If Looks Could Kill (45 page)

And she has been consigned there. Judged, sentenced, cast down with the muttering, half-mad goats while the sheep share the love of the Lord. A fourteen year-old without visitors or mourners. A lost cause with a curable disease.

This time she knew it. She knew she was dreaming, that the terror and shame and revulsion were old news, that the doors—at least this time—swung open for her in the end.

She knew that the shadows were just shadows and the ache in her jaw was from clenching down on the airway when she convulsed from the electroshock therapy.

She knew that there really was someone standing at the bottom of her bed. That that person had been standing there all along. That that person bad a familiar face, a familiar voice.

She just had to look into it and see.

"Please. Come closer."

Sue didn't waste a minute on Mac when she walked in.

"Victor?" she asked, kneeling down in front of him. "Are you all right?"

Victor refused to look at her. "I'll be fine," he assured her, although Mac wasn't so sure. "May I go now?"

"The blinds were closed," Mac said yet again. "Front and back for at least ten minutes."

Victor nodded, curling even farther into himself. "I've told you the whole story five times. I... I can't anymore. Please."

"I know, Victor. I just wanted to make sure. JayCee didn't do anything during that time."

A shake of the head. "He was eating his breakfast in his cruiser. I'm not sure he really noticed."

"And you didn't see anybody you didn't know hanging around Chris's house before that."

"Just the police and the reporters."

"And the reporters liked to slink around the back of the house?"

"I ran off a couple."

Mac pushed himself away from the edge of the desk. "Thank you both, then," he acknowledged, reaching over to help them up. Even the dummy looked vaguely ashamed now that Sue had joined them. "You don't know how much you've helped Chris. If you think of anything else, anything at all that you didn't remember this time, let me know, OK?"

Victor lifted those distressed Bambi eyes at Mac, and Mac knew he was going to give in. "I appreciate your coming forward, Victor. I'm sure JayCee will be happy to testify about those blinds. The only other thing I may need is to have you identify just which reporters you chased off."

Victor slumped noticeably. Nodding mutely, he turned for the door.

"Now," Mac said, heading to refill his coffee cup as Sue regained her feet. "You want to tell me all about Fulton State Hospital?"

"The blinds were closed?" Sue echoed instead, turning on him. "You mean JayCee missed something after all?"

Mac scowled at her. "A subject he and I are going to discuss at length in about ten minutes. Right now, though, I want to talk about your work history."

Sue didn't get the chance to answer. Just then, Chris appeared in the doorway to Ray's office.

"There's no need to," she said quietly. "I remembered."

Mac swung around, not sure what he was expecting to see.

"Remembered?" Sue asked, stepping up to her friend. "Remembered what?"

But Chris didn't even seem to see her. Her gaze was riveted on Mac. She was haggard, her face tear-streaked, her eyes sunken and dark. She held onto the door by white-knuckled hands, and her knees had a tremor in them. Even so, her voice was quiet and calm. Controlled.

Mac didn't say a word.

"The watcher was real," she said, and he saw the brief tumble of every horror she'd faced in those haunted eyes of hers. "Another patient. Somebody who... who was always there when I woke up from the electroshock treatment. Who waited by the door when I went in."

Mac watched her, gauging her to the split second, knowing just how close she was to crumbling into a little pile on the floor. Frustrated as hell that he couldn't simply walk over and physically help her slog past this.

She wouldn't have accepted a strong arm right now anyway, well-intended or not. So he waited again and marveled at his patience.

"I know who it was," Chris said simply.

Still Mac held his place, held the damn coffee mug, held his silence, not needing to spook her. Desperate to know the identity, to find out once and for all whether he'd finally made the biggest mistake of his long, sorry career by trusting her.

"Who?" Mac asked.

Chris never let go of the door frame. She never acknowledged the hand Sue laid on her arm, or the frank distress in the other woman's eyes. Her words were for Mac alone, because she knew he was the one she needed to convince. And when she gave him the name, she gave it without inflection.

"It can't be," he retorted, his anticipation dying. "You know that better than anyone."

Chris shook her head. "She was there. Kind of like a shadow, always at the periphery. She must have read my story... maybe I told it to her, I don't know." Chris took a deep, shuddering breath, and Mac could see fresh tears glitter in her eyes. "Could she be the killer?" she asked.

"Chris..."

When Harmonia Mae Switzer entered a room, people knew it. She blew into the hall just then like an explosion.

"Where is she?" the woman demanded in her best DAR voice, the door still jangling behind her, the traffic outside growling angry counterpoint.

All three people turned on her. "Where is who?" Mac demanded.

But Harmonia Mae only had eyes for Chris. "I have a houseful of guests, and that senseless little chit simply disappears just as she's supposed to start supper. Said she was going to help you."

Chris straightened like a shot. Mac felt the punch of inevitability in his gut. There was no question in his mind, now. Somehow, Chris had been right.

"Where'd she go?" he demanded, slamming down his coffee cup on his way to the radio.

"Well, I'm sure I don't know. After receiving that phone call, she simply grabbed her purse and ran out. Said something about Chris being in terrible trouble, and she had to intervene."

"There should have been a patrol car outside your house, Mizz Switzer," he protested. "Did you see it when you left?"

"Still right there," she said, brow crinkling a little in confusion. "Nobody in it, though."

"Fuck," Mac snapped, keying the mike. He never heard Harmonia's gasp of outrage or Sue's questions. "One-Baker-Five, this is Chief MacNamara on Tac Two, do you read'"

Silence. Static.

"Curtis," Mac snapped into the mike, "where the hell are you?"

"Chief," another voice spoke up. "This is John. I'm two blocks away. Want me to look?"

"Yeah. I'm putting an APB out on Shelly Axminster, too. She's missing, and I want her found."

"10-4."

"Dispatch?"

"Here, Chief."

"I want the sheriff and the highway patrol captain on this channel in three minutes. We're starting a search for Shelly Axminster. And put an APB out for..."

He turned to find Chris at his elbow, hand at mouth, eyes huge. "You're sure?" he demanded.

She nodded.

He turned back to his mike. "Sergeant Elise Lawson."

Chapter 20

"Chief, I don't think..."

"I don't remember asking you to think," Mac snapped at the dispatcher, sharp as his creases and thinking at light speed. "Just do what I said. I want an APB out on the woman who calls herself Elise Lawson. Everybody around here's seen her. Caucasian female, five foot two inches, brown hair, hazel eyes, no scars. She may have Shelly Axminster. She's definitely armed and dangerous."

"But how can that be?" Sue demanded. "She's dead. They identified her."

"They identified Elise Lawson," Mac said. "My guess is that she was dead before whoever we met ever hit town. The person we met must have known who Lawson was. Maybe followed her from St. Louis and then ambushed her where she wouldn't be seen. Borrow the car and wedding ring for a couple of days and then send it all off the side of the road so that it looks like Elise Lawson just missed a corner on the way home."

"I had a murderer under my eaves?" Harmonia demanded in a tone that grated like ground glass.

She promptly plopped into Sue's chair.

Chris felt Sue's gaze on her. She should have answered the hundred questions she knew were whirling around in her friend's head. Should have demanded some answers of her own. She couldn't quite get that far.

The dream still had hold of her, the shame and terror and lost, helpless panic churning in her like old acid. The sights and sounds still kept her prisoner. Dingy green walls, scuffed linoleum floors, the smell of urine and old sweat and industrial-strength disinfectant. Cries and moans and murmurs, the symphony of madness. Harsh lighting and no privacy and limp mattresses being turned to chase away the cockroaches. Endless, numbing hours of nothing.

And The Watcher. The vague, discomforting face of familiarity caught at the edge of her consciousness, expression always expectant, always waiting. Like a dog. Like a sentence, waiting to be imposed for crimes rendered.

Chris had been able to put features on that face. She still couldn't come up with a motive. She simply couldn't remember enough about that other person, about her time at Fulton at all, to be able to understand why someone from fifteen years ago would seek Chris out after all this time and act out her books. Chris couldn't think what she possibly could have done to the other person to warrant this kind of retribution.

"What can you tell me about her?"

Chris startled back to attention with Mac's question. He was standing in front of her again, completely in police mode, his features stern, his jaw tight, his finger working that upper lip.

Chris did her best to dredge up active thought. To slam all those pictures behind a heavy door, to push them far enough away that they couldn't hurt her, couldn't distract her.

Cards.

Chris shook her head. She had no idea where the thought came from. Playing cards, with color pictures of the national parks on the back. Yosemite had been on the jokers.

"All I can remember," she said, rubbing at her aching head with a hand that refused to steady, "was that she would wait for me. She had long hair then, stringy brown, and glasses. They were standard issue, with black rims and tape at the bridge where she'd broken them..." She lifted her head, memory sliding into a stumbling gear. "...throwing them at one of the techs. She hated him. Used to try and bite him."

"But she never bit you?"

"I don't know. All I can remember is her standing at the edge of my bed... and, oh, yeah. Her allergies. She couldn't stand the smell of pine cleaner. It made her..."

Mac nodded, already ahead of her. "Sneeze constantly and talk like a frog. She may be nuts, but she's smart as hell. She did a great job of disguising her voice. Anything else?"

"Cards. I just remembered something about cards."

Mac didn't exactly lean closer. Chris felt his attention focus in, though, laser sharp. "Her name," he prodded gently. "Do you remember her name?"

Chris tried. She ran names past her personal view-finder, looking for matches; she considered that old face, those blank, staring features pocked with acne and Band-Aids, and searched for inspiration. There was nothing, though. Only the frustrating gap of missing memory chips. Brain cells permanently scrambled by successive jolts of electricity.

She was so tired. So sore and frightened and confused. Picked apart and left lying out in the leaves like the Scarecrow, without a clue as to how to put herself back together again. With no choice but to pick herself back up and wade into the fray before something happened to Shelly.

...
A sacrifice for the sake of your soul. A lamb for the slaughter with my knives if you don't offer yourself up instead. Penance, repentance, an eye for a like eye. A life for a life...

It was a story she simply couldn't allow to come true.

"I know how you can find out," she managed, at least giving into the luxury of closing her eyes. "My Edgar Award. Shelf to the right of the fireplace. Dust it for prints."