Her Dying Breath (9 page)

Tracking down the victim’s actions and behavior the last few months might lead him to the killer.

A journal entry, March 4

Now I know the truth. The Commander lied to us at the hospital. What other lies did he tell?

Was any of what he’d said true?

The school where he sent me, the teachers, the caretakers…had they helped him continue his experiment on us once we left the Slaughter Creek Sanitarium?

Memories fought their way through the fog in my brain. Just as the news story said he’d done to Amelia, he’d stolen my mind, and I’d left the memories of what was real behind.

But suddenly one memory broke through the wall.

When I was four years old, I saw one of the other girls in the hospital with a pretty lady with silky blond hair and eyes that glittered like stars when she looked at her daughter.

The little girl had to get a shot, and the mommy hugged her and shielded her face while the doctor gave the injection.

I told the Commander I wanted a mommy like that.

But he said my mommy died. I cried and yelled and called him a liar. Then he punished me by locking me in the dark tiny room he called the hole for hours until I cried myself to sleep.

When he let me out, I asked again about my mommy.

A sinister look crossed his face, then he drove me to the graveyard and showed me her grave.

He made me lie down on the cold dirt for hours and hours
.

Seven hours, he said, because I was number seven.

After that, seven became my number. Seven times I walked up and down my room before I crawled under the covers. Seven times I checked to make sure no monsters were under my bed.

Seven times I’d chant, “Yes, sir,” when he ordered me to walk to the basement.

Seven times I counted over and over in my head as he filled the needle with the drugs to make me sleep. And when I slept, and he played with my mind, I heard him calling my name, Seven.

I glanced at the newspaper picture of him I’d cut out and taped on the wall of my room, then stood and began my pacing regimen.

Seven steps across the room. Seven steps back. Seven times in one direction, seven times in the opposite.

A block just the size of the hole where I spent so many nights.

If everything he’d told me was a lie, was my mother really dead? Or had she left me with him to be killed over and over again?

I slumped down against the wall, the terrifying memories bombarding me. The shrill screams of the others. The cries and pleas, the children begging not to be taken to the basement.

My hand shook as I gripped the piano wire and wound it around my wrist. I clenched it tight and pulled and twisted with one hand, watching as it began to cut off my circulation.

Seven times I squeezed it, seven times I thought about lying on that cold grave as night set in, and ghosts rose from the ground and reached for me. I closed my eyes and tried to read the name on the tombstone, but shadows covered the name and I couldn’t make out the letters.

It was a good thing my mother was dead.

If she was alive, I’d kill her for leaving me with the Commander.

B
renda’s phone was ringing as she let herself into her condo. Hopefully it was Nick with more information on the murder, but the caller ID indicated that it was her father.

Stalling, she dropped her keys on the kitchen counter and opened the back patio doors. The moon shone dimly over the treetops, stars glittering like diamonds in the sky.

She had chosen the new housing development for its security and the fact that it had been built on one of the ridges that jutted out over the valley and hollows. Her patio spanned the length of her unit, offering a panoramic view of the mountains and Slaughter Creek. The last of the snow was melting, the buds on the trees bursting to life, the smell of spring wafting in the air.

Her phone buzzed again, and she clenched and unclenched her hands, dreading the conversation that inevitably waited.

But her father would send one of his goons over to check on her if she didn’t pick up. When the case had broken before, and he’d seen her name on the news story featuring Arthur Blackwood’s arrest, he’d insisted on hiring her a bodyguard.

She had adamantly refused and told him she would no longer answer his calls if he persisted.

The phone buzzed again. Resigned, she punched connect as she walked to her bedroom and slipped on her PJs. A strong odor hit her, and she glanced around. It smelled like…hospital soap.

She didn’t have hospital soap in her condo. In fact, the smell always made her nauseous, just as hospitals did. It was almost as if she had a phobia.

“Brenda, what took you so long to answer?” her father bellowed. “Your mother and I have been worried sick.”

“You’re always worrying, Dad.” Nerves on edge, Brenda checked the condo, but nothing seemed amiss.

She must have imagined the odor.

Shaking off the unsettling feeling, she returned to her kitchen and examined her refrigerator for dinner. Nothing substantial, but she had grapes, red pepper hummus, and a block of Gouda cheese. She pulled them out, grabbed a box of Triscuits from the cabinet, and made herself a meal.

“Of course I’m worried,” her father said, his voice uneven. “You insert yourself in the middle of the most horrific crime that’s ever happened in Slaughter Creek. Hell, the worst in Tennessee, for that matter.”

“Dad, I’m just doing my job.” Brenda poured herself a glass of her favorite pinot noir.

“A job doesn’t require putting your life in danger.” Her father heaved a breath. “You don’t even have to work,” he said. “If it’s money—”

“No, Dad, I like my job.”

“But it’s not safe,” he argued.

“I’m fine, Dad,” Brenda said. “Home, locked safe in my condo.”

“For now, maybe,” her father said. “But I saw that newscast of you at the Slaughter Creek Motel. For God’s sake, first you tangle with Arthur Blackwood, who you know murdered everyone who was involved with that experiment, as well as everyone who tried to expose him, and now this.”

“He didn’t kill Jake or Nick or Sadie,” Brenda said, irritated.

“He hired someone to kill Sadie,” her father said. “And who knows—he may hire someone to kill you.”

Brenda opened her mouth to argue, but he continued on his rant.

“I know you had a breakdown years ago over the adoption, but do you have a death wish?”

Brenda tensed at the reminder. “That was years ago, Dad,” she said, striving for calm. “I’ve moved on and worked hard to earn respect in my field. I wish you’d try to understand that.”

A long, tension-filled minute pulsed between them.

Brenda sipped her wine. “Dad?”

“Just promise me you’ll come to Sunday dinner.” Emotions thickened his voice, triggering Brenda’s guilt.

“I—”

“No excuses, Brenda,” her father said. “It took me a half hour to calm your mother down after she saw that newscast. I had to give her a Xanax.”

Along with her vodka tonic, Brenda thought. “All right, Dad. I’ll be there.”

She could hear her father’s relieved sigh. “Thank you, darlin’. We’re looking forward to it. And oh…wear a pretty dress.”

“Dad—”

“I have to go—your mother’s calling from the bedroom.” He said good night, then hung up, and Brenda took her plate of food and wine to the patio.

Wear a pretty dress?

What did her parents have up their sleeves? She always dressed nicely for dinner. Agnes Banks had instilled the rules of etiquette in her as a child. But the fact that her father had suggested a dress made her wonder if they were having other guests.

Good grief. They weren’t planning a setup for her, were they?

No, surely not. She’d warned them about meddling before.

Maybe it was some kind of intervention—they intended to try to convince her to drop the story.

She dipped a cracker in the hummus, took a bite, and stared out at the mountains. There was no way they could persuade her to do that.

Just like there was no way they would keep her from finding out the truth about her birth parents.

The next morning, Jake called Nick to discuss a strategy.

“I’m going by the ME’s office to see what he found,” Nick said. “Then I’ll visit Logger’s ex and search his house.”

“Good. Amelia was too tired to talk last night, but Sadie and I are going to visit her today. I’ll meet you at Logger’s house.”

Nick agreed, then showered and drove to the ME’s office, an urgency needling him.

Dr. Barry Bullock was deep in concentration over the body as Nick entered the morgue. Nick paused a second to stave off the vile odors of the autopsy and the chemicals, grabbed a paper cover-up, and approached Bullock. “I checked his fingerprints in the database last night and verified that the vic is Jim Logger.”

Dr. Bullock was peering at some organ in a dish. “I’ll run his blood and DNA,” he said.

“How about the tox screen?”

“A little Ecstasy in his system, but nothing that would have incapacitated him to the point of being unconscious when he was strangled.”

Meaning the poor bastard had known what was happening to him.

“What else can you tell me about him?”

The doctor lifted his protective goggles. “Man was not a smoker, liver and heart look good. He was fit, too, probably
worked out regularly.” He hesitated, then gestured toward his abdomen. “Looks like he took a bullet once, and he had some shrapnel in his leg.”

“Fits with his time in the service,” Nick commented.

Dr. Bullock nodded. “Now, to the cause of death, asphyxiation. In this case, death resulted from autoerotic asphyxiation.” Bullock looked up at him. “Did you know that cases similar to this were noted dating back to the seventeenth century? The practice of autoerotic asphyxiation came about when it was noted that subjects who were hung developed erections. Some actually ejaculated, while in others the erection remained.”

Bullock was a wealth of information. “No, I didn’t know that.”

“It’s called a death erection,” Bullock continued. “You see, the carotid arteries in the neck carry oxygen-rich blood from the heart to the brain. Compression on the arteries, as in strangulation or hanging, creates a sudden loss of oxygen to the brain, which makes carbon dioxide accumulate. This accumulation increases feelings of giddiness, pleasure, and lightheadedness.

“There are also abnormalities in the cerebral neurochemistry involving the interconnected neurotransmitters dopamine, 5-hydroxytryptamine, and endorphin.”

“It creates a rush?”

“Exactly. Some people also experience hallucinations.” Bullock poked at the brain with one of his instruments. “One of the most famous cases was in Japan in the 1930s. A woman killed her lover, cut off his penis and testicles, and carried them around in her pocket for several days.”

“Ouch,” Nick muttered. “She was sick.”

Dr. Bullock shrugged. “Definitely.” He indicated bruises on the man’s chest. “It looks like she strangled the man, then revived him. My first thought was that it was accidental and she tried to save him. But—”