Black Forest, Denver Cereal Volume 5 (23 page)

“
What do you think you’re
doing?” Tanesha asked. “It’s still my Rachel time.”

Sandy snuggled her tiny baby and kissed her
cheek. For a moment, the women looked at each other. Tanesha hugged
Sandy.

“
You don’t have to,”
Tanesha said.

“
You saved her,” Sandy
said.

Sandy kissed Rachel again and gave her to
Tanesha. Tanesha sat down in the chair next to Rachel’s
incubator.

“
Just stay right here,”
Tanesha said.

“
I’m not going anywhere,”
Sandy said.

Tanesha took Sandy’s hand and gave it a
squeeze. Their eyes held again and Tanesha turned her attention to
Rachel. She began singing Rachel a song. Cam pulled up a chair next
to her.

“
God, Sandy, I’m so
sorry,” the nurse said. “I let him in. He said he was a friend of
the family. He had a Saint Joe’s badge.”

“
Dr. James?” Sandy
asked.

“
Psychiatry. He wrote that
on the sign in sheet. I checked it against his badge,” the nurse
said. “He told me you’d asked him to check on her neurological
development. I thought it was weird but you have so many people
helping out with Rachel. It seemed… possible.”

“
He wasn’t on the list,”
Sandy said.

“
He wasn’t,” the nurse
said. “But he had an excuse for that. He told me he ran into you at
the police station this afternoon. We all knew you were going
today. God, I’m so sorry. If any thing had happened to Rachel,
I…”

Sandy nodded.

“
It’s wonderful that
everyone wants time with Rachel,” the nurse said. “Our head nurse
is supposed to ask you how you set that up.”

“
I have great friends,”
Sandy said.

Seth came into the nursery. He hugged Sandy
and leaned over Tanesha to say hello to Rachel.

“
Didn’t catch him?”
Sandy’s eyes reflected her worry.

“
No, he knocked over a
couple of kids learning how to use their crutches on the stairwell.
By the time I got past the mess, he was in his car. On-call doctors
parking. The bastard smirked at me as he drove by. If it wasn’t so
crowded, I would have shot him.” Seth face and voice were filled
with despair. “I called dispatch. They sent it out to everyone,
but…”

Sandy hugged him.

“
How’s Rachel?” Seth
asked.

“
She’s a little sleepy,”
the nurse said. “We’ll have to monitor her closely to evaluate the
effects of the drug.”

“
Oh thank God,” Seth
said.

“
Is it true that was the
serial killer?” the nurse asked.

“
We need to get the Crime
Scene Unit here to gather evidence,” Seth said. “Is there another
incubator? We’ll need everything for evidence.”

“
Yes Detective,” the nurse
said. “I bagged everything…”

Sandy put her hand on Seth’s arm. He looked
up at her.

“
What about Ava?” Sandy
asked.

~~~~~~~~

Tuesday evening — 5:30 P.M.

Ava had imagined hanging like this. She had
processed the forensics from the barn as well as the Sand Creek
bunker. She knew that young men and women had died right here.
She’d been horrified and disgusted with the method. She and her
forensic colleagues had called it torture. The Coroner compared it
to water boarding.

Now that she was here, it wasn’t so bad.

Her wrists were tied to a six inch by six
inch beam with her hands resting on top of the beam. A one inch
round dowel was treaded under her elbows and around her back. The
dowel was attached to the beam. Her weight was distributed between
her wrists and the dowel. A thick leather strap went under her chin
constricting her airway.

When she woke up here, she panicked and
almost suffocated. She’d quickly learned to use the yogic breathing
she and Beth had practiced in college. She could breathe if she
took deep, slow, calming breaths. Hanging here, she’d fallen into a
meditative state. She was almost peaceful. The drug kept her pain
free. Outside of the cold, she had a sense that she wouldn’t mind
hanging here forever.

She remembered the Coroner saying that any
sudden movement and the hanging person would break their hyoid
bone. Death would come quickly after that. She resolved to stay as
still as possible.

Of course, she wasn’t awake when he put her
up here. Somehow, he’d lowered this beam, attached her to it, and
then raised it again. She longed to turn her head to see if there
was a mechanism that made it happen. There was no way she was going
to risk her hyoid out of curiosity.

Her mother’s oft repeated reprimand repeated
in her mind: ‘Curiosity killed the cat, Amelie.’ Not this cat.

“
What are you doing?” the
woman returned.

“
Hanging,” Ava
said.

The woman gave her a soft smile. Like a cool
wind on a hot day, strains of music drifted in Ava’s direction.

“
What is that?” Ava
asked.

“
Do you remember where you
heard it?” the woman asked.

“
Seth,” Ava whispered. “It
was playing in his car the first time we kissed.”

Ava felt transported to that moment. She was
sitting in his warm car. She’d wanted him to kiss her for at least
a month. She’d enticed him with breakfast invitations, donuts, and
her tight jeans. Finally, he was sitting right there.

She knew her mother would pitch a fit. He
was an old man; she was a young girl. Yet, her body ached for him
to make love to her.

Ava jerked herself back to the barn.

“
It’s all right to let go,
Amelie,” the woman said. “To remember for a while. I won’t tell
anyone.”

“
Will you let me know when
he comes back?” Ava asked.

“
Of course.”

Ava’s mind drifted to her favorite things -
warm brownies over vanilla ice cream; chocolate chips straight from
the bag; a cold drink from a high mountain spring on a hot summer
day.

And, of course, Seth.

~~~~~~~~

Tuesday night — 7:30 P.M.

Filled with rage and sorrow that Saint Jude
slipped away at the hospital, Seth headed downtown. He had been so
close and lost him. He had gone to help search for Ava but he got
no more than two feet into the building before he was turned away.
He was too valuable to risk injury or death in this kind of search.
Plus, Ava’s father, Attorney General Aaron Alvin was holding a
press conference.

And Seth was in the way.

“
We don’t interfere when
you’re investigating, Magic,” the head of SWAT told him. “Let us do
what we do best.”

“
I’m just not willing to
risk it, O’Malley,” the Chief told him. “Go home. We’ll call
you.”

Seth went to an AA meeting, talked to his
sponsor, and eventually went home to bounce around the empty
house.

His mind reeled with the events of the day.
Bonita and his children had been murdered, the bastard had tried to
take his baby Goddaughter right out of the NICU, his oldest
daughter didn’t hate him, she was pregnant, his Julie Ann was a
Marine, his daughters had taken back his name, and through it all,
Ava was missing.

He tried to feed himself but burned his
fingers trying to save the enchiladas from being consumed by
flames. He tossed the smoking enchiladas in the sink and turned on
the exhaust fan. Settling at the kitchen counter, he iced his
fingers and tried to decide what to do with himself. As a
distraction, he set the contents of his pockets on the counter. He
put his wallet, keys, cell phone, and USB flash drive into perfect
alignment on the counter. He smiled at the sense of order.

With his unburned hand, he reached over the
items to the plate of cookies. His hand was almost on the plate
when he stopped moving. Beth’s documents. She’d given her life
rather than give up these papers. He’d emailed a sent a copy of the
documents to his investigative team but had never looked at them
himself. Picking up the USB flash drive, he went to the kitchen
computer.

He turned on the computer and went back for
the plate of cookies. If he couldn’t have bourbon, he could
certainly have a few cookies. He filled a steel water bottle and
took his treats to the computer.

This computer was Maresol’s. He had to close
her email account, the cumbia music playing on Pandora, Facebook,
rotating pictures of her grandchildren, Google sidebar, and the
recipe of the day before loading the USB flash drive. Computers
were tools, not friends, he always told her. Maresol rolled her
eyes at him.

He clicked open the scanned documents and
leaned back in his chair to read. As his intern, Beth had seen some
of Dr. James’s clients while working to get her hours for her
license. She had been the primary therapist for Jeffy and Razor.
Listening to the boys, Beth sensed that something wasn’t right with
Dr. James. Unsure of what he was really up to, Beth had tracked
some of his activities. Yet, for all the fantastic details, details
the District Attorney would have paid for, Beth had never connected
Dr. James with the Saint Jude murders.

Why had Saint Jude killed her?

CSU had found remnants of these papers in
Beth’s office. Saint Jude had taken precious minutes to shred and
burn these papers in an ashtray before taking Ava. These papers had
to be the key.

What was Seth missing?

Seth went over the documents again. He
opened a spreadsheet to track every detail. On one page, he made a
list of all of the children who were clients of Dr. James. On
another, he tracked the dates. He continued working until he had a
spreadsheet for every list of details in the reports. To be
certain, he printed out Beth’s scanned documents and crossed off
the information he had moved to a spreadsheet.

Then he saw it.

Dr. James had an office in Denver.

Dr. James had an office near Platte Park in
one of the homeless shelters.

Dr. James lived in Hilltop.

Dr. James had a cabin outside of Granby.

Since finding the officer’s body in Beth’s
office, the police had searched every known residence for Dr.
Thaddeus James. They had found nothing to connect Dr. James with
the Saint Jude murders. Yet in his bones, Seth knew Saint Jude’s
arrogance would dictate a need for more memorabilia from his
triumphant killing of these children. They just had to find
them.

On the last page Beth had made a notation:
Jeffy spent the winters on the high plateau in New Mexico. Charlie
had told him that Jeffy wasn’t in town during the cold months. Had
Jeffy stayed with Dr. James? Where? There was no evidence of Jeffy
at any of Dr. James’s known residence.

Who was Jeffy to Saint Jude? Beth had an
answer for that. Jeffy was Dr. Thad James’s foster son. He’d
‘rescued’ the boy from a couple of teenaged parents. He’d used
Jeffy, and boys before him, to lure in victims. Saint Jude killed
Jeffy because the boy had stopped doing what he was told. Saint
Jude killed Jeffy because he had made a friend – Charlie.

Where did Jeffy stay in New Mexico? Seth
hadn’t found anything more specific than the reference to the high
plateau. He was about to give up when he saw a series of numbers in
the margin of the page: 36 52 15, -105 53 10.4. GPS coordinates.
Seth typed the numbers into Google Maps and came up with a
satellite location. Using Google satellite maps, he peered down on
a large Spanish style mansion on the edge of the plateau. He did a
quick records check. The home was owned by Jude T. James.

Seth jogged to the kitchen for his cell
phone. He called the New Mexico State police and gave them the GPS
location. He called dispatch and had an officer sent to the Castle
to warn Sandy and Aden that Saint Jude might come for Charlie. Of
course, the night commander repeated what the Chief had told him:
“Stay home; let the officers take care of this; get some rest;
we’re going to need you tomorrow; you know this is a marathon, not
a sprint.”

Seth sat down at his piano and played
through the initial composition of his new piece. He bit his
lip.

Saint Jude still had Ava.

Every cop in the state was looking for
her.

Shaking his head at himself, Seth went back
to the kitchen. He put his wallet, phone, and USB flash drive back
in his pocket. He went to the hall closet. He unlocked the wall
cabinet and took an additional handgun and clips for his service
revolver. He grabbed his digital camera and 3-D cell LED MagLite
from the shelf. He stuffed them in his pocket. Picking up his thick
leather jacket, he went around back to the garage.

Stay home?

Leave it to the officers?

Not tonight.

Seth clicked off the security system to the
dark blue Bugatti Veyron his agent insisted he buy. This car topped
out at two hundred and fifty three miles an hour. Pulling out of
the garage, he set the police bubble on the roof.

Tonight, he was going to check Dr. Thaddeus
James’ creepy hideouts.

Tonight, he was going to find Ava if he had
to drive all the way to New Mexico to do it. He took Colorado
Boulevard to the 270 and let the car go.

First stop, Brighton and the evil barn.

~~~~~~~~

Tuesday night — 8:30 P.M.

Sitting on the couch next to the fireplace
in the loft, Jacob clicked off his phone call and looked at his
Blackberry. Glancing up, Jill waved for him to come to say good
night to Katy. Katy had only wanted her Mommy to put her to bed
tonight. Once in bed, she wanted Jacob to tuck her in. Jill felt
Katy was being excessive but Jacob didn’t mind. He went across the
loft to give Katy kisses and wishes for a good night’s sleep. When
he was done, he closed her door halfway and went to find Jill
waiting for him in the kitchen area.