TWENTY NINE
Two Months Later
She’d called every night to talk to Nia, and while Nia was civil, she’d made it clear that she wanted to try living with her dad. “Just for a time, Ma…just to see how I like it. Please try to understand.”
She tried to understand. Every night she tried to understand. She cried herself to sleep each night as well.
In the meantime, she’d been summoned back to Charleston to be on hand at the murder trial of one Dr. Roland Thomas Hatfield, to testify to all that she knew and the attempt on her life. The evidence appeared
overwhelming against Hatfield, but his case had attracted a high-powered lawyer, the best in the state, and he was going for an insanity plea.
The trial pulled her away from home for days, and in the end, the jury found Hatfield guilty but guilty by reason of insanity—he got it his way. In a sense, he got away with multiple murder. He was well on his way to a federal prison for the criminally insane.
Days after the trial, Rae got a letter from Hatfield. She opened it and saw the familiar handwriting, but it now looked more relaxed, at ease. Hatfield wanted something from Rae. He wanted her to come see him, to see firsthand how far he’d come along already, and he said he had a business proposition for her.
She paid little attention to the cryptic note or the madman’s request. One day at her Quantico office, however, she mentioned the letter to Raule, and he became instantly interested. He sat down and read the letter over— twice. He then said, “You have to go see this creep, Rae.”
“What?”
“It’s an opportunity to conduct interviews, learn more about the enemy—something we—”
“Whoa up, there, boss!”
“—something we do whenever possible. This time he’s asking us to hear him out, asking you. This way, you can learn details about his crimes and what motivated him in the first place. We need more empirical evidence on what creates serial killers.”
“No…no, it wasn’t empirical evidence that ended this monster’s career. It was psi evidence.”
“Rae, this is a great opportunity to get inside his head.”
“You climb into his head. I draw the line at sitting across a table from this guy, Raule. Find someone else.” She started for the door, wanting to escape Raule’s office.
“He wants you, Rae.” “And not long ago he wanted to kill me, no!”
“I don’t want to make it an order, Rae.”
“Then don’t. It’s not in my job descrip.”
“I can put it in.”
“You do that, Raule. Go right ahead, and I’m outta here. I’ll quit before I let you and the department use me this way. Do I look like Jodie Foster?”
“Rae, whatever else you may think, you work for me, and I see this as a helluva an opportunity, and I’m ordering you to open a dialogue with Hatfield.”
“Why, Raule? What can we possibly hope to get from his fevered brain?”
“We document the thinking of serial killers—it’s a large part of what the Behavioral Science Division of the FBI does, and the PSI Unit is part of the BSU.”
“The step-sister of the BSU, you mean. Look, Raule, I don’t deserve this.”
“Neither did this maniac’s victims, Rae. Look, the more we can learn from the enemy, the better to defeat him in the future. We have files on every major serial killer ever placed in captivity anywhere. Besides, whatever he says can and will be used against him, to keep him behind bars whenever his parole board meets. Regardless of his ‘good behavior’ and ‘corrected mental attitude’.”
“I suppose you’re right, but can’t someone else do this, someone who knows something about interrogation techniques and how to get a madman to vent?”
“He asks specifically for you. He isn’t likely to talk to anyone else.”
“At least try. You have people who have experience in this sort of thing.”
“All right. I will send someone else, but if it doesn’t work, will you then step in, Rae?”
“Thank you.” She rushed out.
# # #
The attempt to have a surrogate go in to conduct interviews with Roland Hatfield failed from the beginning. He insisted he’d only talk to Rae Hiaykawa. It took all of Raule’s persuasiveness and threats to get Rae to the Federal Prison for the Criminally insane in Morgantown, West Virginia.
The place proved a cold concrete labyrinth indeed, and after several doors locked behind her, Rae found herself in a room with a flimsy partition between herself and the killer.
“Sooo good to see you, Dr. Hiyakawa, Rae. Can we be informal? May I call you Rae?”
“What is it you want, Hatfield?”
“I want us to be friends.” “Friends?” she was incredulous.
“All right, then partners…”
“Partners?”
“In writing the book.”
“Writing what book?”
“The book…the book that’ll make a great movie, my story, the story of Roland Hatfield.”
“I’m out of here!” Rae stood to his shouting and protestations. She didn’t hesitate. “I’m not here for your pleasure or gain, Mr. Hatfield.”
Rae didn’t look back. If Raule wanted to co-author a freaking book with a monster, he could do it himself. She would have nothing to do with it.
# # #
When she got home that evening, Aurelia had a package from Charleston, from Carl Orvison. Inside it, she found the film record of her time at the crime scenes clearly marked. She realized that the film could not be used for any definitive evidence against Hatfield, and with the case well over, that the tape was of no interest to Charleston authorities, but somehow it hurt to see it and hold it in her hands.
But there was something about holding it in her hands that made her want to slip it into the DVD player and have a look. Sure enough, it was of her while in trance. Worthless indeed, she thought. Then it struck her, something her parents and Gene had been trying to tell her, that she must watch the tape in rewind mode.
She fast-forwarded through the scene of her at the Cottrill trailer that first time. Then she hit stop and she ran it backwards on rewind. The images sped by, but they had altered. Backwards, the ghostly presences she had seen— of both killer and victim—came into play. When she slowed it, however, they were gone.
She then turned off the set and returned to the foyer where a number of messages flashed in screaming red on her home phone. She’d turned her cell off and had turned it over to guards at the checkpoint while inside the prison, and she’d forgotten to turn it back on. No one who wished to get in touch could, not by any means other than her home phone.
She hit the play button as she stepped out of her shoes. She expected Raule to be on, ranting about her walking out of the prison and leaving West Virginia altogether without giving him the courtesy of an explanation. There were telemarketers ahead of Raule, and then a call from Nia. She alerted on Nia’s voice like a hunting dog. Nia was crying, and she could hardly catch a word. But she did hear, “I wanna come home.” More crying.
Then the crying came as if in stereo, and she realized that Nia stood behind her, crying, in the flesh. “You’re home!” she shouted and rushed at Nia, taking her in a bear hug. “You’re home! How did you get home?”
“I made the chauffeur drive me.”
“You have a chauffeur now! How elegant.”
“I hate him, Ma.” “Your chauffeur?”
“No, Daddy! I hate Daddy. I was a fool to leave.”
All music to Rae’s ears as she held her daughter in her arms and tears came welling up from them both. Inwardly, Rae cheered, and behind Nia’s back, while still in the hug, she lifted both fists in a Rocky win gesture. I knew it was only a matter of time before Tomi Yoshikani showed his true colors. God, I wonder what he did to hurt my girl so.
She held Nia tight, shoulder-to-shoulder, and in the distance, in the darkened next room, she saw her parents’ images in the full length mirror; it was
the first time she’d seen them in and around the house since Nia’s having left the Queen Anne. Her aloneness had been complete at the house, but here they were again, smiling, nodding, happy again with Rae, happy that she’d gotten their granddaughter back and out of the clutches of Tomi Yoshikani.
Over the happy scene, she heard Raule’s insistent voice on the phone message, telling her to call him. She ignored the man. Then Raule came back on to leave yet another message, this time a warning on his lips. “Rae…Rae, you gotta get this message. Dr. Roland Hatfield escaped from the penitentiary hospital between three and three AM, and he is still at large. Watch your back!”
She peeled herself from Nia’s embrace, and Nia lifted a suitcase, going for her room upstairs. Rae dialed into Quantico, Raule’s direct number.
“Is this some sort of joke?”
“No…wish it were.”
“Do the prison authorities and the locals have any idea where he’s headed?”
“Not a clue. Maybe the nearest Ace Hardware?”
“Contact Carl Orvison back in Charleston; make sure he knows, and urge him to put up a guard around Hatfield’s children and wife. The voices in the man’s head might’ve decided he should end it all and take them with him.”
“Or to come after you, Rae. I think we need to get Secret Servicemen on you and yours.”
“No way. If he comes for me, I’ll kill him. I will.”
She saw it as a second chance to give Roland Thomas Hatfield exactly what he deserved in the first place—an execution. If West Virginia couldn’t hold him for his life sentence, and if he did come to Virginia after her, she’d see what she could do to hold him instead for an eternity.
The End
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert W. Walker is the author of more than forty published novels, beginning with SUB-ZERO in 1979. He has millions of books in print. You can visit him at www.robertwalkerbooks.com.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
THE INSTINCT THRILLERS featuring FBI forensic pathologist Dr. Jessica Coran
Killer Instinct
Fatal Instinct
Primal Instinct
Pure Instinct
Darkest Instinct
Extreme Instinct
Blind Instinct
Bitter Instinct
Unnatural Instinct
Grave Instinct
Absolute Instinct
THE EDGE THRILLERS featuring Detective Lucas Stonecoat
Cold Edge
Double Edge
Cutting Edge
Final Edge
THE GRANT THRILLERS featuring Medical Examiner Dean Grant
Floaters
Scalpers
Front Burners
Dying Breath
THE RANSOM MYSTERIES featuring 19th century detective Alastair Ransom
City for Ransom
Shadows in the White City
City of the Absent
THE DECOY THRILLERS featuring Chicago cop Ryne Lanarck
Hunting Lure
Blood Seers
Wind Slayers
Hand-to-Hand
THE BLOODSCREAMS SERIES featuring archeologist Abraham Stroud
Vampire Dreams
Werewolf’s Grief
Zombie Eyes
HORROR NOVELS
Dr. O
Disembodied
Aftershock
Brain Stem
Abaddon
The Serpent Fire
Flesh Wars (the sequel to The Serpent Fire)
Children of Salem
THRILLER NOVELS
Sub-Zero
PSI: Blue
Deja Blue
Cuba Blue (with Lyn Polkabla)
Dead On
Thrice Told Tales (short stories)
YOUNG ADULT
Daniel Webster Jackson & the Wrong Way Railroad
Gideon Tell & the Siege of Vicksburg
NON FICTION
Dead On Writing – Thirty Years of Writerly Advice
Excerpt from DEAD ON by Robert W. Walker
ONE
Marcus Rydell instinctively rushed from his bedroom and out of the apartment, his .9mm in hand, taking the stairs two at a time. Even here in the stairwell, he could hear the distressed, keening cry of what sounded like a wounded animal, but it was all too human. Definitely a child’s scream, which meant probable cause for him to break down a door, something he’d always relished doing when he’d worked as an Atlanta cop.
The thought pumped blood to his every artery and to the brain. It felt wonderful, like a balm, like a spring shower and train whistle all conspiring to wake him the hell up and out of his previously paralyzing depression.
As he approached 58-B, Marcus made out words coming from an adult male inside. The man’s words were halting, pleading in turn, saying, “Hon-hon-honey, please n’more. Don’t h-hurt me! Please! I’ll be good to you, sweetie. I swear!”
The child endangerment laws left no doubt in Marcus’s mind. He shouted through the door, “I’m coming in! Open up in there, or I kick it in!”
Others in the building peeked from their doors, shy and tentative and curious, but of no help. “Call 9-1-1, lady!” Marcus shouted over his shoulder to a silver-haired woman. Terrified, eyes bulging, this neighbor slammed her door so hard that Marcus thought himself shot. The sound, like a gunshot, repeated itself up and down the hallway. No one wanted to get involved. Another elderly lady muttered, “Animals…you’re all animals!” before slamming her door.
More shouting and crying came wafting through the door at number 58-B. “Open it, now!”.
“Very helpful lady!” Marcus backed up, lifted his leg, about to kick when he heard the door latch come off. “I have a gun!” he now added, cautioning whoever had unlatched the door. Then it swung open wide.
In the doorway, stood a four-foot high Oriental girl, looking the same age as Rydell’s own daughter. The black-haired, wide-eyed child stood four-feet high and shaking. “I-I-I kilt him.”
“Killed who?”
“Him, da-da. Good ’n’ dead now.”
Marcus swallowed hard and put his gun away, tucking it into the small of his back beneath the white shirt he’d earlier donned for his farewell to the world as he’d been chewing on the same gun moments before. He saw that the girl had suffered multiple bruises. He assumed authorities would discover, and must assume many more welts beneath her clothing. A closer look into her eyes and features revealed a creamy colored skin and blue eyes. She looked partially Caucasian. “Where’s your mother, honey?”
“No! I nobody honey. No more never.”
“Your mother? Mama-san?”
“Don’t have one.”
“All right, let me have a look at your da-da over there.” The man lay still as death at the center of the room.
“He no my father neither. No pappa-san!”
Marcus cautiously stepped inside and around the little girl, noticing now for the first time the bloody claw hammer in her hand; it dripped a trail from door to da-da’s bashed in face and skull. The girl may be little, but she knew how to wield a hammer with deadly effect. She had definitely taken daddy by surprise.
In fact, from the injuries the hairy, swarthy adult, had sustained, Marcus doubted he’d find a pulse, and he almost didn’t. Somehow through the excruciating blinding pain, the man muttered, “B-Bitch she…jeeze… caw’t me s-s-sleep.”
The effort spent to accuse the girl of murdering him in his sleep did him in entirely. Silent now for eternity, the disfigured child molester went in search of rigor.
Meanwhile, Marcus realized that the monster who’d just died had had some knowledge of the law, just enough to possibly punish this child once more—this time using the law. If the courts and attorneys learned that she’d attacked him while he slept, they could and would make out a case against her, despite her bravery. She could be portrayed as a cold-blooded killer in need of penitentiary time. Their case would rest on exactly what Daddy Dead had uttered, for at the time of the
attack the little, frightened prisoner girl was in no immediate or imminent danger from the dead man. If established as true, this negated the self-defense argument regardless of the ugly circumstances and common sense.
Once she’d gotten the upper hand, the little girl, not yet in her teens, had repeatedly driven the hammer into him, concentrating on cranium and face. Not an unusual target for sexually abused victims when they fought back; there seemed a sense of urgency to deconstruct the face of her attacker. Given more time, she might well have deconstructed other of the man’s parts.
Deja Blue Page 28
