Sleep Tight (26 page)

"Did you ask her if she wanted to go for a ride?"

"I asked her ... if she wanted to come home with me," Gavin said. "She said yes."

"And you took her to your house?" Wakefield asked.

"Yeah."

"Did you have sex with her?"

Gavin looked at Gillian. Shit. Why was he asking those kinds of questions in front of her? He should know better than that.

"Answer the question," she said sternly.

So he answered the question. What else could he do? "Yeah."

"Consensual?" the detective asked.

"Huh?"

"Did she also want to have sex with you?"

Oh, consensual. They thought he was dumb, but he just hadn't heard right. "I think so."

"She claims that you raped her. Did you rape Cammie Curtis?"

Rape? Had he raped her? "I'm not sure."

"Did you tie her to your bed?"

Again, he looked at Gillian. Tell the truth, her body language seemed to say.

"She sure as hell didn't do it herself."

"Is that a yes?" the guy asked. "Are you saying you tied her to the bed?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"The occasion just seemed to call for it."

"Did you rape her?"

He was confused.

His brain was mush.

Were they supposed to be asking him questions when his brain was mush? Should he wait for a lawyer? Did it matter?

"Gavin?" Gillian prodded.

If she thought he needed a lawyer, she would have said so.

"Answer the question. Did you rape Cammie Curtis?"

Had he raped her? She'd wanted it, hadn't she? At least he thought she'd wanted it, but then he'd thought Gillian had wanted it too. "I don't know about the rape stuff." He thought about the knife—a knife that looked like the knife that had killed his grandmother. He thought about the huge rock that had crushed Fiona Portman's skull. "Is she dead?"

"Who?" the detective asked.

"That Cammie chick. 'Cause all I remember is that I was gonna kill her."

That shut them both up. Gillian and the detective looked at each other; then they looked at Gavin.

"Gavin, listen to me," Gillian said with insistence.

He complied, the way he always complied.

"Did you abduct Charlotte Henning?"

There was something odd about Gillian. She seemed like somebody else. "You're different," he stated.

She put a hand to her hair.

"Not your hair," he said. "You. You're different."

"Answer the question, Gavin." That command came from Wakefield.

Gavin continued to stare at her. "What was the question?" His mind had floated away.

"Did you abduct Charlotte Henning?"

He could see that Gillian wanted him to say yes.

He could see that she believed he'd done it, and if she believed it, then it must be true. His head hurt, and he wanted to sleep. "Yes," he said.

"Did you smother her—on purpose or by accident?"

"Yes."

Wakefield moved his palm-size recorder nearer, while Gavin continued to stare at Gillian.

"Did you throw her body in the river?" Gillian asked.

"Yes."

"Did you abduct Holly Lindstrom?"

"Yes."

The door opened. "Time's up," a male voice said. "No more questions."

"We've got enough for now." The detective sounded pretty damn satisfied. "Gavin Hitchcock, you're under arrest for the rape of Cammie Curtis, the murder of Charlotte Henning, and the abduction of Holly Lindstrom." He read him his rights, then shut off the recorder.

The detective and Gillian were stepping out the door when Gavin called her name.

She stopped and turned.

"Why didn't you let me die?"

For a moment he caught a flash of the old Gillian, the Gillian who had liked him and believed in him.

"Couldn't you see I wanted to die?" His voice was a rough, aching whisper.

Her only response was to leave the room.

Gavin heard the click of the closing door, heard the detective telling the officers that the patient was under arrest and would be transported to jail as soon as medically possible.

He'd be going back to prison. That was okay. Things were better in prison.

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to forget the way Gillian had looked at him. Everything was so hard, too hard.

She was all he'd ever had, all he'd ever wanted, and now she hated him. His fault. Completely his fault. He was bad. Very bad.

He wanted to tell her he was sorry, tell her how much she meant to him, tell her he was glad she'd been a part of his life.

He pulled out the oxygen tubes, ripped out his IV, shoved himself to his feet, and staggered to the door, pulling it open.

"GILLIAN!" he shouted before the guards grabbed him and dragged him back into the room. "GILLIAN!"

It didn't matter. She was gone.

His body stiffened. His head flew back.

"He's seizing!" somebody shouted before oblivion came.

Holly was putting on makeup when Gillian returned to the house.

Upon leaving the hospital, Gillian had had to fight the urge to drive straight home. She wanted to be alone, but Holly was waiting. In the hospital hallway Mary had tried to stop her, concern on her face, but Gillian had barged past, afraid that any weakening, any personal contact—especially from her sister— would cause her to fall apart.

Why didn't you let me die?

She had to be tough; she had to be strong. And the only way to do that was to shut herself off, at least temporarily. Not like Mary, not for a lifetime, but for a few hours, maybe even a few days.

"Let her go," Wakefield had told Mary, his voice seeming to come from another dimension.

"What's wrong? What happened?" Mary had asked, worried.

"We got a confession."

We got a confession.

"Did you find your friend?" Holly asked, leaning close to the vanity mirror, a mascara wand in her hand, her mouth open as she concentrated on her reflection.

"Yeah. Yeah, I did." Gillian paced. She picked up a stuffed animal. She put it down. "I need to talk to you."

Holly swung around, her expression going from bored distraction to frightened in less than a second. "What happened?"

"The guy who abducted you—he's been arrested."

"Oh my God! Is it the Lucia Killer?"

"So far he's confessed to one of the murders. I'm sure the others will follow."

There was a long pause as Holly absorbed the information. She plopped down on her bed, as if suddenly too weak to stand. "Does this mean you're going to leave?"

Instead of being relieved, as Gillian would have expected, Holly sounded upset. "We have him in custody," Gillian explained. "There's no reason for me to continue to work undercover."

Holly hung her head and stared intently at the floor. "W-what should I tell the kids at school?"

"Tell them I patched things up with my parents and went back home."

Gillian heard a sniffle, followed by another—and realized it was the news of her departure that Holly was finding difficult to deal with. Poor thing. She'd been through so much. Her emotions were brittle right now, the shift too abrupt. She'd just gotten used to the idea of Gillian spending almost every moment with her; now she was leaving.

The mental distance Gillian had been trying to maintain fell away. "Don't cry," she pleaded, sitting down and putting an arm around her. "We'll still see each other."

"It won't be the same. You won't be my cousin. I know you haven't even been here a whole week, but it was starting to be so much fun."

Gillian held her as her shoulders quaked. "We can still have fun together. I'm not really that much older than you. Look—" She jumped up, grabbed pen and paper, and wrote down her address and home number. Holly already had her pager number. "Call me anytime you feel like it. In the middle of the night—if you need to talk to somebody—call me." She tucked the paper in the frame of the vanity mirror. "Maybe you can stay over sometime. We can rent movies and make popcorn."

Finally Holly raised her head and looked at Gillian, her face wet with tears. "What will happen to him?"

"He'll go to prison."

"For how long?"

"He's already done time, so he'll get a severe sentence," Gillian said sadly. "Probably life." An hour ago, she'd hated Gavin. Now she felt like crying for him.

Couldn't you see I wanted to die?

"I'm still afraid," Holly confessed, sounding surprised. "I thought when he was caught, I wouldn't be afraid anymore. But I don't feel any different. I still have this knot right here." She pressed a hand to her stomach.

"I'm sorry." Gillian wished she could assure her that the fear would subside quickly, but she would be lying.

"What was he in for before?"

"I don't think you need to know. Not right now."

"It'll be in the papers and on TV. Tell me."

"Killing a sixteen-year-old girl." For the first time, Gillian spoke the words without a shadow of doubt.

Chapter 22

Three hours after Gavin's confession, the Minneapolis Police Department, along with the FBI, held a press conference in which information about Hitchcock's confession was released to the media.

"The main purpose of this meeting is to inform the public that the killer terrorizing our young women has been apprehended," Detective Wakefield announced.

A cheer went up, and the relief in the room was palpable.

When questioned about the physical evidence, Detective Wakefield admitted that they didn't yet have much to back up the case. "But I'm confident more will surface." He knew a lack of physical evidence could severely undermine the prosecution, and Hitchcock's confession, especially taken as it was in the emergency room, could be withdrawn or considered inadmissible in court.

Immediately following the conference, Mary and Anthony headed to Gavin Hitchcock's home, where a crime lab team was combing the house and yard.

The living room was littered with bent yellow numbers used to mark areas of evidence. Fiber and hair samples had been collected from the couch, rugs, blankets, and bedding. Beyond the perimeter of the labeled area, technicians had methodically removed and examined the framed images that hung on the wall. They took the drawers from dressers, looking for secret hiding places.

"Find anything interesting?" Anthony asked a young technician in a navy-blue sweatshirt with the letters CSI across the back.

"We came across a box of black-and-white photographs," the young man said, "but there wasn't anything that looked suspicious."

"I'd like to see them."

The technician pointed to a cardboard box on the kitchen counter. "Be my guest."

Anthony pulled two pairs of latex gloves from a container on the floor and handed a pair to Mary.

The cardboard box was about twelve inches deep and full of black-and-white photos. Mary pulled out a handful and began sifting through them. Most were eight-by-tens, taken of different locations in the Twin Cities. St. Paul Cathedral. The Warehouse District in Minneapolis. Stone Arch Bridge. The Witch's Hat. There were several close-ups of flowers, some in various stages of decay.

"I don't know anything about photography," she said, "but these look pretty good."

"Nice contrast." Anthony turned a photo over and examined the back. "He must have developed them himself."

"Here's one of an old woman." She handed it to Anthony.

"I'd guess this was done from a color negative. It has that look to it."

"It could be his grandmother," Mary said. "I don't remember exactly how the story goes, but when he was in grade school, he was living with her and came home one day to find her dead. Burglary was the motive, but the perpetrator was never found, and some people believe Hitchcock killed her himself."

"His first kill, maybe?"

"Possibly."

"That's how some of these people start. They get rid of an annoying family member—out of anger or simple curiosity—then they move on past their immediate comfort zone."

Mary turned to the crime scene technician. "Have you come across any darkroom or developing supplies?"

"Nope. Those photographs are the only thing we've found that has anything to do with photography. Except for a camera. We found that in the bedroom closet."

"Any film in it?" Anthony asked.

"A half-finished roll. It's already been sent to the lab." The man looked at his watch. "That was two hours ago. It should be developed by now."

Mary pulled out her cell phone, called the lab, introduced herself, and got the scoop on the developed photos. "All architecture," Mary said, hanging up and slipping the phone back into her jacket pocket. "Except for four of Cammie Curtis. Taken in bed when she was unconscious."