by Abbie Roads
He turned his attention to the image on the wall. But…there was no image. Instead, the wall had been painted gold, perfectly coordinated with the rest of the room. Mac must’ve called him back from his vision before the killer covered up his work with the paint.
Holy.
Fucking.
Christ.
Cain’s legs wobbled when he stood. His hand shook like an alcoholic in need of his jolly juice, but he pointed at the wall. “He painted a picture.” His brain bashed against the backs of his eyeballs. He wanted to press his hands to his eyes to keep them from exploding out of their sockets, but his hands were smeared with the family’s blood. The pain was only beginning.
“I-I don’t know what you mean.” Mac’s tone was full of question.
“He painted the wall white—made a blank canvas. Then he used the family’s blood to create a portrait of some guy…” Cain closed his eyes, seeing on the back of his lids the scars lined up and down the man’s arms, the slashes over his heart, just like the ones on his—
“Fuck!” His lids popped open. His gaze automatically sought the wall, hoping to see the actual image again, but gold paint pulsed in his vision from the thumping inside his head. He held his arms out in front of him. Underneath the thin coating of blood on his skin, a network of white slashes ran from his wrists to his shoulders.
The wounds had healed decades ago, but the scars still remained. He pulled his shirt up high and looked down at his chest stained with drying blood. A thick, white crisscrossed scar rested over his heart—cut into his flesh by his father. Every scar on his body, placed there by the man.
“What is it?” Mac’s tone was full of question, mixed with a bit of suspicion. “You’ve got to talk to me. I don’t know what’s going on.”
Cain’s heart galloped up and down his rib cage, but he forced himself to speak slowly and quietly—in deference to the ax beating against his skull. He told Mac everything he’d seen and everything he remembered about the artwork in blood. “It’s there. You can’t see it, but it’s there. I’m there. Underneath that gold paint.”
It took a lot to catch Mac off guard, but score one for Cain—he’d just done it.
Mac’s mouth was slightly open, lips twitching like they were trying to form words, until one finally spilled out. “Infrared.” The word came out soft and hesitant. “We might be able to see the image using infrared photography.” Things went quiet for a moment while Mac stared at the perfectly painted gold wall. “Why paint you? Why not paint Killion? I mean, people are obsessed with you both, but why choose you over him? And this guy made it clear it was you he painted. Without those scars, we would’ve thought it was Killion.”
Yes. Cain was cursed with looking too much like his father—like one of the world’s most horrendous killers. It usually took a double take and some head-scratching before people realized he wasn’t Killer Killion.
Mac shook his head. “But then our guy covered up what he’d painted. Probably thinking we’d never know the image was there.”
“He even fucking signed it.” Cain didn’t realize until the words exited his mouth that he had seen a signature.
“He put his name on it?”
“Not his name. A symbol.” Cain wiped his hands harder on the towel, then dropped it on the floor. He yanked his cell from his back pocket and tapped on the ArtPad app. The white light from the phone lasered into his skull. It was all he could do to keep his eyes open and not groan out loud. He drew a Christian cross, then put a hook on the bottom of it that looked like an upside-down question mark. “You’ve seen this before. I’ve seen this before.”
He showed the image to Mac and watched the guy’s face turn pink, then tomato with recognition.
“Yeah.” Cain voice was straight as a line. “It’s from my father’s last kill. But he didn’t do this. Not unless Petesville Super Max allows weekend furloughs.”
Mac snorted. “Only way he’s getting out of there is in a body bag.”
Couldn’t happen soon enough. His father was a stain on humanity. “So we know he didn’t do this.”
“But…” Mac’s words disappeared for eight thumps of Cain’s brain. “The girl—Mercy Ledger—made that mark on the wall as she was bleeding out from your father cutting…from her throat being cut. It didn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Didn’t mean anything until today. That symbol was at that scene twenty years ago, and it’s here now.”
Mac shook his head slowly, like an old dog with neck problems. “No one ever questioned her about it. The prints on the wall were hers. Jesus, we need to find Mercy Ledger.”
Mac didn’t say it, but Cain knew how the man’s brain worked. Mac thought Mercy must’ve done this. “She didn’t do this. She’s been locked down in the Center of Balance and Wellness for the past few years.” The words popped out of Cain’s mouth before he censored them. And he really should’ve censored them.
He lifted his arm, pressed his eyes against a clean patch of material near his shoulder, and spoke without looking at Mac. “I…” Yeah. Just what was he going to say? It wasn’t like he could confess that he’d been checking up on Mercy Ledger for the past twenty years. That would make him sound like a damned stalker. And stalking was considered the gateway drug to killing. “Liz told me.” Bold-faced, flat-out, flaming-bright lie. And Mac would know it. The guy was trained to spot a lie at thirty paces. And yet Cain would rather endure the cost of the lie than spend the truth. Call him chickenshit—he would own it. He kept his eyes closed against his shoulder.
“Isn’t that a violation of confidentiality or something?” Mac worded it as a question, but it sounded like a statement. “Liz could lose her nursing license.”
But Liz hadn’t actually told him. He’d guessed. He’d known Liz long before he’d met Mac. In those dark days of childhood, his father had forced Cain to work with him at the Center. Liz had been a night nurse and the only person ever to show kindness to him. Even after his father had been caught, she’d remained a part of Cain’s life—babysitting him when Mac was away for work. She was one of the few people Cain considered a friend and the closest thing he’d ever had to a mother. And now he’d tossed her in front of the bus because he was a pussy.
The quiet closed in around him. His head felt like it was about to burst off his shoulders. His stomach started rolling.
“The Center?” Mac finally broke the quiet. “That’s a horrible irony.”
And it was. That Mercy Ledger had lived the past few years of her life among the same hallways his father had roamed as a janitor was beyond irony. It was downright wrong.
Chapter 2
In a recent online auction, the knife Adam Killion used in the Ledger family murders sold for a record-breaking $2.3 million. The Son of Sam law prohibits convicted felons from profiting from their crimes, but someone just made a fortune.
—J. C. Brown,
www.criminalnewsinvestigations.com
Mercy Ledger sat in the therapy circle with eleven other crazies from Ward B. The pungent funk of unwashed bodies and rotting chicken—thanks to Bo Coray and his chicken fetish—hung heavy in the air. The suicidal, homicidal, or just plain psychotic didn’t care about trivial things like hygiene.
Dr. Payne wore his usual attire—three-hundred-dollar shirt, perfectly tailored pants, and shoes so shiny that when he stepped in front of her, she could see her reflection in them. He looked too GQ to be a psychiatrist in this underfunded, overpopulated dump of a mental hospital.
He handed her a sheet of paper. In what had once been bold letters, but now were more in the realm of fuzzy gray from over-photocopying, it read:
GRATITUDE JOURNAL
Practice an attitude of gratitude!
List three things you are grateful for today!
Gratitude? Seriously? After two years on Ward B, there wasn’t a whole lot to b
e thankful for.
Dr. Payne held out the box of crayons to her. They didn’t trust the residents of Ward B with pens or pencils. Guess no one had ever gotten shanked with a Crayola. “What color are you going to choose?” His words themselves were benign, but each syllable was threaded with judgment.
Her pulse pounded in her veins, her face got hot, and her hand holding the paper began to shake.
The vibe that came off Dr. Payne was something she recognized. Ever since that long, terrible night with Killion, she’d been able to sense people’s bad intentions as if she had an early warning system. It had to do with their energy—it connected with her differently than with most people. But then most people hadn’t survived what she’d survived.
Her mind’s early warning system flashed her snatches of tomorrow’s session with Dr. Payne. If she selected the yellow or orange crayon, he would say she was trying too hard to be cheerful. If she picked red, he would accuse her of having angry or violent thoughts. If she grabbed blue or gray, he’d declare her depressed. If she chose black, he’d claim she wanted to disassociate. Whatever the color, he would make sure she was wrong, forcing her to spend all of tomorrow’s session defending tonight’s color selection. And if she wasn’t successful in her defense, he’d use that as an excuse to have more private sessions with her.
“Mercy. Take a crayon.” Dr. Payne’s voice sounded like a calm ocean, but underneath the surface, hungry sharks swam.
Shit. She grabbed the purple crayon.
“I can stay after group to help you process your reluctance.” His tone was full of fake helpfulness.
“No. I’m sorry. I was just daydreaming.” Great. Now she was going to have to come up with a reason why she’d stared at the damned crayon box so long without choosing one. It wasn’t like she could tell him the truth—that she knew what he wanted and had been trying to outthink him. The level of control he had over her life scared her nearly as much as Killion had all those years ago.
He moved on to Bo, handing him the paper and giving him a crayon, but she still felt the burden of his gaze on her: watching her, assessing her, looking for an excuse—any excuse—to have more one-on-one sessions with her.
She settled her hand over the six-inch ridge of puckered skin scarring her neck. The old injury was always cold, and the heat of her palm soothed something inside her, reassuring her soul that she had already survived the worst of life—and she would survive Ward B and Dr. Payne too.
But she’d better get her hand off her neck before he decided she needed to talk about Killion again. Dr. Payne enjoyed her tragedy too much.
She moved her hand away from her throat, and the scar went cold. She held the purple crayon by the fingers of both hands.
“For tonight’s education group…” Dr. Payne used his Moses-parting-the-seas voice and took the empty seat next to her. He always sat next to her. “…we’re going to talk about happiness and some of the research being conducted in the field of positive psychology. A group of Harvard psychologists have found that happy people have a particular set of habits.”
None of the patients on Ward B gave two shits about happiness. They were all too damned crazy to care about such an elusive term. Now, if this evening’s group had been about how to score smokes, line up conjugal visits, or get extra pudding cups, most of the patients would have been taking notes.
“I’m already happy!” Bo let out a high-pitched little-girl giggle that sounded nine kinds of wrong coming from a three-hundred-pound guy. “I’m Bojangles! See!” He framed his face with his pudgy hands and smiled an open-mouthed, deranged clown smile.
He called himself Bojangles, partly because of his chicken fixation and mostly because the name sounded like a clown’s name, and that’s exactly what Bo thought he was—a clown. That crazy smile and his carrot-colored Afro only solidified the delusion.
“I’m so happy!” Bo swayed violently in his seat, bumping into her and knocking her into Dr. Payne, whose arm went around her, locking her against his hard body. He held her too hard and too wrong. The room fell away. Bo’s shouting vanished. The only thing that existed was his horrible strength, trapping her against him, and the urge—the almost uncontrollable urge—to scream.
“Are you all right? If he hurt you…” Dr. Payne’s breath fanned across her cheek, smelling of sweet tea and summer. He should be the one who smelled like rotting chicken. Her body went into rigor mortis. She couldn’t move or breathe or think.
Bo jumped to his feet and moved into the center of the circle. Dr. Payne let her go. What had felt like an eternity of being pinned against him had probably lasted only two seconds, since no one seemed to notice.
“Let’s be happy together!” Bo hollered at the top of his volume range and began twirling like a morbidly obese ballerina. “Bojangles. Bojangles. Bojangles.” He sang his name at an ear-throbbing volume.
Dr. Payne didn’t move, didn’t blink, just watched Bo with an expression of absolute indifference on his face. That was part of how Mercy had known he was a sociopath. He never reacted normally—and he didn’t have the excuse of being pumped full of antipsychotics and sedatives like the rest of the group. He never seemed threatened, no matter the situation. Probably because he was always the biggest threat in the room.
Bo pirouetted to a stop in front of her. “Dance with me, baby doll!” He snatched her up against his flabby body and hurled them around. His rotten-chicken stench assaulted her nose, but no matter how bad he stank, she wasn’t scared of him. Bo would never intentionally hurt her or anyone else. He was like a mastiff pup. He didn’t understand how big he was, or how strong, or how his size could intimidate.
“Bo, I don’t feel like dancing right now.” She pushed against his pudgy man boobs.
His bottom lip jutted out, shiny with saliva, but he stopped and let her go, just like she knew he would.
His chest bellowed, his lungs wheezed and whistled. Hauling around three hundred pounds would do that to a person.
“Now why don’t you sit down, catch your breath, and let Dr. Payne finish tonight’s—”
Bo began toppling over sideways, taking his time to fall, the way a giant tree goes down in a thick forest. She reached out to grab him, but his momentum and weight were too much. He landed—knee, hip, then shoulder—the sound of flesh slapping concrete punctuated by the thud of heavy bones. Where Bo had been only a second before, Dr. Payne now stood, staring at her. Not at the man on the floor.
And that’s where her ability to sense bad intentions fell short. Spontaneity. When someone acted without planning, her internal warning mechanism failed every time. She could never fully rely on it.
“What’d you do to him? He was done. He was going to sit down.” The moment the words flew out her mouth, she wished she could suck every syllable back inside and swallow them down whole.
An unnatural silence engulfed the room. No one in the group moved, no one spoke, no one checked on Bo. They all stared at her. At her. As if she’d done something wrong. And she had done something wrong. She’d challenged Dr. Payne—talked back to him instead of being subservient. And worst of all, she’d shown caring for Bo.
There was a terrible pattern to her life, one she tried to deny, one she tried to tell herself wasn’t real. But the undeniable truth, the thing that loomed over her ever since that night with Killion, was that if she cared for someone, they were bound to get hurt.
But didn’t anyone else care about Bo? Or that Dr. Payne had somehow caused Bo to fall? She wanted to scream at the group, at Dr. Payne, but clamped her lips firmly closed.
Click. The sound was a mini explosion in Mercy’s head. Her gaze shot to the panic button clipped to Dr. Payne’s belt and his finger just lifting off the pad.
Her stomach kicked. No, no, no. He wouldn’t have hit the button because of her words. He wouldn’t put her on Ward A just for questioning him. Or would he? On Ward A, he�
�d have supreme control over her. No interaction with anyone except for him. Just what he wanted and what she’d managed to avoid for the past two years.
Dr. Payne’s eyes were black and unfeeling, his lips pinched in a promise of terrible things to come. He reached into his pants pocket and withdrew a syringe, uncapped it, and took a step toward her.
An odd buzzing sound started in her ears, and her vision narrowed until the only thing she saw was that syringe held between his perfectly manicured fingers. She couldn’t let him inject her. Couldn’t let him knock her so completely out that she would be unconscious and then in a sedated, vegetable state for days afterward.
Dr. Payne jammed the needle in Bo’s ass cheek. Mercy sucked in a lungful of air—she hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath.
Two security guards and two male nurses rushed into the room. She moved away from Bo and stumbled back to her chair, collapsing so hard on the metal seat her tailbone rang.
“Transport him to Ward A.” Dr. Payne returned to his place beside her. “I’ll be down to assess him in a few minutes.”
She wanted to cringe away from him, but forced her body to stillness and watched as each member of the security team took an arm or leg and dragged Bo out of the room. He weighed too much to carry.
“We’ll be cutting group short tonight. Everyone fill out your papers, return them to me, and then go to your rooms.”
Dr. Payne passed her a fresh sheet of paper and the pink crayon, her paper and crayon having somehow disappeared in all the commotion. Using her leg for a solid surface, she scribbled the same thing on all three lines.
I’m grateful to be alive.
I’m grateful to be alive.
I’m grateful to be alive.
Without glancing at Dr. Payne, she handed in her paper and crayon and strained to walk from the room, instead of run. Because she wanted to run. She wanted to be far away from Dr. Payne and Ward B and this miserable existence where everything she did was under a microscope.
