Читать книгу So Close the Hand of Death - J.T. Ellison, J.T. Ellison - Страница 12

The Outer Banks, North Carolina

Taylor was only allowed to spend twenty minutes catching up with Fitz before Renee Sansom knocked on the door and told them it was time to transport him to Duke for his afternoon surgery.

Taylor had tried asking questions, but Fitz was surprisingly evasive about the crimes he’d endured. He kept repeating the same lines: “I was drugged, I think.” “I really don’t remember anything.” “All I know is what I told you.” “He said to tell you ‘Let’s play.’” “He said you’d know what that meant.”

She’d expected him to be forthcoming with her, but after ten minutes of trying and failing to get him to open up, hearing him reiterate his apparent memory loss, she stopped. She hoped he wasn’t suffering from full-on PTSD, that he was just overwhelmed by the situation, that he remembered more than he was saying, or would remember when the shock wore off. But that was probably wishful thinking, considering what he’d been through.

She switched tactics. She asked if he wanted to go back to Nashville for the surgery and was surprised to hear he’d rather stick to the plan they had for him, go to Duke and get the surgery there. She wondered if he wanted to stay close to Susie, lying in the morgue.

Pushing the worry and concern from her voice, she filled him in on what had been happening in Nashville. How much his fellow detectives Lincoln Ross and Marcus Wade were looking forward to getting him back to work, about the new member of the Homicide team, Renn McKenzie, and their latest boss, Commander Joan Huston. Fitz seemed to appreciate the distraction. He held her hand tightly through the time they spent together, and Taylor could feel the frisson of fear that coursed through his body on a regular loop. He was scared, and that freaked her out.

The Duke Medical Center Life Flight helicopter landed in the small parking lot in front of the police station. Fitz was loaded in, walking slowly, head down. Taylor and Baldwin waved wildly until the sophisticated chopper was out of sight. Taylor hated like hell not going with him, but promised to be by his side tonight, after he was out of surgery. She and Baldwin would take the Gulfstream up, and as soon as Fitz was cleared, they’d take him home.

The snow was whipping harder now, the storm in full gear. They trooped back inside the station, shivering. The door closed against the blustery day, they made their way to the conference room Nadis had evacuated for their purposes.

Sansom eyed Taylor and said, “Okay. It’s time for your debrief. I need to know everything you have about this creep. Your boy there didn’t want to talk to me, but I assume he told you quite a bit. Let’s have it.”

Taylor shook her head. “Fitz didn’t tell me anything, actually. He says he was drugged, that he doesn’t remember anything, and I believe him. Like you said, he’s been through a lot. I’m not inclined to push him too hard. If he starts to remember, or seems more open to discussion, I’ll be there to hear the story. In the meantime, I can give you enough background to get you started.”

Sansom looked at her for a moment. “Our initial blood work doesn’t indicate drugs in his system.”

Taylor stared her down. “You know a complete toxicology will take weeks.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps your sergeant is trying to hide something.”

That got under Taylor’s skin. “You can’t possibly think he had something to do with this. He lost his eye, for Christ’s sake. What do you think, he murdered his girlfriend, scooped his eye out with a spoon and drove it on up to Asheville?” She was breathing heavily, fists clenched, and barely felt Baldwin’s hand on her arm. Restraint. But come on. Accusing Fitz of any involvement in Susie’s murder was ridiculous.

Sansom continued to bait her. “I don’t know, Lieutenant. It’s awfully convenient. He wouldn’t be the first to have a relationship go south and blame it on the local bogeyman.”

“That’s bullshit, and you know it.”

Sansom had the audacity to smile.

“Taylor,” Baldwin said, the note of warning clear, “let’s just cover what we know so far, and take it from there.”

“Fine,” Taylor replied, biting off the comment she really wanted to make. She tried to see the case from an outsider’s perspective. While she and Baldwin knew, in their bones, that this was the work of the Pretender, people who hadn’t been privy to the earlier cases might be led astray by the crime scene. Any good investigator would look at all the possibilities. That was all Sansom was doing.

Taylor kept telling herself that, felt her blood pressure drop a notch.

Baldwin held Taylor’s chair for her, and the three of them sat at a long table that Taylor suspected doubled as a lunch spot for Nadis’s team. Spots of dried mustard coated the wooden edge of the table in front of her seat. She scooched down a hair so she wouldn’t accidentally lean into it.

Sansom’s two agents joined them, were introduced as Wally Yeager and Eliot Polakis. They each had a clean yellow pad in front of them, ready for notes.

“Baldwin, why don’t you begin?” Taylor said. She wasn’t quite ready to reengage.

“All right. I’ve been profiling the Pretender for a year now, and the profile is still in progress. It keeps changing. He’s a chameleon. He adapts, copies, mimics, then disappears. Despite your thoughts about Sergeant Fitzgerald, I’m fully convinced this is the Pretender’s work. Killing Susie McDonald, stabbing her and leaving her on the boat, taking Fitz, then removing his eye and letting him go, are only his second original series of crimes we’re aware of, which obviously changes things yet again. There are a few items I can tell you up front—I don’t think he’s had a formal education, but he’s above average in intelligence. He was raised in multiple homes, was probably a foster child.”

“A foster child,” Sansom said. “Hmm.”

“He’s also transient, just sets up base wherever he is, which makes him harder to track. He’s in his early thirties, lacks confidence in himself, takes jobs as necessary to pay for his basic needs. He’s computer savvy, knows his way around the message boards. He believes he’s a scholar, a student of serial murder. He’ll have books with him, anything and everything to do with serial killers. He considers himself as much of an expert as I am. And he has a fascination with blood that would have started at an early age. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that he killed very young, a sibling, perhaps. He’s good with his hands, affable, charming, sexual. He can go unnoticed, or he can draw attention, whatever suits his purpose.”

He leaned into Sansom, making sure she was paying attention. “Don’t ever let your guard down if you do happen upon him. I’m dead serious here. He has no feelings, can’t be reasoned with. He’ll kill you without hesitating and never give it a second thought. If he’s cornered, he’ll do whatever it takes to get away. We’re going to have a hard time bringing him in alive. He has nothing to lose. He isn’t a glory seeker, trying to see himself in the news. He’s a pure sociopath who enjoys killing by any available method.”

Sansom didn’t flinch at that, and Taylor thought she should. Of course, Taylor had seen him in person, or thought she had, back in Nashville last year, in a bar called Control, at what was supposed to be her bachelorette party. She’d felt the evil emanating from his skin like sweat on a hot summer day, visible and malodorous.

“Okay then. Where do we start?” Sansom asked.

Baldwin sat back in his chair and crossed his legs. “With the note you found in the trailer in Asheville. It’s handwritten. I have one of the world’s preeminent experts on sociopathic graphology ready to study that note. With any luck, she’ll be able to tell us something about him that we don’t already know.”

Sansom turned to Taylor. “That’s a start for you, then. I still have a kidnapping and murder on my books to clear. So let’s get down to it. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. What else do you know about the Pretender? How are we going to catch him? Lieutenant, I’d like to hear from you. What do you think his next move is?”

“His next move?” Taylor laughed lightly. “Me. I’m his next move.”