“Oh, don’t worry about me. I’ll weather whatever bad publicity comes my way.”
She was trying to sound lighthearted and unconcerned. She wasn’t fooling him. “What will happen to the civil trial?” he asked.
“Judge Ingle has formally adjourned it until next week, pending the outcome of the investigation into Lee’s disappearance.”
“And if Lee isn’t found? Or worse yet, found dead?”
“I don’t know, Damian. I just don’t know.”
The sadness in her eyes was suddenly too much for Damian to bear. He looked away, raked his hands through the sides of his hair. “This makes no sense. Who could have attacked Lee? And why?”
“Damian, could Roy really be back?”
Damian exhaled heavily as he dropped his hands and sat back in his chair. “I would have bet against it. But there are a lot of things that have happened to me lately that I would have bet against and lost. Yes, it’s possible Roy is back.”
Damian noticed then that her fingers were drumming on the table in front of her. Very rapidly. He leaned forward. “What is it, Kay?”
“I’ve been thinking about Lee. We both know it isn’t in him to lie. Yet he got on that witness stand yesterday and said Roy was back. So that means Roy has to be, doesn’t it?”
“And if he is?”
“Remember when you told me about the tug-of-war between Roy and Lee, the fight for control?”
“What are you getting at, Kay?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe I’m just thinking crazy, but you tried the door to Lee’s apartment. It was locked. No one could get in. I keep thinking, what if there wasn’t another somebody in there with Lee? What if it was Roy he was arguing with? What if it was Roy with whom Lee had the fight?”
“That’s a very thought-provoking question, Kay. Have I been too arrogant in my assumption that I really did extinguish Roy?”
“So Roy could have tried to kill Lee with a blow to their shared body?”
“Yes, Kay. Many alters frequently inflict harm on the body, not fully realizing that the body of another alter is also theirs.”
“Then this theory is possible?”
“More than possible. You realize what this could mean?”
“That we can prove your innocence and get you out of here.”
He smiled at her, wishing again he could touch her hand or her cheek. “It also means that it might have been Roy all along who’s been causing this trouble as he’s been coming back to life.”
“Trouble? You mean the intimidation against you?”
“It all makes sense. If Roy was angry at my attempt to extinguish him, he might have been seeking revenge. First through the notes. The threatening calls. Then the envelope that caught fire. The speedboat. The car. The gunshot. Even his dropping the bloodied brass bookend in the back seat of my car to implicate me in Lee’s disappearance.”
She shot to her feet. “I have to go talk to Adam and the police and explain about Lee and Roy.”
“Kay, please be careful,” Damian called after her fast-retreating back. “If it is Roy, he could be very danger—”
But Kay wasn’t listening to Damian’s warning. She was already out the door.
* * *
ADAM TURNED TO Kay as they exited the jail. “So you and Damian think it really could be Roy Nye behind this?”
“I know it sounds strange, but from what I’ve learned about multiple personalities, it makes sense, Adam. Let’s go talk to the detectives on the case and explain.”
“No, Kay. You’re out of this.”
“But, Adam, you didn’t see those videotapes of Roy. I did. I have a much better chance of making those detectives understand what Roy’s like and of convincing them that Damian is innocent.”
“Kay, the detectives on this case aren’t about to believe anything a lawyer found in a robe with her client in a hotel room is going to say about the innocence of that client. Don’t you see? Your presence can only do him harm now.”
Adam turned his back on her then as he strode away in the clearest and sharpest reprimand Kay had ever felt from her senior partner.
The hardest part of that reprimand was knowing she deserved it. She had betrayed one of her profession’s strictest rules. And because of it, she had not only ceased to be useful to her client, she had become a liability to him.
Kay’s feet dragged as she trudged over to Pine Street to catch the monorail back to the office. The sun was peaking through soft white, pillowy clouds. The monorail glided above Seattle silently, swiftly, like a lovely, breeze-borne sea gull.
Normally, she loved the sight of the busy city below. But not today. Today she saw nothing but Damian behind prison bars. Today the quiet ride was shattered as Adam’s words pounded loudly through her brain: You can only do him harm now.
She exited the monorail and walked the last few blocks to the Justice Inc. offices opposite the Space Needle. She immediately sought the solitude of her private office and sank into her chair, burying her head in her arms.
She had committed the cardinal sin. She had gotten personally involved with a client. And not just personally involved, she’d fallen in love with Damian. Deeply, foolishly, fatally in love with him.
How could this have happened to her—the epitome of the logical lawyer? Had she gone insane? Did she need a psychologist?
She laughed mirthlessly at the irony of her question. Of course she needed a psychologist. She needed Damian.
Her intercom beeped. She pressed down the button. “Please,” she said to her secretary, “no calls.”
“I’m sorry, Kay, but a Dr. Payton is flipping over the phone lines. She says she has to talk to you. She says it’s a matter of life and death.”
Kay’s back stiffened. “I’ll take it,” she said quickly, picking up the receiver. “Yes, Dr. Payton, this is Kay Kellogg.”
“Ms. Kellogg, I must see you. Right away. There’s something urgent you must know.”
“Why can’t you just tell me over the phone?”
“No. I didn’t realize how far... This has to be in person.”
“All right. Do you know where our offices are located?”
“I can’t come there. You have to come here.”
“Dr. Payton, I’m not—”
“You want him out of jail, don’t you? I’m telling you, you have to come here!”
The woman sounded panicked. “Where are you?” Kay asked.
“My house. Get out a pen and paper and I’ll give you directions. You’d better hurry. I don’t know how much time I have.”
“How much time you have? What do you mean by—”
“For God’s sake, stop asking questions and just write!”
* * *
WITHIN TWENTY MINUTES, Kay was cruising the upper-middle-class neighborhood of Sand Point, just west of Lake Washington, following the last of Priscilla Payton’s telephone directions.
She spied the address and parked in front of a nicely kept colonial peaking out over the top of a thick shrubbery barrier. She got out of her car and walked up the left side of the circular driveway. As she approached the front door, she noticed it was slightly ajar.
Had Dr. Payton left it open for her?
“Dr. Payton?” she called out. “It’s Kay Kellogg. We spoke on the phone?”
No one answered.
Kay wasn’t one to step into someone’s house without a clear invitation, despite the fact that she’d just been summoned by an urgent telephone call. But as she turned around to leave, she heard a noise from inside.
“Dr. Payton?” she called.
Again there was no answer. The little hairs began to stand up on the back of Kay’s neck. Then she heard a voice, faint and indistinct, coming from inside.
“In here.”
Kay stepped through the open doorway, cautiously following the direction of the voice. She found herself in an empty living room, boldly decorated in red-and-black checks.
“Dr. Payton?” she called again.<
br />
“In here,” the voice repeated, still muffled, still indistinct, seeming to come from down a hall.
“I’ll wait in the living room for you,” Kay said. This walking through someone’s house on the trail of an eerie voice was beginning to give her a very unsettling feeling.
“I’ve fallen. Please, help me,” the muffled voice cried.
Kay hurried down the hallway where the voice seemed to be coming from, chastising herself for her earlier hesitation. She should have realized it right away. The woman was clearly in trouble.
“Where are you?” she called out.
“In here,” the faint voice replied.
Kay turned toward an open bedroom door. She rushed inside only to stop in her tracks. Dr. Priscilla Payton was in trouble, all right. She lay on the carpet, her eyes open and glassy in death, slashes of fresh crimson blood splashed across her chest.
The danger immediately closed in on her. Kay turned to flee. But it was too late. A hand grabbed her arm and yanked her forward, a cruel hand with a cruel grip that threw her viciously to the carpet. She landed on her back, so hard that the breath was knocked from her lungs.
A wave of white dizziness swept through Kay. It took a moment for her head to stop spinning and her vision to clear. When it did, she wished it hadn’t. She could see the blood still dripping from the knife that had killed Priscilla Payton—the knife that Priscilla’s murderer now held over her.
Chapter Fourteen
“Croghan!” Kay cried, fear tearing his name from her throat.
Croghan’s lips drew back into a sneer. “So Priscilla didn’t tell you about me over the phone? Now that’s a relief. What did she tell you?”
A drop of blood from the knife splashed onto Kay’s cheek. She opened her mouth to speak, but only a pitiful squeak came out. She closed her eyes, fighting off a wave of nausea and numbing terror.
A sharp kick registered in her ribs. She cried out uncontrollably as pain shot through her.
Her eyes flew open again to see Croghan’s cruel sneer.
“That get your attention? Good. Now, if you don’t want to end up like Priscilla, you’d better tell me what I want to know.”
Kay fought down the nausea and the fear whirling inside her and searched her mind for the words that could stave off the knife poised so purposely over her.
Trial attorneys learned to think fast under pressure. Still, this was pressure the like which Kay had never known. For it wasn’t just the outcome of a trial in the balance. It was her life.
“Well?” Croghan prodded.
“Priscilla asked me to come over to talk about the tapes.”
“You’re lying. I burned Roy’s videotapes. You think I was going to let you introduce them into court after what Priscilla told me was on them?”
Kay quickly absorbed Croghan’s offered facts. So he was the one who had stolen the videotapes? Yes, it was beginning to make sense. He’d just put on an act about wanting those tapes. The man defending the memory of Roy Nye could not have permitted the jury an opportunity to see the tapes that revealed the Roy personality for what it was.
“I wasn’t talking about Roy’s videotapes,” Kay quickly improvised. “I was talking about the tapes Priscilla made that revealed you were the mastermind behind all this terror against Dr. Steele.”
Croghan’s eyes darted around the room wildly.
“She made tapes? That bitch! And it was her idea to begin with!”
“Her idea?” Kay echoed, a persistent voice inside her telling her to keep this man talking, keep his mind away from using the knife in his hand.
“She came to me when I was ready to go to trial against Steele. She told me she knew Steele well and could help me make trouble for him. She made the calls to Steele and wrote the first letters. She was the one who told me about the secret videotape room and how to get into Steele’s house by climbing the wall and coming in through the garden.”
“But you were the one who expanded on the idea,” Kay guessed. “You were the one in the speedboat and the car and behind the letter fire. You were the one trying to escalate the terror campaign so it would make the news and generate more publicity for the case. Priscilla didn’t want publicity.”
“No, all she wanted was to play on Steele’s guilty conscience. But she didn’t tell me to stop when she learned about the speedboat, car, letter fire, even just missing him with the shotgun. No, she laughed about them. It was only when I got him arrested that she got all scared and started talking wild.”
“Because she knew you’d murdered Lee Nye.”
“She acted as though I had a choice. Hell, I even offered to cut Lee in. But he kept saying that Roy had come back and that he would have to admit it. So I smashed in his stupid face. Damn zombie brought it on himself.”
“And then Dr. Steele conveniently showed up.”
“He must have heard me moving around the apartment wiping off my fingerprints. He called out after ringing the doorbell. I waited until he left and the nosy biddy from next door went back to her apartment before I carried Nye’s body to my car along with the bookend. I dumped Nye’s body in a ravine off the highway and then went to Steele’s place and dropped the bloodied bookend in his car. It all went like clockwork.”
“Until Priscilla got alarmed about the murder.”
Croghan grasped Kay’s arm and yanked her to her feet. He brought the knife to her chin. “Where are her videotapes?”
Kay felt the sharp end of the blade against her throat. She was afraid to swallow, almost afraid to speak. But she knew she had to. And she had to say just the right thing.
“Priscilla sent the first tape to me in the mail. I won’t be getting it for at least another day.”
Would that lie keep her alive until tomorrow?
“Then why did she want you to come over?”
“She insisted on giving me what she called ‘the part-two details’ in person.”
“Is that all there is, part one and two?”
“No, part three is also on a tape that she said she was going to mail to me tomorrow if I kept my half of the bargain and didn’t go to the police until after she left.”
“Left?”
“She was planning to leave the country. She didn’t want to be arrested as an accessory to murder.”
Were these lies sounding plausible?
Croghan’s eyes flew around the room. “I see no signs that she was packing.”
“She wasn’t leaving until tomorrow morning. She was probably putting the packing off until later.”
“Where is the videotape she was going to mail to you?”
“Hidden, I suspect.”
“Then, we’re going to start searching for it. And you’d better pray we find it.”
Croghan shoved her in the direction of the dresser. Kay obediently opened a drawer and began her pretense of a search, trying not to look or think about the body lying on the floor just a few feet away.
“I don’t understand why you’ve done all this, Croghan. You’re one of the finest courtroom adversaries I’ve come up against. Surely, with your legal talent, you don’t need...”
He stepped over Priscilla’s body as though it were nothing but an annoying impediment to his progress as he headed for the nightstand.
“What do you know about what I need? You’ve got it made, Kellogg. Barely thirty and you’re already a partner! I’m thirty-nine. Thirty-nine! Yeah, I’ve got legal talent. Yet year after year I watched others getting the big breaks and the big bucks. Now I have my chance. This case is making me a household name. I don’t care what I have to do. I’m winning it.”
“But now that Lee’s dead, his testimony that Roy has returned—”
“Will get thrown out of court,” Croghan finished as he banged a nightstand drawer shut. “I’ll see to that when they find Lee’s body where I dumped it and formally charge Steele with his murder. That confession you’re going to write saying the two of you set it up will help, of course. Hell, this cou
ld take all day. I don’t have time for this. I’m just going to have to torch the place. Come on. I’ve got extra cans of gasoline in my car. You can help.”
Croghan yanked her arm and dragged her out of the bedroom.
Kay tried to resist, but Croghan’s malicious fingers dug into the sensitive flesh of her arm. She stumbled unwillingly along beside him, biting back the pain.
She had just one ace left. She played it. “I’m not helping you set this place on fire, and I’m not writing a confession implicating myself and Dr. Steele. You won’t kill me. You need me to get that mailed tape for you tomorrow.”
He stopped in the living room and turned to her, resting the knife just under her chin. “No, I won’t kill you, Kellogg. But if you don’t do exactly as I say, I’ll make you wish you were dead. I have nothing to lose. This is my chance, and nothing and nobody is going to get in my way. Believe it.”
Kay did believe it. The man’s eyes were cruel and cunning and desperate—a deadly trio. Fear swirled in her stomach.
He dragged her out the front door. His Lincoln was parked behind the visual barrier of the heavy shrubbery on the far side of the circular driveway. He approached the car’s back end and flipped open the trunk. He reached in for the two full cans of gasoline stored there and shoved one into each of her hands.
“You’ll pour. I’ll light. Get going.”
Kay looked around, hoping to attract someone’s attention. But the heavy shrubbery, which had hidden Croghan’s car from her view earlier, hid any other view now. She had no choice but to stumble back up the driveway carrying the heavy cans, as Croghan prodded her in the back every step of the way with the sharp blade of his bloody knife.
She knew he would kill her after he got her to do what he wanted. He couldn’t afford to let her live.
She promised herself to resist him, that whatever happened, she must not let him coerce her into writing that confession implicating Damian.
Brave words, but what if she wasn’t strong enough to adhere to them? What if she gave in to Croghan’s demands in order to ease her pain or buy herself a few more precious seconds of life?
Either from the weight of the gasoline cans or the weight of her thoughts, she stumbled and fell onto the grass.
Beauty vs. the Beast Page 23
