Blood Trails (25 page)

The knot in her stomach grew tighter as Whit got down on his knees and peered into the opening.

“Son of a bitch,” Whit said. “I see stairs.”

Holly felt sick. She leaned against the wall and closed her eyes as they removed more flooring until the stairs were completely revealed.

“Give me a flashlight,” Whit said, then turned around and looked inquiringly at Holly.

“I need to see,” she said, straightening.

“Are you sure?”

“I need to know if he…if my mother…” She shuddered. “Please.”

“Yeah, you’ve got the right,” he said. “Follow me down.”

Holly moved past the others without meeting their gazes. She didn’t want to see the expressions of disgust and pity on their faces. It was more than she could handle. She braced herself as she started down, focusing on the faint glow from Whit’s flashlight, and then halfway down he found the switch and the room was suddenly flooded with brightness.

They stood speechless in the face of what confronted them.

They had been lined up like soldiers—blondes, brunettes, redheads, their scalps all hanging from the walls, silent reminders of her father’s insidious deeds.

And suddenly Holly was five years old again, innocently blundering into her father’s secret world. She moaned and would have fallen, had Whit not grabbed her arm and steadied her as she descended the last few steps.

Techs from the crime lab quickly followed. Except for a brief gasp of shock or a softly muffled curse, they were silent. The trophy aspect of the macabre scene was obvious. Each scalp dangled from the wooden plaque to which it had been affixed, with an engraved nameplate below it.

Whit was stunned as he counted. Thirteen. They’d only known about nine. Where in hell were the other bodies?

Holly pushed past him and began scanning each name with growing panic. When she got to the last one and realized her mother’s name was absent, she groaned, then grabbed her knees and bent over to keep from fainting.

Whit grabbed her arm. “Holly?”

“She isn’t here,” Holly mumbled, then stumbled toward the stairs, going up on her hands as if she were climbing a ladder, and then crawling out onto the floor on her hands and knees.

“Ma’am?”

Holly looked up. A uniformed officer had knelt beside her.

“Help me,” she whispered. “I need to get outside. Get me outside.”

He yanked her to her feet, and when she would have walked, he scooped her up into his arms.

Startled, Holly protested, “I can walk.”

“No, ma’am,” he said, and carried her out onto the porch, then put her down. A muscle jerked near his right eye as he met her gaze. “My mother was one of his victims. I was ten when she disappeared. I became a policeman because I wanted to find the man who killed her. Thanks to you, we’ve done it.”

“Oh, my God, oh, my God, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she kept saying, then put her hands over her mouth to keep from screaming.

“You have nothing to apologize for any more than I do. We were children.”

He patted her awkwardly on the shoulder, then walked away, back into the house.

Holly sank weakly onto the steps.

“They found what they were looking for?” Ray asked, walking over.

She nodded, then covered her face and started to sob.

Whit stayed on-site with the crime scene investigators while one of the officers took Holly back to the hotel.

Instead of going inside, she went straight to valet parking to get her car. She needed to see Bud. Even if he wasn’t awake, she wanted to be in his presence.

Bud woke up with Holly’s hand on his arm. She was staring off into space, and even as groggy as he was, he could tell she’d been crying.

“Hey, honey…”

She turned and quickly swiped her hands across her face. “Hey yourself, Mr. Man, how do you feel?”

“Alive, which at this point suits me just fine.” He touched her face. “You missed one.”

She sighed. So what if he knew she’d been crying? “They found the scalps today. They were beneath the floor of Mackey’s house.”

Bud gritted his teeth as he shifted to a more comfortable position. “Isn’t that good news?” She nodded.

“And still you cry.”

“You didn’t see their faces. I’m his child. They’re wondering if I carry the taint that made him what he is.”

“Bullshit.”

“You know they’re thinking it. I know they’re thinking it. If we have a child,
you’ll
be thinking it, too.”

“Unless you’ve suddenly turned into a psychic, you don’t know what the hell anyone is thinking,” he said. “As for us having a child, it’s not if, it’s when.”

Holly’s chin quivered. She crossed her arms on the bed beside him and hid her face.

It seemed to Bud that no matter what he said, she was ready to shoot it down. It was apparent that the last person who was able to deal with her past was Holly herself.

“All I can tell you is to lean on me, because my love is strong enough for both of us.”

Holly lifted her head and saw the truth in his eyes. She threaded her fingers through his and held on, but the pain was too deep to cry.

Mackey was in handcuffs and shackles, and had been waiting for his lawyer to appear for a good ten minutes, when the door suddenly opened. A middle-aged woman wearing a rumpled brown suit and sensible black shoes walked into the interrogation room carrying a briefcase.

Harold gaped. “Who the hell are you?”

She slapped the briefcase onto the table between them and sat. “Myra Finch, your court-appointed lawyer.”

“You’re a woman.”

Myra stifled a snort. “You’re more observant than some of my clients. You need to know your situation has changed considerably since your arrest. The police have recovered thirteen women’s scalps from beneath a bedroom floor in your house. There have now been thirteen counts of murder and two attempted murder counts filed against you. The police want to talk to you. They said they’re short four bodies and wonder if you’d like to explain what you did with them. Also…”

Harold held up his hand. Besides the fact that he’d just been sideswiped by the news of the discovery, he wasn’t about to talk to her about his case.

“Whoa now! You wait just a damn minute. Why didn’t I get a man…I mean, a lawyer who’s a man?”

“Luck of the draw. Who knows?” She pulled a folder out of her briefcase and opened it on the table between them. “How do you want to proceed?”

“Proceed? I’m not proceeding anywhere with you.”

Myra frowned, which caused her eyebrows to run together in a rather impressive uni-brow. Harold couldn’t quit staring.

“As I was about to say, you can plead innocent, although with your daughter’s testimony and the thirteen scalps, it will be a tough sell. You can plead insanity, but no one’s going to buy it, since you’ve been living a calm, quiet life and holding down a regular job for the past twenty years without another murder to add to your name. Or—and this is my personal favorite—you could plead guilty, save me some time and nightmares, the State of Missouri a butt-load of money, and go straight to jail while awaiting your trip to hell.”

Harold stood up with a jerk and yanked at his handcuffs, which were fastened to his chair, while yelling and stomping his feet.

“I want another lawyer! Somebody get her out of here and get me another lawyer!”

Myra slapped the file back into her briefcase and then snapped it shut.

“Totally your call,” she said. “I’ll let the court know.”

She strode to the door and knocked twice, then called out, “I’m through in here!”

The door opened. She walked out without looking back.

Harold’s heart began to hammer as he finally processed what she’d said. They’d found them! The trophies were his, and now they were going to become public viewing. Things were spiraling from bad to worse. They would never understand. They would not appreciate his purpose.

A cop entered the room and marched Harold back to his cell.

Bud woke up again. They’d moved him out of ICU. He didn’t remember that happening, but he guessed it didn’t matter. Holly was standing at the foot of his bed, talking to a doctor, which did matter. He could hear the muffled murmur of their voices as they spoke. “Holly.”

She spun. “You’re awake! Hi, honey…this is Dr. Larson. He’s been taking care of you.”

Bud’s gaze shifted to the man beside her. The only thing he noticed about the doctor was his eyes. They were kind.

“Thank you.”

Dr. Larson smiled. “You’re welcome. You’re doing fine. The knife blade glanced off your shoulder blade, missing any major arteries, which is good. The downside is, it did cut deeply into the muscles, which are going to take time and therapy to heal. I understand you’re both from Montana and will be returning soon. You can easily do your therapy there.”

Then he left, moving on to his next patient and leaving them alone.

Holly grabbed Bud’s hand. “Isn’t that great, honey? We’ll be home before you know it.”

“Home sounds like heaven.”

“Anywhere with you is heaven.”

“Kiss, please,” he said with a smile.

Holly obliged, taking great care not to touch anything but his lips.

“I talked to your uncle Delbert,” she said a few minutes later.

Bud frowned. “Everything okay?”

“Everything but you,” Holly said. “He’s fine, and said to tell you to get well.”

“By the time I get home, he’ll have my job,” Bud muttered.

Holly laughed.

It felt good to be happy, if only for a little while.

Bud patted the side of his bed. “Sit,” he said. “Talk to me.”

She pulled up a chair, then slid her fingers through his.

“Mackey is in custody, and they—we—found his trophy room. Wherever my mother is, whatever he did to her, he didn’t take her scalp. That was such a relief.”

Bud frowned. “Have they talked to him?”

“Not yet. Detective Carver said he refused his first court-appointed lawyer. They’re sending another one.”

“What was wrong with the first one?” Bud asked.

Holly grinned. “She was a woman.”

Bud chuckled, then winced. “Oh, shit. Laughing hurts.”

Her mood shifted. “I asked to talk to him.”

Bud’s eyes narrowed. He thought of all the reasons why she shouldn’t, but he knew they wouldn’t trump the one she held.

“Do you think he’ll tell you where he hid her body?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” She paused, looking down. “No, probably not. But I won’t leave without trying.”

“I wish I could be with you.”

“I need to do this alone. Can you understand that?”

“Some.”

She traced the lines on the palm of his hand. “You have a very long life line.”

“The better to keep up with you, darlin’,” he said softly, then lifted her fingers to his lips and kissed them one by one.

“You’re my touchstone, Bud. You couldn’t lose me if you tried.”

Sixteen

E
very media outlet in the state of Missouri was running coverage on the arrest of Harold Mackey, aka the Hunter. Old neighbors, acquaintances—everyone who’d ever had access to him—were all being interviewed, and the ones with pictures of him were selling them right and left.

Photos of his victims were also running with the coverage, as one by one living relatives came forward, willing to talk about their personal family stories and the family members he had killed.

The missing persons department was being flooded with calls from people desperate to know if the four unknown victims had been positively identified. Although Mackey had names under the scalps, until DNA confirmation on the four new ones came through, those names could not be released.

Carver’s task force was getting calls by the dozen, requesting interviews, and after the discovery of the infamous scalps, even Hollywood had called.

Chief Hollis had issued a gag order and told everyone to refer all calls to his office. Whit didn’t have to be told twice. He was still having nightmares about what they’d found. He hadn’t been to church in years, but after walking into that bomb shelter, it was the only place he could think to go to absolve him of the feeling that they’d desecrated a tomb.

And he took it as a personal insult that they were four bodies short.

Mackey had never dumped two bodies in the same place, so they didn’t have a dump site to go back and check. Whit had stared at that map until his eyes burned, trying to see a pattern, to understand why Mackey had picked the sites he’d chosen, but nothing popped out at him.

And there was a Fed from Quantico wanting permission to interview Mackey. He wanted to know why Mackey had gone dormant so abruptly. But the only request Whit felt obligated to honor was Holly Slade’s. All he was waiting for now was a phone call from Mackey’s lawyer, but the man had insisted on a new one, which meant there would be a delay in everything, starting with the arraignment. They had the go-ahead from the chief to take Holly to see the man, but that, too, had to wait until he’d conferred with his lawyer. And if Mackey wanted his attorney present when he talked to Holly, they couldn’t deny him. All Whit needed was for that phone to ring.

Holly moved from room to room in her suite, pacing, planning, trying to figure out what she would say to Mackey. Exactly how did one ask a murderer to reveal his innermost secrets and make him give up the location of a body?

Carver had said he would call once he’d set up a time, but the phone had yet to ring. What if Mackey said no? What if he wouldn’t talk to any of them? How could she live the rest of her life with the question of her mother’s fate unanswered?

She moved to the window and looked out at the Arch. It represented an impossible feat of engineering, and yet they’d done it. If only the St. Louis police were as successful with tying up this case.

Suddenly there was a knock at her door.

She frowned.

The last time she’d answered a door in this hotel, her own father had tried to kill her. She moved quietly to the door, peered through the security peephole, then gasped and began fumbling with the dead bolt.