Stone Cold (35 page)

‘Which means that she must have learned about his history,’ Olsen said, ‘which means that she may have abducted Sheila McKenzie…’

‘… to protect her,’ Maietta finished the sentence. ‘Holy crap, this whole thing was about pure revenge? I didn’t know the shrink had it in her.’

‘Kathryn lays in wait,’ Griffin said, ‘gets inside, clouts Sheila McKenzie and gets her out of the house, then sets us all in pursuit of Dale.’

An officer hurried into the apartment and whispered to Captain Olsen, who closed his eyes as though the worst day of his life had just begun.

‘There’s one more thing,’ Olsen said. ‘Sheila kept a diary. Had it locked away in a little tin box.’

‘How much did it say?’

‘Enough. Sheila knew about her husband’s second life and had done for months.’

‘She
knew
? And she didn’t do anything about it?’

‘She was worried about the social consequences, if you can believe that. She preferred to keep quiet about it all. Cursed Dale to an early death in the diary, but said nothing about it to any of her friends.’ Olsen shrugged. ‘I guess it happens all the time, women putting up with their husband’s infidelity, suffering in silence and all that. But what’s really interesting is that Kathryn slipped up, just once.’

‘How?’

‘She must have got really fascinated reading the diary, because her prints are all over it.’

Griffin sighed. ‘That’s not enough to push for a warrant.’

‘No,’ Olsen admitted. ‘But at least we know now that she was in the home.’

Griffin nodded.

‘She abducts Sheila, sets up the ransom letter and leaves a trail of evidence leading to Dale.’

‘Who realises what she’s doing and moves in, probably follows her to the lock–up, and then figures out a way to turn it all against Kathryn,’ Maietta said.

‘Damn it,’ Griffin cursed. ‘It would have worked, if I hadn’t burst in there and stopped him...’

‘Stopped him from murdering Kathryn as well as Sheila,’ Maietta cut across. ‘Think about it. Kathryn never set out to murder anybody: it’s Dale who’s the killer, and he’s now sitting in jail awaiting a trial that will probably see him serving life with no parole.’

‘Yeah,’ Griffin nodded, ‘it’s perfect isn’t it? She played us, every last one of us.’

‘Yeah,’ Olsen replied. ‘She did. We could probably chase the money, track her down over time. Question is, are you going to expose what she’s done and try to get her back here for trial on conspiracy charges, and maybe undermine the trial of Dale McKenzie for the multiple slaying of women across the country? Dale McKenzie’s defence team would love any possible evidence of unstable testimony. Or are you going to ask yourself whether maybe this result is the better end of a lousy deal? We caught a killer, Scott, and we lost a fraudster who’d been wronged herself by that same killer.’

‘It could have been a lot worse,’ Griffin shot back. ‘Who knows what could have happened, who might have died if her insane little plan had gone awry?’

‘It did go awry,’ Olsen said. ‘But you saved her life, remember? Maybe that was why she picked you. Two birds, one stone, if you’ll forgive the pun.’

‘Fleeing in itself is enough to raise questions over McKenzie’s trial,’ Maietta pointed out.

‘We won’t need her,’ Olsen insisted. ‘McKenzie’s previous murders will be more than enough to convict him, you know that. Personally, I think that you just want her back here for yourself, detective.’ Olsen gave the apartment one last glance. ‘You write your report, but you make damned sure you don’t hand it in until I’ve left the force, you understand? It’s your call but don’t make it mine too, not now.’

Griffin nodded wearily and waved the captain away. ‘Thanks for the support.’

Olsen left the apartment. Griffin remained for a few minutes, looking around at the apartment that for so long had held a woman captive by her own will, imprisoned by the world that she had tried to create for herself and seen so utterly destroyed by one man.

He knew that she would not be coming back.

Griffin took one last look at a photograph of Kathryn Stone on the wall of the living room and then turned and walked from the apartment.

*

Ally Robinson eased herself out of her hospital bed and reached for a glass of water on her bedside table. She was drinking from the glass when a nurse entered the room and handed her a brown envelope.

‘Delivered here by a courier,’ the nurse explained.

The envelope was addressed to her in big, round letters that she recognised immediately. Ally hesitated, unsure if she really wanted to open anything that had come from Kathryn, but her curiosity quickly got the better of her.

Ally waited until the nurse had left before she opened it.

That Kathryn had gotten her into this mess could not be denied, but then Ally too had gone against her own better judgement, as well as ignored Kathryn’s wishes, when she had agreed to get into Stephen’s car. That Kathryn had lived with the insane bastard for so long amazed Ally.

Inside was a carefully folded note. Within the folds, as she opened it, was a rectangle of stiff paper. Ally caught it and turned it over. A cheque, she realised, written to her, for eight thousand dollars.

Ally’s breath had caught in her throat, and she looked at the note.

Sorry to get you involved.

Hope this helps and makes up for what happened.

Yours,

KS

P.S. You never really know people until they do something that you don’t expect.

Ally smiled, and slid the envelope into her handbag.

***

52

The world drifted by as Kathryn watched through the window, a flare of sunlight in the hard blue above that was too bright to look at directly. She leaned back in her seat and shifted her leg slightly, giving her ankle more room.

There was only a little pain now, and what little there was had been suffused not just by the painkillers she had taken but by the sense of calm permeating her soul in a warm embrace. Sometimes, all it took was the realisation that one had to change in order to find happiness: that it wasn’t the rest of the world that was at fault, but one’s self.

She had tried so hard to conform, to be a part of a society that expected of her the things that it demanded of others. A loving husband, a good job, a nice house, new car, two point four children. Pets. Holidays twice a year. Team Family.

But some people just were not meant to be that way. Kathryn had realised, belatedly perhaps, that she was not one of those people. There would never be children, or pets, or a white wedding. Such things had passed her by. Even a good job was almost out of reach at her age. Too long on the bench, too long waiting for her chance to shine, and the last opportunity stolen from her by a murderous asshole.

Kathryn had finally realised that it was not her job to conform, not her responsibility to fit in with other people. Her only responsibility was to herself, and the sooner she started thinking that way, the better her life would be.

The tickets she had bought for Mexico were not for a getaway with Stephen, mainly because she had only bought the one. There had been no sense in showing it to him too clearly when she had revealed the purchase over breakfast, so she had waved the ticket airily, making sure that he
assumed
there were two. No reason for him not to, really. The fact that they were
Air Ventura
tickets was enough to preoccupy his mind anyway. As she had learned, sometimes Stephen’s self–obsession could be an asset.

Picking up Sheila’s credit cards when she had visited her home had been another decision made on an impulse, along with a handful of bank statements and access codes to Sheila’s on–line banking. Katheryn had moved the money into Dale’s accounts long before he had realised his wife was missing, enough to place suspicion on him right from the outset.

She was hardly a master criminal, but she knew enough to be sure that Stephen would have access to accounts both in his own name and Dale’s. It took her little time to find them in Sheila’s house.

Kathryn had never intended that her escape from the drudgery of her life had become so complex. Stripping Dale of his money and fleeing had been her main aim. Equally, she had never intended her abduction of Sheila to end with her being shot, yet it remained that Sheila had known about her husband’s duplicitous life and had been quite happy to let it continue. They had both willingly and knowingly danced with the devil, the consequences of doing so to be born on their own shoulders. For Sheila, that had meant the end of her life as she had known it.

For Kathryn, it had meant the beginning.

Katheryn looked down at the letter she was writing, saw it quiver as a thump reverberated through the bus as it rumbled along the asphalt road. She glanced out of the window at the brilliant sunrise, the perfect blue sky, the palm trees and the airport terminal emblazoned with
Aeropuerto Internacional de la Ciudad de Mexico
as the bus pulled away
.
She smiled to herself, and then looked down again at the letter and read it one last time.

I’m like you. And you’re like me. Like you, I’ve made mistakes.

Like you,
I just wanted to escape them.

We were both enslaved to our pasts, to the tragedies and histories of other people, not by our own choosing but by events neither of us could do anything about.

I suppose that’s what all of us want to do, in our own way, shake off our histories and start afresh. Sometimes it seems to me that people are not really meant to spend their lives together, that enduring life’s rigours is easier when there’s only yourself to worry about. I didn’t always think this way. Maybe it’s because I’m an orphan, but I used to dream of the perfect life. Team Family, I used to call it, the perfect little bubble that a fortunate few find themselves cossetted inside, like those charming old couples who have been together since the Dawn of Time and seem effortlessly to sail life’s turbulent seas before cruising on into an afterlife of eternal peace. That was all I really wanted.

But in reality it’s all a damned sight harder. We all want that perfect life, but none of us really know what a perfect life should look like. We all want do the right thing, and yet we all want to be free. And what is the “right thing” to do anyway? We struggle to adapt to each other, and when a thousand tiny irritations finally blossom into enraged conflict, where no compromise can quench the anger that courses like acid through our veins, so begins what so many of us call “the rest of our lives”.

I made a stand. I decided that “good enough” wasn’t good enough, that I had one life and I would damned well make sure it became the best I could ever live because life isn’t a rehearsal and I’ll never get another shot at it. If I failed, I failed.

Don’t tell me you’ve never dreamed of doing it too.

Kathryn slipped the letter into an envelope and addressed it to Scott Griffin.

She hoped that one day he would understand.

***

Also by Dean Crawford:

The Atlantia Series

Survivor, Retaliator

Aggressor, Endeavour

The Warner & Lopez Series

The Nemesis Origin

The Ethan Warner Series

Covenant, Immortal, Apocalypse

The Chimera Secret, The Eternity Project

Independent novels

Eden, Holo Sapiens, Stone Cold,

Revolution, Soul Seekers

Find more books by Dean Crawford here in the USA:
Author Page USA
or here in the UK:
Author Page UK
or sign up to Dean Crawford's
Newsletter

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dean Crawford is the author of the internationally published series of thrillers featuring
Ethan Warner
, a former United States Marine now employed by a government agency tasked with investigating unusual scientific phenomena. The novels have been
Sunday Times
paperback best-sellers and have gained the interest of major Hollywood production studios. He is also the enthusiastic author of many independently published Science Fiction novels.

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