Forty-Four Box Set, Books 1-10 (44) (12 page)

“What about the arsonist?” I asked.

“His report isn’t back. Maybe they were all drug addicts. Got a bad batch. Or didn’t pay what they owed or something. Maybe the killer is an angry dealer settling scores and sending messages.”

“He’s not angry,” I said. “He’s methodical.”

She nodded. “Well, keep thinking.”

“Any new messages from Matt?” I asked.

Kate had mentioned that he had been leaving long, incoherent voicemails lately. I was worried about him and wanted him to be okay.

“No,” she said. “He’s kind of gone off the deep end a little. Didn’t see that coming at all. It’s not like I led him on or anything. Did he think we were going to get married or something?”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Well, it was kind of odd. Ben said he saw him at the hospital the other day. When he tried to go and talk to him, Matt ran off.”

“That is kind of weird,” I said.

She looked in the mirror and put on some dark lipstick.

“Okay. I have to go ask a couple of questions here. You can stay in the car if you want. I’ll only be a few minutes, and then we can go grab a coffee.”

She got out. I reclined the seat.

I knew Kate wanted to solve the murders, and obviously she was thinking a lot about it all. But I also could tell that she refused to look in one particular direction, that she wasn’t even considering Dr. Mortimer as a suspect. And as time went by, she seemed even more adamant about his innocence, refusing to even acknowledge what I had seen in the waiting room that night.

But I knew. I knew what I saw.

CHAPTER 28

It had been a long day of bad grades and steely girl looks from across the classroom. I knew I had to talk to Amanda and had planned to. But it didn’t feel quite right yet so I decided to wait.

My exciting evening consisted of tackling the stack of homework that waited for me. I opened my laptop, found the first draft of my social studies paper, and got to work.

About an hour later, my cell buzzed. It was Kate.

“Hey, Abby, do you have a minute?” she asked.

She sounded hurried and rushed. I glanced at the clock. It was after seven and I had hoped she would have been home by now.

“Yeah,” I said. “What’s up?”

I could hear an intercom in the background. My heart sank. She was at the hospital.

“I just had this strange hunch about the murder victims,” she said, whispering. “I don’t know where it came from. Maybe our talk the other day, I don’t know. I haven’t told anyone yet and wanted to bounce it off of you first.”

She seemed nervous, which was odd. Kate didn’t rattle easily.

“What is it?” I said, leaning back in the chair.

“Well, I started thinking that there had to be something that linked the victims together. I thought like maybe a gym or a bank. Or maybe they had their taxes done at the same place. So I’ve been checking those kinds of things out the last few days. Nothing turned up, though."

“Okay,” I said.

“Now, I want to tell you this, but you have to promise not to jump to conclusions, because it’s not conclusive. It doesn’t mean what you think it means. I need you to just listen to what I’m saying.”

“All right,” I said.

“The thought passed through my mind that maybe they all went to the same dentist or doctor. So I’ve been checking around town. Nothing there either.”

Suddenly, I had a strange feeling about what she was going to say. No wonder she didn’t want to tell me. The facts were staring her straight in the face.

“So I checked the emergency room files. I have a contact over here. He’s letting me look at the names of the patients who have been in the ER during the past year and—”

“And they all were in the ER,” I said, finishing her sentence.

She was silent for a minute.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, Abby, that’s exactly it. Thomas Rasmussen, the first guy, came in for frostbite last winter. Lana had an infection in the summer. And then...”

I heard papers being shuffled in the background.

“And then the arsonist. He was in for bronchitis. Abby, they were all here. This is the connection. The hospital.”

“The ER,” I said, correcting her and hoping she would pick up on my hint. “The ER where Dr. Mortimer works.”

Another silence.

“Yes,” she finally said. “Yes. Look, I have to finish up here and then I’ll be home. They won’t let me copy the files, so I want to get down a few key things. See you soon.”

Her voice was shaky.

“Be careful, Kate,” I said. “The killer is smart. Hurry and get out of there.”

Now I was nervous. I didn’t like her being over there alone.

“See you in a bit,” she said sharply and clicked off.

 Although I was nervous, I was also relieved. This would help prove what I had been telling Kate. She could ignore my visions, but she couldn’t ignore these facts.

I got a soda and drank it, staring at my reflection in the kitchen window.

This should help Kate see what was really going on. I could only hope that it would help her face the truth.

That night I had another vision. Another killing. A woman floating in the Deschutes. But this time I saw him. I saw who the killer was.

And Kate would have to wake up.

CHAPTER 29

I stood on the bank of the Deschutes River, just after dawn, the lights of Awbrey Butte twinkling in the distance and the quiet of the late winter’s morning surrounding me. This was the first time that I was at a scene from one of my visions. Everything felt exactly the same. I saw where he had held her down in the water. I saw where he had dumped her body, saw the footbridge.

And of course I saw her, where she was still snagged in the river, face down.

I called Kate and waited. I was the only one there, not even the runners were out yet. I could feel the killer’s energy around the area, like a part of his essence still lingered, strong and powerful. Funny. I still referred to him as the killer, even though I knew who he was, had seen him clearly as he smiled at me in my vision.

Now I could stop him.

I wasn’t sure if Kate would help me or not. It would be hard for her. But it didn’t matter anymore. This couldn’t go on.

Kate pulled up in her car with a photographer. I nodded and pointed and she walked over and studied the body. She had her notepad out and the photographer started taking pictures. She must have called the police too, because I heard the whine of sirens coming our way. I backed up into the trees and watched.

Kate ran up to me quickly. I told her what I had seen, who I had seen smiling at me and then walking away from the terrible thing he had done. She nodded, didn’t look at me, but wrote it down in her notepad as if that would help stop the sting.

The police arrived along with the reporters from the TV station. Kate headed back over.

Now there were four. It was just too many bodies in too short of a time for Bend. Maybe they could rush the toxicology report with this one.

I didn’t approach Kate again. She was busy working. But I saw her face from a distance. Pale, tired, and scared. I could see it and I could feel her fear. I think she knew what had to be done. I hoped so.

I walked back to the Jeep and did the only thing I could think of to do. Head over to school.

CHAPTER 30

Somehow the thought of going to school was comforting. Sitting in class, listening to teachers, studying in the library. But I couldn’t completely stop thinking about it either.

I got a text from Kate later while sitting in English class. The dead woman was an instructor at the community college. It was being labeled a suspicious drowning. Everything was being looked at, and the police had a new intensity to their investigation. They were even starting to whisper among themselves that there might be a serial killer loose in Bend.

It was a huge story. This could be the one Kate was waiting for to get her to the big city.

I sent a text back.

“Stay away from doc til we can talk plz.”

She didn’t respond right away. But finally, she wrote back.

“OK.”

I went to algebra, took the test the best I could, and wandered down the hallway, waiting 10 minutes after the bell until everyone cleared out. I was glad the day was over. I felt like sleeping for a year.

Jesse was waiting by my locker. I couldn’t stay mad at him. So what if he ignored my last text when I told him we needed to talk? It was good to see him and I wanted to tell him everything about what had happened, about the vision and the killer, about what I had to do.

“Hey, Craigers, long time no see,” he said.

We hadn’t talked since before he was cut from the team. That seemed so long ago, so much had happened. I didn’t really know what to say and yet I wanted to say so much.

“Want to go get a burger or something?” I said.

“Can’t. I told my dad I’d help him out at the garage. I just wanted to say hi. So you probably saw the basketball roster, huh?”

“Yeah. Bummer. Doing okay?”

“It was painful seeing it up there without my name and all,” he said. “But I guess I just have to get used to it.”

“Why don’t you go talk to the coach? You’ve known him for almost four years. I don’t think it’s impossible to talk your way back on, but you have to stop going up to the mountain so much.”

“Yeah, maybe. We’ll see. How are you doing?”

“Can you walk me to the Jeep? I can tell you what’s happened.”

“Sure,” he said.

I caught him up. About my vision and how I finally had the guts to see who the killer was and how I had gone to the river in the morning to see the body. About how Kate was working on the story and about how I needed to confront Dr. Mortimer.

He opened the door for me.

“Just be careful, Craigers,” he said. “Let the police handle it. It sounds like they are more interested now. You can feed all your information to Kate and she can leak it to the cops. Stay out of it. It’s too dangerous.”

Jesse didn’t realize my anger, or my determination. This was going to stop. I wasn’t waiting for the authorities to piece it together. I had already waited too long.

“All I want to do now is go take a long nap,” I said. “But I’ll keep you updated.”

“Call me if you go see him,” he said. “I’ll go with you. Whatever you do, don’t go over there alone.”

“I won’t,” I said. “Hey, you want a ride? I could drop you off.”

I was tired and truthfully didn’t feel like going all the way out to his dad’s garage, which was on the outskirts of town.

“Naw, my ride should be here any minute now,” he said. “Thanks anyway.”

“Okay, then,” I said. “Tell your dad I’ll come by soon to say hi.”

Jesse gave me a quick hug. I drove home and took a long nap.

***

When I woke up, it was dark both outside and in the house. I felt groggy and stumbled out into the living room. I was surprised to find Kate was home. I could see her silhouette on the sofa, a soft stream of steam rising from her teacup.

I turned on the dining room lights.

“Leave them off,” she said.

I sat down next to her.

“I don’t understand how this happened,” she said. “Why would he do this, Abby? Why is he killing all these people?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Tell me again what you saw. Everything.”

So I told her.

She took a long sip of Earl Grey.

“Did you write up the story?” I asked.

“Yeah. They’re finally taking this seriously and assigning a lot of detectives to the case. Too many bodies. It’s caught the attention of the national news. We’ve been talking to newspapers and stations all over the country. This is big. Finally.”

“Well, that’s good,” I said.

“Yeah, but it’s not quite as cut and dry as I had hoped. The instructor had a bit of a sketchy past. Who knows why, but she told her classes about how she used to be a drug addict. The police interviewed some of her students already and a few said she seemed pretty unstable. The theory now is that she was out late last night buying drugs.”

“Weird,” I said.

“You think? They’ll investigate this one thoroughly and compare it to the other deaths. I bet she has that same drug in her system. That in and of itself should blow this whole thing wide open.”

I stared out the window. Tiny, shimmering flakes were swirling in the wind, blown from the rooftop, caught by the light on the porch.

“It’s time we stopped this,” I said. “Are you helping me?”

Kate was staring outside too. She didn’t look at me.

“Let’s go.”

CHAPTER 31

We drove over to the hospital. Kate didn’t want to call ahead or anything, she wanted to catch him off guard. But he wasn’t there. We talked to the nurse in the ER and she told us that it was Dr. Mortimer’s night off.

“He must be at home,” Kate said. “That’s even better.”

I had no idea where he lived, but Kate did. We started heading up Awbrey Butte, a high-end community with new, large houses that had views of the city and the Cascades. We kept climbing the icy, winding road.

“I’m glad you’re here with me, Kate,” I said.

The city was beneath us now and with all the lights, it was a spectacular view.

“Of course I’m here with you, Abby. I want answers too. I just can’t figure out why he is doing this. Is he just a psycho? I have to know.”

She was mad now. Her emotions had turned from sadness to anger and I was relieved. We would need her strength for this and she was the strongest person I knew. I was happy she was back to her old self.

As we drove, fear crept in and started to grow. We were going to confront Dr. Mortimer and I wasn’t even sure what we were going to say. But there was no turning back.

We made a left onto Summit Drive. The butte was frozen, the roads slick. Kate turned off the radio and we finally pulled off onto a long driveway, which snaked up to the house.

It was magnificent. Large and estate-like, with large windows that must have offered spectacular views of the mountains during the day. Kate turned off the car.