Deathscape (5 page)

“
No.”

“
You still live alone?”

“
Yes.”

“
Any visitors in the last couple of days?” He was taking notes.

On what? She hadn’t given him anything. “My father and my daughter.”

“
Seen anyone around, back in the woods?”

“
No.”

“
Have you seen or heard anything suspicious at all earlier, anything out of place?”

She shook her head.

“
And you just went out there to look at trees?” He seemed to have a problem with that part of the story.

“
It’s like—” She grasped for an artsy explanation that would discourage further inquisition. “Paul Klee said that when he was drawing, he was just taking a line for a walk. Works the other way around too. Sometimes my lines take
me
for a walk.” A walk straight to hell.

He wrote the name Paul Klee in capital letters, then tapped pen to paper.

She opened her mouth to tell him he didn’t need to worry about Klee, but then changed her mind. If Bing wanted to run the Dutch artist who’d been gone for almost seventy years through the system, let him.

“
Anything else you want to tell me at this point?”

“
I already told you everything.”

He huffed, watched her for a long moment, his eyes, the color of burned sienna, narrowing. “All right. I’m going to see what Joe found out there. I’ll be back in a while. You stay right here.”

She knew that tone. The captain blamed her for all this. She couldn’t bear the thought of more interrogations to come. If her father found out…

The thought about stopped her heart.

Her father couldn’t find out. Whatever she had to do, she had to keep her new batch of troubles secret. She had to find a way to clear her name and make this all go away, and she had to do it in a hurry.

* * *

Jack Sullivan saw the bright light again. This time, he wasn’t about to march blindly ahead. Screw the light. With superhuman effort, he willed himself awake. His eyelids going up felt as if someone was dragging sandpaper over his eyeballs. It hurt to breathe.

“
Welcome back, Jack.”

Bing’s face swam into focus.

“
Captain.” He cleared his throat, then tried for something better than the weak whisper. “What happened?”

“
Do you know how much paperwork I have to fill out every time one of my men gets injured?”

He blinked at the hospital room around him—white walls, green sheets, strange-looking medical equipment—and wrinkled his nose at the smell of iodine. “I’ll try not to make a habit of it. I’m fine.”

“
You might think differently when the painkillers wear off,” the man said in a voice that leaned toward gentle. Not something Jack had heard from Bing before. He had to be dying.

He tried to sit up. Couldn’t. What the hell?

“
Take it easy, son.”

Nobody had called him son in at least a decade. And Bing wasn’t yet forty. They had less than a decade between them.
Oh, hell.
He had to be in even worse shape than he’d thought. Pain stabbed his side. He’d been hurt, badly, but couldn’t remember how.

Bing leaned forward, the chair creaking under his weight. Not that he was fat by any measure, but solidly built with muscle. He put in his share of time in training at the station’s gym. He required his team to keep in shape and would never ask anything of them that he himself wasn’t prepared to do. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

Jack forced his mind to focus. “Going out on an anonymous call. Suspicious activity reported at an abandoned farmhouse.” At first he’d thought drugs. Then he’d gotten there and saw that chunk of bone.

Memories flashed across his mind suddenly, a horror movie on fast-forward. His teeth clenched. “It was Blackwell.”

Bing went still. “You think too much about the man. You were in a lot of pain. Your mind came up with—”

“
Blackwell,” he said again. “I had time to make positive ID.”

Bing sat up straighter, stared at Jack for a long moment. “They got some DNA from under a couple of your fingernails, but it’ll be a while before the results come in. Do you know if the FBI has DNA on him?”

“
They don’t.” Adrenaline spiked through him. If they gained enough DNA, if it matched to something in the database…

Bing rubbed his hand over his knee as he watched him, that look of doubt still in his eyes. “Do you remember enough for a sketch? I can have someone here in ten minutes.”

Jack shook his head. The images that had come back to him were only of the lower half of his own body, a cement floor stained with his blood, Blackwell’s boots. He gritted his teeth. “He kept me blindfolded. But he talked about the others.” The bastard had taunted him while he’d tortured him.

“
I might recognize his voice.” That he wasn’t sure he would killed him. But there’d been a fan rattling the whole time, pushing the heat of the woodstove around the torture chamber. And his mind had been in a haze of pain, not exactly on full speed. “How long was I gone?”

“
Three days.” The captain’s jaw clenched. “We were looking for you. Harper and Chase never went home. The rookies too. We were looking for you every hour of every day.”

“
I know. That kept me hanging on.” A small cough sent stabbing pain through his midsection. “He knew who I was. He had a trap set up.”

The captain swore, which was usually the worst of his temper. He was, for the most part, pretty even-keeled, not the type who got off on tearing his men down just to show who was boss. Although, at the moment, he didn’t look too happy with Jack.

“
I told you being obsessed with a serial killer was a dangerous hobby,” he snapped.

He had. But Blackwell went way beyond a hobby. This went back to Shannon. But nobody needed to know that.

Machines beeped around them, various hospital noises filtering in the open door as Jack thought of all the people he’d looked for in the past, the ones he hadn’t found in time. He figured Bing might be thinking the same. Except now Jack knew exactly how those victims had felt, what his sister had gone through before she’d died fifteen years ago.

Bile rose in his throat. “How bad is the damage?”

Bing waited a second before he answered. “Nothing to come crying to me about. Four broken ribs, blood loss, some internal bleeding, some burns, hypothermia, and a concussion, some nancy-ass lacerations barely worth mentioning. I pretty much figure you’re only here to get out of mandatory overtime.”

“
When are they letting me out?”

“
Some frostbite here and there,” Bing went on. “I’m going to overlook it this time, but you’ve got to stop parading around buckass naked. You’re scaring well-meaning citizens.” He kept his tone as light as his words, but concern filled his eyes.

“
I want to get on the case as soon as possible.” Jack drew a shallower breath, testing if that might circumvent some of the pain. Not really. “You think you could pull some strings for me here?”

“
We’ll take care of Blackwell.” The captain gave him a hard look.

Jack hardened his own gaze. “Blackwell is mine.” He’d been after the man for most of his career. He wouldn’t allow himself to think how close he’d come to having him.

“
You’re lucky to be alive. One of the broken ribs punctured your lung. If the Price woman hadn’t been there, we’d still be looking for your body.”

Price woman.
For a second, he didn’t understand; then more memories trickled back. The grave. There’d been a woman—a possible connection. He knew Blackwell now as he’d never known him before, and with an actual lead… “I want this case.”

“
Your body, Jack.” Bing surged to his feet, his voice tinged with anger and exasperation. “Do you understand what I’m saying? You were that close.”

He’d been closer than his captain thought. He remembered that light, the floating feeling, the out-of-body sensation. He remembered someone being there with him on the other side, how he had reached out to that presence. But it hadn’t worked. Apparently, he hadn’t been ready. The pain had returned. Then he saw the woman.

The Price woman. “
I want to talk to her. She has to be in with Blackwell. How would she know where to find me? He sent her to check on me. Or she got nervous.”

Bing shook his head. “She’s a damn artist. I’m not saying I like her, but she’s not a criminal. You have to stop thinking about this. You’re on medical leave. And you’re officially off the case.”

Jack swore a blue streak.

“
Forget Blackwell, dammit,” Bing growled, but when he continued after a moment, he lowered his voice again. “You’re losing perspective, Jack. I’m telling you this as a friend.”

He had no friends. All he had was his badge and his mission to see Brady Blackwell dead. “You have to keep an eye on the woman for me.”

Until he got out and he could do it himself. She would lead him to Blackwell. In his mind, she was all tied in with the pain. He’d about died of it on the trip from the woods to her house.

She hadn’t looked like much—disheveled, hair plastered to her head, wet from the snow, eyes wild. She’d smelled like paint. And just thinking of paint made his body pulse with pain all over again. He felt the blood run out of his head. He drew a slow breath to steady himself as he blinked.

“
Dammit, Jack—”

“
What do we have?” he cut Bing off. “Doesn’t being half-dead earn me the right to some answers?”

A bleak look settled on the captain’s face. “The DNA, if the lab can make it work. A generic el cheapo sheer shower curtain with no other fingerprints than yours and Ashley Price’s. Shoe-print casts, size twelve, men’s. Pattern not in the shoe-print database. But we have a fair idea of the shovel used to dig the grave; standard-issue army-entrenching tool, triangle tip, one side serrated.”

His lips narrowed for a second. “The kicker is, I was sitting just up the road, handing out a speeding ticket. I saw Ashley Price drive by.”

“
Who else?”

“
The snowplow for one. And the mailman. Old Arnie Martin drove by too. Mrs. Smutzky. Couple of cars I didn’t recognize. I was paying attention to the people I was ticketing.” He rubbed his hand over his knee. “We canvassed the area as soon as you were found. Nobody reported seeing any strange cars pulled over in the hours before you were discovered.”

Jack nodded while he gritted his teeth against the new wave of pain that washed over his body. Whatever drugs they’d given him were wearing off. Good. He wanted to be able to think clearly. He wanted to remember.

“
Is someone watching the Price woman?”

“
Forget her,” Bing snapped. “She had nothing to do with this.”

I’ll be the judge of that.

He had a lead after all these years, a living, breathing, tangible link to Blackwell. He held on to that thought with everything he had. She might have fooled Bing, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to fool him.

“
Let it go. That’s an order.”

He looked his captain in the eyes, preparing for a shit storm as he said, “Shannon Sullivan, the third victim, was my sister.”

A long, tension-charged moment passed as Bing stared at him. “So this hobby of yours is not a hobby. It’s personal.” His expression darkened as he put two and two together. “I don’t believe in coincidences, not in one this big.” His voice sharpened. “Have you followed Blackwell here? Is that why you showed up at my department last year, asking me for a job? You knew something?”

Jack said nothing as the man’s hands fisted on his knees.

“
You knew there was a damn serial killer in my town, and you said nothing to me?” Anger heated the captain’s voice.

“
I wasn’t sure. I was trying to figure it out.” He’d be damned if he apologized for it. “Blackwell killed my sister.”

Bing pushed to his feet, jaw tight, eyes flashing, about as pissed as Jack had ever seen him. “I can’t talk to you about this right now. I’m gonna strangle you if I stay. Hell, I liked you, Jack. You’re a fine detective, one of the best I’ve ever worked with. But you crossed a line here.”

He wasn’t sure he cared at this stage.

The captain stalked to the door but then stopped to look back with a scowl. “You sure it was Blackwell?”

“
One hundred percent.”

A muscle ticked in the man’s face. “Brady Blackwell, one of the most wanted serial killers of the decade, confirmed in Broslin. You know what this means? Freaking FBI all over my town.”

Jack’s jaw clamped tight. He needed to get the hell out of here before the FBI mucked up every clue and lead. Before Ashley Price could disappear.

He glanced around. “Where are my badge and my gun?” A sick cold spread in his stomach.