looked up to see her best friend’s brother standing there with clenched fists.
Sable nodded. “Don’t you worry about that. We’ll find him Bobby, and when we do he won’t live to stand trial. I promise you that.”
Bobby Gordan nodded and went over to stand beside his parents.
Nick reached in front of her to push the elevator button without saying a word. Once the door closed behind them he said, “Are you sure you should have said that?”
Sable glanced up at his face. “Oscar, or whoever he is, is not going to live when I get through with him. The world would be a better place without him sucking air.”
“That would be up to a jury of his peers, not you,” Nick reminded her.
“If he doesn’t give us a choice, I certainly won’t lose any sleep over it,” Sable said.
“What makes you think he won’t give us a choice?”
Sable shrugged. “He doesn’t seem to be the type.”
When they entered the office again Brandi looked up and smiled. “I think we’ve found Summer Quinn.”
Sable paused and asked, “Where?”
“Actually she lives in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, with her boyfriend Dan Paulson,” Brandi told them.
“How did you find her?” Nick asked.
“I went back to Sable’s birth certificate and found the town Summer came from then I looked for the last name. I found Summer’s parents and her father, Mike, told me he hadn’t seen or heard from Summer since she ran away. He told me to call his brother Victor and Victor told me where Summer was living,” Brandi explained.
“Did you send someone to bring her in?’ Nick asked.
Brandi nodded. “There’s more.”
“What is it?” Sable asked.
“We’ve narrowed the list of missing person’s from about thirty years ago to five that might be in the running.” She handed the list to Nick. “Those were the only five names that we could find that match our John Doe. They all come from wealthy families and haven’t been found yet.”
Nick looked at the list of names but none of the names on the list meant anything to him. He passed the list to Sable. She looked at it but it was just a list of names to her as well.
“Maybe when Summer gets here she can set the record straight.” Nick flipped the list to the desk and went to sit down.
“I wonder what the unfinished business Oscar has to do yet is," Sable wondered out loud.
“What are you talking about?” Nick wanted to know.
“Elisa said that Oscar told her that he would come back for me, but that he had some unfinished business to take care of first. I was just wondering out loud what that business might be.”
“Let’s suppose for just a moment. What would make a su
ccessful serial killer run the risk of getting caught? Oscar claims this is just a new twist to his game but what if he has something else in mind?”
“Like what?” Max wondered.
Sable shrugged. “I don’t know. Start bouncing first impressions out there and see where it takes us.”
“Maybe it’s just what he said; a new and exciting twist to his already sick and perverted game.” Nick told them.
“No, I don’t think so.” Sable announced. “This is not something an organized person would normally do. He likes the hunt and move in for the kill. Hell, he even likes the torture and he always takes the time to hide his work where he knows it may never be found. Bringing us into his little game is not something he can control. He thinks he can but he really can’t and that’s an element of danger for him.”
“Oh I think he controls us very well. When we went underground he forced us to come back,” Quentin remarked.
“Yeah, but even with that he broke one of his rules,” Sable informed them.
“What rule would that be?” Nick frowned.
“He let Elisa live. If this were truly one of his victims, he never would have let her live. He never would have allowed us to find her. He’s breaking the very rules he’s lived by all these years. Something else is going on here. We just have to figure out what before the end of the game,” Sable concluded.
“It’s possible he really didn’t want her dead,” Brandi concluded. “Maybe he wanted her alive to give you the message.
Sable nodded. “That would be one reason he would let her live.”
“But she was never truly one of his victims,” Nick reminded them. “He only took her to get us back in line.”
“That’s true, he only messed her up to get to us,” Sable agreed.
“His real target is you.” Max nodded at Sable.
“Don’t remind me.” Sable closed her eyes. “What did I ever do to him?”
Chapter Six
Sable stood by the window again and watched as the sun rose over the city. She’d been awake for over twenty-four hours, and while she was tired, she knew she would never sleep. Too many thoughts were running through her mind.
The office was dark and the dawn was quiet. The others were all in the lounge trying to get some sleep, and Sable was grateful for the time alone. So intent on her own thoughts she almost missed the sound of the outer door when it was pushed open. She turned and watched as she saw the shadow of a man sneak down the hall.
Without making a sound she crept over to her desk and picked up her gun. Tensely she waited as the shadow stopped at the door. Sable slowly pulled back the trigger of her weapon as not to alert the person standing at the door.
The door eased open and the shadow stepped across the threshold. He seemed hesitant to enter and instead of coming all the way inside he knelt down and placed something on the floor. He turned and would have exited the room but Sable called out to him. “If you move another inch, I’ll put a bullet into you.”
The man stopped and cried out, “Please don’t shoot. I wasn’t hurting anything. I was told to bring in a letter and leave it where someone would find it in the morning.”
Sable didn’t recognize the voice of the man standing in the doorway. His words were slurred and he sounded too afraid to be Oscar. “Come all the way into the room and turn on the lights. The switch is to your left.”
The man took a step into the room and turned to his right. Sable held her gun on him and called out, “Your other left.” She waited until he found the light switch and when the lights came on, she found herself looking at an older man in
raggedy clothes. He was unshaven and had a bottle in a brown paper bag sticking out of his jacket pocket.
“What are you doing here?” Sable demanded.
The little man looked scared out of his mind. “I just brought an envelope for you. I put it on the floor like I was told to.” The man bent over and picked up the envelope and was going to hand it to her but changed his mind. He inched forward and put it on Nick's desk. He wet his lips with his tongue and tried to inch himself back out of the room but Sable shook her head.
“Have a seat old man.” She pointed toward the sofa with her gun. When he moved to the sofa, she got a whiff of his stench. She coughed slightly but didn’t say anything.
She moved to the front of Nick’s desk and looked at the envelope the old man had put there. It had her name scrawled on it and the handwriting looked like Oscar’s. She glanced over at the old man. “Where did you get this?” she asked.
He started to shake his head. “Some guy came up to my box and asked me if I wanted to earn a hundred bucks. He said all I had to do was deliver a letter.” He reached inside his pocket and pulled out a hundred dollar bill. “Do you want it?” He was looking at the gun in her hand. “I don’t want any trouble lady.”
Sable put her gun down on the desk, picked up the envelope, and tore it open. There was a single black and white photograph in the envelope. It was the picture of a small child. The little girl looked sad and was holding a doll in her arms, a doll with a missing right eye and a tangle of curly hair.
Sable frowned and turned the photograph over to find her own name written on the back. She looked at the old man. “Where did you get this?”
The old man squirmed. “I told you lady, some guy paid me to bring you that letter.”
“Did you get a good look at him?”
The man looked at the floor. “I try not to look at anybody. People don’t like to be remembered sometimes, besides this wasn’t a man you want to remember.”
“What do you mean?” Sable asked.
“I don’t mean nothing by that, but when you live on the streets like I do, you know automatic when to remember people and when not to. It’s safer that way.”
“What the hell is going on in here?” Nick exclaimed from the doorway as he looked at Sable and her guest.
“We got another little present from Oscar.” She held up the photograph.
Nick frowned and joined her at the desk. He glanced over at the old man before he looked at the photo. He raised an eyebrow and looked back at the old man. “Who’s your friend?”
Sable shook her head. “I was just about to ask him.” She turned and looked at him. “What’s your name?”
The old man fidgeted. “Me? I’m nobody important.”
“That’s not what I asked. I asked what your name was.” Sable told him.
“They call me Billy,” he told her.
“Well Billy, what are we going to do with you?” Sable asked out loud.
“Pretend you never seen me. I’ll just slip back into my world and nobody will be the wiser,” Billy suggested.
Sable shook her head. “Unfortunately that’s not possible anymore.”
Billy frowned and asked. “Why not?”
“Yes, why isn’t that possible anymore?” Nick repeated.
Sable turned to the window and pointed outside. “Oscar is probably out there right now waiting to see if Billy shows up again. He’ll know by the amount of time that’s passed that we’ve detained him. What he won’t know is if Billy told us what we needed to know. Oscar isn’t going to take the chance that he didn’t. If we let Billy go back to his world, Oscar won’t allow him to live long enough to spend that hundred dollar bill he gave him,” Sable surmised. “And I don’t want another body on our hands thanks to Oscar.”
“But I’ll be ok,” Billy insisted. “I have friends that will watch my back.”
Sable shook her head. “If he thinks you told us anything, he’ll slit your throat before you even have time to tell him differently. Then he would just walk away and leave you lying in the street.”
Billy frowned. “Only an animal would do something like that,” he muttered.
“That’s our Oscar.” Sable nodded.
Nick reached for the phone. “We’ll have to put him in a safe house until we take care of Oscar.”
Thirty minutes later Billy was escorted out
the door in the security of two plain clothes detectives. The other members of the team were busy at their desks ready for another long day of chasing shadows from the past in the small hope they could find something that would lead them to Oscar’s real identity.
Sable was back at the window looking out into the city streets. The thought that Oscar was out there somewhere watching her was driving her crazy. She didn’t even know what he looked like yet she searched every face she could see.
“Did you get any sleep last night at all?” Brandi asked her as she passed a cup of coffee to Sable.
Sable took the cup and sipped the hot black liquid. Shaking her head she finally turned away from the window. “No, there were too many errant thoughts running through my mind.”
Brandi tilted her head and looked at her friend. “You need to rest at some point you know.”
Sable nodded. “I know. It’s just that every time I try and close my eyes I see a faceless menace holding a huge knife coming straight at me. I can’t get that image out of my mind.”
Brandi made a face at her description. “I don’t think I would be able to sleep with that thought running through my head either, but you have to try. You won’t be any good to the rest of us if your mind is fuzzy due to lack of sleep.” Brandi hesitated and then asked, “Where did that image come from? I mean that is a pretty detailed thought.”
Sable shrugged. “I don’t know where it came from. It’s just the only thing I see when I close my eyes. Maybe I will try to take a nap for awhile. I’m just too tired to think right now.”
Before she could do more than place her coffee cup on the desk, the office door opened and a woman came inside. She was escorted by two police officers and another man in street clothes. Both officers nodded at Nick.
“What is the meaning of this?” the woman asked. “The officers wouldn’t give me any information all the way here. Why have the FBI brought me here?”
“Are you Summer Quinn?” Nick stood and asked.
The woman nodded. “I haven’t used that name in years but yes, that was the name I was born with.” She glanced around the room and finally caught sight of Sable staring at her. She tilted her head and stared back at the younger woman. Her eyes widened as she recognized eyes she hadn’t seen in years. “Sabella…” she whispered hoarsely.
