Evil Never Dies (The Lizzy Gardner Series Book 6) (22 page)

She was woozy, but she’d pretended to be completely out of it as he carried her from the wine cellar and up the stairs to the living room, waiting for him to leave her side for one damn minute. But he hadn’t left her side. He’d carried her to the couch and then made himself comfortable. The weirdo had snuggled close and kept his arm around her as if they were boyfriend and girlfriend living in a house on the river.

It took some effort, but she managed to push her legs from the bed. She was worse off than she’d first thought. Her mind was relatively active and clear, but her body wasn’t responding to her brain’s directives.

She could hear the psycho talking to someone at the door. It wasn’t the kid he often complained about because she could hear a voice . . . a woman’s voice. They were questioning him about something, but he was playing coy, making jokes, and having a good laugh.

Adrenaline made her heart pump faster. She tried to scream, but her voice was gone. She needed to get out of there.

When she slid off the side of the bed, she bumped her hip against the wooden frame and fell to the floor. She grasped the carpeted floor, feeling the nylon fibers between her fingers, using the strands to pull herself to the door. She needed to hurry. Her body had been mutilated, and yet she no longer felt any pain. She was way past feeling anything at all. Her arms were weak, but she had to be strong.

It seemed like forever before she finally got to the door. Using the wall for support, she pushed herself upward to her knees, relieved when she managed to grasp the doorknob.

Her efforts were all for nothing.

It was no use.

The door had been locked from the other side. Bastard had thought of everything. She glanced toward the window, thankful she could still hear people talking at the door. She felt so tired. She couldn’t pass out now.

Please don’t leave me here. Please don’t leave.

Crawling on all fours, she made it halfway across the room before she was on her belly again, snaking her way across the room. Her right leg gave out first. Whatever he had given her was just now taking effect.
No. No. No.

Come on. You can do it. Not much farther to go.

She already knew she wouldn’t have the strength to open the window. She needed to throw something at it. Break it if she could. But with what?

There was a lamp and a clock on the bedside table. There were books set within bronzed bookends on the bottom shelf. Just another foot or two to go. She headed that way.

Jessica started the conversation by pulling out her badge and asking Jake Polly straight up if he knew anything about the whereabouts of Claire Kerley.

Although the man looked sufficiently surprised by the badge and the question, he pulled himself together and said, “Lizzy, how nice to see you again.”

Lizzy grunted.

“Now, who is this person you’re looking for?”

“Claire Kerley.” He was a creepy man, Jessica thought, no doubt about it. He had a wild look about him, and he seldom blinked. She noticed a bruise on his jaw and more than one scratch on his neck. As Lizzy had mentioned, his hands were covered with scrapes.

Restless, Lizzy stepped away. She walked along, staying close to the side of the house. It was obvious that she was trying to get a peek through a window.

“What is she doing? Do you have a search warrant?”

“Why? Do I need one?”

“I have nothing to hide, if that’s what you’re asking, but I must say I don’t appreciate her wandering around my property without permission. Please tell me what’s going on.”

“I’ll tell you exactly what’s going on,” Lizzy said as she marched back to the door.

“Lizzy,” Jessica said, “let me handle this.” She turned back to Polly. “Claire Kerley is missing, and we have reason to believe she’s in the area. We’re going house to house. Nothing personal.”

The lie seemed to appease the man somewhat.

“Now that we’re here, though,” Lizzy said in the most cheerful voice she could conjure up, “I would love to know how long you’ve lived by the river.”

“A few years,” he answered unhappily.

“You must love it.” Lizzy was obviously buying time. She took in a whiff. “The air is so pristine. I love the smell of the river. Have you heard of any neighbors planning on putting their place on the market?”

Clearly, he was not a fan of Lizzy’s, but he managed to force a smile. “No, I’m sorry.” When Lizzy opened her mouth to ask him another question, he turned to Jessica. “Nice as it is to chat with you two, I’m really quite busy.”

“It looks like you have a dock leading to the water,” Lizzy said. “Do you mind if we have a look around?”

“In fact, I do.”

A loud crash sounded from inside the house.

Lizzy looked at Jessica. “What was that?”

“Is someone else inside the house?” Jessica asked the man.

“No. I have a cat, and the animal is always knocking things over.”

“I hate to bother you too much longer, Mr. Polly, but I don’t think my friend will be able to leave until she’s had a look around.”

“Not without a warrant. I have been generous enough with answering your questions. I’m afraid we’re done here.”

Jessica tried to stall, but it was no use. He was about to close the door.

“I know who you are,” Lizzy said.

He raised one eyebrow.

“Zachary Tucker.”

His forehead creased, and then he sneered at Lizzy.

And that’s when Jessica realized Lizzy had been right all along.

Before he could shut the door, Lizzy shoved her foot past Jessica into the doorway, causing the door to bounce off the edge of her sole.

Another loud crash inside. One of the windows to their right had been cracked.

“It’s the girl,” Jessica said. Both she and Lizzy drove their shoulders with all their might into the door, knocking the man back and sending them crashing inside after him.

He took off across the living room, disappeared through the sliding doors to the balcony overlooking the river. Jessica followed after him, leaving Lizzy to run out through the front door and around the house to cut him off if he tried to escape.

An ear-piercing scream cut through the air. By the time Lizzy got to the backyard, Zachary Tucker was dragging his body toward a kayak along the riverbank. One leg was bent sharply at an odd angle, clearly shattered in more than one place. She looked up at the balcony and realized the idiot had jumped. She stepped over to him and put the barrel of her gun to the back of his head. “Please do keep crawling, Zachary. I’d love to squeeze this trigger.”

He slumped to the grass and closed his eyes.

Jessica walked up from behind and cuffed the man’s arms behind his back. “I’ll take it from here. You find the girl.”

Lizzy rushed around the house again, this time in search of Claire Kerley. She made her way back inside and down the hallway to the door of the front room where the window had been broken. It was locked. “Are you in there, Claire?”

There was a faint knock on the wall.

“I’m going to shoot the lock off this door. Knock again if you’re out of the way of the door.”

Another knock sounded.

Lizzy fired at the lock. The door swung open.

Inside the bedroom, lying on the floor between the bed and window, was the missing girl.

She had thrown every item in the room at the window. Glass crunched beneath Lizzy’s feet as she crossed the room.

The girl’s face was swollen and bruised. Her lips were cracked. She looked as if she were on the brink of death. She’d been stripped of clothes and every bit of her flesh was covered with cuts and bruises. Parts of her body had been painted. The monster had used her as a human canvas. Her wrists and ankles were raw and infected, but Lizzy did her best not to visibly react to Claire’s condition.

She pulled her phone from her pocket and dialed 911. Next she called Jimmy Martin and told him they had found Claire Kerley and gave him the address. After hanging up, she pulled a pillow from the bed and placed it beneath the girl’s head, then yanked off the sheet, too, and used it to cover her. “You did good,” she told Claire. “I need you to hang in there for a while longer. I’m going to take a quick look around, make sure no one else needs help. I’ll be right back—I promise. An ambulance is on its way.”

Lizzy walked briskly through the house. She stepped outside onto the balcony and peered over the railing at Jessica and Zachary Tucker, still flat on his belly in the grass with his leg canted at its freakish angle. “I found the girl. She’s pretty beat-up, but she’s going to be all right. I also called it in. An ambulance is on its way.”

“This one says his leg hurts,” Jessica said.

“Really? That’s too bad.”

“Yeah,” Jessica agreed. “I was thinking the same thing.”

“I’m going to go back and sit with Claire.”

“I should have listened to you from the start,” Jessica said.

“We’re here, aren’t we?”

Lizzy walked back into the house, then stopped to look at a painting propped on an easel in the corner of the living room. The picture was grotesque. Claire had been chained and cuffed to a wall. Her hair fell over parts of her face, but her eyes were wild and deranged, her teeth snapping.

Lizzy wanted to rip the canvas to shreds, but she couldn’t destroy evidence so she walked away. Drawn by a strong smell and afraid someone else could need her help, Lizzy made her way downstairs. It was damp and dark, and she had to use her shirtsleeve to cover her mouth and nose as she continued down the stairs. Inside a wine cellar, atop a dirty mattress and rolled partially within a bloody tarp, was a dead body. A woman. Her eyes had been carved out of her head.

Lizzy gagged as she ran from the room.

She needed to get Claire out of here.

By the time she got back to the room upstairs, Claire had crawled to the door. “Come on,” Lizzy said. “Let’s get you outside and get some fresh air.” The girl weighed next to nothing. Lizzy propped her on the edge of the bed and fastened the sheet around her again before carrying her down the hallway and out of this nightmare.

Sirens sounded in the distance, growing louder with each step.

“I’m going to live,” the girl whispered as Lizzy set her on her feet and they made their way down the walkway.

Lizzy held her close to her side. “That’s right. You’re a survivor, Claire.”

“I need to talk to Mom.”

“Let’s get into the car, and then we’ll give her a call, OK?”

As soon as Lizzy and Claire were sitting safely in the backseat of her car, they called Claire’s mother. Lizzy told her that her daughter was alive, and then she held the phone close to the side of Claire’s face so she could talk.

“I love you, Mom.”

They both wept.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Hours later, Lizzy talked to both Brittany and Cathy on the phone. She told them what had happened and that it was safe to come out of the house. They were shocked to learn that Jake Polly might be the Sacramento Strangler. For the hundredth time, her sister talked about moving to another state. Lizzy would talk to her later, convince her to stay. They needed each other.

As soon as Lizzy said her goodbyes, Jimmy motioned for her to come with him, letting her know they had Zachary Tucker back from the hospital with his broken leg set and they were about to interrogate him. She followed Jimmy deeper into the task force offices, to an already crowded ten-by-ten dimly lit room adjoining the interrogation room.

Behind the glass, she saw Kenneth Mitchell sitting at a table across from Zachary, whose leg was in a cast and propped stiffly on a chair to one side. A wheelchair was parked in the corner. Jessica, along with three other agents, sat up front in the observation room. Jimmy and Lizzy took a seat in the back.

“How long has Claire Kerley been staying with you?” Mitch
ell asked Zachary.

“I don’t recall.”

“How did she come to be in your house?”

“She was hitchhiking, so I thought I’d give her a ride. She told me she hated her family and her boyfriend and she wanted to get high. She’s a sassy one.”

“So you brought her home with you?”

“I did.”

“Tell us about the wine cellar.”

“What would you like to know?”

“It looked as if you did some renovating. Tell us about the bolts and cuffs that were found embedded in the walls. The ones with your fingerprints all over them.”

“Oh, that. It was Claire’s idea.”

“She asked to be hung by metal cuffs?”

“She certainly did.”

“You painted her portrait, is that right?”

“Of course. Lovely Claire wanted something different than the others, so I gave her exactly what she asked for.”

“Speaking of the others, let’s talk about some of them. I would like to start with Lorry Jo Raciti, the woman found near the American River, not too far from where you live.”

“I don’t recognize the name. Never met her.”

“Maybe this picture will help jog your memory.” Mitchell slid an eight-by-ten color photograph of her body in front of him.

“Ahh,” he said.

“You remember now?”

“Perhaps,” he said, transfixed by the photo.

“So, what were you thinking after you killed her?”

Zachary didn’t say anything. Merely leaned closer for a better look.

“We have your journal in our possession. No reason for you to keep it all bottled up. It’s over, Zachary.”

The killer had yet to take his eyes off the woman he’d killed by the river. “I was thinking how lucky she was to be one of the chosen ones.” Zachary looked up and smiled at Kenneth Mitchell. “Her eyes were so blue. They flickered between wild and fearful. I could see her heart pumping against her chest. She was magnificent. My plan was to paint her next—from memory, of course—once I was finished with Claire.”

Jessica looked over her shoulder and made eye contact with Lizzy.

Jimmy gave her the thumbs-up.

They had their man. He had just confessed to a murder.

There was a pause during the interrogation when Zachary asked for an energy drink, specifically a Red Bull. He refused to go on until his request was fulfilled.

The questioning went on like that for another two hours. Zachary Tucker/Jake Polly seemed more than content to talk about his victims as Mitchell held up one picture after another.

“So why did you kill them?”

“It’s my calling.”

“Killing is your calling?”

“Definitely. I am surprised it took you people so long to find me.”

“Why is that?”

“I left you enough clues.” He gestured to all the pictures scattered across the table. “It was all there, all these years, pointing in my direction.”

When Mitchell asked him about Gillian Winslow, the therapist his parents had hired and assigned as Zachary’s trustee, Zachary decided he’d given them enough information. “I think I’ll request a lawyer now. I want the same deal as the Green River Killer.”

“What deal is that?”

“I want life.”

“Anything else you want to tell us before a lawyer is appointed to you?”

“Yes. I want the world to know that nobody out there really gets it.”

“Nobody gets what, exactly?”

“Evil never dies.”

“Can you explain?”

“Of course. You can catch a killer like me and throw away the key, but there’s always someone else out there slicing and dicing, killing people just because they can. Me,” he said, pointing to his chest, “I am a natural born killer. I killed my own sister, and if given the chance, I would do it again.”

Lizzy could see now why she hadn’t recognized Jake Polly from Hayley’s sketch. Kathryn had been right about his magnetism, and that was something most artists just couldn’t translate to paper. Since Kathryn had seen him last, his nose had definitely been broken, maybe more than once—by his victims, Lizzy hoped. His hair was short and straight, much different from the thick, wavy hair Kathryn had described. Zachary had no facial hair whatsoever.

But they had found him, and that’s all that mattered.

“Good work,” Jimmy said. “That’s officially a wrap for me.”

There was a mischievous glint in his eye.

“You’re finally going to retire?” Lizzy asked.

He jingled the coins inside his pants pockets. “That’s right. I want to learn to sail. I want to travel and spend time with the grandkids.”

“Good for you. I hope you really do it this time . . . for your sake.”

“What about you, Lizzy? Are you going to keep fighting the good fight?”

“Nope. I’m finished being a PI. It took losing Jared to realize this isn’t the life I want to lead, and that’s something I’ll never forget.”

Jimmy looked surprised. “No more investigative work?”

“I’ve had enough. And Zachary Tucker is right.”

“About what?”

“Evil never dies. It never ends. Jared knew that. He got it. But me? I kept thinking I could make a dent.” She shook her head. “It’s impossible. For every evil person caught and locked behind bars, there’s two more waiting on the sidelines.”

“You made a difference, Lizzy. That counts for a lot.”

“Thanks, Jimmy. I’m wishing you the best. Stay in touch, will you?”

“I’ll send you a postcard. Let you know what I’m up to.”

They came to their feet, smiled at each other, and then he gave her one of his comforting bear hugs.

Mitchell came out of the interrogation room. He raised his arms and tried to get a kink out of his shoulder. His eyes were bloodshot. “Lock that crazy son of a bitch up until he has a goddamn attorney. We’ve got what we need for now.”

Jimmy and Mitchell stepped to the side and shared a few words before Jimmy headed off. Three officers brought Zachary Tucker out of the room. His arms and legs were now chained to his wheelchair.

“Hey, Lizzy Gardner,” he said cheerily, metal chains clinking as he gestured her way. He looked at Mitchell. “Can I talk to her for a minute?”

Mitchell looked at Lizzy, who nodded her approval.

Mitchell motioned for the guard, letting them know it was OK to push Zachary that way.

“What? No privacy?”

“Never again,” Mitchell told him.

Zachary set his wicked gaze on Lizzy. He looked as if he wanted to hypnotize her with his eyes. “Good thing you caught up to me when you did, because your niece was on my mind.”

Lizzy didn’t flinch.

“I bet you’re thinking the same thing I think every time I have my next victim in sight.”

“What’s that?”

“Kill, kill, kill, kill.”

“No,” she said. “That’s not what I’m thinking at all.”

“Tell me, please.”

The corner of her mouth turned up slightly before she said, “I’m thinking about you spending the rest of your life behind bars, hopefully in solitary confinement, every day alone with no one to talk to, no freedom whatsoever.”

“And how does that make you feel?”

“Very happy.”

“You talked to Kathryn, didn’t you?” he asked.

“Several times.”

“Did she show you the picture I painted for her?”

“Nope. Didn’t mention it.”

A flash of anger crossed over his face, and yet he recovered quickly. “She’s in love with me, isn’t she?”

“Not even a little bit.”

His eyes searched her face for the truth. “You’re lying. Want to know how I know?”

“How?”

“It takes a liar to know one.”

“OK, that’s enough chatter,” Mitchell said. “Get his ugly mug out of here.”

The guards pushed Zachary’s wheelchair out of the room. Agents and security filed out after them until there were only three people left in the room: Mitchell, Jessica, and Lizzy.

“You did good,” Mitchell said. “Both of you.”

“Thank you, sir,” Jessica said.

“Jared Shayne was right about you, Jessica Pleiss.”

“How so?”

“He said from the beginning that you were going to be a top-notch profiler. Judging by what I’ve seen so far, he was right. Your keen assessment of the crimes and the reconstruction of events were point on. I’m going to put in a good word for you at Quantico.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Now get out of here, both of you. Go get some rest.”