* * *
Judd and Yvette entered the Woodruff Building, per Griff’s instructions, walking directly into the grand rotunda: Gray marble floors, white marble pillars, walnut wainscoting, huge crystal chandelier. A split staircase that spiraled right and left, leading to a banister-encased open mezzanine. Magnificent in the way only buildings from a bygone era were.
Without touching Judd, Yvette sensed the increasing tension in him and around him, especially as Griffin approached. His solemn expression cautioned them.
“What’s happening?” Judd demanded, barely able to control his rage.
Judd was a man on the edge. One false move and he would fall headlong into uncontrollable mania. He had already lost one woman to a sadistic madman. She knew that everything within him was determined not to let history repeat itself.
“We’ve traced his movements,” Griffin said. “If I had it to do over again …” He sucked in a deep breath. “He’s got her on the roof.” Griff glanced up. “The elevator goes all the way up to the sixth floor, then there’s a short set of stairs leading from there to the roof. The door locks from the inside, but if we rush through the door, he’ll kill her for sure. And if we try to go in with a helicopter, same thing.”
“Tell me you have a plan.” Judd glowered at Griffin. “If not—”
“We have a plan.” Griffin glanced at Yvette. She nodded that Judd was at least temporarily under control.
Barely.
“I’m going up there and talk to him through the closed door and do my best to distract him, at least long enough for Holt to get positioned on top of one of the buildings across the street. With this building on a corner and the building beside it only five stories high, the two directly across are the only ones that will give Holt the ability to zero in on our killer and take him out. But in order to get into position, Holt will be partially visible if the killer is looking that way.”
“You need someone who can not only keep the BQ Killer distracted, but put him in the line of fire. Right?”
“Right.”
“I’ll go,” Judd said.
“No. Not you. If you fuck up … This is Lindsay’s life we’re talking about.”
“Don’t you think I know that.”
Griffin glanced at Yvette again. You must let him do this.
“Okay,” Griffin said.
Judd heaved a deep, silent groan. “Let’s go.”
Lindsay did not want to die.
God, please don’t let it happen. Not now. Not this way. If the Beauty Queen Killer murders me, mutilates my body, it will destroy Judd completely. He almost didn’t survive Jennifer’s death. If I die at the same monster’s hands…
The BQ Killer loomed over Lindsay where she lay on the rooftop, curled into a fetal position. Her hands and feet might be bound, but she would not lie still and make it easy for this lunatic to cut her up into little pieces.
“Is your life flashing before your eyes?” he asked. “I’ll give you a few more minutes to make your peace. And feel free to beg me for your life. I get off on hearing my victims beg. They all do it, you know.”
“I won’t.”
“Oh, you will. Once I make the first few cuts and the pain becomes unbearable. You’ll beg, tough girl. You’ll beg and plead and scream, just like all the rest of them.”
“You’re insane.”
“And you’re scared.”
“How does someone become as evil as you are?” Griffin where are you? My time is running out.
The cold springtime wind blew across the rooftop, chilling Lindsay, reminding her that she was still alive, could still feel.
How much would it hurt? To be stabbed and sliced? To be tortured? To be left to bleed to death?
“Are you trembling because you’re cold?” he asked, ignoring her last comment. “And have you finally realized that no one can save you?”
“If you kill me—”
He laughed in her face. “If I thought Griffin would make a deal with me, I would release you, but we both know that he would be willing to sacrifice your life in order to capture the Beauty Queen Killer.”
Before Lindsay even thought of a reply, a loud, deep voice called out through the closed door that led from the rooftop to the staircase leading down to the sixth floor.
“Griffin may be willing to sacrifice her, but I’m not,” the voice shouted. “I’m Judd Walker. I’ll make a deal with you. Name your terms.”
Chapter 35
Lindsay gasped.
Judd was here? How was that possible? He was still in Atlanta, at the rehab center.
Startled by Judd’s unexpected presence just beyond the closed door, Lindsay’s abductor spun around and glared at the barrier between him and the voice that had offered him a way to escape certain death.
“You’re Jennifer Walker’s husband,” the killer said. “The man who sicced Griffin Powell on me four years ago.”
“Let’s talk,” Judd shouted. “Let’s make a deal.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“What have you got to lose?”
The man laughed.
God, how Lindsay hated his laughter.
“Talk to me,” Judd told him. “I’m your only hope of coming out of this alive. You have to know that if you harm Lindsay, you’re a dead man.”
“I’m a dead man regardless.”
“Not necessarily.”
“You have nothing to offer me.”
“That’s not true. All you need to do as a first step in our negotiations is exchange hostages. It will be my life for Lindsay’s, just in case anything goes wrong. Let me talk to you face to face. Let me open the door—”
“No way in hell!”
“I’ll come through the door very slowly, with my hands on my head. If I make one false move, you can shoot me, that is if you have a gun.”
“I have a gun, wise guy. And I know how to use it. But I also have a knife that I’ve already used on Lindsay.”
No, no! He’s lying, Judd. Don’t listen to him. Lindsay’s heart wept. Damn you, you evil son of a bitch. Don’t do this to Judd. Don’t conjure up memories of what you did to Jennifer. “Judd, he hasn’t—” Her voice was so weak she doubted Judd heard her.
Without any warning, the killer aimed his pistol at her and fired. The bullet sliced through the top of Lindsay’s shoulder. She moaned with pain.
“I shot her. Do you hear me? And if you try anything, I’ll kill her right now. I swear I’ll do it.”
“Lindsay!” Judd cried her name.
“He must love you if he’s willing to swap places with you,” the killer said to Lindsay as he walked over to her and kicked her in the ribs. “Knowing that will make killing you all the sweeter.” Surveying her trembling body, he waved his weapon over her, from her head to her feet.
With his attention focused on Lindsay where she lay at his feet, the killer didn’t react quickly enough when the rooftop door swung open. He spun around to face the raging force storming toward him. Too late, he realized that he had lost control of the situation. He pointed his gun at Judd, then back at Lindsay. Everything happened so quickly, almost simultaneously, so Lindsay really didn’t know what occurred first. Judd attacked, using his body like a battering ram. As he knocked the BQ Killer backward, the man fired his pistol, but she didn’t know if he had hit Judd or if he had shot her again. Suddenly, the crack of a rifle shot rang out, and then another, both echoing loudly in Lindsay’s ears. Pain sliced through her stomach as if a sharp sword had pierced deep and wide, and she knew she had taken a second bullet. As she lay there staring at her abductor, only a few feet away from her, she saw blood trickling from a single hole in his head and from another in his neck. He slumped to his knees, and then toppled over, face down onto the rooftop.
Lindsay opened her eyes. The morning light was much too bright. Her head ached and her mouth felt dry. Wondering where she was, she glanced from right to left. Closed white blinds covered the windows. Sunlight peeked through the
cracks. The walls were light green, the ceiling white. The bed was narrow, the linens soft. A packet of some kind of IV solution stood by the bed, with a long tube leading from the packet to her hand.
She stared at the top of her bruised hand. A needle was embedded in a vein, tan tape crisscrossing the tubing to hold it in place.
I’m in a hospital.
I’m not dead.
What happened? Don’t you remember? an inner voice said. The Beauty Queen Killer shot you twice. And someone shot him.
Judd! Oh, God! If Judd hadn’t distracted her abductor …
Lindsay thrashed about, wanting Judd, needing Judd.
Two large, gentle hands stroked her shoulders, soothing her. “Lie still, sweetheart. Everything’s all right. You’re going to be just fine.”
She quieted and gazed up into Judd’s beautiful golden eyes.
“Judd.” Her voice sounded like it belonged to a croaking frog.
“Hello, beautiful.”
“Where …? What …? How long …?”
“You’re in the hospital recovering from a nasty bullet wound. Cary Maygarden, the Beauty Queen Killer, shot you.”
“Cary Maygarden? The eccentric millionaire from Nashville was the BQ Killer?”
Judd nodded.
“He shot me. Twice,” Lindsay said, slightly dazed by the realization that Judd, Griffin, and she had interacted socially with the killer only recently. No wonder he had seemed so familiar.
“One bullet grazed your shoulder and the second hit you in the lower right side of your abdomen. But the doctors patched you up and you’ll soon be good as new.”
“Cary Maygarden was the BQ Killer,” Lindsay repeated, barely able to believe it.
“He’s dead. And his death was far too easy. Two shots. One in the head, the other in his neck. If there were any justice, he would have died a slow, agonizing death. I would like to have taken him apart, piece by piece for what he did to you … for what he did to Jennifer.”
Lindsay lifted her IV-free hand. Judd grasped her hand, brought it to his face and held it against his cheek. That’s when she noticed his heavy beard stubble.
“You need a shave,” she told him. “How long—?”
“Four days,” he said. “Four of the longest days of my life.”
“I’m thirsty.”
He poured her a glass of water, then pushed the button to raise the head of her bed enough so that when he put the glass to her lips, she was able to take several sips through the straw.
After he put the glass on the bedside table, he eased down and sat on the edge of the bed. “That was a damn fool thing you did, using yourself as bait to trap the Beauty Queen Killer. If anything had happened to you … God, Lindsay, when I thought I might lose you, too …”
Using all the strength she could muster, she brought her hand up and laid it on his arm, then squeezed weakly. “It worked. We got him, didn’t we? It was worth the risk.”
“Not if I’d lost you.” He clasped her hand again with the utmost tenderness. “Lindsay …”
“How did you know where I was and what was going on? I know Sanders never would have told you.”
“As a matter of fact, he did. But only at Yvette’s urging. Before we left Griffin’s Rest, she called Griff to let him know we were coming into Knoxville and that she’d make sure I didn’t do anything stupid.”
“Apparently, she wasn’t able to do that.”
Judd frowned. “When I heard that first shot, I thought he’d killed you. At that point, I didn’t care what happened to me.” He leaned over carefully and kissed her lips. She sighed. He lifted his head and smiled at her. “I love you.”
“Please, say that again.”
“I love you, Lindsay McAllister.”
Tears flooded her eyes. She blinked repeatedly, but several stray drops hit her cheeks. “I love you, too, but you already know that. And I want you to know that it’s all right if you’re never able to love me the way you loved Jennifer. And I don’t care if you still love her and always will.”
He kissed her hand, then held it against his chest as he gazed down at her. “While I was in rehab, Yvette was allowed to work with me, to take me through a crash course of grief-counseling. She made me realize something very important about love. I can love Jennifer for the rest of my life and I can love you, too. Jenny will always have a place in my heart. She’ll always be my first real love. But you, Lindsay, are the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with, the woman I’ll grow old with, the woman who was meant to be mine. You’re my last love, sweetheart. My true soul mate.”
* * *
Griff was more than surprised when several hours ago, he received a telephone call from former FBI Special Agent Curtis Jackson inviting him to meet him at Cary Maygarden’s ancestral mansion outside Nashville.
“Nic’s officially in charge of the BQK cases, but since I headed up the original task force, they’re allowing me to be in on the conclusion,” Jackson had said. “Our people have been going over the guy’s house with a fine-tooth comb for days, searching for memorabilia from his kills.”
“And?”
“And nothing. Not until this morning. That’s when our guys found a secret room in the basement.”
“And inside?”
“Not a damn thing, but just when we’d given up, guess what we found?”
“Another secret room.”
Jackson chuckled. “Yes, sir. And I thought since you’re the one who actually caught the BQ Killer, you should be allowed to take a look at Maygarden’s trophy room.”
“How does Nic feel about that?”
“Not happy, but she’s not going to bar you from entering. Strictly as a favor to me, her old mentor.”
And that’s how Griff wound up with Nic Baxter, Josh Friedman, and Curtis Jackson inside Cary Maygarden’s grue some secret chamber, the walls lined with photographs of beauty queens. Photos of them as contest winners, with their crowns and roses, alongside shots of the same young women after they had been murdered. Photo after photo of hacked, chopped, butchered, slaughtered wives, mothers, daughters, sisters. Each one a woman loved by someone, missed by someone, mourned by someone.
Griff stopped at the photograph of Jennifer Mobley Walker the night she was crowned Miss Tennessee. So young. So beautiful. So full of life.
When he stared at the snapshot of Jenny sitting on the floor in the kitchen where she had died, her hands hacked off and lying on either side of her, Griff whispered her name.
“That’s Judd Walker’s wife, isn’t it?” Nic said as she came up beside Griff. “She was a beautiful woman.”
Griff nodded.
“I wonder why he chose to display pictures of these particular women,” Nic said.
“What?” Griff was still thinking about Jennifer, remembering the vibrant, vivacious woman she had been.
“Look at the photos, each one of them,” Nic told him. “Don’t count the pictures themselves, but count the number of women represented here.”
“Is there some reason you want me to play this numbers game? We know how many women he killed, so there should be—” Griff stopped rattling as his gaze swept up and down the snapshot-covered walls.
He went back to the first photo and began counting—the women, not the pictures. Nic followed him to the end of the long, narrow room and back up on the other side.
“I’ll be damned. He displayed photos of only half the women he killed,” Griff said.
“Odd, don’t you think?”
Griff nodded. “There’s probably some simple explanation. Maybe he rotated the pictures for some reason or other. After all, he was playing a sick game where with each murder he racked up points, so it wouldn’t be a huge stretch to imagine he liked to change out the photos of his victims according to the month or the season or whatever.”
“You’re probably right.”
Griff studied Nic, noting the tilt of her lips. Not a smirk. Certainly not a smile.
“What are yo
u not sharing with me?” Griff asked.
She shrugged. “What makes you think … Oh, all right. You’ll find out soon enough when your sharpshooter— what’s his name?”
“Holt Keinan.”
“When Mr. Keinan is notified that although he did shoot Cary Maygarden, it may not have been his bullet that killed him.”
“What?”
“According to our medical examiner’s report, the bullet that entered Maygarden’s body first hit him in the neck, severing a vital artery. Keinan’s bullet hit him in the head, probably seconds before or after. Either one could have killed him.”
“So Holt shot him twice.”
“With two different rifles?”
“Two different …?”
“The bullets removed from Maygarden’s body came from two different rifles, which means—”
“He was shot by two different people.”
“Did one of your other agents shoot Maygarden?” Nic asked.
Griff didn’t reply.
“If not, then it seems we have a mystery shooter on our hands. Someone who managed to slip onto the rooftop of a nearby building without being seen. Someone with a motive to kill Cary Maygarden.”
“Is the FBI going to actively search for another shooter?”
“No, not at this time.”
“What are you going to tell the press?”
“Only the basic facts. No details. But I intend to go over every aspect of this case, from A to Z, until I figure out who other than your agent, might have killed Maygarden and why.”
“And you told me about this so that I could help you solve the mystery,” he said sarcastically, knowing full well that he would be the last person on earth Nic would ask for help.
“No, Mr. Powell, I told you because I want you to think about it, ponder over every detail, worry yourself crazy, and try your damnedest to put the puzzle together. You see, I didn’t give you all the pieces, so if anyone is going to be able to put the puzzle together, it won’t be you.”
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