Gingerbread Man (35 page)

"But he has no right to put my patient's life
at risk," Graycloud insisted.

Vince cut in. "Listen, kid, if the suspect
dies because you didn't do your job, it'll be your ass, not
Selkirk's. You got that?" His own methods were a bit more direct,
but he didn't have time to dick around with the rookie. He and the
doctor had come along the hall to see Selkirk with his hand on the
hospital room door, about to go inside, and the guard looking the
other way. "If you're too scared of Selkirk to stand up to him,
then just call one of us next time he tries to get into the
room."

"I'm not scared of Agent Selkirk,
Detective."

"Shoot, you wouldn't know it to look at you."
Vince shook his head. "Can you do the job, kid, or should we ask
for someone else?"

"I can do it just fine, sir."

"Good."

"Doctor, please," the nurse said again.

"Just a moment, will you? Listen, son, if we
hadn't come by just as Agent Selkirk was heading in there, I can't
even predict what would have happened. Now, I know what you're
thinking—so he dies, no great loss. But keep in mind that we have
no solid evidence of that man's guilt. But we have very good reason
to believe he might be the only hope we have of finding little
Bethany Stevens alive. So you think about that, all right? You're
not protecting a suspected child killer. You're protecting the life
of a little girl."

"Yes, sir," the agent said, and he looked,
for once, as if he meant it.

Sighing, Graycloud nodded, turned away. "Now,
what is it nurse?"

She walked beside the doctor and Vince
through the hallway, flipping open a folder as she did. "They
messed up the blood samples you requested," she said. "Must have
been a glitch in the hospital lab; either way, we're gonna have to
do them over again."

"Why's that?" Frowning hard, Doc pulled a
pair of bifocals from a pocket and slipped them on, then took the
chart from her, scowling at the pages inside.

"Miss D'Voe's friend insisted on being tested
as well. And as you can see, the results between her workup and
Miss D'Voe's are, well they're..."

"They're damn near identical." He lifted his
gaze to Vince's.

Vince swallowed hard and felt the blood drain
from his face.

"Exactly," the nurse went on. "I had the lab
double-check. They swear the results are right, but it's obvious
they must have mislabeled the samples, or tested the same one
twice. For two adults to test this way they would practically have
to be—"

"Siblings," Doc said.

Vince shut his eyes tight. "My God."

"Thank you for the information nurse. I'll,
uh, I'll take it from here," Graycloud muttered, and the nurse left
them with an odd look.

"We can't breathe a word of this," Vince
said. "Not to anyone, not until we're absolutely sure. I don't
think Doris could take the shock, much less the heartbreak if it
turns out we're wrong. And as for Holly..." He shook his head
slowly. "I don't know how she'll take this, but I do know we have
to be sure. I don't want to hurt those two—those three—any more
than they've already been hurt by all of this."

“I’ll have further tests run," Doc said.
"We'll need fresh samples from the two women. We'll get this
confirmed and—" He was turning as he spoke, walking quickly, but he
stopped all at once, braced a hand on the wall to keep him upright.
His head dropped forward.

Vince quickly gripped his arm. "Whoa, hold
on."

The doctor hung there a moment, closed his
eyes. "My God, O'Mally, what if I took part in keeping a secret
that should never have been kept? What if I'm partly to blame for
what that family went through?" He opened his eyes, and they were
wet. "I thought I was saving her. Not hiding her from a loving
family! I swear I did."

The man looked stricken. And Vince felt sorry
for him. He could imagine making the same choices, if he'd believed
what they had that night. "Look, you did what you thought you had
to do. And who the hell knows, maybe you did save her. You said
yourself, she told you and Reggie her daddy had been the one who
hurt her."

Lifting his brows and his head at once, Doc
paled. "You think Holly's father—then, what about her? What about
Holly?"

"I don't know," Vince admitted. But it galled
him to think she may have been a victim of the same thing.

"No. No, Vince, it wasn't him," Dr. Graycloud
said. "I knew the man. And, besides, if it were him, that would
mean he was the one who took Bethany. And those children in
Syracuse, he would have done that as well. But he couldn't have.
He's dead. He's been dead for seven years."

"Let's not get carried away. Maybe this
really was just a mistake in the hospital lab."

Doc nodded. "We'd better get those samples
from Holly and Amanda."

Vince headed for the elevator, and thought
about Holly. About Amanda. He kept putting their faces side by side
in his mind, and seeing similarities. Or was that wishful thinking?
Why hadn't he noticed before if there was a resemblance?

* * *

DORIS NEWMAN STOPPED walking when she heard
the two men arguing outside Mr. D'.Voe's room. She'd been on her
way to look in on him, since she couldn't sleep anyway. He seemed
like such a kind man, and she honestly hoped he was going to be all
right

But the words of the two men brought her up
short.

"Look, I'm sorry I got you into trouble," one
man was saying. "I shouldn't have done that. I just don't want to
wait until morning to question this guy."

"I know," the younger man said. He was the
one who seemed to be guarding the door. "The idea of protecting a
child killer makes me sick. But are you sure he's the one?”

"As sure as I need to be. He took that kid
last night. Near as we can figure he's been killing little girls
for eighteen years. Maybe longer. There's a guy in prison right now
for one of those deaths."

The guard sighed deeply. "Still, we'd better
stick with procedure."

"We will kid. I'll question him in the
morning, with the doctor standing there protecting him. The piece
of shit."

Doris's eyes were frozen wide open, and her
heart was skipping beats and swelling. Reginald D'Voe? A killer?
Was it possible? Was
he
the man who had murdered her
precious little girl? She felt herself sinking to her knees, one
hand pressed to the wall, the other to her heart.

"Ma'am? Are you all right ma'am?" someone
asked.

She ignored her. Ignored the hands pulling
her to her feet, the chair she was eased into. Someone looked at
her wristband, and said, "Mrs. Newman? Doris, can you hear me?
Honey, what are you doing down here? You belong up on the third
floor."

She blinked, lifted her head, and tried to
see through swimming eyes. But she couldn't. "I was just going to
look in on Mr. D'Voe," she said. "He's a neighbor of mine."

A neighbor. A neighbor, who had stolen her
baby. Who'd killed her, and nearly driven Holly insane with grief
and guilt. Him. He'd done it. But why? She'd never even met D'Voe
until she and Holly had moved here. She'd known of him, even driven
the girls past his house a few times when they visited every
summer. But D'Voe had always summered elsewhere. The Keys, she'd
once heard someone say. He'd never even been in town when she and
the girls had been here. Why had he targeted her Ivy? Why?

They pushed her chair into an elevator. She
was shaking. Too much, it was too much to feel all at once.

The doors opened, and the nurse pushed her
back toward her room, as one of the nurses at the desk came forward
to take over. "What happened? Doris? I thought you were doing
better?" the nurse said. "I'll take it from here," she told the
other nurse. Then she leaned over Doris again. "God, hon, you're
white as a sheet."

She shook her head. "Just tired. I... need to
rest."

"Well, we'll see to that. I've put Mrs.
Stevens back in her own room for now. She'll be out till morning.
Do you need anything to help you sleep?"

What she needed, she thought, was a gun. Or a
knife. Or a vat of deadly poison. Reginald D'Voe had taken her
baby, and God only knew what he'd done to her before he'd finally
killed her. He'd put Holly through hell, and he'd caused the cancer
that had killed her husband. She had no doubt about that. Never
had. The man had all but destroyed her family. He couldn't get away
with that. He couldn't.

He wouldn't.

As the nurse pushed her toward her room past
the nurse’s desk, she saw a large pair of shiny silver sheers on a
tray. She bumped the tray with her foot, knocking some of the
lighter items to the floor. When the nurse bent to pick them up,
Doris grabbed the sheers and hid them in the folds of her hospital
gown.

“YOU DID IT!" the woman shrieked from the
middle of the trashed kitchen. Every drawer was opened, every
cupboard. Papers, photos, old notebooks were strewn over the table
and counters. She'd been searching for something. Evidence of his
guilt, he supposed. "You did, didn't you?
Didn't you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about,
honey. Why don't you calm down and stop looking at me like
that?"

His wife was wild-eyed. Her eyes were red and
bulging and her hair a mess, as if she'd been repeatedly running
tear-dampened hands through it. He'd never meant for her to find
out. But he supposed, deep down, he'd always known she would. How
could she not?

The truck was in the back driveway, behind
the house, its precious cargo bound and gagged and drugged and
frightened. God, he loved it when they were frightened. It made it
so much better. He'd only come home for a bite to eat, a change of
clothes. Hadn't intended to stay long. Hadn't expected her to be
home. God knew how little time he could take with his girls these
days. It was getting shorter and shorter every time.

"Our own daughters," his wife sobbed. "You
did it to our own daughters."

"Don't be ridiculous." He reached out for her
but she backed away fast. Past the little round table, one hand
dragging over it, knocking papers and old news clippings to the
floor.

"Our own daughters," she said again, shaking
her head while new tears welled and rolled. "They tried to tell me
what you were doing to them. And I didn't believe them. I chose you
over our own daughters. That's why they ran away. That's why they
left us. Because I wouldn't believe them."

He tried to look stricken as he moved closer
to her. One step, then another on the little square tiles. She was
still backing up, but his steps covered more ground. "How can you
even think something like that?" he asked softly.

"And then, when little Ivy was taken—it hit
me then, that maybe it was you. Maybe the girls had been telling
the truth and I'd been blind—but then that other man confessed. I
was so relieved. God, I was so relieved to know it wasn't you!"

"He confessed because he was guilty," he said
reasonably. "That proves it wasn't me. It was never me."

She didn't just shake her head this time, she
flung it from side to side so fiercely he thought she would wrench
her neck. Not that it mattered. Not now. "No! No, he didn't confess
because he was guilty. Doris told me he only confessed to cop a
plea. He didn't kill Ivy. Someone else did.
You did!
And I
could have saved her. I could have saved Ivy if only I hadn't
wanted so badly to believe you!"

"Oh, honey, come on. You're upset. This whole
incident with little Bethany has you thinking crazy." He was close
now. He reached out and caught her upper arm.

She slapped him. Her hand whipped his face so
hard he rocked backward, releasing her arm in the process. "Where
is that little girl? What have you done to her? Tell me!"

He didn't speak this time. Just stared at her
and felt his cheek heating, reddening. She had never hit him. In
all their years of marriage, she had never once hit him.

Her voice came broken now, softer, her body
shaking. "How could you do it? How could you kill a child?
How?"

He sighed deeply. Damn, he hadn't wanted it
to come to this. He knew he shouldn't have made a move on the
Stevens girl so soon. Not until he'd gotten that nosy cop the hell
out of town, at least. But he'd planned this for so long. He'd
never taken a child from Dilmun before—but this one was special.
He'd been watching her for two years. Soon she would have been too
old.

He'd been planning for Bethany for months.
Then things started going wrong. They'd seen his old van, the one
no one knew he kept. So he had to use his work truck. They found
his hideaway in the city. The place where he liked to use them and
keep them. It was where he'd kept Ivy. But he'd kept her too long.
She'd been an important lesson in his education. You couldn't keep
them too long.

Then that cop had shown up in town—and now
this. His wife knew. She knew.

She looked at his eyes as he started toward
her again, and she backed up still more. Through the arching
doorway into the dining room. He paused in the kitchen, near the
counter. She was halfway across the dining room now—she couldn't
see. Reaching out with one hand, he drew the meat cleaver from its
rack, brought it behind his back so smoothly she never noticed.

"How could you? How could you murder a
child?" she kept asking.

"Hell, honey, it isn't like I wanted to. It's
just—well, if you give them what they want—oh, yeah, they want it.
They all want it. I never touched a girl that didn't—but once you
give it to them, they talk. Our girls, for example. Ungrateful
little..."

She brought her hand to her lips, eyes going
even wider. "Oh, my God..."

"So you go younger, and you take 'em
someplace where you can keep 'em quiet, use 'em till they're all
used up. Shoot, I was still trying to decide how to finish it all
when the first one got away." Sighing, he shook his head slowly.
"See, it's their fault. You
have to
kill 'em, or they run
away. You can only keep 'em for a short while at the most. And then
you have to kill 'em. It's the only way."