Humpty Dumpty: The killer wants us to put him back together again (Book 1 of the Nursery Rhyme Murders Series) (7 page)

After several minutes, his shaking form began to quiet itself. He lifted his head and turned to look at her, his eyes red from his outpouring of grief.

“Thank you.”

Surprised, Sariah sat back. “For what?”

He shrugged, his face creasing itself into a hundred lines of pain. “For not trying to help. For just sitting there.”

“I’d love to claim some kind of wisdom here, but I had no idea what to do.”

“No one does. Most of them try anyway.” He looked around at the scurrying figures surrounding them at the crime scene. “Trust me, I’ve experienced it all firsthand. It’s part of what drove me to New York.”

“And to the bottle?”

“Yeah. That too.” Joshua let loose one more sob, almost like an aftershock. He shook his head. “She could have died.”

It wasn’t in Sariah to sugarcoat. It might’ve been the nice thing to do, but she wasn’t sure that nice was what he needed right now.

“It’s not a sure thing that she won’t.”

“I know.”

Sariah took the measure of the man beside her. Here was someone who had suffered the grief of multiple lifetimes and had been left a hollow shell. If there were ever anyone who deserved to be able to wallow, to receive unending comfort, this was the one.

Too bad he was stuck with her.

“What you’re doing doesn’t just affect you, Joshua.”

“I get that.”

“Do you?” Sariah probed, catching his gaze and holding it. “Do you really get it? Because it’s not redemption I’m bringing you.”

Joshua met her gaze head on. “Then what?”

“I’m bringing you the names of the dead. The ones you could have saved but didn’t.”

Pushing himself back up to standing, Joshua hobbled away from her, weaving a bit and clutching at his head. He peered up at the one light bulb that had served as the only illumination in this alley, before all the flashing lights had shown up. The gleam from the lit globe brightened his face, giving him an almost angelic glow for a moment. He turned back to her.

“That…” He paused, then grimaced. It almost seemed like a smile. “That kinda works for me.”

“I thought it might.” Sariah gestured for him to follow. “And now let’s get you to the hospital. You’re looking like you might be concussed.”

Joshua’s squawking didn’t die down for quite a while after that.

* * *

The New York Hospital, Queens, looked like some kid had been playing with his Erector set and decided to quit and walk away. It was a gray, jagged set of interconnected boxes that did nothing but depress anyone who looked at it.

And right now, it was Joshua Wright who was looking at it. At least the front entrance was a tiny bit more welcoming, with its maroon brick façade cut with green-tinted glass. But as he and Agent Cooper walked through the doors, the inside was just like any other hospital: drab, off-white walls that spoke of sterility and healing to most, but screamed nothing but germs and suffering to Joshua.

Plus, the alcohol was starting to wear off.

What was he doing here? He’d never allowed someone to drag him to a hospital before. What made tonight different?

Joshua observed his captor as she checked in at the desk of the ER. She still seemed to be as put-together and fresh as she’d been when he first saw her. There was no attraction here. Some men went for the young ones, but that had never appealed to Joshua. But there was something about this agent that was getting itself wedged underneath his skin in a big way.

He didn’t like it.

There were several people ahead of them, but none as serious as his possible concussion. Shocking for Queens. When a pert young nurse in braided pigtails called for him to come back for an initial evaluation, Joshua noticed more than one pair of eyes glaring at him out of dark faces.
Look at whitey, going up to the front of the line
. At least having Coop with him mitigated the race card a slight bit.

Following the nurse back to triage, Joshua called back to Coop, who was three steps behind him, “If I die from something I catch here, I’m taking you down with me.”

The nurse turned with a flip of her braids. “Oh, we take hygiene very seriously here at New York Hospital, Queens.”

“I bet you do,” he replied. “Probably douche after sex, too, don’t you?”

“Excuse me?” Every ounce of politeness the nurse had radiated vanished in those two words.

“Joshua,” Agent Cooper growled from behind him. Hey, he had warned her not to take him to the hospital. She should learn to pay attention.

“Sorry.” He smirked at the nurse, her badge proclaiming her to be Nurse Jensen. “It’s the concussion. Can’t help it.”

Coop moved forward, speaking to Nurse Jensen. “It’s the fact that he’s an asshole. And he’s right, he can’t help that.”

The nurse gave Agent Cooper a smile and a nod, fixed Joshua with a glare and then turned to prepare the blood pressure cuff. She gestured with a free hand to a chair in which he could sit.

Oh, this was going to be fun.

* * *

Sariah watched as the nurse fumbled with the cuff, struggling to get the Velcro open, then dropping it twice before she managed to get it around Joshua’s arm. As she maneuvered around to try once more, she bumped into Joshua’s side, grazing the place on his side that Sariah had bandaged up earlier that night.

Joshua hissed in pain. “You have done this before, right?” He fixed her with a steady gaze. “How old are you? Have you even had your first period?”

The gasp told Sariah that the former agent had struck a nerve. The roughness with which she grabbed his arm to reapply the cuff told her he’d struck true. The combination of the alcohol burning off and his being in a hospital had turned Joshua into a rabid dog.

“And those pigtails. Really?” He snorted in disdain. “Are you trying to fit into some old lecher’s porn fantasy? Might as well be wearing a school girl uniform and sucking on a lollipop.” The nurse’s breath came faster and her bottom lip started to tremble.

“Joshua,” Sariah warned. “Whatever you’ve got going on in that sick brain of yours, keep it there. This girl’s done nothing.”

“Nothing? Oh, that’s not true, now, is it, Nurse Jensen?” He winked at the nurse. “She’s screwing her boss. Aren’t you, precious?”

The poor girl managed to hold on for another few seconds, then burst into tears and fled the room. The sound of her sobbing could be heard down the hall.

Joshua stretched, groaning as he pulled on the area of his side that had been bruised. “There. That should work to get someone competent in here.”

Sariah stood up from the chair where she’d been watching this scene play out and approached the table where Joshua sat, perched. The bright fluorescent lights overhead buzzed and blinked in time with the beeping of one of the instruments in a nearby room. They spoke of the breakdown of all things human, both the body itself and everything else created by this magnificent, warped race of self-eaters. Clapping her hands together in a slow rhythm, she caught Joshua’s eye and held it, making her distaste clear.

“That was masterful.”

“I told you not to bring me here.”

Sariah nodded. “I see. So you decided to take out your impotent rage on a young candy striper? Makes total sense. Can’t save ‘em in the alleyway, might as well terrorize ‘em at their place of work.”

“She was incompetent.”

“She was trying to be nice,” Sariah corrected him. “And before you get started on me, let me just tell you that I’m not menstruating, nor am I sleeping with my boss.”

Joshua chuckled, a short burst of bark-like noises. “You think that’s going to save you? There’s so much more fodder for my cannons.”

“Do it, then. Don’t keep me in suspense.” There was no way Sariah was going to back down from this. The former agent was going to be working with them. Time to lay all the cards out and see who had what trump cards.

The former agent cracked his neck. “I feel bad for you.”

“Don’t.”

“Fine.” He fixed her with a bloodshot eye. “You had an abusive drunk of a father for whom you cared. But he died. On your watch. Probably while you were doing something passive-aggressive to get back at him.”

Sariah took a step back. She’d seen analysts at the BAU pull some rabbits out of hats, but nothing compared to this. The blood began rushing and throbbing in her inner ear, pounding out a rhythm that said,
run, run
.

But he wasn’t done yet. “You’ve spent the rest of your life proving your father right. You can’t get along with anyone. You’ve done your damnedest to sabotage your own career. And you are completely ineffectual at your job.”

Tears sprang to her eyes. It was like he had taken every single one of her fears and spread them out on the table beside him. He didn’t just have a trump card here and there. He had them all.

And it didn’t matter in the slightest.

“You’re right,” Sariah answered. She was proud that her voice remained steady. Almost. “Which is why you have to come with me. This plan to get away from me is not working out so well for you. You’ve just reconfirmed to me that I can’t do it without you.”

As she walked off to the nearest bathroom to clean her face, Sariah smiled to herself. He may have her pegged, but she hadn’t failed. She wasn’t incompetent.

Joshua was coming with her, and together they were going to catch a killer.

* * *

Joshua had woken up at four thirty. It never failed. Somewhere around four in the morning, he would start awake from dark dreams, and that would be it for sleep for the night. Didn’t matter how hard he tried to drift back down into the embrace of the little death. It always evaded him.

So he had pushed himself up from the couch and listened to the snoring of Agent Cooper for a while. Too bad he hadn’t had anything to record it. She’d be mortified if she knew how loud she was. Although, so far, she’d defied his expectations about how she was going to respond to everything he’d thrown at her.

His assessments of her were all spot-on. He knew it. And yet, when he called her on it, she just seemed to get stronger.

He also acknowledged that it was going to take a lot to break through the layer of ice that woman had built up around her. It would also take a different person. Joshua wasn’t interested in all that.

Keep those walls up, baby. You’re going to need them.

He’d then spent the next forty-five minutes going through her stuff. He’d found his own file, which had been a fascinating read. And then, of course, the file on Humpty Dumpty. That had taken a few more of the mini-bottles of liquor to get through, in spite of his best efforts to the contrary. Working on this case was not going to be easy.

Starting out, Joshua had done his best to stay quiet, but when the steady buzz saw noise coming from the petite agent hadn’t changed, his searching had gotten more and more aggressive. By the time it was 5:15, all the lights and the television were on, and she still hadn’t stirred.

It was time for them to get out of here, and Joshua had long since gotten all the information he’d be able to get on his own. So… time to wake up Sleeping Beauty.

She lay there on the bed, her limbs all akimbo. At some point during the night, she’d kicked the covers off of her legs, and Joshua could see the alcohol bracelet there, attached to her ankle. Stupid girl. That hadn’t worked out too well, had it?

Then again, he was here. Maybe she wasn’t so stupid after all.

It didn’t take long before he found that waking her up was going to be much more difficult than it should have been. After poking and prodding her with no discernible effect, Joshua got an idea.

Turnabout was fair play, after all.

He grabbed the ice bucket on the bathroom counter, swung the bar of the sliding bolt against the doorframe to keep the door to the hotel room open, and trotted out to the nearest ice machine. A push of the button and the bucket was full.

After making his way back to the room, he filled up the bucket with water, walked over to the bed and held the ice water over Agent Cooper’s sleeping form. A couple more moments to enjoy the sweet sounds of her slumber and then he emptied the contents of the bucket all over her head.

The sounds of her yells were sweet, sweet music to his ears.

CHAPTER 5

Washington, DC was the coolest place Had’d ever seen in his life.

Of course, he hadn’t seen any other cities outside of Michigan, not that he could remember, anyway. Detroit had been one of the great disappointments of his young life.

In spite of having no sleep the night before, he was excited when Judy, sitting next to him in the plane, had started chatting with him. It had made the flight go by so fast. Plus, Had not only had a place to stay in Phoenix whenever he might be out that way, but he now knew how to pickle prickly pears. Bonus. People were fascinating.

Even considering how hard it was to keep his eyes open at this point, the first thing Had did upon touching down in DC was to start seeing every sight he could. He wasn’t supposed to meet up with Coop until 10 and his flight had gotten in at 7:35. The taxi ride out to Quantico was going to take about forty-five minutes. That gave him just over an hour.

More than enough time.

He grabbed the first taxi he could find out in front of the Ronald Reagan National Airport. The driver was a Pakistani driver named Bilal who managed to be even friendlier than Judy from the plane, even though his English rated just above the third-grade level. Plus, the guy knew his way around DC, and had an uncanny ability to avoid the worst of the early morning traffic.

“Did you know that the Washington Monument is made up of two different kinds of stone?” Had asked the man. He’d studied up on the capitol city before he’d gotten here and had all kinds of facts at his fingertips. "If you look close, you can see two colors."

“I was not knowing this fact,” responded the driver. He appeared to be surprised. “And I am driving in this place for many years.”

They’d hit the Mall, the Lincoln Memorial, the Museum of Natural History and now they were headed over to the White House. At some point, Had wanted to stop and walk and really take time with each of these landmarks, but for right now, he was just happy to be catching glimpses of them all.