Tattooed (38 page)

Not at Kenzie.

Not at the gun that lay on the passenger seat, gleaming under the streetlights.

52

A
little later—Kate had lost all sense of time when she heard a knock on the front door of the Richardsons’ house. She had been resting there, despite patrol’s request to take her to the hospital. “I’m fine,” she told them.

Kate had made one phone call when she arrived at Muriel’s. To Finn. When he heard what had happened, he rushed over, his face white, his eyes stunned.

But he didn’t ask Kate any questions. He could see she was in no shape for them. Instead, he took Muriel into the kitchen and kept her busy preparing soup for the patient.

There was another knock, louder this time. Finn and Muriel must not have been able to hear it. Kate slowly got to her feet and walked to the door, steadying herself on furniture. She opened the door.

“Kate!” Ethan rushed toward her and pulled her into his arms. “Why did you refuse to go to the hospital?”

“Too tired,” Kate said. Despite Ethan’s arms around her, everything kept lurching. “I need to lie down.” He led her back to the sofa.

She sank back and lowered her head on the cushion.

Ethan leaned over her. He brushed a wisp of hair that was encrusted with blood. “You need to get this stitched. You are still bleeding.”

“It’s superficial, Ethan.” Her eyelids kept drifting closed.

“Kate, look at me.”

She opened her eyes.

“I’m taking you to the hospital.”

“Tomorrow,” she murmured.

“No. Tonight.”

He slipped a hand behind her back and eased her up. “I need to ask you some questions, but they can wait.”

He led her to the front hall, leaning down to help her with her shoes. “For heaven’s sake,” Kate muttered. But she couldn’t bend over. The pain in her head was crushing.

Two hours later, the emergency room physician had stapled her scalp wound together— “fairly superficial, although you may have a small scar at your hairline” —
and confirmed that she had a concussion. “Ever had one before?” she asked Kate.

“No.”

“Ever been hit in the head before?”

Kate closed her eyes. The lights were so bright in here. Pain crashed back and forth through her head. “No.”

Ethan glanced at the doctor. “She was hit on the head a year ago. Knocked unconscious.”

The doctor looked at Kate. “Do you want to tell me about that?”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot.” God
.
The concussion must be bad to make her forget about that attack. “I was hit on the head and passed out.”

“Did you have any of the same symptoms as you are experiencing tonight?”

“Just a headache. And blurry vision. But it went away.”

“Ms. Lange, you will require rest, a darkened room and no stimuli for the next few days. If the symptoms persist, we will need to reassess you. If you had a previous concussion, it can take longer for this one to heal. We want to keep an eye on brain swelling.”

Ethan helped Kate off the examining table.

“Whoa.” Kate swayed.

Ethan put a steadying arm around her waist. “Can you walk?”

“Yes.” There was no way she was spending the night in hospital. She’d done that last year. She wasn’t going to make it an annual event.

The drive home was dark, silent. Kate closed her eyes and rested her head against the seat.

“Ethan,” she murmured.

“Yes?”

“I almost killed Kenzie.”

He put his hand on her knee. “It was self-defense, Kate.”

Darkness billowed through her head. Clouds and clouds of darkness, cloaking her anger and her fear in the soothing comfort of night.

She was half aware of Ethan walking her upstairs. He laid her on the bed, drew the covers over her and closed the door behind him.

When she next awoke, it was two in the afternoon.

“I’ve got some tea all ready for you,” Nat said,
smiling.

Kate pushed herself up on her pillows. “Have I got a scoop for you.”

53

F
inn knocked on Kenzie’s hotel room door.

She’d had her shoulder set at the hospital last night, and had been released on bail after lunch. She called him as soon as they gave her back her phone. But she hadn’t been sure he would come.

She opened the door.

He stood in the hallway.

His gaze took in her sling, the bruises on her face.

But his eyes sliced right through her.

She forced a smile. “Come on in.”

“No, thanks.”

“I just wanted to explain—”

“I already know.”

His eyes said,
You are dead to me now.

“It was a mistake, Finn. I was young. McNally was controlling, abusive—”

“What about your mother?” His voice shot through her denials.

The police had “leaked” the fact to the press that she had been seen leaving her mother’s bedside just before Frances died.

Kenzie stared at him. Her eyes swam with tears.

Her mother had been sleeping when Kenzie slipped in through the back door. The room had been still. Peaceful, except for the sound of her respiration machine.

She brushed her lips against her mother’s cheek, still smooth, still warm.

“I love you, Mom.”

She gently lifted her mother’s head and removed the pillow.

Her mother’s eyes opened.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“Sweet dreams.” Kenzie placed the pillow gently over her mother’s face.

And held it there.

After a while, she lifted her mother’s head and slipped the pillow back. She smoothed a wisp of hair off her face.

“Be at peace.”

She brushed her thumb—the one with “tranquility” tattooed in Kanji—over her mother’s cheek.

And then she called Kate Lange.

A tear threatened to tremble.

“Enough.” Finn shoved his hands into his pockets. “I shouldn’t have come.”

“I know I don’t have the right to ask this of you…”

He stiffened.

“I know I’ll go to jail on that assault charge—” she couldn’t bring herself to speak of Kate in front of him “—but I wanted to ask you to look after Foo.” Her lip trembled.

His face softened. The tiniest fraction. “Okay.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m not doing it for you, Kenzie. I’m doing it for an innocent animal. He deserves a good home.”

“It’s not forever.”

His smile was grim. “Nothing is forever, Kenzie.”

He turned and walked away.

54

T
he team assembled in the war room. Ferguson elbowed open the door, carrying two trays of Tim Hortons coffee with a box of doughnuts hanging on for dear life on top of one of the trays.

They passed around the coffee, squabbling good-naturedly over the lone Boston Cream doughnut that was nestled amongst the others. Ethan drained his cup, soaking up the caffeine in his sleep-starved body. The sugar doughnut helped, but he really needed another coffee to feel remotely human.

“Okay, let’s get this party started,” Ferguson said, her eyes bright. “Ethan, what’s the status?”

“We’ve got Kenzie Sloane under arrest for the murder of Heather Rigby, although she still proclaims her innocence. Kate Lange stated that John McNally told her Kenzie shot Heather Rigby.”

“Do we have any evidence to back this up?”

He shook his head. “McNally is dead. All we have is what Kate says she heard him say. And that was after she’d been unconscious.”

The team exchanged looks. Not a great start to building the case.

“What about the gun?” Ferguson asked.

Ethan grimaced. “I don’t think they are going to find anything. Any original prints are now gone. In terms of the chain of evidence, Frances clearly had possession of the key to the storage room before giving it to Kate Lange. Kate gave the key to Kenzie and accompanied her into the storage locker, so unless she was carrying it on her person, the gun was stored by Frances in the locker. And…Heather’s cause of death was inconclusive. It wasn’t clear if she died from the gun wound or the asphyxiation, so even if we could prove Kenzie fired the gun, I doubt we’d get a conviction.”

“Were Kenzie and McNally the only ones at the scene when Heather was killed?” Ethan asked.

Lamond shrugged. “The only one who is talking to us is Kate. Does she know if there were any other players?”

Ethan shook his head. “She told me that McNally and Kenzie only identified each other as being present during Heather’s murder.”

The mood in the room had sobered. “And what about McNally? Who shot him?”

“Kate. Self-defense.” Ethan’s voice was curt. Ferguson raised her brows at Lamond. Lamond shrugged.

“Did Kenzie shoot anyone?” Ferguson asked.

“No. All we’ve got on her is assault.”

“So do you think Frances Sloane’s confession still stands?”

Ethan shook his head. He wished he could make it stick, but he was sure that her son would fight it tooth and nail. Lack of capacity was sure to be bandied about by his legal team. And they could be right. “No. I think Kenzie did it. With McNally. But we have absolutely no proof Kenzie did it. We did find a tattoo kit and a rope in a bag hidden by the bunkers. We believe it belonged to McNally. We are hoping we can match the rope with the one used on Heather, but it’s a long shot.”

The way things were looking, the case could go from “missing girl” to “unsolved murder.”

It made him sick to think Kenzie was getting away with murder.

He wished Kate had shot her.

An eye for an eye.

But he knew Kate would never have gotten over it.

“Lamond, what did you find out about Frances Sloane’s death?” Ferguson asked, chewing thoughtfully on a honey cruller.

Lamond flipped open his notepad. “Her caregiver told me that she thought she saw Kenzie leaving through the back door that night.”

Ethan straightened. “You mean, she killed her mother?”

“Hard to say. But the caregiver did see her. And I checked the list of phone numbers on the call screen, and she had made a phone call to Kenzie about an hour before she died.”

“What did the autopsy results show?” Ferguson asked.

Lamond grimaced. “Basically, Mrs. Sloane stopped breathing. With her condition, that was entirely to be expected. Whether it happened as a result of the disease or from a pillow pressed over her airway, it’s hard to say. It would not have taken much pressure to kill her.” So there would be little or no evidence of trauma on her body.

The team digested that.

“So…Kenzie kills her mother to ensure the confession stands. But McNally keeps harassing them. And she decides to take both Kate and McNally down. But Kate takes McNally down.” Ethan rubbed his jaw. “What do you think?”

“Makes sense to me,” Ferguson said. “She wanted to get rid of all the loose ends. But why would she want to kill Kate?”

“I don’t know if she did,” Ethan said. “I think her hand was forced by McNally. He sent her a text that night. He was clearly escalating his behavior. Kate says that Frances had asked her over a week ago to give Kenzie a key to a storage room after she died. If Kenzie knew that the gun was hidden in the storage room, she would have to get it before she left town. Otherwise her brother would have found it and turned it in.”

“So, why did she have to drag Kate into it?”

“Because she told Kate that her sister was originally supposed to be McNally’s first victim… . She even got the same tattoo as Heather Rigby. She thought that Kate would recognize it and make the connection.”

Ethan exhaled. “McNally was a sick stalker. He had this thing about ‘marking’ his victims with tattoos.”

“I had read once that tattooing used to be a stigma and criminals were marked with it,” Lamond said.

“Could be that’s where he got the idea. Anyway, the raven was symbolic for McNally. It mated for life.”

“But why would he mark girls he was killing?”

“He wanted to be in control. They were ‘his’ and he had the power to kill them. Kenzie Sloane had one, too, according to Kate, but I think she was the queen bee. I think he wanted her to be the Bonnie to his Clyde. But she dumped him and became a celebrity tattoo artist, instead.”

“Good career move,” Lamond said.

“So, right now all we have is an assault charge on Kenzie. The gun she pointed at Kate was broken. They both knew it,” Ferguson said. “Damn.”

“Just what every celebrity tattoo artist needs to add a little street cred to their rep,” Ethan said, his eyes grim.

Unless they had a major break somewhere, Kenzie Sloane had gotten away with murder.

At least once.