Fear Nothing (48 page)

Now Phil gestured to a short hallway with two closed doors. He took the first, D.D. doing her best to provide cover with her one good hand.

Phil kicked in the door, revealing the walk-in closet. He conducted a quick search, covering the corners; then they were on to door number two. Master bath, D.D. thought. From inside, she could hear the sound of running water.

Phil tested the knob.

He gave a short nod to indicate that it was unlocked.

She resumed her flanking position.

Phil twisted the knob. Shoved hard on the door.

D.D. sprang inside, leading with Phil’s backup thirty-eight.

And there stood Adeline next to a bloody tub, a knife already arching over her bared wrist.

“No,” Phil yelled.

D.D. didn’t bother. Adrenaline. Danger. Determination. Everything she loved about her job.

D.D. pulled the trigger.

 • • • 

T
HE KNIFE WENT FLYING
across the room. Not a bad shot, single-handed, D.D. thought, though in truth, her target had been only five feet away.

The knife hit the floor. Phil was already on the move, kicking it farther away from Adeline.

The doctor didn’t move. She just stood there, surrounded by a sea of water and blood, and smiled at them.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she murmured.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” D.D. snapped, straightening. Looking behind Adeline, she could see a second female collapsed in the rosy tub. Shana.

“Slit her wrists,” Adeline said, a statement, not a question. “The price for her help. She’s already gone. I checked before unlocking the door.”

“Taking up where your family left off?” D.D. asked harshly. She was pissed off. She wasn’t sure why. The Rose Killer was dead, Shana Day clearly beyond help. The worst was over, and yet D.D.’s heart was still pounding, and she felt furious about the whole damn thing.

Standing before her, Adeline swayed slightly. The shock, adrenaline crash. The doctor placed a steadying hand on the edge of the tub. “Charlie killed those women,” she whispered.

“We know.”

“You’ll find hair. In my bedroom. Samuel Hayes. But not his fault. Charlie brought the strands to incriminate him.”

“We know that, too. Charlie targeted Hayes to be his fall guy. Except then Hayes literally fell. Off a ladder. Guy’s wheelchair bound. No way he did this.”

Adeline smiled wanly. “Good. In my closet, behind the bureau, in a cutout in the floor . . . Charlie left behind mason jars. Victims’ skin. Trying to mess . . . with my head. It worked.”

“For God’s sake, sit down!” D.D.’s temper broke. “Seriously, Adeline. If you’d simply told us when you’d discovered the video cameras . . . Instead, you broke your sister out of prison, putting yourself, not to mention the whole fucking state, in danger. When, if you’d just given us twenty-four more hours . . . We figured it out. Everything that happened thirty years ago, let alone what Charlie has been doing now. The whos, the whats, the whys, the hows; we know it all. You didn’t have to do this, Adeline. You didn’t.”

“But I did.”

“Adeline.” D.D.’s gaze narrowed. Beside her, she could sense Phil’s growing concern. The doctor’s face was very pale. Dangerously pale.

“Please tell Superintendent McKinnon I’m sorry.”

“Self-defense,” D.D. muttered. “Mitigating circumstances, your own psychotic break. Plenty of ways to justify what happened today.” She took a step closer to Adeline. Then another, searching for marks on the doctor’s exposed wrists. “What matters is that Charlie is dead, and your sister can’t hurt anyone anymore. Adeline? Adeline?”

The woman went down. Sank, really, to her knees. D.D. shot forward, trying to grab Adeline’s shoulder with her right hand, but the floor was too slippery. She didn’t catch the doctor as much as help ease her down, half-propped against the tub. In a pool of blood. So much blood, especially considering Shana’s slit wrists were inside the bathtub . . .

D.D. closed her eyes. “Oh, Adeline. What did you do?”

“What I had to. There isn’t enough nurture to overcome this nature, D.D. Just ask my adoptive father. He tried so hard, and still . . . here I am.”

Adeline had slashed her upper thighs. Going after her wrists had merely been act two. No, the main event had already happened before D.D. and Phil had burst through the door. Another move Adeline had stolen from her sister’s playbook.

“Adeline—”

“Shhh. All is as it should be.”

“You’re not your sister, dammit! You’re a good doctor. You help people. You helped me!”

Phil was on the radio now, requesting immediate medical assistance, but they wouldn’t be in time. Just like the SWAT team and backup. Everyone pouring in the building, charging up the stairs, storming into the unit.

All of them, each and every one of them, too late. Just as D.D. and Phil had been. Too late.

Phil was yanking down towels. D.D. ignored Adeline’s protest, ripping open the front of her robe to expose her gashed upper thighs. The femoral artery. Jesus. She couldn’t believe the woman had lasted this long.

Phil handed over more towels and she piled them on the wounds, pressing hard, her face so close to Adeline’s she could already feel the cool pallor of the woman’s bloodless skin.

“Hang on,” D.D. gasped. “Come on, Adeline. Fight for me, okay. You and me, taking on the Melvins of the world. It doesn’t have to be like this. It never had to be like this.”

Adeline’s hand moved against her. To help, to hinder? Instead, her cold fingers brushed against the back of D.D.’s hand.

“Hold . . . my hand?”

D.D. didn’t want to. She had to apply pressure. She had to fix this mess, heal these wounds. She had to save this woman because she was strong and intelligent and . . . and . . .

“Shit!”

She couldn’t do this. Adeline was dying. Really, already gone, and D.D. wanted so badly . . .

Phil nudged her aside. He took over pressing against the towels. They weren’t even that bloody because most had already drained out, onto the floor.

D.D. picked up Adeline’s hand. She cradled it on her lap.

Behind her, the SWAT team finally burst through the door in a stampede of pounding footsteps.

Adeline smiled, as if at a joke only she understood. Her eyelids fluttered down.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “Where I’m going . . .”

She squeezed D.D.’s hand one last time.

And then she was gone.

Epilogue

Dear Detective Warren:

If you’re reading this, then the worst has come to pass.

The service was small, but that wasn’t really a surprise. Dr. Adeline Glen had lived a very private life. Upon her passing, there was only a handful of colleagues, a prison superintendent and a couple of Boston cops to bid her good-bye.

Alex had come with D.D. Phil as well. They huddled off to one side, a somber trio, listening to a minister’s highly impersonal service, before the casket was lowered and the first clod of earth followed.

I’m sorry I didn’t tell you more. About the cameras, the mason jars, the final twenty-four hours when I realized what the Rose Killer was planning, but also what I was capable of as well.

As we discussed, everyone has triggers. It turns out, a smaller, defenseless victim triggers the good in my sister, Shana, while a raging killer triggers the evil in me.

Shana Day had been buried the day before. A simple wooden casket, another hole in the ground. Apparently, Adeline had found the markers for her parents’ graves years ago and made the arrangements to expand the family plot.

Mrs. Davies had attended. Her presence hadn’t surprised D.D. The older woman had walked right up to the casket and whispered a few words. Nothing D.D. could hear, but she’d bet money the woman had finally delivered her apology, necessary or not.

I took a calculated risk breaking my sister out of prison. I gambled on her trigger being as strong as mine. But more, I gambled on our connection. That all these years later, we had forged a bond. We were sisters.

And together, we would make our last stand.

In the days since the bloody scene in Adeline’s apartment, Phil and Neil had kept busy processing Charlie Sgarzi’s apartment. In a locked file cabinet, they’d found copious notes, photos and other research material that had gone into the making of the Rose Killer. Surveillance videos of his victims. Website printouts on proper chloroform dosages. Handwritten logs tracking each victim’s schedule as he performed his reconnaissance. They even found newspaper clippings on D.D., as well as a fuzzy photo of her at the second crime scene. Best Phil could tell, Charlie had stumbled upon her by accident at the home of the first victim. But being a true-crime aficionado, he’d immediately recognized her as the lead investigator from several high-profile local cases. In that instant, he’d made his decision. The Rose Killer would take on Boston’s best detective. A duel of equals, a battle of wits. Apparently, according to Charlie’s notes, the stuff great drama was made of.

D.D. would like the record to show that she’d won. Except, now no book would ever be written.

If you’re reading this, I hope that the Rose Killer is now dead. Slain by Shana’s hand, if not my own. I would like to think that would be the end of the violence, but of course, that’s not to be.

I have a hobby. I’ve never told anyone about it. It involves seducing men, then removing a small sliver of skin from their backs while they sleep. And yes, I preserve my souvenirs in formaldehyde, tucked beneath my closet floor.

Doctor, heal thyself, you think. Trust me, over the years I’ve sworn to stop, demanded of myself to be the person my adoptive father wanted me to be. But the little girl who spent the first year of her life sleeping on top of the world’s most gruesome collection of trophies simply can’t let go. She is the ultimate Exile, and all these years later, she is still demanding to be heard.

The service was wrapping up. Superintendent McKinnon walked over, looking especially regal in a severely tailored black suit.

“Detectives,” she said by way of greeting.

“Superintendent.”

D.D. had personally met with the superintendent just the day before. Not at the MCI but over coffee. Two women, sharing memories of an old friend.

The superintendent’s feelings had been hurt by Adeline’s actions. It had taken until that moment for D.D. to realize that’s how she’d felt, too. Why hadn’t Adeline trusted more, asked for help, ever told either of them what was going on?

D.D. would’ve personally stayed over at Adeline’s condo if it would’ve made a difference. The superintendent muttered she might have been able to clear Shana for a family-emergency furlough, something. If they’d just known . . .

But Adeline had not confided in either of them. Instead, she’d formed a plan on her own. Leaving D.D. and the superintendent to sort through the wreckage of the aftermath.

“Things finally quieting down?” D.D. asked Superintendent McKinnon now.

“I think the reporters almost believe I have nothing to say.”

“What about the talk shows?”

McKinnon shrugged one elegant shoulder. “Initial demand has already passed. An escaped killer on the loose is exciting. One that’s now dead and buried . . . not so much.”

D.D. nodded. She understood what the superintendent wasn’t saying. That a highly dysfunctional relationship was still a relationship. After spending ten years managing, worrying and stressing over Shana Day, to have her just be gone . . . It left a mark, whether you wanted it to or not.

“How’s your shoulder?” McKinnon asked.

“Look.” D.D. gingerly raised her left arm. Not pretty, but better.

“Great!”

“Yep, anytime now I’ll be back to cracking heads and taking names. Or at least terrorizing my fellow detectives.”

Beside her, Phil smiled. He’d missed her being on the job. Neil, too. She could tell.

The superintendent waved in farewell, then worked her way across the cemetery toward her car. Phil’s cell phone was already vibrating at his waist. He unclipped it from his waistband, walking off.

D.D. and Alex stood alone.

I know, Detective Warren, that had I asked, you would’ve helped me, too. You would’ve summoned the cavalry, girded your loins and waded into battle on my behalf.

Thank you for your faith in me.

But in truth, I’ve been lucky to have lived this long. A woman with my condition, I should’ve succumbed to infection or some other injury long ago. The constant diligence preached by my adoptive father saved me, but maybe it doomed me, as well. I spend night after night inspecting my own skin, while diligently denying myself even the simplest of life’s pleasures, a walk on a beach, a hike in the mountains, a crazy night out on the town.

And for what? The lover I’ve never taken? The kids I’ve never had? The life I’ve never truly led?

I’m tired, D.D. I’ve been isolated too long by a condition that sounds like a blessing but is ultimately a curse. I’ve lost my connection to humanity. I’ve lost my sense of self.

Alex remained patiently waiting. D.D. leaned against him, not quite ready to leave the graveside but not sure why.

“Adeline left her entire estate to a children’s service agency,” she commented now. “And we’re talking a considerable sum of money. Apparently Adeline was pretty successful, not to mention what she’d inherited from her adoptive father.”

“It stands to reason she’d want other children to have a better chance,” Alex said.

“You mean, better than her and her sister.”

“Adeline confused making a bad choice with being a bad person,” Alex supplied reasonably. “Maybe because bad choices were her family legacy, so she only needed to mess up once to decide the exception proved the norm. But she’d been granted a huge opportunity when she was adopted, and she used it to build a real life. She was intelligent, empathetic, valued. Even when she went off the rails . . .” Alex shrugged.