Rosebud and Kate arrived at the scene at the same time as a patrol car parked a few houses down. Kate exited the vehicle and darted to meet the two officers that had just gotten out of theirs. Digging into her jacket’s inner pocket, she pulled out the sketch that Rosebud had shared with her.
“That’s our suspect.” She pointed to her house. “That’s my home. My boyfriend and his mom are possibly inside with him. I’m going in the front, as though I was just coming home. Rosebud”—she turned to see him arrive, out of breath—“there’s an entrance around the back. I’ll disarm the alarm on the backdoor. Depending on where he is, I may not be able to unlock the backdoor without him seeing me, but there’s a spare key hidden in the bucket that holds the clothespins.” She turned to the patrol officers. “You’ll follow me through the front door. I don’t expect him to be armed. He uses an unknown drug or poison on his victims. If there’s an antidote, he’s the only one who knows, so do not kill him. Getting him to talk may be the only way to save the other people in the house.”
The other people. The ones I care most about in the whole world.
“And let’s stay silent to keep the element of surprise,” Kate added.
Inhaling deeply, Kate motioned for Rosebud to head around the back of the house, and she climbed up the front stairs, the two officers in tow, her heart threatening to burst in her chest. She couldn’t lose them. Not Luke or his mom. No. She simply couldn’t let that happen.
She unlocked the front door, drew her weapon, and stepped into the home, doing her best to push aside the dread. Something really nice reached her nostrils. Mrs. O’Brien had once again cooked them a feast. Here was hoping everyone would live to enjoy it. She had to act swiftly.
The clutter of shoes at her feet included an unknown pair. Black. Men’s shoes that weren’t Luke’s. The killer was still here. All Kate could do was hope he hadn’t taken action yet. And keep her shoes on, ready to outrun the guy or kick him where it hurt.
“Luke? Mrs. O’Brien?” she called out, pretending to act normally, but she didn’t lock the door. She motioned for the officers to head upstairs.
Beeps echoed in the entrance hall as she turned off the alarm they kept activated on the backdoor.
Nobody had replied to her greeting. While expected, it didn’t make the dread any easier to take. How bad was it? The killer couldn’t have already…
She didn’t dare finish her thought.
The officers upstairs had two bedrooms and two bathrooms to clear so Kate left the entrance hall and entered the living room, checking everything around her.
Nobody was here.
She continued advancing through the room, checking Luke’s office door as she passed it. It had been left open.
Clear.
That left the kitchen and the downstairs’ half bath. She could continue moving across the room and reach the kitchen that way, or she could backtrack to the entrance, go down the hall, check the half-bath and then enter the kitchen from the back, next to the backdoor entrance. There was no way for her to unlock that backdoor without being seen by the killer if he was in the kitchen.
She still didn’t know if the killer acted alone. Rosebud would eventually find his way in, even though the key was hard to find among the clothespins. Plus the other officers would join her downstairs if they hadn’t found him or an unknown accomplice upstairs. They would check that half-bath.
So, with a deep inhalation, she stepped forward and turned to face the opening to their kitchen and dining room.
But as she peeked into the kitchen, her fears became real.
Mrs. O’Brien and Luke had both been tied to kitchen chairs, their limp bodies held up with duct tape. On the table in front of them rested a turkey, a carving knife next to it.
Luke’s head was tilted backward, and so was his mom’s. Kate had to blink for a second as flashes from her parents’ kitchen came back. Between blinks, she saw blood on the walls. The turkey. The knife. The duct tape. Everything reminded her of that fateful day. The multiple knife wounds her parents had suffered in their sudden demise. Twenty-three years suddenly disappeared, merging with her present.
But she blinked her hallucinations away as her heart boomed in her chest. Her current reality didn’t show any evidence of blood. At least not yet.
Between Luke and Mrs. O’Brien stood Anderson, a wide grin on his face.
“And our third sinner finally joins us,” he said.
Both of his arms were extended in a way that reminded Kate of the preaching position. Elbows lowered but hands up and facing away from his body. The troublesome part was what he held in each of his hands.
Two vials—their lids gone—hovered threateningly just above Luke and Mrs. O’Brien’s gaping mouths.
“Put those vials away,” Kate said, her gun aimed at him.
“I won’t.”
Kate’s instincts and training told her to end the threat, to shoot for the center of the target, but she refrained from firing. While she wasn’t worried about her marksmanship, she didn’t want to risk having those vials spill their contents into her loved ones’ mouths as Anderson fell to the ground. Not knowing what he had in those vials changed everything. Would an ambulance get here in time? Would the doctors even know how to counteract whatever the vials contained?
“What did you do to them?” she asked, doing her best to notice any movement with Luke’s and Mrs. O’Brien’s chests.
“Gun down, then we’ll talk.”
Kate didn’t obey; she changed topics instead. “So, no broken arm?”
He squinted and frowned. “I broke it years ago. I kept the cast as a souvenir. Came in handy these past few weeks.”
Her weapon still aimed squarely at him, Kate glanced at the table once more. Beside the damn turkey lay the pieces of his discarded cast. Each half showed a straight edge, where a saw had been used to cut the cast, then two smaller latches had been added. A tiny part of her admired his ingenuity. With the brace holding the cast in place over his shoulder, none of that had been visible. The X-rays he’d so proudly shown to Rosebud had probably been old ones, of which he’d taken new photos, so they’d appear in his recent timeline.
“Gun down, Detective,” he repeated.
Kate knew she wasn’t in any imminent physical danger herself, but she feared for what he’d already given Luke and Mrs. O’Brien. She needed to learn more about the drug or poison he used.
“Not until you prove to me that they are both still alive.”
“They’re alive. Not for long, but for now.” An evil smile grew on his lips.
“What did you do to them?”
“I gave her some of my cleansing medicine. He came in a little too soon, so I had to hit him on the head.”
Although Kate couldn’t be sure, she figured he’d brought three vials, one for each of them. “Why are you doing this?”
“In general or this here?” he asked.
Anderson was testing her patience. Her finger feeling the trigger, she hoped he’d move his vials just a bit so she could shoot him.
“Here,” Kate said. “Lori. Jessica. Mariana. All of it!”
“This, here, is for you. You are misrepresenting my work. You need to learn my real purpose. To understand it. If you won’t lower your gun, then please join me for a toast.”
The arrogance in the man’s voice made his distorted sense of grandeur palpable.
She had to get Anderson to move those vials. She couldn’t believe he was still holding them. His elbows being bent probably made it a less strenuous a posture to maintain than if his arms had been held out straight.
“But why Lori? Why Jessica? Mariana?”
“All sinners. I know firsthand what happens when corruption and sin enter a person’s soul. It’s a slippery slope that ends nowhere but Hell.”
“Was it why you also targeted Amanda? What was her sin?”
He flinched at the mention of her name.
“What had she done that was so bad?”
He shook his head and something unsettling and deeply unnerving shone in his eyes. “I am simply a servant of the Lord saving fragile souls before it’s too late. They start off with the sin of the flesh, then drugs and alcohol, then…”
“Then suicide? Like Penelope?”
One of his eyebrows rose. “What? How do you know about her?”
“That’s my job. You think your sister, Penelope, or Pixie, is rotting in Hell?”
His voice descended nearly an octave as rage flashed in his eyes. “She is, unfortunately. That is what happens when people commit suicide. I’m her twin. I know. I can feel the flicker of the burning flames against my skin when I think of her. I’ve seen where her despair took her, and I want to save other souls before they reach that point.”
“Because suicide is bad, and the worst possible thing anyone could ever do?”
“Yes!”
“Worse than murder?”
His crazed eyes looked up. “The Lord has been speaking to me.” His hands—and the dangerous vials he’d been holding—reached toward the ceiling, so Kate took her opportunity.
She fired a single shot. His body fell backward and the vials he’d been holding crashed onto the tiled floor.
Kate walked toward the man, still aiming her gun at him. His face contorted as his hands reached toward his shoulder. Blood seeped from the wound she’d inflicted, rapidly staining the area around his left collarbone.
Rosebud and the other two officers joined her in the kitchen and she heard other people rushing into her home, shouting their BPD identity as they stormed in.
Kate met Anderson’s eyes and shook her head at the deranged man lying at her feet. “The Lord—”
“Don’t you dare speak his name in vain,” he said, his voice tainted with agony. “You ingraaaate!”
One of the patrol officers got to the floor and began attending to Anderson’s wounds now that he was no longer a threat to others.
Radios crackled around her as Rosebud reported the situation to Fuller who had nearly arrived at the scene. The other officer radioed for medical assistance.
Kate turned her attention to Luke and his mom. Kate checked Luke’s pulse first, then his head. A bump was already growing. He could have a concussion.
She checked Mrs. O’Brien next. Her pulse was weak, but present.
She allowed relief to wash over her. They’d soon be in good hands. The threat to her family was gone. She looked at Anderson again as the officer continued applying pressure to the wound to stop the bleeding.
“Just so you know, your sister isn’t rotting in Hell,” Kate told Anderson. “She’s in California. Maybe those L.A. sun rays hitting her skin are the flickering flames you’ve been feeling.”
“No!” he winced. “Impossible. The photo—"
“Enough of this. Anderson Carson,” Kate announced with a booming voice, “you’re under arrest for the murders of Eliah Thompson, Lori Davis, Jessica Stephenson, Mariana Gomez Alvarez, and attempted murders of Amanda McCutcheon, Luke O’Brien, and Mrs.—” Kate corrected herself upon hearing her words aloud, “and Marjorie O’Brien.”
Anderson hissed at her, and Kate turned away from him to stare at her loved ones once more. Mrs. O’Brien wore a peaceful expression, oddly enough. Kate crossed her fingers, hoping that the drug would soon wear off and leave Luke and her without any repercussion—or recollection of what had happened.