FATAL FORTY-EIGHT: A Kate Huntington Mystery (The Kate Huntington Mysteries Book 7) (18 page)

“Look, darlin’,” Skip’s voice was low, “I know something’s gotten off kilter with us, but we’ll sort it out later, okay? When we don’t both have an audience.”

“Okay,” she said, and disconnected.

~~~~~~~~

Total darkness. Sally wasn’t sure if she was awake or not.

She moved her feet, felt the blanket weighing on them. She wiggled first one, then the other foot out from under the covers. Sliding her heels to the side of the bed, she let the weight of her feet and legs swinging down help leverage her body to a sitting position.

A wave of dizziness threatened to knock her onto the floor. She wished she could put her hands down on the bed to steady herself. Instead she closed her eyes and focused on the feeling of her butt against the mattress, her feet on the floor.

When it no longer felt like the world was spinning, she opened her eyes again. Still pitch black. No ambient light at all.

Her mouth was dry, cottony. She looked in the direction where the water bottle would be, sitting on the bedside table. She wished she could feel around for that bottle, bring it to her parched lips.

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

The old saying, her mother’s favorite, brought tears to her eyes. What would it do to her elderly mother when the nursing home staff gave her the news that her daughter was dead, murdered by a serial killer? She tried to rub an arm, in its straightjacket sleeve, over her aching chest. Unable to wipe away the tears, she shook her head in frustration.

At least he hadn’t gagged her. She opened her mouth to scream. All that came out was a croak. She worked her mouth to produce some saliva, then tried again. “Help.”

The word echoed back to her, sounding feeble. She sucked in air and yelled louder. “Help!”

She kept it up until her throat was hoarse and her cries for help were once again nothing more than croaks.

The unrelenting blackness mocked her. She was utterly alone. No one was going to rescue her.

She considered getting down on the floor, trying to find the spot on the wall where she had plucked the soundproofing away with her toes. Maybe if she put her mouth near the wall and yelled for help there?

But once down there, she’d have trouble getting up again. She tabled that idea for now.

How long did she have before her captor returned? She had no idea what time it was. No doubt he’d expected her to sleep until morning. Maybe putting the pill under her tongue had reduced its effect.

She went back to Plan A and tried again to wiggle out of the straightjacket. Her arms had gone to sleep from lack of movement. She tensed the muscles, then released them. Did it again. She gritted her teeth against the pins and needles as the blood flow increased.

Once again she tried to lift her arms that were crossed snugly across her middle. Once again, the straightjacket snagged on her ribcage, not letting her arms go up over her head. She exhaled and tightened the muscles in her chest and stomach, making her core as small as possible. Still the canvas caught on her ribs and would only allow her arms to get as high as her chin.

She stopped to catch her breath and visualized in her mind’s eye the woman she had witnessed escape from a straightjacket at Sheppard Pratt Hospital several years ago. Thank God the suicidal patient had also been in a padded room.

The woman hadn’t tried to get both arms over her head, only the one on the outside. She’d pushed the other arm up to her opposite shoulder.

Sally tried pushing her left hand toward her right shoulder. She felt some slack in the straps that bound the sleeves together behind her back.

This time, she got the outer arm up to her nose before the canvas jacket caught on her ribs. She tried again, but no matter how much she strained, she couldn’t get the arm any higher. Bottom line, the straightjacket itself was too tight.

Click. The room flooded with light. Sally jumped, almost lost her balance, then squinted against the sudden brightness.

The three lamps in the room were apparently on a timer. It must be morning. Her captor was coming soon.

Even as her heart pounded at the thought, her brain was hatching a plan. She needed to get him to let her out of this damn straightjacket, if only for a few minutes.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

5:30 a.m. Sunday

When they entered the police station, Charles was sitting in the outer lobby, leaning forward on one of the vinyl chairs, elbows on his knees, staring at the scarred tile floor. Kate and Tim approached him.

“You find anything?” Tim asked.

“Yeah. I gave the list to Lieutenant Anderson.” The man barely raised his head. “She said she’d get some officers to check them out.” His chair leg scrapped a little on the floor as he shifted his weight, the sound loud in the empty, cavernous room.

Kate and Tim exchanged a look. Tim tilted his head.

Kate shrugged.

Tim nodded once and headed across the lobby. The officer behind the glass panel at the main desk must have recognized him. The buzzer immediately sounded, announcing that the door to the rest of the station was temporarily unlocked. Tim opened it and disappeared inside.

Kate sat down beside Charles. She opened her mouth, then closed it again. All her training and experience were useless at the moment. She’d never dealt with anything like this before. How do you comfort a man whose lover is being held by a serial killer?

Charles was slumped over, looking down at his hands hanging limply between his knees. “I gotta go,” he muttered.

Confused, Kate asked, “Go where?”

He stirred restlessly, wiped his palms down the thighs of his slacks. “I don’t know. Home, I guess.”

“It might be a good idea for you to try to catch a couple hours of sleep. I don’t think there’s anything more you can do right now.”

He didn’t respond. His knee started jiggling, his heel tapping a soft staccato on the tile floor. A quick sideways glance at her. “I can’t do this,” he said in a low voice.

She kept her voice gentle. “Do what?”

“This.” He waved a hand around the large room, the circle of empty chairs against its walls.

Kate sat still, silent, hoping the man would eventually say something that made sense.

“I can’t do this… The waiting. I feel like I’m gonna explode.”

“The waiting,” Kate echoed. “It’s the hardest part.” She squelched the urge to jump in and reassure, letting the silence encourage him to say more.

He turned his head away from her. “I want to just go.” She could barely make out his words.

“Just run out of here. Go home and pretend–” His voice caught. He dropped his face into his hands. “Pretend I never knew her.”

Kate tentatively placed a hand on a big shoulder. It was shaking.

A few minutes ticked by, then he choked out, “She doesn’t deserve this.”

He looked up at her, his cheeks wet. “What kind of man am I, that I can’t wait, when she must be going through hell?” He turned his head away, stared across the room. “She deserves better than me.”

Kate caught herself as her jaw was about to drop. It sounded like he was trying to break up with Sally
in absentia
.

She felt the familiar click in her brain as the psychological pieces fell into place.

Sitting back in her chair, she said in a conversational tone, “You know, I see a lot of young people in my practice. Mid-twenties to mid-thirties. They often come into therapy because they realize they’re doing something wrong in the relationship department. Can’t seem to get one to stick. A pattern I see a lot is rejecting before you’re rejected.” She paused.

He was still staring into space. She couldn’t tell if he was even listening.

“Say, some gal is in the early stages of dating a guy she really likes, but then she starts picking him apart in her mind, convincing herself that he isn’t really that great. She pulls back from him emotionally, gets bitchy with him maybe. Might even break up with him. All to keep herself from getting hurt, just in case he doesn’t care for her as much as she does for him.”

A couple beats of silence. Then Charles shifted in his chair, turned his torso partway toward her. “You think that’s what I’m doing?”

Kate tilted her head slightly to one side. “Yeah, I think so. But not consciously. You see, our psyches, they can be sneaky bastards.” She normally avoided cussing when in therapist mode, if she didn’t know how the person felt about it. But sometimes the shock value actually got the message in better. “They play games like that– rejecting before we’re rejected for instance–trying to protect themselves from emotional overwhelm. But if we can catch them at their little game-playing antics, we can choose to handle our emotions differently.”

“And how do I do that?”

Kate paused, racking her brain. Finally she gave a half shrug. “Honestly, I don’t know what to tell you other than to hang in there. This situation is so damned out of the ordinary that there is no good way to deal with it.”

Charles stared over her shoulder for a moment, his eyes out of focus. “I can’t believe I almost gave up on her, on us.”

Kate covered his big hand, resting on his thigh, with her own. “When she gets out of this mess, she has the right to go back to the good life she had before. And she is not
too good
for you. You are exactly right for each other.”

That got her a fleeting ghost of a smile. “You really think we’ll find her in time?” he asked.

“I’m not letting myself think anything else.”

“What do I do now?”

“There really isn’t anything you can do right now to help, but there might be soon.” The last part was a fib. She doubted there would be much else he could contribute. “Why don’t you go home for a little while. Try to rest. I’ll call you as soon as we have any inkling of where Sally is.” Another fib. The man was too close to the edge. She wasn’t calling him until they had Sally safe and sound, or…

She mentally shook her head to rid it of that thought as she mustered a smile for Charles. She patted his shoulder. “Go home. I’ll call you.”

He nodded and pushed himself to a stand. “Thanks, Kate.”

She smiled up at him. “Anytime.”

As she watched Charles walk away, she softly blew out air.

That disaster averted.

Insight jolted through her brain. She smacked herself on the forehead with the heel of her hand. “You idiot!” she muttered out loud.

She was doing the same damn thing. Pulling back from Skip, jumping to conclusions. Rejecting before she was rejected. Skip was right. She needed to wait until they had a chance to talk privately. They’d work it out. They always had, they always would.

She just had to wait.

Yeah, I’m almost as good at that as Charles is.

When she entered the conference room, Tim was lounging back in a chair, eyes closed, feet up on the table. She sank into a chair across from him as quietly as she could. But a sigh escaped her lips before she could catch it.

He opened one eye. “That bad, huh?”

She nodded.

“What’d you tell him?”

“Basically, tie a knot in his rope and hang on.”

Tim shoved back from the table and let his feet drop to the floor. “Sure glad I decided against the therapist route. I’d be lousy at all that empathy stuff.”

“I don’t know about that. You’ve got a gentle soul.”

His face twisted into a strange expression.

She chuckled softly. “I guess tough FBI agents aren’t supposed to have gentle souls.”

“No, but we’re supposed to hide them well.”

“I think you do, with most people.”

He gave her a warm smile.

Uh oh, time to change the subject.

Judith Anderson did so for her, by striding into the room. “Where the hell have you been?” She pointed a finger at Tim. “Your techie gal just called. She’s dug up some more stuff on Delaney.”

“Sorry,” Tim said. “We needed a breather.”

“Yeah, well your Ms. Garcia says–”

Kate’s mouth fell open. “That’s not really her last name, is it?”

“No,” Judith said. “She just reminds me of that Penelope gal on
Criminal Minds
.”

Kate burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?”

Kate waved her hand in front of her. “Never mind. Not important. What’d Jane find?”

“Seems the Delaneys had a foster kid, for a couple years back in the nineties. Jane’s trying to find a current address on her. She might be able to give us some insight into this guy’s mind.”

“How old was the girl when she was with them?” Kate asked.

“Thirteen to fifteen. She would’ve been a few years younger than their daughter.”

Kate and Tim nodded in unison. “Yeah,” Tim said. “She’d have been old enough she might’ve gotten a decent sense of what makes this guy tick.”

Judith turned to Kate, her eyes narrowed. “Also got a call from SA Wallace. She says Canfield broke into this guy’s house up in New York.”

“She has no proof of that.” Kate intentionally paused. “But we do have some info about his house, from an anonymous tip.”

Judith stared at her for a long moment. Swiping a slender hand down her tired face, she blew out air. Then she pulled out a chair and sat down. “Tell me.”

~~~~~~~~

Click. Whir.

Sally’s heart jumped into her throat. She tried to take a deep breath. It came out on a shudder.

Her captor entered the room. The opening behind him slid closed. He had a small brown paper bag in one hand and a styrofoam container in the other.

“You’re up bright and early.” His tone said earlier than he had expected.

He thought I’d still be out cold from the pill.

Her brain scrambled for something to say.

He walked over to the bed where she was sitting. “Did you sleep well, my dear?”

“Yes.” It came out as a hoarse croak. She cleared her throat. “Yes. The light woke me, when the lamps came on.”

That seemed to satisfy him.

He held up the container. “A special treat this morning, from IHOP. Hope you like blueberry pancakes.” There was a sparkle in his eyes.

Sally’s stomach churned. Her throat closed. She hated that the bastard was getting off on this. Not trusting her voice, she nodded and struggled to keep her expression neutral.