“He just happens to be a homicidal maniac,” Maddie gritted out, squeezing her phone. She wanted to call Nick more than anything but couldn’t figure out a way to make it work without tipping off Andrea. “How could you do this? You’re a nurse, for crying out loud. You’re supposed to want to help those in need, not hurt them.”
“Only the right sort of people,” Andrea corrected. “You can’t have a healthy society when certain people are dragging it down. It’s a harsh lesson to learn, but once you learn it things will get easier. You have to accept that certain people are limited.”
“Funnily enough, I was thinking the exact same thing,” Maddie said. “Ultimately it doesn’t matter, though. This little operation is done.”
“And how do you figure that?”
“Because I won’t play your game.” Maddie lifted her phone and hit the keypad. “You’re done. It’s over. You need to accept that.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” Andrea leaned forward, alarmed. “Who do you think you’re calling?”
“I’m calling Nick. I’m done listening to your nonsense. This entire thing has to stop.”
“And you think I’m going to let you stop it?”
“I don’t think you have a choice.”
“Think again!”
Andrea moved quickly, circling the first row of cubicles and launching herself at Maddie. Maddie barely had a chance to hit the button that would allow her to connect with Nick before she found herself flying backward.
Maddie hit the ground hard, oxygen being forced from her lungs. She needed a moment to recover, but she didn’t have it because Andrea’s hands were wrapping around her neck to cut off the flow of oxygen. Maddie tried to buck off the woman, but Andrea had the leverage and she wasn’t afraid to use it.
“You have to ruin absolutely everything!” Andrea screeched. “Why won’t you just stay out of my life?”
“WELL, I GOT THE schedule and there are two things I find to be odd,” Dwight said, shifting his laptop so Nick could see the screen. “We don’t have dates for when the women were taken … er, at least not a complete set of dates. All we know is that some women went missing from the streets, but we have no timetable.
“Several of the women taken – two of them were identified first because they had records on file – weren’t like the others,” he continued. “One, Barb Norris, was a student at Wayne State University. She was taking science classes, but she volunteered her time here.”
Nick cocked an eyebrow. “Here? As in the hospital?”
Dwight nodded. “She took three shifts a week. Apparently she was considering being a nurse. Her roommate reported her missing the first night after she didn’t come home, although she wasn’t allowed to file a formal complaint until twenty-four hours later. The time of the initial complaint is clearly marked, though.”
“So she worked here,” Nick mused, rubbing his chin. “That’s another tie.”
“Yes, and Adrienne Kennedy is one of the other women we identified right away,” Dwight said. “She was also a student, young and pretty. She worked twenty hours a week in the cafeteria.”
“At the school?”
Dwight shook his head. “Here at the hospital.”
“And there’s your other thread,” Nick said. “We wondered why those two women were so vastly different from the rest. They were low risk, which never made sense.”
“They both disappeared after late shifts here,” Dwight said. “That’s on top of Tessa Roth, who was also identified early and actually worked here. I don’t know why I didn’t see it or notice it before. Perhaps I wasn’t looking hard enough because the idea of it being a doctor seemed so ridiculous.”
“Okay, that’s somewhere to start,” Nick noted. “Can we cross-reference staff workers who had late shifts on those days?”
“I was just starting that when I got an immediate hit,” Dwight said. “Ironically, it’s someone you already dislike.”
Nick was practically salivating. “Who?” His phone picked that moment to go off. “Hold on a second, I think Maddie is calling.” He lifted the device to his ear. “What’s up, love?”
MADDIE GROWLED AS SHE tried to fight off Andrea’s maniacal efforts to kill her. Oxygen was in short supply but Maddie managed a quick inhalation when Andrea shifted her hands.
“I hate you!” Andrea screeched. “You have no idea how much I hate you. You always have to ruin everything. That’s simply what you do.
“Do you have any idea how good my life was going before you showed up?” she continued, her eyes madly flitting back and forth. “Things were perfect and now you want to ruin them. You almost ruined them the first time by stealing his attention. Once you left, though, he let it go. Now you’re back and you’re going to ruin things all over again!”
Maddie dug her fingernails into Andrea’s wrists as hard as she could, causing the woman to cry out. Maddie bucked her narrow hips at the exact moment, causing Andrea to careen to the side and smack her head into the nearest cubicle.
Maddie took advantage of Andrea’s momentary confusion and managed to wriggle away from the demented woman in the intervening seconds, lashing out with her foot and making contact with Andrea’s ribs in her attempt to escape.
Because she was shaky, Maddie opted to crawl rather than immediately get to her feet. She was five feet away when she realized someone else had entered the room. She rolled to her side and focused on the familiar face.
“Call for help! She’s crazy. She’s one of the murderers.”
The doctor – and he was a doctor – merely shook his head as he tsked. “Well, this isn’t good. I told you to take care of her quietly, Andrea. How do you think we’re going to make this go away?”
Maddie sucked in a breath when she realized Andrea’s partner had joined the party and she was in even more trouble than before.
“I guess I should’ve known it was you.”
“Yes, well, we can both agree about that. You need to learn to think things out before acting. Alas, I think it’s too late for that to turn into an acquired skill for you.”
19
Nineteen
Nick was confused as he glanced at his phone.
“Hello?”
The only response on the other end of the call was muted noise and a girly trill of sorts that Nick was sure came from Maddie.
“Hello?”
“What is it?” Dwight asked, instantly alert.
“I don’t know.” Nick stared at his phone for a long beat. “I don’t hear anything.”
“Maybe it’s just a dropped call.”
“Maybe.” Nick had trouble believing that. “I … .” He broke off when he heard whispering, a soft kiss against his ear that he was sure no one else would hear. He didn’t recognize the voice at first but realized it was Olivia fairly quickly. Her message was clear. Panic licked his spine and the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. “Maddie is in trouble.”
Dwight’s eyebrows flew up his forehead. “How can you possibly know that?”
“I just know.” Nick was firm. “Maddie is in trouble and needs me. We have to find whatever room Andrea took her to.”
“Because Andrea is going to hurt her?”
“I … don’t know. I just know that Maddie is in trouble.”
“I hate to ask but … how can you know that?” Dwight wasn’t interested in fighting Nick, but the shift in the man’s demeanor was enough to set his teeth on edge.
“Let’s just say a little birdie told me,” Nick suggested, risking a glance over his shoulder and finding nothing staring back. The whispering had ceased, but his determination was set. “We need to find Maddie right now. Whatever is happening, it most certainly isn’t all right.”
“Then let’s find her.”
“Wait.” Nick grabbed Dwight’s arm before he could stroll out of the room. “Who were you about to tell me about? Who is the doctor?”
“It’s funny you should ask.”
MADDIE
RUEFULLY RUBBED her cheek as she stared at Milton Tipton. His expression was hard to read as he stood in the doorway and surveyed the scene in front of him.
In truth, Maddie was angry at herself for not figuring it out sooner. Tipton was a fussy know-it-all who thought he was smarter than everyone else in the room. Doctors had to clean their hands multiple times a day for sanitary reasons, but he was almost brutal about the process, scrubbing twice as long and dumping whatever chemicals he could find on his hands, something that always got the nurses talking about possible OCD.
He was also politically minded. Maddie remembered hearing him discuss politics in various break rooms around the hospital, although it was never a normal political discussion. It wasn’t about being a Democrat or Republican as much as it was about social ideals that never seemed to make a lot of sense.
In hindsight, Maddie realized he was the easy answer and she shied away from suggesting him because of that. She should’ve gone with her instincts, although it was far too late to change things.
“What is going on here, Andrea?” Tipton’s voice was harsh and clipped. Maddie could see people bustling about the hospital on the other side of the door, which gave her hope, but she knew she was in quite the pickle all the same. Now she was outnumbered and separated from the door by two bodies “Do you realize what sort of position you’ve put me in?”
Andrea, who was busy rubbing her head and staring with wide-eyed astonishment, seemed to be having trouble wrapping her brain around what was happening. “I … you … I … um … .”
“Yes, well, I see your astounding conversational skills remain intact,” Tipton said derisively, making a disappointed sound with his tongue. “I really cannot believe you did this. Have you no sense at all?”
Since she wasn’t sure what to do with the new information, Maddie was completely comfortable letting Tipton and Andrea duke it out while she formulated a plan. In fact, if Tipton and Andrea forgot she was even in the room, she was convinced that would be the best possible outcome.
Alas, that was not in the cards.
“This isn’t my fault,” Andrea whined, adopting a pitiable look. “She pushed things too far and stuck her nose where it didn’t belong.”
“And who put herself in this position to begin with?” Tipton sounded as if he was talking to a child rather than a girlfriend.
“It wasn’t my fault.” Andrea made a face. “I don’t see why you’re blaming me.”
“Yes, well, we’ll talk about that in a little bit.” Tipton leveled his gaze on Maddie and it took everything she had inside for the frightened blond to maintain her footing in the face of his chilly glare. “It seems we’ve found ourselves in a bit of a predicament.”
“I would say so.” Maddie refused to cower in front of the man so she squared her shoulders. “You’re a killer and you enlisted Andrea to help you with the dirty work of your operation. That’s definitely a predicament.”
“That’s a pedestrian answer,” Tipton countered. “I’m not a killer. I’m a cleaner.”
“I think that’s simply a nice word you want to use because it makes it easier to justify your actions,” Maddie supplied. “You’re a killer. You’re a predator. I know what you did to those women.”
“And what’s that?”
“You hunted them.”
Tipton’s brow wrinkled. “I don’t think you understand the nature of my operation. I didn’t go into this as a means to hurt people. That’s simply a byproduct. In the end, the community will be better off because of my efforts.”
“Really?” Maddie’s stomach twisted. He appeared so rational that she had trouble reconciling the man who stood before her with the things she knew he did. “If that’s true, why did you get off on the hunt? Why did you chase them through alleys? Why did you catch some of them and let them go only so you could chase them again?”
Tipton balked, surprise over Maddie’s profound knowledge throwing him for a loop. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Andrea shot Tipton a quizzical look, confused. “That didn’t happen.”
“It did happen,” Maddie argued. “He hunted the women he took.” She searched her memory for an important scene from the vision. “In fact, there was one woman – she had long auburn hair, although I think it was a wig because the hair was clearly acrylic – and he took her to an abandoned building.
“I’m not sure what building, but I know he made it so the doors were locked from the outside and she had no way to get out,” she continued. “He let her loose on the top floor and then proceeded to hunt her through the building. I think it might’ve been a former department store. Maybe one of those old, dilapidated buildings down on Woodward.”
Tipton’s face turned ashen. “How can you possibly know that?”
Andrea’s voice turned shrill. “It’s true? You never told me that. Why wouldn’t you tell me? We’re supposed to be a couple. I told you what my therapist said. She said if we expect to make it for the long haul, we have to communicate with one another.”
Tipton ignored Andrea’s outburst. “I’m really curious how you know about that, Ms. Graves. The woman’s name was Sherry, by the way. She was a prostitute who locked her ten-year-old son in her apartment while she went out and turned tricks. Are you honestly saying she was worth saving?”
Maddie shrugged, refusing to engage in a moral argument with a man who clearly didn’t possess empathy. “I don’t think it’s my place to judge others. I don’t know the woman in question. I do know that she was terrified, that you wore her down when you chased her through the building.
“I also know that you taunted her from the darkness,” she continued. “You had a knife and you showed it to her and you kept letting her get away. You played with her until she was so terrified, so afraid, it was almost a relief for her when it was over.
“Her last thought was of her son, though,” Maddie said, absently scratching at the side of her nose as she absorbed the vision for a second time. “She was sorry because she worried he would never know what happened to her. She didn’t want him to think she’d simply walked away and didn’t love him.”
“Oh, well, that’s a pretty story,” Tipton sneered. “You’re clearly making it up, though.”
“If that’s what you want to believe, I can’t stop you.” Now it was Maddie’s turn to be matter-of-fact. “That’s not how things went down, though.”
Tipton stared at Maddie a long beat, his mind racing. Out of nowhere, he shifted his stance and held out his hands in a placating manner. “I don’t think you understand what I was trying to do. If you understood, if things were better explained, you would be open to the outcome. You must understand … things are getting better.”
“I’ll never be open to what you’re suggesting.”
“I think you’re wrong.” Tipton offered up a smile that was without mirth or warmth. “I think you’re simply missing the bigger picture. When I tell you why … when I explain how much better things are … you’ll come around to my way of thinking. In fact, I think you might want to join the team.”
Maddie barely managed to bite back her distaste. “You think I’ll want to join the team? Your team? Why would I possibly want that?”
“Why would you possibly want that?” Andrea challenged, regaining her senses as she stared at her partner. “Why do you care if Maddie gets with the program?”
“I don’t care,” Tipton replied. “I simply hate for people to live in ignorance.”
“And is that what you think she’s doing?” Andrea asked. “I mean … do you think she’s stupid? Is that the issue here?”
“I didn’t say she was stupid,” Tipton clarified. “I hardly think that. She was one of the better nurses we’ve had on staff at this facility. That hardly makes her stupid.”
“She left, though,” Andrea reminded him. “She couldn’t wait to get out of here, to get away from you.”
Tipton narrowed his eyes. “That’s not exactly how I remember things going.”
“Then you’re remembering wrong.”
Maddie bit the inside of her cheek as she watched the interplay. She couldn’t understand how the conversation had managed to take such a turn. Even more than that, though, she didn’t fully grasp the dynamic between the players. She was starting to get the feeling that Tipton would rather cut Andrea’s throat than be what the woman yearned for him to be. Maddie figured she could work with that if the opportunity arose.
“And what am I remembering wrong?” Tipton asked. “I seem to recall Ms. Graves having to leave because her mother died. She had no other choice. The story included something about a grandmother who was old and suffering from ill health. Most everyone believed Ms. Graves would return once her grandmother shuffled off the mortal coil.”
Maddie was flabbergasted. “What? How can you possibly say something like that?”
Tipton didn’t answer, instead remaining focused on Andrea. “You shouldn’t talk out of turn. We’ve discussed this. If you don’t have the appropriate answer, then you shouldn’t try intercepting the question.”
“Oh, whatever.” Andrea’s face twisted as she pulled herself to a standing position and dusted off the seat of her scrubs. “You don’t think I know what’s going on here, but I know everything that’s going on. I understand what you’re doing. I’m not an idiot.”
Tipton crossed his arms over his chest, giving Maddie a clear view of his hands. He didn’t appear to be armed. Of course, that didn’t mean he didn’t have a weapon of some sort – a scalpel maybe – in the pocket of his coat. She would have to be careful.
“I didn’t say you were an idiot,” Tipton said evenly. “If you heard that, perhaps you should clean your ears.”
Andrea wasn’t even remotely mollified. “You might not have said it, but you’re thinking it.”
“Oh, well, thinking it is entirely different. I’m definitely thinking it.”
Andrea’s mouth dropped open. “What?”
“You heard me.” Tipton looked as if he were at the end of his rope. “I don’t want to keep going around with you. This fight between us – this ridiculous little spat – is not helpful and, frankly, it’s a waste of time.”
Grave Danger (A Maddie Graves Mystery Book 12) Page 18
