In the dark of evening, Kate directed Simon to drive to a corner where Kate thought they would be best hidden, where she and Simon had a full view of the back of the kid’s house.
“You know they could go out the front door,” Simon noted.
She nodded. “I know, but I’m expecting that, wherever they’re going, they need to drive, so they’ll need the vehicle.”
“You’re thinking it’s all of them?” he asked, horror filling in his voice.
She shook her head. “No, and I don’t really know yet,” she admitted. “There’s only really one viable suspect.”
He frowned. “I get that, but you think the killer would have learned that by now.”
She smiled at him. “Maybe.” She settled back into her seat, sniffed the air, and asked, “What did you buy?”
He snorted. “You said, coffee and take-out burgers, so I bought lots of both.”
She stared at him. “Lots?” she asked in a surprised tone.
“Well, how long will we be here for?”
“You’re into cold burgers?”
“Absolutely,” he replied. “After growing up not knowing when food would be available,” he explained, “I don’t turn down burgers, hot or cold.”
She shook her head. “Are you telling me that you’ll turn on the engine, open the hood, and warm them in there or something, if needed?”
He grinned. “You know that trick too, do you?”
“Are you kidding? A whole cult of people cook on the manifold,” she noted, chuckling.
He reached around into the back seat and pulled up the fast-food burgers. Immediately the smell of salty, greasy fries and burgers filled the air, and her stomach rumbled in joy. “I wish you would feel the same way about smoked salmon and caviar.”
“Never had either,” she replied, as she reached for a burger.
He reached out and snagged her wrist, staring at her. “Seriously?”
She looked up at him. “Cop job, cop salary. No time, no money. Remember?”
“We’ll have to fix that.”
She rolled her eyes. “Not everybody has your money, you know? I don’t even know how you make your money because no way buying all these shitty old buildings and fixing them up is making you the big bucks.”
He chuckled. “You’d be surprised. What’s unusable to some is a gold mine for others.”
“And what does that do for your conscience then?”
“My conscience is clear because some of them go to low-income housing, some of them go to senior centers, some of them go to families who need a helping hand.”
She stopped and looked at him. “Like women’s shelters?”
“I support a large number of those as well,” he noted quietly. “But they aren’t ones that most people know about.”
She nodded. “I get it,” she replied. “The ones set up by women in trouble, knowing what it’s like to be out there on the streets, when they’ve got an abusive husband or boyfriend after them. Way too many of those kind of men are out there.” She unwrapped her burger, looked at it, and gave him a fat grin. “You got pickles and fried onions on the burgers?”
He shuddered. “At least you got the right burger.”
“Why? What’s on yours?” she asked curiously.
He unwrapped it to see bacon and cheese.
She shrugged. “Well, that’s pretty boring.”
“No,” he argued, “it’s not boring. It’s conventional.”
“Says the man who likes smoked salmon and caviar.”
He shook his head. “Absolutely no way you will convince me that what you’re eating right now is on the same level as smoked salmon and caviar.”
She batted her eyes at him. “You have to be adventurous, you know? If you expect me to try your two items, then you should try this.” She handed over her burger.
He shook his head, pushed back the burger, and said, “No way in hell.”
She glared and then chuckled. “That’s good because I’m really not into sharing.” Then she took a huge bite.
He watched in amazement as the burger went down faster than he could have imagined. “Have you eaten at all today?”
She shook her head. “I don’t remember,” she replied, “so I’ll say no. My stomach has been screaming at me all day.” She rummaged in the bag, looking for more food and immediately pulled out fries and stuck four in her mouth right off the bat. She looked over at him. “You would share the fries, right?”
“You can have it all,” he noted, “if you’re that hungry.”
“I’d never eat it all,” she replied.
“Well then, slow down and pace yourself,” he suggested.
She shook her head. “Nope, I’ll need fuel soon.”
“And why is that?”
“Either you’ll do a lot of driving or I’ll do a lot of running.”
He instantly took in her feet. Sneakers. “I didn’t come dressed for running,” he noted. “I mean, obviously I can do a mile or two,” he said, as he looked down at his leather loafers.
She snorted. “You don’t worry about that. I’ll go after him. You’ll have to stay and keep watch on the house, if it comes to that.”
At that, he stopped and looked at her. “What are you expecting?”
“Not expecting anything,” she said cheerfully. “Yet I’m open to seeing just what occurs.”
“And if nothing happens?”
“Then it’ll be a damn long tiring night,” she stated, “and I’ll be frustrated and pissed off come morning.”
“But somehow I don’t think you’ll be that way, will you?”
“I sure as hell hope not,” she agreed, “because that poor woman in your visions doesn’t have much longer.” Immediately his appetite fled. He slowly lowered his hand with the burger; she watched him and whispered, “I’m sorry. You need to eat.”
“No,” he argued. “Here. You have it.”
“You eat it, just in case we need your energy.”
“Well, unlike you,” he replied, “I had breakfast and lunch, and I think a bagel was in there somewhere as well.”
“A bagel?” She stared at him in outrage. “Where the hell are you finding fresh bagels?”
“Did I say it was fresh?”
“It’s you,” she noted, rolling her eyes. “You don’t buy anything but the good stuff.”
“I try not to,” he agreed. “That doesn’t mean it always works that way.”
“It works mostly though,” she stated. “It’s disgusting actually.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I really love bagels.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that,” he said. “I could have picked up some.”
“You could have,” she agreed cheerfully. “But, in the meantime, I’ll take care of this.” She snatched a second burger.
He did finish off his burger, but now it tasted like sawdust to him, though she was able to eat hers with great relish. “I do appreciate an appetite. I just wish it came from commonsense eating habits and not because your stomach is finally getting fed.”
She grinned at him. “It’ll be hard to break those habits.”
“I’ll work on it though,” he muttered.
She shrugged. “More power to you, just don’t expect any cooperation out of me.”
He sighed. “You don’t have to be difficult about it.”
“I’m not, but I really don’t see the point of worrying about it. When the next meal comes, I eat. When it doesn’t come, well then, I guess I don’t eat.”
“You know that you can’t keep on like that.”
“So people keep telling me,” she admitted, feeling the frustration build.
He immediately held up his hand. “Hey, I’m not here to nag you.”
“Could have fooled me.”
He sighed. “Why don’t you just pour some coffee? That’ll make you feel better.”
She immediately brightened. “You know what? You’re right. Can’t argue if you’ve got a coffee in your hand.”
He chuckled. “Is that all it takes to stop an argument?”
She nodded. “Pretty much, but, in your case, you need a bottle of wine, a beer, or a shot of whiskey. Me? I’m good with coffee.”
“Do you ever think about switching to tea?”
She stopped in the act of reaching for the big jug of coffee in the back seat and stared at him.
“Hey, hey, hey, calm down,” he said, interpreting her look as one of complete madness. “It was just a question.”
“For the future,” she noted, “I have found very little tea that’s actually drinkable.”
He sighed. “You know that people all over the world would argue with you.”
“Then they can drink it,” she stated instantly.
He started to laugh. “You’re never short of an answer either, are you?”
“Doesn’t do me any good to be short on answers,” she replied. “People around me are always talking in circles. Or asking endless questions. It’s irritating.”
“I can’t imagine that anybody is doing that,” he argued in surprise. “You always seem to be one up on every conversation.”
“No, not at all,” she admitted. “Sometimes I feel like I’m being completely left out of conversations.”
“Is that because you don’t get it or because you’re so busy working that you’re missing all the joking around you?”
She thought about it seriously for a moment, while she poured coffee. “You know what? It could be the latter. I hadn’t really considered that.”
“You do know that to make friends, you have to actually be friendly, right?”
“Yeah, that’s another fact that’s been revealed to me lately,” she grumbled. “Who knew being part of a team was such a pain in the butt?”
“Weren’t you always part of a team as a cop?”
“Sure, I was,” she stated, “but they were used to me. I feel like I have to train these ones all over again.”
He stared at her for a moment, and then his shoulders started shaking. She looked over at him, with a quiet satisfaction inside. He didn’t know she was joking, but, at the same time, it made her feel good that she could lighten his day. He’d been way too serious and way too sad, when he had picked her up. It worried her to see what all these visions were doing to him, especially when she could do so little to help him.
When he finally calmed down, she held out a coffee and asked, “You want one?”
“Absolutely. It doesn’t look like I’ll be getting any sleep tonight anyway.”
“Nope, you’re probably not.” She chuckled.
“Are you always this much fun on a stakeout?”
“Oh, hell no,” she said. “But I’m here for a reason, and I feel really confident that the outcome will make me happy.”
He looked at her. “Do you want to explain?”
“No. I didn’t really say too much about it to the guys at work either. I know they were curious, but, having nothing to justify what intuitively I feel is the right answer, won’t make me any brownie points.”
“You could always suggest it as a theory.”
“I do that all the time, but sometimes they don’t like hearing them.”
“Or is it just that you have a tendency to always be right?”
“It’s not my fault,” she argued. “Besides, I’m the rookie here, so I have to work twice as hard.”
“Why is that?” he asked in surprise.
“Well, I feel like I have to justify my position each time I think these things out loud.”
“Oh, I think you’ve done that already,” he noted in amazement. “How could you possibly think that you’re not worthy of that job? And it goes along with that whole ‘trying so hard to get there’ thing. Maybe just calm down and be more of a team member.”
“And now you’re starting to sound like my boss too.”
He winced. “Not trying to.”
“No, but I know when multiple people say the same thing over and over again, maybe there’s something behind it,” she admitted. “And I get it, and I am really working hard on it. I’ve been working really closely with Rodney on this whole case—and not just us either. The others have really stepped in and have helped out too.”
“Is it something that you all work on?”
“Yes, but sometimes we each catch different cases, and we work those too. When we’re waiting on whatever and don’t have anything to work on at the moment, then we help out the others. We’re all supposed to be part of the same team.”
“Yeah, when you say, supposed to—”
“It’s just a carryover from when I first started there. Honestly the entire atmosphere is very different now, and I really appreciate the change.”
“Good.” Then he motioned around them. “So how come they’re not on the stakeout with you?”
“I would have brought Rodney, but his kid had a birthday today.”
“Ah, that’s a good reason. Best not to take him away from his family.”
“There’s very little in our world that allows us to have special moments, except for things like this,” she noted. “So we have to honor them when we can get them.”
“And I appreciate the fact that you called me instead of one of the other team members.”
“Well, honestly”—she winced—“you won’t like this.”
“What? I was the last choice?”
“Actually I was gonna come out here alone, except my sergeant told me not to.”
“Right, so not only was I the last choice,” he noted, “I’m the only choice.”
At that, she burst out laughing. “No, that’s not true. I could have hauled in somebody else from the team, but I thought about who I’d like to spend all these hours with, and you’re the one person who came to mind.” She leaned over and kissed him gently on the cheek.
He stared at her in surprise.
She shrugged. “What? I’m not allowed to do things like that?”
“Always, of course you’re allowed to,” he replied, his voice low. “It’s just that you never do.”
She stared at him nonplussed. “Sure I do.”
He shook his head. “No, you don’t.”
She frowned, feeling like another argument was about to break, when she glanced at the house and whispered, “Action.” She didn’t even know if he understood what she meant, but she pointed, and he immediately turned and stared.
“Is that the garage door opening?”
“Yes,” she replied. “Now the question will be, who is the driver and where is he going?”
“Well, I sure as hell hope he’ll go to the right place, so we can find that poor woman.”
“That’s the plan,” she stated, “so keep the lights off and don’t start the engine just yet.”
“Fine,” he said, “but you should know I’ve done a little of this in my time.”
“Yeah, but probably on the other side of the law.”
“What do you know about that?” he asked in surprise.
She shrugged. “I figure anybody who had the history you did probably went wild for a bit.”
“I did, but I also came back to the straight and narrow.”
“You sure did, which is the only reason you’re here right now.” She nodded. “Get ready.”
He watched as an SUV approached, its darkened windows rolled up. “We won’t see the driver, will we?”
“I’m looking,” she replied, “but it’s damn hard to see anything.”
“Isn’t that the mother’s vehicle?”
“Yes,” she agreed, “but did you notice that she has a limp and a hearing aid?”
“No, I didn’t,” he replied, “but how the hell did you see a hearing aid?”
“She kept fiddling with it, like she couldn’t quite get the right tone.”
“Damn.”
She could tell Simon was pissed off that he had missed it.
“So, just because there’s a hearing aid, what does that mean?”
“Maybe nothing,” she replied, “but let’s go.”
Immediately he turned on the engine and eased into the roadway, a good distance behind the vehicle. “No way a woman would do that to another woman,” he noted.
“You mean, you’re hoping no way a woman would do that.”
“It was her daughter. No way. I refuse to believe any parent would do something so horrific to their daughter.”
“Yeah, what happened to you?”
“Shit,” he muttered under his breath.
She nodded. “Parents of all kinds do not always show themselves as the best people on earth. Some are good, and some are bad. So we learn to deal with both.”
“Says you.” He followed the vehicle carefully. “Now we don’t have anybody watching the house.”
“I know,” she noted. “I’m putting all my eggs in one basket here. I sure as hell wish I had somebody else to watch back there.”
He frowned. “I do know somebody in that area.”
She looked at him in surprise. “Yeah?”
“And, if you don’t ask too many questions, I could ask him to sit and to keep an eye on the house for me.”
She pondered it for a long moment and then said, “Do it.”
He pulled out his phone, while driving carefully, and made a call. She listened in on Simon’s half of the conversation that made no sense, and, when he hung up, he turned and looked at her. “Done.”
“Okay, now do you want to explain that to me?”
“No, remember the no-asking-questions part?”
Frustrated, she glared at him. “I could make you.”
“You could, and you would end a great relationship with this guy.”
“Shit. Please tell me at least it’s not a criminal.”
“It’s not a criminal,” he said instantly.
Unfortunately his reply was a little too instant for her liking. She sighed. “Make sure he doesn’t do anything criminal while he’s there.”
“He won’t. He’s just keeping an eye on the house to see if anybody comes or goes.”
“That’s what I need,” she stated.
“Exactly, so stop complaining and let me do what I need to do.”
She groaned. “Are you always this bossy? Turn, turn, turn.”
“Talk about bossy,” he muttered, as he followed the vehicle. They were heading closer toward the station. “Interesting direction.”
“Well, they’ll have to be someplace where there isn’t a whole lot of traffic. I suppose if you torture women for fun you don’t keep her someplace where anybody’ll stumble across her.”
“Exactly.”
As they kept driving, she said, “It’s really important to make sure he doesn’t see us.”
“And how will he figure that out?” he asked.
“Well, this is a fairly distinctive vehicle.”
“I am being careful, plus it’s also dark out.”
“And yet,” she noted, “it’s not all that dark.”
He thought about it, then nodded and asked, “What do you want me to do?”
“Depends. Wherever he turns off, we’ll have to go past him, so he doesn’t suspect, then go around the block.”
“Right, I can do that.”
She looked over at him, as he expertly handled the vehicle in and out of traffic, staying close but not close enough to be noticed. “You’ve done this a time or two, haven’t you?”
“Sure have. My misspent youth, remember?”
“Yeah, I was trying not to ask too many questions.”
“Good. What is it they say? Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies.”
She winced. “Please tell me that what you did wasn’t too bad.”
“Nope, not bad.”
But just enough extra brightness filled his tone that she realized she didn’t want to know about that time in his life.
They followed the vehicle another few minutes onto Grandview Highway, then Broadway and still on down.
“Interesting,” she murmured. “We’re heading into a more commercial area.”
“Hell, all kinds of buildings are down here,” he noted.
“Do you know this area well?”
“Fairly well. I’m just trying to picture in my mind where they would be going.”
“Anything with that window you saw?”
“I suspect it’ll be a subtle window.”
“And yet you saw it.”
“I did, and I haven’t been able to see it since, other than in the vision.”
“Right.”
Just then the vehicle ahead of them turned into another lane and made a left off the main road.
He held up a hand as she started to give him orders. “I got this.”
She watched impatiently as he did, indeed, have it, and he turned onto the side road, and she whispered, “Goddammit, where are they? Where are they?”
“Up ahead.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I can see the lights.”
She settled back ever-so-slightly. “I sure hope so. We can’t take a chance of losing him now.”
“I got it,” he repeated. “A little bit of trust will go a long way tonight.”
“I’m not used to taking rookies out on stakeouts.”
At that, he snorted. “I probably have more experience with nightlife and hunting than all your rookies combined. Including yourself.”
“Maybe so. We’ll have to talk about that sometime.”
“Not unless you can, uh, put aside the cop persona,” he said cheerfully.
She sighed. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”
“Sometimes.”
Just then, the vehicle turned right, and then as they came around the corner, they sought a left.
“We’re made,” she whispered.
“Nope, not at all. That’s a parkade.”
“What do you mean, parkade?”
“It’s an old parking garage that is being expanded to support a big set of labs and a residential care facility and some nursing facility—if I remember the briefing I read on it.”
“But it’s an old building, like empty?”
“Yes, empty. I’m not at all sure about that window though.” He hated the fact that he might have been so wrong about the window because the last thing he wanted to do was find out that there was yet another victim. “Any idea why there are so many victims right now?”
“Partially,” she replied, “but I suspect we won’t really know until we actually catch him. The last victim was killed quickly, in case I didn’t tell you that. I figured, from looking at her, most of the injuries were postmortem.”
“That’s good for her,” he replied.
“I haven’t heard yet what exactly killed her, but it could be anything from a heart attack to the drugs he gave them to keep them subdued.”
“Right, just because he understands dosing for one doesn’t mean it’s the same for all, and overdoses are way too easy to administer if you’re not familiar with the drugs,” he explained.
“Horrible thought,” she replied.
“Yes, indeed, and yet, at the same time, this is very helpful if we’re in the right area.” Just then he pulled into where the car had turned.
“Don’t you think they’ll see us?” she muttered.
“No, not now anyway. He’s up on the second floor. He shut off the lights as he turned into the parkade.”
“Well, at least he can’t see us now.”
“No, he can’t see us, but, as soon as he stops, he’ll hear us.”
She waited and watched as the vehicle circled up higher and higher. “Crap, how high up is he going?” she asked.
“If it was me, I would go all the way up. It is the easiest way to get rid of a body.”
She nodded. “In this case it might be just to throw her off the roof.”
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”
“I wonder if he just picks old deserted buildings every time,” she wondered.
“That brings you back to case number one.”
“I know,” she admitted. “Case number one, the one that’s also important.”
Simon pulled into a parking spot. “We’re one floor down from the top. I don’t think we should go up any higher.”
“I got this,” she whispered, as she slid out.
“I’m coming with you.” She immediately turned to protest, but he held up a hand. “Stop. I’m coming.”
She frowned. “You have to stay behind me.”
“I got that,” he whispered, “I promise I’ll do everything you say, but you are not going up there alone.”
She just glared at him.
He shook his head. “It’s either that or I’ll make noise right now,” he threatened.
“And he’ll kill her,” she murmured. “There’s no place up there for him to go.”
“But this building connects to the one beside it,” he explained. “That’s the purpose of the parkade. It was for this big complex that was here. It’s an old apartment building, and it had the parkade because a lot of other businesses were around here too. So a door here connects to the building that’s nearby, and it’s deserted as well.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I looked at it at one point, but they were asking way the hell too much money.”
“Of course they were,” she muttered. “Everybody’s hoping to make a buck.”
“In this case they wanted to make millions, like a couple dozen.”
She stared at him in shock, and then she gave a quick shake of her head. “Come on. We have to go.”
Closing the door ever-so-quietly and leaving it unlocked so the locks being engaged didn’t actually beep, she raced around to the front end, where the ramp was slightly lit up one way. Climbing up higher and higher, she watched carefully—as soon as they could see over the top of the concrete partitions, to see if there was any sign of anybody. She heard footsteps up ahead. She followed carefully, keeping a respectful distance behind while trying to keep quiet. No sound came from Simon either. She turned to look, and he was walking as smoothly and as quietly as anybody could, yet he didn’t have runners on. That suggested a level of expertise that they definitely needed to talk about.
When she thought about that for a moment, she realized it was probably better if they didn’t. There were only so many lines she could cross when it came to her work. Something was between them, and she wasn’t quite ready to break up yet. Maybe never. But that wasn’t something she was even prepared to look at right now.
When she heard a door open and saw a light shining up ahead, she broke into a run. Still no way to tell who the suspect was. A baseball cap was on his head—or hers for that matter. As Kate raced quietly forward, she came to the door and stopped. She looked over at Simon and whispered, “Do you know what’s on the other side of this door?”
He nodded. “A long hallway and then it opens into offices.”
“Are the walls still here?”
“Some,” he whispered, “but not very many.”
She nodded and opened the door, but light from the parkade shone into the hallway, and she winced at that. With her handgun out, she couldn’t find anybody ahead of her, as she stepped inside. With Simon right behind her, staying close, they quietly raced down the hallway and came up to the first of the offices. She immediately flattened against the wall, and he followed suit. She stared at him.
Quietly she whispered, “Can you think of any place here where they would likely keep her?”
He nodded grimly. “Yeah, I have a damn good idea now.” And, with that, he said, “I’ll lead.”
Not giving her a chance to argue, he bolted ahead, staying close to the wall, until he came to a corner. She was right behind him, as he held back a hand in warning. She waited to see what he would say, when she heard a voice, an angry voice.
“Fucking bitch,” he snapped. “Why couldn’t you have died yet? Jesus Christ, the last one died in two seconds. I didn’t even get a chance to have any fun with her, and you? Jesus, you just won’t quit. Do you actually think somebody will come and save you or something?”
Kate barely recognized the voice, but, in her heart of hearts, she knew who it was.
She stepped in front of Simon, raced around the corner, and then, with her flashlight and service weapon drawn together and pointed directly at his face, she yelled, “Police! Hands up!”
He stopped and looked straight at her, then started swearing. She stared into the eyes of a killer, a man who hadn’t stopped since the very first time, when his stepdaughter had died in his arms.
She looked at Rick’s stepfather and asked, “How do you keep your wife from knowing all this is going on?”
“She thinks because I take my drugs that she can take hers. She thinks it’s safe for her to sleep when I am.” He gave Kate a rough smile. “Little does she know what comes out to play when darkness falls.”
“She has no idea, does she?” Kate asked.
“No,” he said. “How the hell did you figure it out?”
“It got to the point where there were really no other options, and there could only be one choice,” she replied quietly.
He shook his head. “No way. I worked really hard to pin these on my stepson.”
“Yeah, you did, and it worked the first time, didn’t it?”
“Of course, and then I picked two in Alberta at different times,” he told her, laughing.
“And two in Saskatchewan.”
Immediately the smile fell from his face. “You found those, did you?”
She nodded. “How many overall?”
“I don’t know that I counted,” he replied, with a sneer. “What does it matter to you?”
“It matters to the families who would like closure.” She approached slowly. “Put your hands over your head.”
“No, I don’t feel like it. What will you do about it?”
She immediately cocked the gun. “I’ll shoot you.”
“It doesn’t matter to me,” he told her. “I knew the game would be up soon. You were sniffing around too damn much, and I couldn’t figure out how to throw you off.”
“Once we found the last crime scene,” she noted, “there really weren’t too many other options.”
He stopped and stared. “You found her? You found Lacy?”
She nodded. “Unfortunately we didn’t find her fast enough.” She shifted, so she could take a quick look at who he’d been yelling at earlier. And there was her missing persons’ victim. As she turned her head back again to see him, he had moved.
“Oh no, you don’t,” she stated. “I might as well put a bullet through your head right now.”
From her side, the woman, her voice faint, said, “Please do, dear God, just do it.”
“You just focus on staying alive. I mean it,” she snapped. “I mean it. We’ve worked really hard to find you.”
The woman started to cry, and Kate heard Simon’s voice gently speaking to Chelice.
Kate aimed her gun and repeated, “Hands up and don’t give me any of your shit. Then get down on the floor where I can see you.”
“Nope, you’ll have to shoot me in cold blood. Of course you can’t do that.”
“Why do you think that?” she asked, but inside she was just pissed enough, wondering how she would get this guy to cooperate, without … and then she smiled. “You know what? I don’t really need your cooperation.”
And, with that, she lowered her weapon and blew out his right knee. Screaming, he dropped to the ground, unable to sustain himself on his feet.
“That’s police brutality,” he roared.
“No,” she replied, “it’s a taste of your own medicine.” She quickly holstered her weapon and pulled out her handcuffs. Keeping a close eye on him, knowing he was a tricky bastard even now, she quickly moved around behind him, then pulled his arms back and handcuffed him. Feeling better about that, she quickly disarmed him, removing a knife, screwdrivers, scissors, pliers, and some other tool that she didn’t recognize, until she realized it was something for cutting off fingers.
She swore as she stacked his stash off to the side and then pulled out her phone and called for backup. “Now your wife will have the worst day of her life.”
“Not yet,” he said. “Not yet.”
“She will when she finds out that you did all these murders,” she argued.
“She doesn’t want to know. I used to beat her up all the time,” he explained. “I’m the one who put her in the hospital when we were in Alberta. I needed her out of the way, so I could go murder a couple more women.”
“Why murder them?” Simon asked.
The guy looked over at him. “You don’t really understand how much fun it is to torture and murder until you actually get a chance to do it,” he explained. “We’re built, taught by society, not to do these things, that they’re wrong and that they’re painful and that they hurt. But they don’t hurt us, they only hurt the victims. And, by the time you get dulled to their cries, you actually start to miss it,” he shared in a conversational tone. “You just don’t understand until you’ve been there.”
“And is that what you did to all your victims? You just missed those feelings, so you had to keep doing more and more murders? I get the last one died on you too fast, so you had to pick our poor girl here to continue your sick hobby,” she noted. “But what about your stepdaughter?”
“That stupid bitch,” he muttered. “That was a sad deal. I didn’t mean for her to die that way. But she caught me with somebody else, so there wasn’t anything I could do. I had to take her out. I had been experimenting, you see, on the best ways to keep them alive and to extend the pain. I mean, this latest bitch here is a good example.” He pointed at her. “I’ve kept her alive for a long time. I mean, you should be thanking me.”
“Really?” she asked. “That’s actually not what I was thinking.” She stepped over to look at the woman on the table, both ankles and both wrists broken, with slices across her chest and her belly. Kate reached out and touched the woman’s neck, checking for her pulse.
“I’m here,” she whispered, “please don’t take your eyes off him.”
“I blew his knee apart,” she told her quietly, “and I’ll take out the other one if he moves a muscle. Don’t you worry. This asshole isn’t going anywhere but jail.”
The woman then started to cry in earnest.
Kate looked over at Simon and said, “Keep an eye on her. Help is on the way.”
He nodded, and she could see he was already administering first aid. She turned back to the killer. “And your son, what about him?”
“He’s built of stronger stuff,” he replied. “He helped me with his sister.”
She stopped and stared, the sickness inside her coalescing, as she realized that her fears were being proven. “I was afraid of that. He was on drugs, wasn’t he?”
He nodded. “He came home, high as a kite.”
“But you guys were supposed to be on a holiday.”
“Yeah, my wife and I got in a fight. I beat the crap out of her, and I told her that I needed a few days to cool off. She never said a word to anybody and came home meek and mild as always.” He sneered. “In the meantime, I picked up a victim, and I kept her at the house, thinking it was safe, but it was just temporary. I just had her there for a day or so. I didn’t think about my stepdaughter, but there she was, and she saw me with the other girl. And, after that, all hell broke loose.”
“What happened to the other girl?”
“Well, I had to kill her and fast, so that really pissed me off. Then I decided that the stepdaughter had to go because she’d seen too much and would tell,” he explained. “So, as much as I was sad about that, it was a pretty obvious answer.”
She stared at him in shock. “That was a daughter you had raised.”
“Yep, it was,” he snapped, “and the bitch should have kept her mouth shut.”
“You didn’t give her a chance to keep her mouth shut,” Kate argued. “You tortured her.”
“She kept saying that she would tell, and that somebody would find out, that somebody would help her, and that she would make sure I went to prison. She was always one of those do-gooder people. You know? The holier-than-thou type, always right, while everybody else was wrong. She kept calling me a sinner. I told her that she was a sinner and that she would go to hell.”
“And Rick?”
“Rick came home stoned and drunk one day. She was already tied up in the basement, crying and screaming for help. He went down there, and I followed him, and he had a knife in his hand, and he was trying to cut her loose.”
“And I said, ‘Jesus Christ, boy! What did you do?’ He just stopped and stared at me and started yelling, ‘I didn’t do anything.’ He cried out, ‘I didn’t. I didn’t.’ Meanwhile I just poured it on, saying, ‘You stinking drunk. You’re stoned out of your head. Look what you did to your sister.’” The stepfather chuckled, as if delighted with himself.
“Go on,” Kate said.
“I told him, ‘You don’t even know what it’s like to kill somebody properly.’ He stared at me, as if he was struggling so hard to understand what was going on. I could see the drugs were still in his system. I said, ‘When you kill her, you need to kill her clean and make sure that she dies.’ At that, his sister started yelling at him to not listen to me and that I was evil and to stop me. But it was funny, like watching a video. He looked at that knife in his hand, and he held it against her neck, as she started screaming and screaming. He freaked out a little, saying, ‘Shut the fuck up, just shut the fuck up. I can’t think!’ And before he knew it, he’d sliced her throat.”
“And yet there was a gouge,” she noted.
“Yeah, there was. I added that later. Just to make it look a little better.” And then he smiled.
“So, Rick did kill his sister.”
“He probably doesn’t have a clue how it all happened, and I know he’s terrified, and he has no idea what part I played in it at all. You can bet he’ll never talk.”
“But he confessed, just like a good boy.”
He laughed. “That was the best part. That and watching my wife have no clue what was going on.”
“And you really hate your wife that much?”
“She’s completely useless,” he noted.
“And yet she’s been a patsy for you all this time. She’s been your alibi all these years.”
“Of course. She has to have some purpose. Even now, she has taken her drugs because she gave me mine.”
“And yet you didn’t take them, did you?”
“No, hell no. I only make it look that way. I give myself a chance to rest up in between my sessions, and then I’m up all night. It makes me dopey all day. And I can save my drugs for my experiments.” He gave her a big fat ugly smile and added, “Works out really well.”
“Jesus Christ.” Kate stepped back. “I’m tempted to just blow you away now.”
He shrugged. “Go ahead. You know something? It’d be good for you. Then there would be no difference at all between us. You high and mighty folks, you think you’re so perfect. You’re really not. You’re just as twisted and sick on the inside as I am.”
“No,” she argued, “I’m not, but I’m glad to hear you know what a sick bastard you are.”
“Nope, I’m not,” he stated simply, “but I’ve listened to enough of my dear stepson’s therapy sessions to realize that’s what they’ll think.”
“What started you on this path?”
“Actually it was the woman I took home. I met her on the street. I didn’t bring her home in order to kill somebody,” he stated. “She was the first, but only because she pissed me off. I mean, she just pissed me off.”
“In what way? Were you fighting with her?”
“No, she was a hooker,” he explained, “and she’d gotten noisy and then mad because I’d kept her there. But I hadn’t intended to kill her, at least not yet,” he added. “Then I just killed her real quick because she was just in the way at that point because I had to deal with my holier-than-thou daughter.”
Kate shook her head. “Wow, so you killed a hooker because she was in the way, and you killed your daughter because she was in the way too.”
“Do you need a better reason to kill?” he asked, twisting his head. “Look at you. I’m in your way, and you just want me out of your way.”
“Only to rid the world of evil,” she replied quietly. “But I sure as hell have absolutely no wish to kill anybody else.”
“Yeah, you do,” he said. “You just won’t be honest about it. Everybody wants to kill. Everybody wants to know what it’s like to kill,” he noted, with a half-smile. “But everybody is too scared to do it. Once you’ve done it, it’s a piece of cake. All I wanted to do was make them pay.”
“Why? Why do you hate women so much?” And then she looked at him. “Your mother, I suppose.”
“Yeah, my mother was a bitch.”
“And was your mother the first one you killed?”
“No, I already told you the hooker was my first one. My mother died before I could get there. I think I’ve been trying to kill her ever since.”
That was as good of an explanation as anything she’d ever heard. And explained his chosen “type.”
When they heard the sirens outside on the street, she looked over at Simon and nodded. “Go get them and bring them up here, will you? Make sure that ambulance gets here fast.”
He hesitated.
She smiled and said, “Don’t worry. The next shot will take out his testicles.”
Simon winced at that, but he believed her. He raced down the ramp and motioned at the cops and told them to bring the ambulance crew straight up because they had a critical victim. As he raced back, his gaze immediately went to Kate. But she was still standing there, holding her gun on the man on the ground. “At least he’s still alive,” he noted.
“Yeah, he is,” she replied. “It’s just so strange to have the case actually over.” She looked over at Chelice. “Are you doing okay?”
“I am now,” the woman whispered. “I just hurt so damn much.”
“The ambulance is here,” Kate told her. “Hang on a little longer, and we’ll get you out of this hellhole.”
Just a few minutes later, the woman was surrounded by the EMTs, and it didn’t take long before she was quickly removed from the ropes and whatever support system he had strung her up in. Soon she was cut down and taken away, Kate realized that Simon had been busy taking photos.
She walked over and stated, “I’ll need those.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I figured somebody needed to take photos of how he had her strung up.”
She nodded. “I know, and I couldn’t do anything until somebody else had him. Thank you.” She looked back to see the killer also being loaded onto a gurney. “He goes into a separate ambulance,” she ordered.
The EMTs looked at her in surprise, but she shook her head. “This woman has been tortured by him long enough. He can wait until another ambulance gets here. She gets priority, and the last thing she needs is to be around this asshole another second. He doesn’t deserve any medical treatment. Matter of fact, I wouldn’t mind if you dropped him a couple times on the way out of here.”
The still-bleeding man started to laugh. “See? There’s that killer part of you talking right now,” he said. “Now if only you’d had the guts to do the job.”
“Nah,” she replied. “I figure you’ll suffer far more in prison for the rest of your life.”
“I won’t suffer.”
“Yeah, you will. You’ll end up in solitary most of the time,” she stated, “because nobody can stand you. And the prisoners will beat the crap out of you when you’re in the general population, just as a matter of course.”
“I’ll kill myself instead,” he said, with a casual shrug.
“I couldn’t care less, but you won’t do it on my watch.”
And, with that, she stepped back, and the EMTs loaded him onto a gurney and strapped him down, as another cop handcuffed him in place. She turned to look at Simon. “I’ll be here for a while.”
“Yeah, you think?” he asked. “Probably all night again, huh?”
“Yeah,” she said, with half a smile. “Like all night again. So, if you don’t mind making a trip to the car before you go—”
“You want your stuff?”
“Yeah, I’ll need my bag. I want my coffee, and some of those cold burgers would be fine too.”
He shook his head. “How can you eat after this?”
“Because I’ll have a long night ahead,” she repeated, with a smile. “Besides, we won this one.”
He looked at her and nodded. “You know something? You’re right. This is a big win.”
“It is, indeed,” she agreed. “So maybe you can get some sleep tonight. She’s safe. You did everything you could, and we found her.”
He smiled. “I wanted to show you something.”
She frowned and looked at him in surprise.
He nodded. “Take a look at this.”
A door was in front of them. It was barely standing, and it went out to a balcony, and a shutter was over it. But he pulled both open, and there, across the street, was a huge building. And, sure enough, it had the same damn window on it.
She shook her head. “You know that I don’t really doubt you,” she explained, “but sometimes I do. And then this happens, and I find out that I’m full of shit and that you’re right.”
He laughed. “Well, in this case, I’m just relieved to see it because the only other answer for me would have been yet another victim out there somewhere, and I couldn’t stand that.”
“No more victims,” she confirmed. “The paperwork will be brutal, however, and it’ll take us a long time to get to the bottom of all that he did. Plus I’ve got a prostitute’s body missing somewhere, the true victim zero,” she noted, “though, in this case, it’s probably sitting in the morgue, unidentified.”
“It could have been buried even, as a Jane Doe, since it was so many years ago.”
She nodded. “Probably so. Hopefully they took DNA.”
“Surely they did,” he noted. “You’ll run it and test it later.”
“Yet we didn’t find that at the kid’s house.”
“Nope. Maybe because he didn’t have her there very long.”
“Maybe. Or maybe he cleaned up afterward. I don’t know. We’ll figure it out,” she stated. “You need to go home to get some rest.”
“I’ll go get your stuff first. Be right back.”
She nodded and turned to see that Rodney had just arrived on the scene. He walked over, gave her a big fat grin, and said, “So you found Chelice, huh?”
“Yeah, we did.” She nodded and pointed out the balcony to the window in the building across the way.
He stared. “Jesus, so Simon was right.”
“Absolutely. He’s gone down to get my stuff from his car, so he can leave and go home.”
“We should probably get a statement from him.”
“We’ll get that tomorrow,” she said absentmindedly. “He’s pretty overwhelmed at the moment.”
“With good cause, it’s a hell of a job you two did. I didn’t even think about doing a stakeout because I didn’t really expect it would be any of the family.”
“Well, if we can believe the stepfather, it sounds like the kid actually did kill his sister. He was drunk and high on drugs, and, at the goading of his stepfather, killed her under the influence, never really knowing what exactly happened. Rick confessed because he killed her,” she noted. “Yet it was the stepfather who tortured her.”
“Why?” he asked.
“She caught him fighting with a prostitute that he’d kept too long. So he got mad and killed the prostitute, and then he dealt with the stepdaughter before she could turn him in.”
“And the torture?”
“She wouldn’t shut up about how evil he was and how he would go to hell, and apparently she didn’t die easily, and she didn’t die fast, and the whole time she gave him shit.”
“I like her spirit.”
“Yeah, but it also made her life and her death a whole lot harder.”
“Yet, in the end, we can still only be who we are,” he noted quietly.
She turned and looked at him. “You know what? That’s a really lovely thing to say. Because she did her best the whole time. She thought her brother would save her, but instead he’s the one who dealt the final blow.”
“Asshole.”
“I’m not even sure he knows he did it,” she murmured, “and he’s already been tried and convicted.”
“At least now he can get the truth. I wonder how that’ll make him feel.”
“I rather imagine it’ll make him feel pretty shitty, but, at the same time, knowing the truth now should also bring him some relief because I doubt he’s had very many nights of sleep since it happened.”
“No, that unknown stuff just eats away at you, doesn’t it?” he asked.
“Yeah, it does. Now he’ll know for sure, and he’ll have to live with it. But, like I said, he’s already been tried, convicted, and served a sentence. Now he and his mother can begin to heal.”
“Jesus, the mother. What a blow for her.”
“It’s looking like, in many ways, the stepfather was abusive the whole time. The only peace the mother ever got was when he started being medicated for his psychosis or whatever the hell that was, though I think it was largely made up on his part. Anyway, she thought she was getting those drugs into him. However, he has had his nights to play for all these years, while she’s taking her drugs to help her sleep. During the daytime then, he’s pretty groggy from not sleeping, so he’s happy to keep functioning at a minimal level.”
“And, of course, now she’s all affectionate and loving because he can’t beat the crap out of her.”
“For the most part,” she said. “He went to Alberta and put her in the hospital there, so that he could have some freedom to do what he needed to do with his next two victims, which, of course, would just turn the light on his stepson. He always wanted to keep Rick as an easy suspect, instead of anybody else. Yet, at the same time, he couldn’t resist a new hunting ground.”
“Asshole,” Rodney said.
“Yeah, but now he’s a caught asshole, so it’s a whole different story.”
Forensics arrived just then, and she smiled. “You know something? Smidge will actually be happy with me for a change.”
“You think? We’ve still got bodies in the morgue.”
“Yeah, but we didn’t bring him a new one,” she noted. “This time we kept one alive.”
“Thank God for that,” he muttered.
“I know.” She sighed. “We sure have a bunch of work to do here.”
“I can handle this,” Rodney stated. “You’ve done the bulk of it. You need to get your ass home and rest.”
“No,” she argued quietly. “I’m here to finish it. I’ll rest tomorrow. Now that I know everybody is safe and sound, I’ll rest then,” she said, with a big smile. And, with that, they turned and got to work.