Blind Rage (43 page)

He raised his hands high. “Not until you put the gun away.”

“No way.”

His eyes darted from her gun to the hole in the platform on his right. The opening was where the stairs started their descent. “Why should I tell you? You’re going to kill me regardless.”

“I want to get out of this dog kennel.” She tipped her head toward the walkway. “Come on. Move it.”

Keeping his eyes on her weapon, he inched forward. “You kill me, you’re never going to get to the truth.”

“Slowly,” she said, pressing her back against the railing so he could move past her. “Keep those hands in the air.”

His eyes darted to the stairs.

“Don’t,” she said.

“Don’t what?” He threw himself on top of her.

A shot vibrated the platform. She felt a flash of pain in her own gut, and then it evaporated. “Charles?” she panted.

He rolled off her and onto his back, clutching his stomach. “You…shot…me.”

Crawling to her feet, she kept the gun on him. “I’ll call for an ambulance.”

Holding his stomach with both hands, he moaned. “Oh…God!”

He wasn’t getting away from her; stomach wounds were bad enough, and this had been at close range. She pocketed her gun and pulled out her cell. Punched in a number. “Try not to move.”

“Oh…God! Hurry!”

Turning away from him, she spoke into the cell in a low voice. “I need an ambulance on the West Side…” While she gave directions to the dispatcher, the man behind her coughed and groaned. She had no pity for him. She felt nothing at all, and the numbness was a relief. Finally, she was liberated.

She hung up and turned around to see that Araignee had rolled onto his side. “Stay still. Help is coming.”

“Ruth,” he wheezed.

Bernadette didn’t give a shit about Ruth anymore. She pocketed the phone and went over to him, kneeling at his head. “Tell me about the other drownings. Names.”

“Twins,” he wheezed.

She shuddered. “Names.”

“I’m dying.”

She knew better. The most evil ones often pulled through, their innate cruelty carrying them to a full recovery. She bet Araignee was one of those lucky pricks. She should have put a few more into him and guaranteed him a trip to the morgue. She stood up and turned away from him. He disgusted her. Twins. She’d get the names while he was in the hospital.

“God, I’m dying,” he moaned behind her.

“I wish,” she muttered. Taking out her cell, she punched in a number and walked out onto the bridge to look up at the night sky. The wind had died down, but the stars remained obscured by the clouds.

It rang once before Garcia picked up. “Cat? Where are you? What the hell is going—”

“Did she make it?”

“She’s going to live.”

“Thank God.” She glanced over at the man down in the tower and turned back around. “I shot the bastard, but he’s going to make it, too.”

“The cops are crawling all over the West Side. Where are you?”

“Those green steps on Prospect Boulevard. Top of the green stairs, on the bluff.”

“I’ll send an ambulance.”

“Tony, he says he killed twins. I hope to God he’s—” She heard a scuffling noise and a chilling wail. For an instant, everything in front of her went black. She gasped.

“Cat!” Garcia yelled from the cell. “What is it?”

“Charles,” she breathed, and lowered the phone. Turning around, she looked at the tower platform. Empty. She ran across the walkway and looked down. He’d crawled to the edge and slipped between the bars. By the glow of the streetlamps, she could see his lifeless body sprawled on the sidewalk at the foot of the tower.

Had it been a desperate attempt to escape, or an effort to end his life his way? She didn’t want to weigh the third possibility: that her emotions had for once taken over
his
psyche, making her death wish for him become a reality.

Chapter 41

YELLOW POLICE TAPE AND FLASHING SQUAD LIGHTS TOOK
over the neighborhood at the top of the tower, as well as the sidewalks and street at the bottom. A few people were roused from their beds by the sirens, throwing on coats and jackets over their pajamas to go outside and check out the ruckus. Half an hour after the body was taken away by the ME’s hearse, a television news van pulled up and then promptly departed. There were no photographers, reporters, or news helicopters anywhere in sight.

Bernadette and Garcia sat in the front seat of his car. Every once in a while, he thumped the steering wheel with his fist to punctuate a point. Her gloves were off and in her lap, and she fiddled with them as he spoke. Her jean jacket had been bagged, and she never wanted to see it again. It was covered with Charles’s blood and some of hers. Another article of outerwear lost to this case. The cuts on her face and fingers hurt, but the paramedics had taped her up.

A couple of blocks away, yellow tape also trapped Charles’s house. Bernadette and Garcia had gotten there just in time. Regina Ordstruman had nearly bled to death in Araignee’s elegant claw-foot tub. She was a University of Minnesota senior with a major in American studies and double minors in anorexia and depression. She’d never been a patient at the VonHader clinic, but Regina had tried to commit suicide twice before her twentieth birthday. She’d met Charles through the Suicide Stop Line that he’d so enthusiastically staffed as a regular volunteer—the number provided by the unknowing but ever-helpful Professor Wakefielder.

The tub and river drownings would all be examined to see how Charles Araignee had first come in contact with his victims. Recent drowning cases in Minnesota and Wisconsin would have to be resurrected to see if any were the twins Charles had tried to use as a bargaining chip. The murderer himself would be studied postmortem to see how one man’s childhood obsession could turn into a killing spree spanning two states.

Because her death didn’t match the pattern, the toughest loose end could be Zoe Cameron. Even if her autopsy showed she’d died of an overdose rather than her eating disorder, Bernadette was uncertain of Charles’s complicity. Araignee could have talked her into suicide while the girl sat in that oppressive waiting room, or Cameron could have done it all on her own—the tragic timing wreaking havoc with the investigation into Wakefielder. The prof’s lawyer would probably sue everyone in sight, but Bernadette figured no one owed Wakefielder anything. He purposely and habitually surrounded himself with unstable women half his age. Maybe this mess would convince him to stop offering classes that attracted basket cases.

Bernadette wasn’t at all certain she would be entrusted with tying up the loose ends, or be allowed to take credit for cracking the cases in the first place. Even if she and Garcia managed to keep the use of her sight out of the reports, there would be other questions raised about how she’d conducted her investigation. For starters, the cops and the ME were asking how her suspect, though shot through the gut, could have managed to crawl out of the tower and fall to his death.

“He was alive when I called you,” she told Garcia for the fourth time. “I did not push him. He jumped. Crawled, actually.”

“After you shot him.”

“Yes.” She glanced through the window, at the tower across the street. “What else do you want from me?”

“Your gun’s been turned over. His revolver’s been recovered. We’ll have to wait for ballistics. The crime scene crew is crawling all over the shooting gallery that used to be his kitchen.” He paused. “I have to ask…”

“What?”

“Do you need some more time on the gun range or what? Why couldn’t you hit him the first twenty times?”

She flexed her injured hand, a reminder of all the weirdness that had taken place while she and Garcia were stalking their prey in the house. “I was afraid if I shot him, I would also be…” Her voice trailed off.

“Let’s keep that out of the reports, shall we?”

“Good idea.” She looked over at all the blue uniforms mingling with the black FBI jackets. “Who from St. Paul Homicide—”

“Ed has it all under control.”

“Your cousin drew the short straw on this?” She sank back against the car seat. “I suppose he’s got questions about this tower thing, too.”

Garcia rubbed his face with his hand. “You could say that.”

Her shoulders sagged. “I’m sorry if I’ve put you in an uncomfortable position.”

“I want you to go home and get some sleep.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Please stay put, Cat.”

“I will.”

“I mean it. This is serious now.”

“I know it is,” she said.

“Don’t leave the house without talking to me first.”

“I won’t go anywhere.”

“Don’t even go downstairs to collect your mail without calling me.”

She nodded. “I understand.”

“I’ve gotta hang around,” he said tiredly. “I’ll have one of our folks take you home.”

“Not Thorsson,” she said. “He’ll lose me.”

Garcia’s face lightened for the first time since they got in the car. “Not Thorsson.”

EVEN THOUGH
she felt as if she’d been trapped in Garcia’s car forever, dawn was still a couple of hours away by the time she got dropped at home. She was pretty sure Charles’s suicide had happened after the papers’ deadlines, but there’d be something on the TV news later in the morning. She made a mental note to leave the television off for the day and stay away from newspapers for the rest of the week. She walked into the bathroom, flipped on the lights, and peeled off her clothes. She activated the shower and hopped in the tub. The hot water felt good. She heard her phone ringing and ignored it.

Tired and aching, she threw on a bathrobe and hobbled into the kitchen to grab a bottle of water. The phone again. She picked it up off the counter. “What?”

Garcia said, “Did you see the morning paper?”

“You told me not to pick up the mail.”

“Meet me at the VonHader place. Don’t go in. Wait for me.”

“Both men are in jail,” she said. “There’s no one there.”

“Their lawyer sprang them already.”

“But why—”

“My turn. I got a bad feeling,” he said.

She hung up and stared at the phone. She was rubbing off on Garcia.

BERNADETTE PARKED
a block over from Summit and jogged to the mansion, instinctively feeling the inside of her jacket pocket before remembering her gun was gone. When she got to the front door, Bernadette raised her fist to knock but hesitated. She had no idea what this was about, and Garcia had asked her not to go inside. Reluctantly, she stepped off to one side of the porch to wait.

She heard a vehicle rumbling down the street, but it wasn’t her boss; it was someone in a beat-up station wagon. She saw the driver slow in front of a neighbor’s house and toss a folded newspaper from the car window. It landed on the front stoop. Not a minute later, an early riser came out in his sweats and picked up his morning read.

Bernadette wondered if the carrier was going to stop in front of the VonHader place. She stepped away from the porch windows and watched while a newspaper landed on the sidewalk leading up to the steps.

“Shit,” she muttered. Afraid someone inside was going to come out for the paper, Bernadette took cover behind the army of statues. Several minutes went by, and she wondered if she was being too cautious. As she started to stand, the porch light flicked on. Ducking back down just in time, she heard the deadbolt slide open.

Peeking out from behind a statue, Bernadette saw the doctor step out onto the porch. “Damn paper boy.” Wrapping his robe tighter around his body, he pushed the screen door open and went outside to collect the morning news.

Immersed in the headlines, he paused in front of the door. With the porch light directly over his head, Bernadette was able to get a good look at his face. His mouth dropped open, and he put his hand out to steady himself against the doorframe. Whatever he was reading, it horrified him. “God, no,” he said under his breath.

The Dow is down,
Bernadette thought cynically.