Trigger Effect

by Maggie Price

  Wishing fervently she was double-jointed, Paige slid her left arm up her spine until biting pain forced her to stop. Teeth clenched against the damn ball gag, she locked her right forearm against her ribs, then slid her fingers beneath the dress’s armhole. Her index finger snaked under her bra. While she struggled to loop the chain around her finger, pain tightened her shoulder muscles into a spasm.

  By the time she had a grip on the chain, her breathing was ragged and sweat beaded her forehead.

  Inching the silver chain from beneath her bra, she drew it out through the dress’s armhole. She winced when the tooth of the handcuff key nicked her flesh.

  With the chain dangling from her fingers, she lowered her arms behind her. Her muscles unclenched in relief.

  Step two: insert the key into a hole on one of the cuffs using a grope-in-the-dark technique.

  She lost count of how many attempts it took her, but finally—finally!—the key dipped into the hole. She twisted it, felt the cuff on her right wrist loosen.

  Angling toward the moonlight, she unlocked the other cuff. By the time she reached the window, she had the ball gag unbuckled and out of her mouth. She slid the silver chain over her head, sending thanks to her grandfather for making her promise to wear it always.

  Step three: if she was still at Midnight, get to Brenna’s car where she’d left her cell phone and call McCall. If she wasn’t at Midnight…well, she’d figure out something.

  The window was old with a lock at the top of a wooden frame on which age had taken its toll. Paige dealt with the lock and tugged on the sash. Her first attempt forced it up an inch. Leaning into the effort, she shoved it fully open.

  Moonlight and freezing air poured into the room that was lined with storage shelves. She peered out the window, saw she was still at Baskerville Hall, in a ground-floor room. The only thing between her and Brenna’s car was an expanse of winter-dry grass.

  Paige slid out the window, landed in a defensive crouch. Watching, listening, she retrieved the asp from the hollow heel of her left boot. Staying low, she sprinted toward the car.

  Halfway across the lawn, she heard footsteps pounding behind her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a shadow coalesce into a man. Masked. Loverboy. Kidd.

  Flicking her wrist, she pivoted, swinging her arm in a powerful arc. The silver baton slashed against his throat. He grunted, jerked back, evading. Stepping sideways, he moved in a slow circle around her, keeping his weight forward on the balls of his feet. A predator looking for an opening.

  “What’s your hurry?” he asked.

  If she’d had any lingering doubt Steve Kidd was behind the mask, his voice erased it.

  “It’s over, Kidd.” She turned with him, keeping him in front of her while she held the baton ready to strike. “Give it up.”

  “What? I saw you running across the lawn, thought I’d see what you were doing at Midnight.” He angled his chin as he continued to circle her, closing in. “Small world, isn’t it? How about we go inside and see what interests we have in common?”

  “You killed Lauren Gillette. She showed up at your house on Sunday morning and you killed her. I know it. McCall knows it.”

  “I called Nate five minutes ago. Shot the breeze with him. That sound like he suspects me of killing some woman?” Kidd circled, edged nearer. “You’ve got an active imagination, Paige. There’s no way you can prove a person was alone, or with someone just because his verb tense changed.”

  He was closer than he’d been a second ago, braced and ready to attack.

  One chance, she thought. She had one chance to disable him before he made his move. Knowing a cop’s gaze instinctively followed a weapon, she whipped the baton upward. With his focus diverted, she landed a full-footed kick to his crotch.

  Cursing, he doubled over, made a wild grab. His hand locked on her left wrist, jerked her forward. Using her body’s momentum, she turned into him, smashed her elbow up into his nose. Cartilage crunched, blood spewed from behind the mask. He went down hard the same instant light fanned across the lawn.

  She whirled. McCall bailed out of his cruiser, leaving its door open, the engine running.

  He had his automatic drawn, aimed downward as he ran toward her. His hand gripped her arm even as his gaze stayed on the masked man, lying unmoving on the ground.

  “It’s Kidd,” she said, her breath ragged. “He killed Lauren Gillette.”

  “I know.”

  “How? He said he called you. He could tell by your voice you had no clue.”

  “I didn’t, not then.” Jaw set, he holstered his automatic, then crouched. Pulling Kidd’s arms behind his back, McCall slapped on a pair of cuffs. Seconds later, he had the mask off.

  McCall rose, came back to her. “After Kidd and I hung up, I got a call from the lab.” He did a quick head-to-toe scan of her, then shrugged off his topcoat and settled it onto her bare shoulders. She hadn’t even felt the cold until that instant.

  Drawing in a couple of cleansing breaths, she retracted the asp. And felt her stomach muscles begin to unknot.

  “The lab tech got a report back on the fiber found in the box with Lauren Gillette’s body,” McCall said. “It was a piece of plastic monofilament, consistent with dental floss. And it was soaked with saliva. The first image in my head was of Kidd, chewing on those damn floss toothpicks.”

  McCall stared down at the man, his friend. “Then I thought about your analysis of the assignment he wrote. About how suspicious you were about his actions on the same day Lauren Gillette was murdered.” His grim gaze rose to meet hers. “I didn’t want you to be right. I called Kidd’s house. His wife said he was at his lodge meeting. That he wouldn’t be home until after midnight. Midnight. My gut told me you were in here with him.” He shoved a hand through his hair. “Christ.”

  “I’m sorry.” Paige settled her hand on his arm. “So sorry.”

  He lifted her hand, then the other, and stared at the abrasions on her wrists. “Kidd did this to you?”

  “Yes.” She would hold off mentioning the knot on her head.

  “I’m sorry, too, Paige. Damn sorry.”

  Paige had always thought of an interrogation as a con game of give-and-take, of tricks, the challenge of making someone say something he or she had no intention of saying. Any cop worth his salt knew that everyone held secrets. The skill was finding a way to pry them out.

  After two hours in an interrogation room with Steve Kidd, Paige conceded this was one killer who was smart enough to keep his secrets to himself.

  Kidd’s sole comment had been, “You got a case, file it.” Up to now, he hadn’t asked for a lawyer, no doubt thinking they had no evidence to connect him with Lauren Gillette’s murder.

  Now, Paige stood outside the small room, gazing at Kidd through a pane of one-way glass. Her elbow jab had broken his nose and settled purple bruises under his eyes. Sitting at the small table pocked with cigarette burns, he looked pale, somewhat ill, yet defiant.

  Like Paige, he was still dressed in black leather.

  “He’ll eventually talk,” she said, turning to McCall. He looked as pale as Kidd, and just as haggard. “We know now that he was one of the myriad cops who’ve worked off-duty security at Lang. That ties him to the freezer where Gillette’s body was found. And you and I are almost positive the DNA on the piece of floss from the box will match Kidd’s. Once we get the lab report to verify that, he’ll know he has to cooperate. Work a deal.”

  “To avoid the death penalty. Yeah, he’ll know.” McCall’s voice was as hard as quartz.

  Paige could almost feel his misery. He had to be sick to death about his friend. After her ordeal at the lake, he had given her the comfort she’d so badly needed. She wanted to do the same for him. At least, as much as she could.

  “Nate, tonight, when I came to in that room Kidd put me in, I thought about you. And how much finding out what he’d done would hurt you.”

  “He murdered Lauren Gillette.” McCall shifted his gaze, st
ared at Kidd through the one-way glass. “I have to figure he would have killed you tonight if he’d gotten the chance.”

  She stepped closer. “You’re thinking you worked side by side with a killer and never saw it. He was your close friend and you never saw. You’re standing here, beating yourself up, wondering what kind of cop does that make you.”

  “You pegged Kidd.” His gaze came back to her. “Just by reading the assignment he wrote, you pegged him.”

  “Not as a killer. I knew he was hiding something. I had no idea why. Nate, you couldn’t have known.”

  The sound of footsteps coming from the opposite direction had them both turning.

  Captain Ryan strode toward them, his expression even more grim than it had been when he’d first arrived. He wore a gray sweater and jeans, and carried a manila envelope in one hand.

  “Both of you follow me,” he said without slowing down.

  Paige and McCall exchanged a look before tailing the captain into the vacant interview room next to Kidd’s.

  “What’s up?” McCall asked, shutting the door.

  At the worn table in the room’s center, Ryan opened the envelope, withdrew two file folders and flipped their covers open. “A lab tech processing Kidd’s car found these under the carpet in the trunk.”

  Paige stepped closer. And felt herself go still. “Those files are mine.” She looked up, her gaze flicking from Ryan to McCall. “They were in my briefcase when I got mugged.”

  She pictured the mugger, clad in black, with his leather full-head mask. “Kidd? Kidd mugged me?”

  Ryan angled his chin. “Is there any other explanation for him having these files?”

  “No.” She glanced again at McCall. He looked as disbelieving as she felt. “No.”

  “What else was in your briefcase?” Ryan asked.

  “Copies of the workshop assignments. Premeasured syringes of epinephrine, the drug used to treat my peanut allergy. A banana.” She shoved a hand through her hair, working things out in her mind. “Kidd must have been after the assignment he’d written,” she said after a moment.

  “That has to be it.” McCall settled a hip on the table. “That first morning of your workshop, you showed us just how good you are at statement analysis. Kidd and Henderson gave you a statement from a homicide case that took them a week to close. You pegged the suspect in less than five minutes. Then you read what I wrote, and scored a direct hit on what I’d done the day before. So, Kidd’s sitting there, knowing he murdered a woman on Sunday. He had to be thinking he’d covered his tracks, had nothing to worry about. In about ten minutes you showed him the opposite was true. He damn well couldn’t chance your picking up on some unconscious clues in the assignment he’d written.”

  Paige thought back to that day. “He left the workshop early. Said he had to drive his wife to a doctor’s appointment.”

  “You’d told all of us about Isaac,” McCall said. “That he was on the lam. When you broke for lunch, you put the assignments in your briefcase. Kidd just needed time to work out a plan. So, he went somewhere, changed his clothes and got one of his leather masks. He would have parked away from the training center and walked there. Waited for you to come out.”

  “I couldn’t figure out why a mugger would ignore my purse and go for my briefcase. That’s why I thought Isaac was behind the mugging, to play with my mind.” She shook her head. “Kidd thought the original assignments were still in my briefcase. He didn’t know I’d made copies.”

  McCall gestured toward the files. “When he opened it, he’d have instantly realized you still had the originals. So he probably went through the files, saw the memo from your doctor about your allergy. Do any of us think it’s a coincidence that a few hours later, the bowl with bananas and apples injected with peanut oil got delivered to your hotel suite?”

  Paige felt a numbing unreality, but they were taking the pieces and making a puzzle fit. That’s what police work was all about.

  “I went to the E.R. with the original assignments in my purse.”

  “Kidd would know the fruit would get tested,” McCall said. “So, he reviewed the reports you had on Isaac, found out his ‘Gentleman Jim’ moniker. He typed you a personal note from Isaac, stuck it on the back of the mug shot he found in the file and left it in your suite. Bingo, the suspect in the tampered fruit is the escaped shrink who’s vowed revenge against you.”

  Paige nodded. “I moved out of that hotel and checked into the Ambassador Arms under an alias. So Kidd’s next shot at getting the original assignments was the next morning at the training center.” She paused, thinking back. “I left them in the guest instructor’s office while I went to get coffee. Kidd and Henderson were in the break room. Tia Alvarado and I stopped to talk, so I was away from the office for about five minutes.”

  “Long enough for Kidd to get in and steal the assignments,” McCall said. “You have to figure he jimmied the drawer on the desk, took your billfold and left the drawer open where your purse was, betting you’d focus on that. Not notice for a while that the assignments were gone.”

  “Which is exactly what happened.” There was something more, Paige thought. A vague thought, lurking in the outskirts of her mind. Too far away to pull it in.

  Ryan scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “Do we have a way to prove any of this?”

  “The mugging,” Paige said. “I cut the bastard’s neck with my car key.” She looked at both men, a sense of cold anger settling inside her. “I want the lead when we go back and talk to Kidd.”

  While Nate gave a statement to Internal Affairs, Paige settled into the chair across from Kidd and dropped the files onto the table in front of him. “We found these in your car.”

  He glanced sideways, saw Ryan leaning against the wall. Paige saw an uneasy flicker in Kidd’s blue eyes before he looked back at her. The fluorescent lighting gave his skin a pasty hue, a stark contrast with the bruises beneath his eyes.

  “So?”

  “So, you got them from my briefcase after you mugged me.”

  “The only thing I know about you getting mugged is what McCall told me. As for those files, Isaac’s an escaped killer. Since when is it a bad thing for a cop to collect rap sheets and arrest reports and other information on a wanted criminal?”

  “You collected the information in this file?”

  “How else would I have it?”

  “And you compiled a file with personal information about me, because?”

  “You’re Isaac’s target. A victim. How many times did Henderson and I follow you to make sure Isaac didn’t tail you?” He shrugged. “I just covered all the bases to protect you, Paige.”

  “Well, Steve, I’m touched. Under the circumstances, I need more than just your word on this.”

  “That’s all you’re going to get.”

  “You say you didn’t mug me. I want to believe that. So, tug down the collar on your leather vest and show me your neck. That way I can eliminate you as a suspect.”

  His expression remained emotionless, but that didn’t stop him from going pale.

  “You’re in custody,” she reminded him. “You’ve been Mirandized. These files give us probable cause to suspect you assaulted and robbed me. You can either show us your neck, or we’ll look for ourselves. What’s it going to be, Steve?”

  He leaned in, a flicker of pure hatred in his eyes. He was sweating, his forehead glistening in the lights. “Damn bitch,” he said, keeping his voice so low it was impossible for Ryan or the audio equipment to pick up. “I hope to hell Isaac shows up here. Grabs you, tortures you. Kills you the same way he did those Dallas whores.”

  Chapter 22

  Five minutes later, Paige and Captain Ryan walked out of the interrogation room. Ryan closed the door, shook his head. “I’ll have a lab tech photograph the scratch on Kidd’s neck.”

  Paige glanced at Kidd, sitting slumped at the table beyond the one-way glass. “This is a nightmare.”

  “Yeah.” Ryan set his jaw. “Wh
at did Kidd say to you?”

  “That he hopes Isaac gets me.”

  “Christ.” Ryan shoved a hand through his dark hair. “You think you know someone.”

  “Actually, it triggered a thought that’s been floating in my head. Something I couldn’t put my finger on. If I’m right, it ties into what Kidd said to me earlier at Midnight.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I might be off base.” She rubbed her fingers between her brows. It was after one o’clock in the morning, she could feel her energy flagging. But this was the best time to pin down the person she suspected might have the answers to her questions. “I want to check on something before I lay this out.”

  “Anything I can help with?”

  “Two things. When McCall gets out of the IA interview, tell him I had to leave for a while. Second, can you get me Tia Alvarado’s phone number?”

  Two hours later, Paige walked into the small office off Homicide’s squad room. McCall was at the desk, reading a report. He looked up as she closed the door, an emotion she couldn’t read in his eyes.

  “Where’ve you been, Carmichael?”

  “I had to check on something.” She pulled off her coat, hung it on the hook behind the door. “Didn’t Ryan tell you?”

  “Yeah.” McCall leaned back in his chair. He’d been up all night, yet his pale blue dress shirt looked crisp, his gray slacks perfectly pressed. “And I told you that until Isaac’s found, you don’t go anywhere without me.”

  Paige sat in one of the chairs facing the desk, the black leather dress riding up on her thighs. She could do without the caveman attitude, but she let it pass. She’d come here to let McCall know what she’d found out. Then tell him goodbye.

  “I wasn’t alone,” she said evenly. “Tia Alvarado went with me. Besides, you were in an interview with IA.”

  McCall leaned forward. “Kidd’s no longer a threat to you, but there’s still a sick psycho shrink who wants to kill you. You could have waited for me.”