Freak (5 page)

“Any fan in particular stand out?” he asked.

Abby allowed a small smile to play at the corners of her lips, never allowing it to fully materialize. “Nobody special comes to mind.”

“They’re going to check your mail. See who’s been writing to you.”

“That’s a ton of mail. They won’t find anything.”

“That’s their problem.” Borden put his hand over hers.

A shudder of repulsion passed through Abby. Not that she let it show, of course. She didn’t like to be touched unless she initiated it herself. But it was important to let him think she liked him. She needed him to work hard for her, especially since he was doing it for free. She allowed his hand to remain.

“What’s happened here, Abby—as much as it’s a tragedy that a woman was found dead, of course—is not necessarily a terrible thing,” Borden said. “For you, I mean. There are indications that this murder wasn’t the first. Another woman, also resembling you, was killed a week ago, but I haven’t received definitive word from my sources yet as to whether the two murders are related. They likely are, though.”

Abby sat up straighter. “They think it’s a serial killer?”

“A serial killer who’s obsessed with you. Somebody desperately wants you out of prison. And whoever he is, he went to great lengths to send the police a message.”

Abby wanted to smile, but she held back. A smile would not be an appropriate reaction to news like this. “So the killer
carved ‘Free Abby Maddox’ into the woman’s back. That’s a serious way of sending the prosecuting attorney a message, Bob.”

Her lawyer paused, a slight frown passing over his face. Immediately, Abby bit her lip.
Shit
. The man missed nothing, which was exactly the reason she’d picked him. Had Borden specifically said that the carving was on the woman’s
back
? Maybe he hadn’t.

She squeezed his hand, and it immediately had the desired effect because his face reddened. “Those poor women.” Her voice was husky. “How did she die, Bob? Blood loss?”

“Actually,” Borden said, his tone matching hers, “she was strangled with a zip tie before she was carved. You know those long plastic doohickeys you can buy at a hardware store?” He grimaced. “It’s actually a very efficient way to kill somebody. The ties are cheap, they’re quick to tighten, and once they’re on—”

“You can’t get them off unless you cut them off,” she finished. “With scissors.”

“Exactly. No blood. No mess. No fuss.”

Abby said nothing as she processed this. It was a rather horrific way to die, wasn’t it? She closed her eyes for a moment, picturing what the death would have been like. She imagined the sound the zip tie would make as it was pulled tighter, ridged plastic against ridged plastic, and how it would feel cutting into her throat, cutting off air, cutting off the ability to even take a breath, small hands clawing at the plastic to try and tear it off, but to no avail. The world eventually going dark, until there was just . . . nothing.

A zip tie. Who knew something so cheap, so readily available, and so easy to hide in a pocket would be so effective?

Fucking brilliant
.

“There’s more,” Borden said. “Beneath your name was another
message.” He paused again. He knew damn well he had her full attention and he was determined to soak up every second. Jesus, how did his wife stand him? “Two numbers. A two, a slash, and then a ten.”

He let go of her hands and Abby resisted the urge to wipe her palms on her prison-issue slacks. She watched as he removed his pen from his breast pocket to scribble something on the yellow legal pad in front of him. He turned it around so she could read it.

2/10.

“Two-ten?” Abby frowned at his handwriting, her finger brushing over the page where he’d scrawled. “Is that a date? February tenth? What happened on February tenth?”

“Nothing, which is why they don’t think it is a date.” Borden tapped the notepad with his pen. “February ten doesn’t correspond to anything. It’s not your birthday, it’s not your incarceration date, it’s not linked to anything relevant they can find. Not even anything to do with Ethan, as far as they can determine.”

“So then what does it mean?”

“The police think it’s the kind of number you would see at the bottom of a limited-edition print.”

Abby waited. Her attorney interpreted her silence as confusion.

“You know when artists make prints of their work?” Borden said. “And at the bottom, they sign it, beside the number of prints that will be in circulation? The dead woman who was found a week ago—who’s probably linked to this murder—was also strangled with a zip tie. Your name wasn’t on that one, or we’d have obviously heard about it then, but there was a number carved on that body as well. One-ten.” He scrawled it again for clarity.

1/10.

“I see.” Abby picked up the piece of paper and stared at it, tilting her head. “So it’s a
counter
. As in, one out of ten. Two out of ten.”

“Yes. They think so.”

She spoke softly, almost a whisper. “So there’ll be eight more victims? Victims who look like me, with my name carved into them?”

“Possibly.”

Abby leaned forward and took both his hands in both of hers, enjoying the flush that spread across his cheeks once again. “So you’re thinking I might have some leverage here. The police are going to assume I know something.”

“Do you know something?”

She shrugged and said nothing. A moment passed. Borden didn’t push. She knew he didn’t care whether she was innocent or guilty—he was her lawyer, for fuck’s sake. All he cared about was winning.

Borden smiled at her, the rush from their skin-to-skin contact going straight to his head. “It’s okay. Even if you don’t know anything, there’s no reason to let them think otherwise. For now, anyway. This could definitely be to our advantage, if we play it right.”

“So tell me how to play it.”

He squeezed her hands tighter. “Just keep doing everything we talked about. I’ve been getting some calls from television shows wanting to interview you, and we can work with that, too. You might be in prison, but you
are
in control here, Abby. Don’t you ever forget that.”

Abby laughed. God, men could be so stupid. “Come on, Bob. As if I ever could.”

THE LOVEBIRDS WERE
still inside the restaurant. How long did it take to eat lamb souvlaki, anyway?

Jerry didn’t have the time to be sitting outside a Greek tavern. He was scheduled to meet Maddox in an hour, and the drive to Rosedale Penitentiary was a little over that, maybe fifty minutes if he really stepped on it. But none of that seemed to matter at this moment. Abby Maddox could wait. He’d been on an overnight stakeout when Torrance had called that morning, and he wanted—no, needed—to see how it all played out.

He sat cocooned inside the tinted windows of his brand-new navy blue Jeep Grand Cherokee, bought last month after his old Honda Accord finally died. The afternoon was dark and wet, typical for a Seattle winter. With the rain pelting against the windshield, he was in the perfect spot to observe the entrance to the restaurant without being seen. An older Sony DSLR camera was in his lap, mounted with a 180 lens. Not the best one he owned, but good enough for the few shots he would take when the couple finally finished eating and came out.

Jerry didn’t love being a private investigator, but he didn’t hate it, either. It was simply something to keep him busy since
his retirement from Seattle PD two years ago. Jerry was still a young man, only fifty-three, and retirement in the cliché sense—golfing, vacations to Florida, early bird specials at the local diner—had never appealed to him. Relying on referrals from his cop friends, he’d started the business one month after his last day at PD and had been lucky to have a steady stream of clients from the first day he’d hung his shingle. The income wasn’t making him rich, but it supplemented his pension decently. He specialized in cheating partners and missing persons. There always seemed to be an abundance of both.

This job was the former. Not Jerry’s favorite type of work by any stretch, because in infidelity cases like this, emotions always ran high. And he hated delivering bad news, which he almost always had to do, because if a husband or wife
suspected
their spouse was cheating, the spouse almost always was. There was something to be said for marital instincts.

Jerry knew all about marital instincts. He’d been married for over fifteen years. He had damned good marital instincts.

The glass door of the restaurant finally opened and the woman exited first. Her date held the door for her as she went through, laughing at something she’d said. Arm in arm, the pair strolled down the sidewalk to where the man’s Range Rover was parked in the pay lot. The woman narrowly avoided stepping in a puddle, and she grabbed her date’s arm for support. Jerry allowed himself a tight smile in the privacy of his Jeep.
Not cool making her walk in the rain, buddy
, he thought.
You should have had her wait in the restaurant while you went to get your fancy car. That’s what I would have done
.

Rolling his window down a few inches, Jerry poked the lens of his Sony through the opening and took several photos in rapid succession. Pictures weren’t his strong suit, and nobody had requested these today, but he felt compelled to bang
out a few shots anyway. You never knew if you’d need them later. Plus it was easy taking pictures of this woman. Her smile was infectious, and Jerry thought she looked extra beautiful this afternoon, her long coat unbuttoned over a knee-length green dress, one he hadn’t seen before.

As far as her lover went, Jerry had done a thorough background check, and not that much had come up. The man’s name was George Jackson and he was the head basketball coach at Puget Sound State University. His income was roughly $160,000 a year, obnoxiously high considering the Steelheads had been the losingest basketball team in the Pacific Northwest for the past three years straight. Jackson was forty years old, making him six years younger than the woman on his arm. An upstanding, taxpaying citizen with no criminal record.

The wind picked up suddenly, catching the woman’s dark hair and pulling it back off her face. Even from this distance, Jerry could see the gorgeous diamond hoop earrings she wore, the stones glinting like little stars at her lobes.

Diamond hoop earrings that the woman only wore on special occasions.

Diamond hoop earrings that had been an anniversary present five years ago.

Diamond hoop earrings that Jerry had spent hours picking out at the jewelry store, because that was the kind of thing a husband did for his ten-year wedding anniversary.

Through the long lens of his camera, Jerry watched as another man held his wife’s arm, leading her toward a shiny white Range Rover. He watched as Annie climbed into the passenger side, still laughing as her date climbed in beside her and started the engine.

A minute later, Jerry pulled out onto the street behind them, careful to keep one car back. Not that he had to worry about
being spotted. Neither was expecting he’d be behind them, and of course Annie wouldn’t recognize the brand-new Jeep.

Like the last six times, he was planning to follow his wife and her boyfriend back to Annie’s apartment, because that’s where George Jackson, the college basketball coach who was thirteen years younger than himself, richer, and in much better physical condition, had picked her up.

Like the last six times, Jerry needed to see the goodbye kiss. He needed to see the man’s arms around his wife in that passionate embrace that always seemed to top off their dates together.

Even though it stung like hell. Even though it aggravated him. Even though it caused the scar at his throat to itch like crazy from the stress. It was all as fresh and real as it had been six months ago when Annie had left him. She may have done the leaving, but it was Jerry who’d done the hurting.

He knew he had to stop following her. None of this was healthy.

The Range Rover turned left toward Annie’s place, and at the last second, Jerry turned right, which would take him to the freeway. There was someone he needed to see before he headed to the prison.

He’d had enough self-punishment for one day.

SHEILA CARED ABOUT
Jerry a lot, but he was her close friend’s soon-to-be ex-husband, and the whole situation was awkward as hell.

Jerry was one of Morris’s closest friends. Marianne (or Annie, as only Jerry was allowed to call her) was Sheila’s best friend, and the four of them had been through a lot together. But in a marital separation, it was always more than just the couple who split. Social circles fractured right along with the marriage. Sheila hadn’t seen Jerry in a couple of months at least, and she had no idea why he was here now, sitting in her office with a big manila folder in front of him. The morning had been difficult already, and she thought she’d escape to the university to catch up on some work. She sensed now that that wasn’t going to happen, and she pushed the papers she’d been grading aside.

Jerry didn’t look good. Tired and skinny, he was dressed in a black turtleneck to hide the scar on his neck. He seemed to only wear turtleneck sweaters these days, and it was not a good fashion choice for him. They only made him look skinnier.

“Sure you don’t want coffee?” she asked him again. “I can grab you a cup. If I’d known you were coming, I’d have stopped and picked up some muffins.”

Jerry shook his head and glanced at his watch. It made her nervous that he wasn’t smiling. Usually he was always smiling.

“I only have a few minutes,” he said, his voice raspy and raw. Even after a year, it still surprised Sheila to hear it. “I’m glad I tracked you down here. I stopped by your house and nobody was home. Where’s the big guy today?”

Sheila smiled. Jerry always referred to Morris as the “big guy,” even though the two men were about the same height. Morris, however, outweighed Jerry by about seventy pounds. “Out, schmoozing clients from Hong Kong.”