The Broken (The Apostles) (15 page)

“Reaction from parents?”

Watson dropped his hands in his lap. “Concern by most. Outrage by a few. Two families pulled their boys.”

“I’m sorry.” And Hayden was. Serial killing, any killing, had a ripple effect that reached far and wide.

“Not half as sorry as I am.” He straightened the desk phone then folded his hands in his lap. “So what can I do to help?”

“Help me paint a picture of Jason. Give me the colors and textures of his days, his work, his relationships.”

“Jason was an exemplary employee. He started as a kitchen hand and within a year had worked his way up to kitchen manager. He kept meticulous records, never complained, and willingly took on new and challenging tasks.” The director handed him Jason’s file, the contents nothing short of glowing.

“What was Jason’s schedule like?” Hayden asked.

“As a live-in, he worked three weeks on, one week off.”

“Was he ever late? Did he ever miss any work?”

“Until this week, he had a perfect attendance record.” Watson pulled out the work schedule and handed it to Hayden. “I’m sure this will interest you.”

It did. Each of the Butcher attacks occurred while Erickson was off work.

“Has he contacted you at all since he took off two weeks ago?”

“Not a word. He was due back here on Monday.” Five days ago.

“And you weren’t concerned about his failure to show?” Hayden asked.

“We were, but Beth mentioned that he’d been going to his family’s cabin during his weeks off, and she got the impression he was having some family issues. Since Jason had plenty of vacation time banked and a great work record, we were going to give him until Monday before doing anything, including contacting the police. Honestly, we were beginning to think he might have been the victim of some crime.”

Hayden set aside the schedule. “How did Jason get along with others here?”

“Everyone liked him. Staff, students, even visiting parents said kind things about him.” Beside him Kate stiffened. “Jason was quiet and shy, but he was always pleasant and respectful.”

“Did he have any close friends or confidants?”

“None. He was a lonely kid, but a good one.”

Kid.
Interesting word choice to describe Jason, a man in his mid-twenties. Shades of paternal feelings. “Girlfriend?” Hayden asked.

“I think he had a special girl in his life. I never met her, but I remember him picking flowers from the academy gardens to take to her.”

“Did he ever talk about his childhood, his family?”

“No, I think he spent his weeks off with his mother, but I never met her. I heard in town that she’s a bit of a recluse, hadn’t been out of the house in five or six years.”

Kate’s entire body tensed, and her leg started to bounce. He casually reached over and set his hand on her knee. He knew this was hard on her, but there was no way he’d leave her alone at the cottage. Plus, her intimate knowledge of Jason might give him a different insight.

“About six months ago, around January, did you notice any changes in Jason? Or were there any changes here at the academy?” Hayden was fishing for triggers, anything that would explain the onset of the slayings in January.

“No. Jason was very much an even-keeled individual, very predictable.”

“Do you have any idea where he may be?”

“Not a clue. As I said, he was very quiet and private.”

Hayden went fishing and came up with an empty net. “I’d like to see Jason’s things and the places where he slept and worked.”

The Hope Academy kitchen smelled of pine cleaner, and the stainless steel appliances were so clean Hayden could see the tight lines of Kate’s mouth reflected on their surfaces. Likewise, Jason kept his dorm room tidy and unadorned, except for one small picture. On his nightstand sat a photo of a little brown-haired girl dressed in a blue princess costume with a tall gold crown. She held a baby on her lap dressed as a pumpkin. Both smiled at the camera with chocolate-smeared faces.

Next to him Kate gasped. He pictured her eyes without the brown contacts: green, the same color as the little girl in the photo.

Other than the picture, which needed much further thought, he found nothing significant. No calendars, address books, notebooks, and no souvenirs from six dead broadcasters.

The director escorted them to the main house and down the hall. As they passed the door marked
INFIRMARY
, Watson stopped.

“You know, there’s one more thing,” Watson said. “Earlier this year Jason started taking some kind of prescription medication. Because we’re very strict around here about any drugs, he kept the meds in the infirmary.”

“What was he taking?”

Watson shook his head and took out a set of keys that jingled on a large silver loop. “Our staff physician, Dr. Trowbridge, keeps track of that type of stuff, but he’s out of town at a conference.” He opened a small locked cabinet. “Here we go.”

The prescription bottle label read
ANAFRANIL
.

Kate nudged closer. “What’s it for?”

“Antidepressant,” Hayden said. “A drug historically used to treat obsessive-compulsive and panic disorders. When exactly did Jason start taking the Anafranil?”

Watson tapped the bottle against his palm. “January. I’m sure it was January because we had some changes in our employee health insurance plan, and I remember Jason checking to make sure prescription drugs were still covered.”

“January,” Kate repeated. “The same month the first broadcaster was murdered.”

Chapter Ten

Saturday, June 13, 8:15 a.m.
Dorado Bay, Nevada

A
little girl in a sherbet-orange sundress with green slime running from her nose screamed into Kate’s ear. Kate dropped the
Field & Stream
magazine she’d been pretending to read and grabbed the side of her head.

“Oh, Pammy, come here, doll baby.” The little girl’s mother picked up the screaming child and held her to her chest and started to rock. “I’m so sorry,” the mother said to Kate. “She has an ear infection, and she’s miserable.”

Kate mouthed “Oh” and settled the magazine in front of her face.

She and Hayden sat in the Dorado Bay Medical Center, a small operation with a part-time doctor and one nurse, as they waited to meet with the physician who prescribed the antidepressant to Jason six months ago. On the waiting room chair next to her, Hayden pecked away at his laptop, jotting page after page of notes from their meeting at the academy. She continued to be amazed at Hayden’s total focus. If she hadn’t seen that flare of heat in his eyes at breakfast, the one that still warmed her cheeks when she thought about it, she’d swear he was some kind of super secret robo-agent.

“Do you two have any kids yet?” the woman asked when the little girl stopped screaming and climbed off her lap.

“Kids? Him, me, us?” Kate asked with a start. “No!” The idea of her and Hayden being a couple was insane. She didn’t do “couples.” In college, she’d dated but never more than two or three dates with the same man, and she’d never slept with any of them, mostly because she never found a man she connected with. It was ironic. In college her classmates called her “everybody’s girl” because she dated so much, but they’d been wrong. She’d belonged to no one. And never would. As for kids? Not in this lifetime. The Butcher’s knife had done too much physical damage.

“Just wait,” the mother in the doctor’s office said. “Kids will change your life. Mostly for the better.” She smiled at the child who toddled over to a fish tank, where she took a long green string of mucus from her nose and wiped it on the front of the glass.

“Oh, Pammy, don’t do that!” The mother whipped a tissue from her purse and swiped at the child’s nose, which sent Pammy into another nuclear meltdown.

Still Hayden typed on his computer without missing a stroke. Was he human?

A nurse in a smock with blue monkeys poked her head into the reception area. “Dr. Gray will see you, Pammy.”

“No!” The little girl kicked as her mother picked her up and carried her toward the exam rooms. As the door shut, Kate watched Pammy run to a man in a white coat and kick him in the shin.

“Dr. Gray will see you after this patient,” the nurse said before she shut the door.

Twenty minutes later, the nurse led them to one of the exam rooms, where Dr. Gray was rubbing his shin. He sported two Pammy-size sandal prints on his pants.

“Agent Reed. Ms. Johnson.” The doctor nodded as he began washing his hands.

“Why did you prescribe an antidepressant to Jason Erickson?” Hayden asked. No foaming the runway, no greasing the skids. Hayden could read people well, and it was obvious that he knew they didn’t have much time with Jason’s doctor.

“Panic attacks,” Dr. Gray said.

“When did they start? How did they present?”

“I prescribed the antidepressant after the first of the year. Classic case. Palpitations, sweats, chest pain, nausea, feelings that he didn’t exist.”

“Was this Erickson’s first time on antidepressants?”

“That I know of.” The doctor rinsed his hands and dried them with a paper towel from the dispenser. “I’ve only been seeing Jason for the past five years.”

“Why a tricyclic? It’s an older class of antidepressant and not widely prescribed now, given that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors do the same job with fewer side effects.”

The doctor dropped the towel in the trash can. “Are you a physician, Agent Reed?”

“Forensic psychologist.”

The doctor put his hands in the pockets of his white coat and tilted his head in thoughtful contemplation. “A man who spends a good deal of time in the criminal mind. Tough calling.”

Hayden pointed to the shoe marks on the doctor’s pants. “So is dealing with patients like Pammy.”

For the first time, the doctor smiled, and Kate realized again how good Hayden was at figuring out how to get into people’s heads to get what he needed.

“It’s challenging.” The doctor walked gingerly down the hall toward another exam room.

“So why put Jason on a drug with undesirable side effects?” Hayden asked.

“Because Jason insisted on the tricyclic, even after I warned him of the accompanying dizziness and vision problems.”

“Why?”

“Apparently his mother took the same drug when she was younger and suffering from anxiety attacks. Jason said the drug worked for her and insisted on taking what she used.”

Kate remembered Kendra’s panic attacks. Screechy affairs with flying dishes, destroyed books, and overturned furniture that ended with the panicked woman cowering in a corner. Even now, the skin on Kate’s forearms pebbled at the memory of her out-of-control mother.

“I’ve been monitoring Jason for the past six months, and he is doing very well. No complaints, and he said his panic attacks all but disappeared.”

They reached exam room two. Kate saw the tick in Hayden’s jaw. Time was running out.

Hayden asked, “In your professional opinion, Dr. Gray, do you think Jason was of a mindset to murder those six broadcasters?”

The doctor picked up the chart on the plastic inbox of the exam room. “Absolutely not. I can’t see Jason stabbing those women. He may have had a few panic attacks, but in my opinion, he’s no killer.”

*  *  *

Saturday, June 13, 8:30 a.m.
Carson City, Nevada

“Get me a goddamn drink.”

The tone, more than the words, made Robyn Banks cringe. Mike hadn’t always talked to her that way. Three years ago he’d treated her like a queen. No, like a goddess. She’d been the center of his celestial universe.

Until Katrina Erickson ruined everything.

Mike stumbled over the hole in the carpet of their living room, where she sat at the card table that served as her computer desk, trying to decide if she should really hire a private investigator with the company name Cheap Dicks. But she needed cheap right now. She had to track down Katrina Erickson. Her job at KTTL-TV depended on it.

“I said get me a goddamn drink. Jack and water.”

Robyn turned from her computer but refused to see the wreck of a man before her. Instead she concentrated on her wreck of a home, specifically at the wall that once held two Cassatts but now featured only two holes, the exact size and shape of Mike’s fist. “It’s too early for whiskey,” she said.

“Then make it a fucking Bloody Mary.”

She forced a smile. “How about pancakes?”

“You cook like shit.”

She ran her hands through her hair and massaged her scalp. She was trying. Didn’t anyone see that? The news director at work? Mike here at home? She pressed the sides of her head. Didn’t they see she was trying to hold it together? “I’ll get us cereal, make some juice.”

“For Christ’s sake, Robyn, stop pretending.”

“Pretending?”

Mike threw his arms wide. “That we’re fucking normal.”

She straightened her spine. No, they weren’t normal. They never had been. Not now. Not in the past. They’d been special at one time. Not so long ago they were destined to be Dorado Bay’s Golden Couple. She held the nightly anchor spot, the shiniest of all stars, at KTTL-TV for eight years, and Mike Muldoon was the star of his own shining universe. He had been king of all pension administrators and had amassed a horde of golden treasure that suited her lifestyle.

“We could be more normal.” This morning she didn’t hold back the bitterness. “You could try to get a job.”

“Newsflash, baby. People don’t want to hire an ex-con to handle their precious retirement dollars, especially one charged and found guilty of embezzling six million bucks.”

No, it was $6.8 million, and the charges included not only embezzlement of health and welfare plans, but also the defrauding of pension funds. When Mike screwed up, he did it in a grand way. Justice had been swift for Mike. He had spent two years in prison. When he came out, he was a changed man. But Robyn had stayed at his side through it all. Even as the U.S. government had stripped away everything she and Mike owned: the Cassatts, vacation homes, her Jag. But they hadn’t taken their home, a Victorian fixer-upper they had no money to fix.

She blinked back memories of what they no longer had and held out her hand. “Come on, Mikey, let’s go get some breakfast.”