The Serial Killer's Wife (36 page)

Elizabeth struggled again, trying to free herself, which earned her another slam on the head with the pistol. The world went blurry for a moment. The strength went out of her legs. She staggered and Frank had to hold her up, shove her against the wall, while Julia Hogan waited at the end of the units.
 

“You know what I regret?” Frank whispered into her ear as he shoved her forward. “Not getting the chance to fuck you.”
 

She clenched her teeth, trying to fight him, but he was strong, much stronger than she had ever taken him for. She said, “You wouldn’t have liked it anyway. I’m still breathing.”
 

“Not much longer you’re not,” Frank said, pushing her even closer to Julia Hogan, the space between them now less than twenty feet, and, like she had done with Clarence Applegate, Elizabeth leaned her head forward and quickly snapped it back into Frank’s face. She could feel the cartilage in his nose give, could feel the warm blood in her hair, and she twisted out of his grip, reached for his head, and shoved it hard against the side of the wall.
 

Frank went down, but not before he fired his pistol, three consecutive rounds. At least one of them hit Julia, sending her to the ground. Elizabeth was frozen for a moment, not sure what to do next. There was Frank right beside her, Julia Hogan not too far away, and her son and brother at the other end with David Bradford.
 

Before she could make a decision, though, a hand grabbed her leg and yanked it out from under her. She hit the ground hard, knocking her head against the pavement. She was barely aware of Frank sitting up, the gun still in his hand, but then more gunfire sounded out and two spurts of blood appeared on his chest. He stared for a moment, just stared, and then fell back.
 

Elizabeth scrambled to her feet and hurried over to Julia. “Is it just you two? Did you call backup?”
 

Julia Hogan lay flat on the ground. Her face was pale. It was clear the woman hadn’t been hit with just one bullet. Blood was seeping from her left arm and her left leg. She nodded, once, and whispered, “Should be here soon.”
 

Suddenly gunfire erupted on the other side of the storage facility. At least a half dozen rounds from two different guns.
 

Elizabeth went to stand back up, but Julia grabbed her arm. “Don’t.”
 

She pried Julia Hogan’s fingers off her arm and rested them on the woman’s chest. “I’ll be right back.”
 

“Don’t,” Julia Hogan said again.
 

Elizabeth considered taking the woman’s weapon but didn’t want to leave her without one. She went to Frank, took the gun away from him, checked the magazine. Only two rounds left. Not a lot, but still two was better than none.
 

Jamming the magazine back into the gun, she glanced at Julia Hogan one last time before hurrying toward the opposite end of the facility, where the gunfire had gone silent and where she hoped her son was still alive.

•
   
•
   
•

S
PECIAL
AGENT
DAVID
Bradford was dead, or at least he looked dead, lying on the pavement, his arms and legs splayed, his eyes closed. Most of his body was covered in blood.
 

Elizabeth paused long enough to crouch and press her fingers to his neck. There was a pulse, but it was weak.
 

Bradford’s eyes fluttered open. He opened his mouth like a fish, attempting to find speech, but no words came out.
 

“Shh,” she whispered. “Don’t talk.”
 

“Leg,” he managed in a voice that barely sounded human.
 

Elizabeth didn’t know what he meant at first but then she realized his left leg was twitching. She noticed something near the cuff, a slight bulge, and immediately reached out and pulled back the cuff to reveal the ankle holster. A revolver was nestled there, a Ruger .38 Special, and as gently as she could she slipped it free from its holster.
 

“Go,” David Bradford managed.
 

Elizabeth set Frank’s gun aside, stood with the Ruger, and checked the chambers. They were all full. Five shots, five chances. Five ways this could all go from bad to worse.
 

She closed the cylinder, started to hurry forward ... but then stopped and stared back down at the gun and the faint glimmer of moonlight reflected off its barrel.

•
   
•
   
•

A
CHAIN
-
LINK
FENCE
ran along the back of the facility. She could hear the traffic on the highway, she could hear the leaves skittering across the pavement in the wind, and as she came around the corner she could hear her son sobbing and her brother cursing at him to shut up.
 

They were at the utility van, a black nondescript thing, and the side door was open and Jim was trying to hustle Matthew inside. The van was maybe thirty yards away. Elizabeth stopped at the rear corner of the unit, raised the revolver, and fired two shots at the van’s windshield. The glass spider-webbed and Matthew screamed and Jim went suddenly still. Then, when nothing else happened, he slowly glanced over his shoulder. Elizabeth knew what he saw: his sister standing there with a gun shaking in her hands.
 

“Let him go,” Elizabeth said, her voice hoarse with fear.
 

Jim just stared back at her. “No.”
 

She closed her eyes and raised her shoulders and pulled the trigger again. Nothing. Just a dry click. She tried it a second time but still nothing happened.
 

Jim grinned and started to laugh. “You want me to let him go? Fine, here he is.”
 

The moment Jim released his grip on Matthew her son went scrambling toward her. She could see her brother reaching into his pocket when Matthew was twenty-five yards away. She could see her brother bringing out the cell phone when Matthew was twenty yards away. She could see her brother standing there, holding the cell phone up, his thumb on the
SEND
button, waiting until Matthew had reached her. She could see her brother watching her, and as Matthew neared, she saw something change in Jim’s eyes. The smugness had started to fade. A realization had begun to creep in. She watched her brother watch her, as the gun in her hands had suddenly stopped shaking. As her shoulders went back. As the fear in her face disappeared. As she tilted her head slightly to the side.
 

“No,” he whispered.
 

Elizabeth pulled the trigger one last time and the bullet inside—the bullet she had purposely saved for last, the other two safe in her pocket—exited the Ruger’s snub-nosed barrel and a moment later entered Jim’s throat.
 

Before she knew it she was running forward, dropping the revolver and scooping Matthew up as she hurried toward Jim. He had fallen to his knees, his face pale, both hands trying to hold in the blood. He’d dropped the cell phone and it lay beside him, within easy reaching distance. She kicked it away just as Jim made one last futile attempt to grab it. Then he lay there on his side, staring up at her with dying eyes, and Elizabeth, holding her son, turned away.

CHAPTER 63

T
HE
NEXT
SEVERAL
hours were a blurring parade of state police, federal agents, emergency personnel, and bomb squad technicians.
 

Elizabeth had already taken the explosive collar off her son’s neck, placed it in the black utility van—she’d gotten a glimpse of the bed inside, the digital clock behind it, the camera set up on a bolted-down tripod—and she had taken Matthew back to Julia who was severely injured. By that point David Bradford was dead.
 

The first thing Elizabeth told the authorities when they arrived was about how David Bradford’s son had been abducted three days prior. Immediately agents began making calls, attempting to track Jim’s movements over the past several days.
 

She refused to be separated from Matthew. Even after hours of questioning, after telling the same story again and again, after being transported to the nearest hospital for more examinations, Elizabeth demanded she always be in the same room as her son.
 

As far as Elizabeth knew, she was not under arrest. She and Matthew were put in a room together and a nurse or doctor would come in and check on them regularly, always accompanied by an officer, but so far she had not been read her rights. She wondered if she would need an attorney, and that made her think of Foreman and Mark Webster, and she spent several minutes crying for everyone she knew who had been killed, even Reginald Moore, until Matthew awoke from his doze and touched her arm and asked her what was wrong.
 

“Nothing, honey.” She forced a smile, wiped at her eyes. “Nothing at all.”
 

Her current location had been leaked to the press. She turned on the TV hanging from the wall and saw a CNN reporter standing outside the hospital. All they had now was speculation but the main story seemed to be that authorities had finally apprehended Elizabeth Piccioni.
 

Just hearing that phrase made Elizabeth’s hands tremble. She ended up turning off the television and holding her son until they both fell asleep.

•
   
•
   
•

I
N
THE
MORNING
Julia Hogan came to see her. Her left arm was in a sling and her leg was bandaged. She limped as she moved about the room.
 

“They found Dave’s son,” Julia said.
 

Elizabeth sat up straight in the bed. “Is he okay?”
 

“He should be. He’s scared and dehydrated and exhausted but they have him in the hospital hooked up to IVs and, from what I hear, he should be fine.”
 

“How did they find him?”
 

“Traced your brother’s credit cards. He’d flown out to Oregon two weeks before. He’d been keeping a close eye on Dave and his son.”
 

“Jim used a credit card for the room he kept the boy in? I would have thought he was smarter than that.”
 

“Oh, he was. For that room he’d paid with a stolen credit card. But the camera he’d set up to take a picture every hour and then send to David’s phone, that signal bounced off a local cell tower. They managed to locate that and search all motels in a five mile radius.”
 

The hospital room had that sterile unwelcoming feel to it. It was not a place to be comfortable or even feel relaxed. Beside her in the bed Matthew continued to sleep.
 

Elizabeth asked, “Am I under arrest?”
 

“No. At least not yet. You have broken several laws in different states, so that puts you under federal jurisdiction. However, you are now being credited with revealing the true killers behind the Widower Maker Murders.”
 

There was another silence. Elizabeth asked about David Bradford.
 

“What about him?”
 

“The relationship you two had wasn’t strictly professional, was it?”
 

Julia Hogan’s face flushed. She looked away for a long time before speaking.
 

“I first met him five years ago when he came to arrest your husband. He was ambitious and brilliant and it looked like he was going to advance in the Bureau. But then you disappeared and his superiors blamed him. It didn’t help that he and his wife were having issues, either. One night before he ended up going home we got together at a bar and got drunk and went back to his hotel room. That ... that was pretty much it. Just a one time thing, I thought. Then he’d gotten transferred and his wife left him and he started sending me emails. We’d talk on the phone every night. Sometimes he’d fly out and see me or I’d fly out and see him. We never said it to each other, but we ... we were in love.”
 

“I’m sorry.”
 

Julia wiped at her eyes. “It’s not your fault.”
 

Elizabeth didn’t want to dispute this claim, though she knew it wasn’t true. Everything that had happened was her fault.
 

“What about my husband?”
 

“That’s another issue completely.”
 

“How so?”
 

“Does the name Alex Scott mean anything to you?”
 

Elizabeth thought about it, frowned. “No,” she said, then glanced down at Matthew sleeping beside her and paused. “Actually, yes. Before we named our son Thomas, Eddie and I had talked about two other names. Alex and Scott. Why?”
 

“Alex Scott is the name of the person leasing that storage unit where the fingers were kept. We were able to figure that out pretty quickly—the owner of the place gave us all the information—but the ID Alex Scott had given him was a fake.”
 

“Eddie had a fake ID?”
 

“Right after he had told your brother about the fingers, he knew he needed to hide them. He knew there was a chance your brother and his partner might come after him, so he managed to get a fake ID, secure a ten-year lease at the storage unit for a fixed rate, and then created a bank account with enough money to pay it off. He set it up so every month the exact amount would be transferred over. He assumed if it came to it, he would go to jail and you would be protected as long as those fingers were safe.”
 

“How do you know all this?”