Don't Slay the Dragon (The Chronicles of Elizabeth Marshall Book 1) (4 page)

Chapter Seven

Back in the small room of ward D, I looked at the bright, child-like glow in her eyes.  She bounced on the balls of her feet, waiting patiently for recognition of her artwork.

“It’s beautiful, Lizzy.”  I smiled at the pleasure that came into her expression. 
“Look at all the detail you put into it.”

She shrugged with embarrassment at the compliment but I knew she enjoyed it. 

“It’s not my best.  They won’t let me use markers here.  I wrote on my hands by accident one day.  Nurse Rosie took my markers away.  Could you get them back for me?”  She gave me a shy, pleading look.  Little Lizzy was so gentle and sweet.  My heart melted for the innocence I saw on her face.  I reached over to touch her shoulder, to reassure her that I would talk to the staff and try to get her markers back. 

The passage of years had dulled my instincts. 
I should have known better than to touch her without warning.  Quicker than my eyes could follow, she turned her back on me, brought her right hand low then swung it high, the sharp edge of her palm connecting with my wrist with such speed and power that it sent me off balance and made me stagger back a few steps.  I clutched my throbbing hand to my chest, hoping that nothing was broken but knowing I would at least have a dark bruise.

She backed into the corner of the room between her bed and the wall, feet braced apart, entire body taunt, hands up in front of her in a defensive stance. 
She looked at me through the black-green slits of her eyes then darted her gaze around the room as if expecting dark creatures to jump out from every corner. Back and forth. Back and forth her eyes darted, senses on high alert, eyes, ears, even nose attuned to the environment around her. 

I backed up a few more feet and took a jagged breath.  I was almost to the door.  How much danger was I in?  Could I risk calling down the hall to the staff?  Should I make a run for it? 

“Who’s here with you Caitlyn?”  It was a deep, masculine voice, low and powerful, commanding.  That voice had visited me in my nightmares for years.  It was smooth as satin and sinister.  “You’re not here alone, are you?”

I knew the best way of handling this, remembered from all those years ago.  It was all about finding the courage to confront it.  That was the key.  It took all my effort to ignore the pain in my wrist and to come across as calm and unemotional. 

“I’m here alone, Vesper.”  I was grateful my voice sounded much more controlled than I felt.  “There is no danger here.  It’s just me.”

A suspicious set of eyes darted around the room
again. The tense body in the corner still didn’t relax its guard. Always watchful, always on alert.  Green-black eyes mere slits and expecting danger from every direction.  It was the kind of look that chilled you to the bone, followed you home, and came back to haunt your dreams.

Vesper was a third degree black belt in
Kenpo Karate and a second degree black belt in Ti Kwon Do.  He was a kick-boxing champion too with a room full of trophies to prove it.  To top it off he was also a paranoid schizophrenic. A lethal combination.  He was a dark, brooding man, suspicious of everyone and everything.  His reflexes were razor sharp and he was prone to act before thinking.  You had to be at your most cautious when dealing with him.  I’m sure that Vesper hadn’t been out since Lisbeth had been put back here in ward D.  If he had shown himself to whatever psychiatrist had been assigned to her case, she would have been put in a padded room with a very secure lock by now. 

“They’re trying to destroy me,” he hissed, “trying to destroy all of us.  They’re filling her with pois
ons to make us go away. Toxins. Evil, vile, venomous fluids. Forcing them into her.  It makes her sleepy.  It takes away my reflexes.  They don’t understand.  It’s going to kill me.  It’s going to kill us all. I can’t let them do that. I can’t let them destroy us.”

The green eyes were wild now, wide open with pupils dilated.  I had to calm him down before he drew attention from the staff.  I knew a sharp needle would soon follow and there was no way I
would find out anything with Lisbeth in a drug-induced stupor.

“Vesper, will you talk to me?
  Do you remember the night Lisbeth had dinner with Barbara?  Were you there?”

The questions stopped his rambling as if his mouth had been suddenly covered.  He took a cautious step forward, his eyebrows rising.  I backed against the door jamb, knowing I couldn’t go much further unless I went out into the hall. 
Was he calming down or getting angrier?  I tensed, getting ready to sprint down the hall if I needed to.  His voice was low, quiet but still masculine.

“I was there, but only for an instant.  I was there when the Dragon did this.”  The same hand that had bruised me earlier now reached up to push the shaggy orange hair away f
rom his right temple.  There were two ugly, jagged, thin scars right at his hairline, starting at his forehead and dragging down across his sharp cheekbone and going almost to his earlobe.  They were healing but visible. 

“Barbara did that to you?”  I gasped.

“The Dragon.”  He nodded.  He was tensing again, his breathing accelerating as if the memory was angering him.  The thin chest heaved in and out as his eyes widened and he began shaking his head back and forth. 

At this point, I knew it was a gamble.  Stay here and risk the danger and maybe learn more about what had happened that night, or flee to safety and pass up this chance, not knowing if I would have
this opportunity again. 

“Why did she hurt you?” I urged.  “What happened after that?”

He advanced another step towards me.  Suddenly, he paused and shook his whole body out, hopping from foot to foot, bouncing like a prize fighter stepping into a ring.  He shook out his arms, legs, one final time before he settled into a battle stance and became eerily still.  His hands became flat, the edge of his palms sharp and deadly as he brought them up to protect his face.   I knew that position, remembered it well.  He was preparing to attack. 

“No more questions,” he rasped out, “no more.  I’ve told you enough.
  You’re one of them anyway.  I know you are.  They sent you in here to gain our trust.  I know better.  You can’t be trusted.”    He advanced towards me, hands up and eyes scanning me for weaknesses.

Vesper had never been violent with me.  I was one of the few people he felt “safe” with.  But a lot of years had gone by.  I wasn’t sure anymore what he was capable of.  He advanced closer and closer,
drawing himself up to his full height.  Even though he was only an inch or so taller than me, he was still intimidating.

  I slowly tried to ease myself around the doorway.  Sudden movements would only give him an excuse to attack at this point.  When he was within a few feet, he dropped low, like a feral wildcat ready to spring at his prey.   I took a sharp breath, poised for the attack, hoping desperately I could escape at the last second. 

“Code red! Code red!”  The male orderly in the hallway broke the spell.  He was built like a linebacker and came charging into the room like he was fully intending to tackle the quarterback.  Instead, he went for the frail figure crouching on the floor.  He had her scooped up before I knew what was happening.  She didn’t give up without a fight.  Biting, kicking, scratching, she tried everything to get free.  She was no match for a muscular man out-weighting her by a good 150 pounds.  He dropped her down on her bed and was reaching down below the mattress for some leather straps before the other four staff members came running into the room. 

I watched, frozen, as one by one they each took an arm or leg and pulled a leather strap tight around
the flailing limb.  The one staff member of the group not holding her down was a bulky older female, gray-haired and stern.  Out came the syringe, just as I had feared.

“No!  Please don’t!”  I yelled, but I might as well have been invisible for all the attention they paid me.

“No!  Get away!”  I watched her wiggle and squirm, trying to avoid the needle even though she had limited space to do so.  I realized it was Lisbeth’s voice doing the pleading.  “Help me, please!  Caitlyn, help me!  I need your help.”

She only struggled for a few more minutes before h
er voice faded to a whisper, her body relaxed and I watched in helpless frustration as her muted green eyes drifted shut.

I don’t remember leaving ward D that day.  I don’t remember the long walk back through the building and past the front desk.  I only remember that it took everything in my power to hold it together until I had reached the relative safety of my car. 

There, with windows rolled up and the doors securely locked, I finally let go.  The tears came, ripping through me, all the bottled emotions I had held in even through the bad divorce.  My body shook like a leaf as the powerful storm raged through me.  I wept for all my pain and disillusions, I wept for Barbara and her death, and I wept for Lisbeth, even now being transported to a private room with stark, padded walls.  I wept for the wasted years for both of us and the helplessness I felt, trying to save someone so incredibly lost.

Once the storm had passed, I rummaged through my purse for my cell phone and dialed a number.

“I need to speak to Mark Jacobs please.”

Chapter Eight

We agreed to meet at a popular sandwich shop downtown.  I arrived first, an old habit of mine.  I didn’t like being late for anything.  I ended up being earlier than I thought, Mark was running behind schedule.  When he did arrive, he wasn’t what I expected.  I always thought most lawyers were well groomed and reeking of money.  I should have known it would be different with a public defender.

He had to have been
five feet eight and thin to the point of being unhealthy.  His mousy brown hair was thinning over the top even though he didn’t look older than his late twenties.  His mustache was thin and trimmed too far up his upper lip.  His glasses were thick and had a tendency to slide down his narrow nose as he spoke, causing him to push them back frequently.  His olive plaid dress shirt was wrinkled, his brown tie had a stain on it, and his brown jacket was wearing thin at the elbows.

He sat down at the table across from me, slightly out of breath as though he had jogged to get here.  He dropped his weathered leather briefcase on the table between us and I tried not to cringe as he opened it up and I saw what a jumbled mess it was inside. 

His one redeeming feature was his eyes.  They were a chocolate brown and seemed to be very sincere.

“I’m sorry for being late, Miss Stewart.  It’s been a very hectic day.
  I have a really heavy case load right now.” 

“Please, call me Caitlyn.  I appreciate you finding time in your schedule to meet with me.”

“Well Caitlyn, call me Mark.  Meeting with you is the least I can do, considering you may be called as a character witness.”

This was no less than I had expected. 
I watched as he shuffled through his briefcase and pulled out a manila folder.  I assumed this was Lisbeth’s case file.  I so wanted to reach across the table and look through it, to see what they knew about her, what evidence they had against her.

“I have to tell you, I really feel out of my league with this case.  I just passed the bar two years ago and I’ve been workin
g only minor cases ever since. Theft, larceny, drug possession, nothing all that dramatic.  I had a gang member that I defended against charges of a drive by shooting once, but no one was injured in the incident.”  He scratched his thinning hair and pushed his glasses up on his nose.

“Then how did you get this case?”  What little hope I had was starting to drift away.

“Well, I only became an assistant to the county attorney recently. He handed me the case, said I needed to start trying some tougher cases if I wanted to make a name for myself.  He said it was a slam-dunk.  He said there was no question she did it, just get her to plead guilty and get my name in the news and my face on the TV.”

Politics.
I knew it happened behind the scenes in a lot of cases, but I couldn’t bear to see it happen in this case. This was a murder case, first-degree if they found enough evidence to show pre-meditation.  There was so much on the line here.  I tried to hold on to my temper and be patient as he continued.

“I didn’t count on her refusing to plead guilty.  We’ve tried to have her declared incompetent to stand trial,
but she’s been a model patient since they sent her down to Provo.  Not a single problem, content, well adjusted, adapting well to her medication.  She never even had a single outburst until your visit yesterday.”

I looked down at my hands and the dark purple bruise right below the boney knob of my wrist.  I was very lucky it wasn’t broken. 
It wasn’t my imagination either.  The bruise was real.  I knew what she was doing, and she was very good at it.   She was hiding the “others”, the “family”, keeping them hidden from anyone she didn’t trust.  They would come out from time to time, like Lizzy or Maxine, but they all had experience behaving themselves when they didn’t want to draw too much notice.  She even had the doctors convinced at one point that they were all “integrated”.

How much did her lawyer know about her?  How much did he know about her past?  Would
telling him what I knew help her case or help a jury convict her?  I wanted to hold out hope that she was innocent.  She said that she was.  I had to know what evidence they had against her.

“As you know, I was living in North Carolina when Barbara was killed.  I’ve read some of the newspaper articles about it, but I don’t know many of
the details.  One article mentioned some DNA evidence.  Can you tell me more about it?”

He thumbed through the folder
and pulled out several typed reports, a few had graphs on them and were full of medical lingo.

“This is the forensics report on tissue found underneath the fingernails of Barbara’s
left hand, middle and ring fingers.  Blood and tissue are an exact DNA match with Elizabeth.”  He sounded more official now, obviously more comfortable with stats and reports.  “It also matches a corresponding injury on Elizabeth’s face, to her right side.”

He pulled out a picture at this point, a snapshot most likely taken at the police station when she was brought in for questioning.  There was Lisbeth, staring back blankly at the camera, a hand, probably from an officer, pulling back her hair to get a good close-up of the jagged
wound.  She looked helpless, lifeless, in shock.  Mark pulled out another snapshot, this one of an even closer view of her face.  I’d seen that scar for myself just yesterday, I didn’t need to see it again.  I pushed the pictures back across the table towards the lawyer.

“
They could have been defensive wounds,” I tried to argue.  “Maybe Barbara attacked her first.”

“There w
as also human hair found in the same hand as the tissue under the nails.”  He continued almost as though I hadn’t spoken.  He pushed another rapport across the table.  “Another DNA match to Elizabeth.”

“Still, defensive wounds.
  They were known to argue.  Barbara could have started it and-“

He slid a full-color 8X10 picture across the table. 
This was the one picture I didn’t want to see.