Because I'm Watching (40 page)

“Right away. My car's close.” Kateri called after him. “And the camera!”

Moen was younger, faster, and stronger; he got back and forth from her car in record time. He would have helped Kateri stanch the bleeding; she knew Maddie would not like that. “Take photos of the crime scene,” she told him.

He sprang into motion. “Do you realize how jealous the guys at the precinct will be that we got here first?”

Kateri sighed.

Eyes slitted narrowly, Maddie watched him. “He's just a kid, isn't he?”

“He's getting better,” Kateri assured her. “Anyway, he can't be much younger than you.”

“I'm pretty mature. I've been through a lot,” Maddie said.

“That you have.” Kateri applied a tourniquet to Maddie's thigh, pressed a sterile pad to her belly, and wrapped linen around the lacerations on Maddie's hands. “How did you fight that woman? She's six feet tall if she's an inch.”

“She made me angry,” Mad Maddie said simply.

“Remind me not to piss you off,” Moen muttered.

All too rapidly, blood soaked all of the bandages, and even as Kateri worked, Maddie's face turned whiter and whiter. Kateri asked, “Maddie, one thing I don't understand”—
When would the EMTs arrive?
—“If you kept that revolver, why didn't you shoot Barbara as soon as she threatened you?”

“I had to make sure she was real.”

Kateri nodded. She understood that.

Maddie continued, “And when Jacob left this morning, he told me to shoot only as the last possible resort.”

“I don't think he meant…” Kateri realized an explanation would be a waste of time. Maddie thought literally, and in the matter of killing people, Kateri approved. Far too many people shot impulsively and without thought for the consequences.

Moen lowered the camera. “Okay, Sheriff Kwinault, I've got the crime scene photos.”

“Then turn that body over.
Her
body?” Still scarcely believing, Kateri looked inquiringly at Maddie.

Maddie nodded. “Definitely female.”

Moen rolled the body faceup. “Yep. Female. Tall and…” He picked up the camera and took more photos of the body, concentrating on the face. “Creepy makeup, but Maddie, isn't this your next-door neighbor, the model?”

“Yes…” For a moment, Maddie seemed to drift, then she snapped back. “When I saw her on the street, I didn't recognize her, but she was one of the nursing staff when I was at the mental institution. She didn't look like that before.”

“What did she look like?” Moen asked.

“Dark, short hair. Overweight.” Maddie breathed deeply. Her words slurred.

Moen got out his phone and called emergency again.

“When I was in the … the mental hospital … I didn't dare stare at her because she would say I thought she was ugly and slap me. If I glanced at her when the doctor was in the room, afterward she'd slap me twice. Hard.” Maddie sounded like a recording slowing down … and down.

“Why did she hate you so much?” Kateri asked.

“She hated everyone. Especially her patients. Especially me. She hated having to take care of me. She hated weakness. She said I was crazy-faking it.… She didn't understand why I would cry for my friends.” Tears dribbled out of Maddie's eyes and into her hair. “I don't know how she met my brother.”

“Your
brother
?” This monster knew Maddie's brother.

“My brother and … her.” The sun's last rays stabbed at the scene. Maddie moaned and shut her eyes. “She hoped to scare me so I would return to Colorado Springs, close to him, where he could … he hoped to make me more dependent on him, get me to write faster.”

“Why would he want that?”

“He was afraid that if I was independent, I would want control of my assets and someday reveal that I was the real author of the A. M. Hewitson novels.”

Moen crowed. “I knew it. I knew you were. I figured it out!” He looked at Kateri and his face fell. “You knew, too.”

“Yes.” Kateri didn't feel the need to tell him she had figured it out less than an hour ago. “In a horrible way, that plan makes sense.”

“But they didn't win. She killed him and I'm still here.” Maddie opened her eyes and smiled. “I'm sorry, but I'm going to faint.” And she did.

 

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

As soon as the plane touched down at Sea-Tac Airport, Jacob called Maddie's cell. When Maddie answered, something relaxed in him. “You're okay?”

“I am.” She sounded almost chipper. “I killed the woman who married and murdered Andrew.”

He sat straight up in his cramped seat on the plane and shouted, “What? What?”

The flight attendants looked around. The passengers in the seats next to him leaned away.

More quietly he asked, “How? Where?”

“To be safe I headed toward town. She followed me in her costume. She thought she would chase me down and kill me. But I fought her. I shot her with my gun.” Maddie's voice turned anxious. “But I didn't use it until it was the last possible resort!”

“Good.” Not really; he didn't care when she had used it as long as she was alive. “Where are you now?”

“I'm in the hospital. They're keeping me for a few days.”

“You're hurt?” How hurt?

As if it explained everything, Maddie said, “She had a knife.”

On the plane, the chimes sounded. All around him seat belts clicked. He opened his and jumped up, bumped his head on the overhead bin, and cursed. “I'll be there as soon as I can.”

“I know.” Now she sounded a little woozy. “They gave me a shot for the pain. I'll probably be asleep. But wake me when you get here.”

*   *   *

Jacob broke land speed records getting to the county hospital. It was after midnight when he parked, raced across the parking lot and into the quiet lobby. He leaned across the desk to the security guard. “Can you tell me where I'll find Madeline Hewitson?”

The guard had a badge—Jerry—and Jerry folded his arms. “I'm not to allow any reporters anywhere near her.”

“Reporters?” Jacob glanced around. “There are reporters?”

“She was famous as a killer and now she's vindicated. Sure there are reporters.
Other
reporters. And
you're
not getting in.”

Jacob drew himself up to his full height, stared at Jerry, and said in his commanding officer tone, “I am not a reporter. I am her fiancé.”

In a bored tone, Jerry said, “Someone already tried that.”

Dr. Frownfelter trudged around the corner. “It's okay, Jerry. I'll take him up.”

“You mean he really is her fiancé?” Jerry peered at Jacob's departing form and called, “Sorry, man.”

Jacob waved a hand.

Dr. Frownfelter led Jacob down a wide corridor. “I've been watching for you.”

Jacob chafed at Dr. Frownfelter's steady pace; he wanted to run. “How badly is she injured?”

Dr. Frownfelter turned the corner to the wing with the patients' rooms. “That woman pretty effectively used a knife on her. If Maddie hadn't been so angry, she probably would have been killed. But as I understand it, Maddie moved in close enough to beat on her with her baseball bat—”

Jacob raised a fist.

Dr. Frownfelter continued, “And Barbara couldn't do the deliberately painful damage she wanted to inflict.”

Jacob knew immediately what the doctor meant, and the slow anger curled like smoke in his gut. “She intended to kill Maddie, but she wanted to terrorize her first. Like all the other times, only this time with a fatal finish.”

“After what Maddie's been through—the slaughter in the dorm room, her fiancé's murder, this constant harassment—it's a miracle that girl
is
sane.”

“Woman,” Jacob corrected fiercely. “Maddie deserves to be called a woman.”

“You're right. She does.” They stopped in front of room 116 and Dr. Frownfelter put his hand on Jacob's arm to bring him to a halt. “You can see her now. She's asleep. Be careful how you touch her. She fought a much bigger and stronger assailant. She's lost a lot of blood, she has a lot of stitches, a lot of bruises.”

“But she won.”

Dr. Frownfelter grinned. “Yeah. She won. Come on. Just be prepared.”

“Whatever it is, I've seen worse.”

“I know. Somehow, when it's a loved one, that never helps.” Dr. Frownfelter pushed open the door and led Jacob into a dim hospital room with a hospital bed occupied by a small, crumpled form.

A cot had been set up against the wall; as soon as the door opened, the form on the cot half rose, gun in hand.

Sheriff Kwinault slept in Maddie's room. Seeing Jacob, she nodded an acknowledgment. She flopped down again and for all intents and purposes went right back to sleep.

“Does she think Maddie's in danger?” Jacob whispered.

“The sheriff wanted to make sure Maddie wasn't harassed. She could have left someone else to guard her, but she said she felt guilty for not realizing sooner what was going on.” Dr. Frownfelter scratched the day-old prickles of beard on his face. “Welcome to the club.”

“I'm a card-carrying member myself.” Jacob approached Maddie. He tried to look her over with a judicious eye. A welter of bandages and bruises, fluids in bottles and beeping machines, and beneath it all, his Maddie, dark, tangled hair against the white pillow, dark, smeared bruises against her white skin. Dr. Frownfelter was right. Seeing her like this … Jacob wanted to gather her close. He wanted to hug her forever. He wanted to avenge her. He wanted once more to hear her say she loved him.

His fingers hovered over her face, her shoulders, but he didn't quite dare to touch her. Quietly he said, “I got into Andrew Hewitson's computer. I figured out everything, but I could not figure out how that woman got her claws in him.”

Dr. Frownfelter took him by the arm and moved him toward the foot of the bed. “Maddie said after she witnessed the stabbings in her dorm she was placed in a mental recovery facility. The deceased worked as a nursing assistant there.”

Jacob inhaled harshly.

“That information set off all kinds of bells and whistles for me, so I did a little digging, talked to the physician in charge of the facility.” Dr. Frownfelter lowered his voice to a barely audible rumble. “Barbara Magnusson—”

“Magnusson?”

“She's been married a couple of times.”

“And widowed?” Jacob asked.

“At least once.” The two men exchanged significant glances, then Dr. Frownfelter continued, “According to the physician, Barbara Magnusson was dismissed from her position for tormenting the patients, specifically Maddie. Barbara disappeared for a couple of years, then she returned to the facility as a patient for … never mind the medical jargon, she was a violent psychotic bitch with control issues. Her family avoided her, but they did support her financially … for a while. Then they moved and left no forwarding address.” Jacob's shock seemed to grimly amuse the doctor. “It happens more than you might imagine. The facility had funding problems, so they determined Barbara was stable enough to be released.”

“How could they release something like her into the world?”

“Indigent medical funding is a problem everywhere, especially at mental facilities.”

Jacob returned to Maddie's side and hovered again, in retrospect even more terrified for her. Returning to Dr. Frownfelter, he said, “That's how Barbara knew Maddie's history of mental illness and recovery. She knew specifically how to destroy her.”

“Exactly. When Sheriff Kwinault searched Barbara's house, she found all kinds of eye-popping electronics Barbara used to play her tricks on Maddie—poisons, drugs, needles.… When Maddie was asleep, Barbara must have injected her with hallucinogens, or perhaps she laced Maddie's food with them.” Dr. Frownfelter flushed an angry red. “I should have paid closer attention. I should have realized.…”

They all, every one of them, felt guilty. “No, you shouldn't have. I looked at Andrew Hewitson's computer. Barbara was the mastermind behind the scheme to frighten and coerce Maddie. Maddie's own brother didn't realize the woman was crazy until he was in far too deep, and he…” Jacob shook his head. “He was a gambler. He used Maddie's money to support his habit. He betrayed Maddie in every way and she deserves so much more.”

The two men returned to Maddie's side.

“You'll give it to her,” Dr. Frownfelter said.

Jacob leaned over her, touched her gently: her lips, her forehead, her poor bandaged hands. “Yes. I will.”

 

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

The click of the hospital door woke Maddie, and she watched as Sheriff Kwinault slipped out into the corridor and shut the door behind her.

Maddie's throat and lips were parched, her body ached in ugly ways. But fast on the heels of her own discomfort she remembered—she had killed the monster. It was morning, the sun was shining, she had all her body parts, and Jacob was coming home.

No, he was home. There he sat, slumped in the chair beside her bed, his head dropped to his chest while he snored heavily. He looked worn out, but in a good way—not as thin, not as grim, less like a man on the brink of death and more like a guy who had traveled the country in search of clues that would save her sanity … and her life.

She was glad. She'd had enough of death and fear and nightmares. She hated to wake him, but she needed water. “Jacob,” she whispered.

At once, he was on his feet. “Maddie! You're awake!” He blinked in that manic way people did when they want to look attentive. He got his eyes really open, smiled, and leaned over her. He stroked her hair back from her forehead and whispered, “You're alive.”