This Side of Heaven (45 page)

“I have to. I have to go.” Anguish made Charlie’s voice break as she continued to back away.

“You can’t.” The handcuffs clanked as Holly kept trying to free herself. Her head turned to track Charlie’s progress. Her eyes clung desperately to Charlie’s. “You can’t just leave me.”

“Be quiet, he’ll hear you. I’ll be as quick as I can.”

“Please. Please.” Holly started to sob as Charlie, able to take no more, turned her back on her and ran from the room. Charlie’s throat went tight. Her heart hung heavy as a bowling ball in her chest. Leaving her friend behind was one of the hardest things Charlie had ever had to do in her life. But getting help was the only smart thing to do, she told herself. She could use the phone, or run to a neighbor. What she couldn’t do was free Holly herself. And if the man caught her …

She couldn’t finish the thought. Fear washed over her in a cold wave.

The stairs were in the unfinished part of the basement, the part that held the washer and dryer and furnace and water heater. Out the rec room door, turn left, and there they were.

Charlie hesitated at the foot, looking up. Her heart pounded. Her pulse raced. The door at the top of the stairs was closed. It opened, she knew, into the kitchen. Concentrating hard as she crept up the stairs, hanging on to the handrail, moving as quietly as it was possible to move, Charlie tried to picture the Palmers’ kitchen. Big and modern, it had an island in the center where she and Holly and the other girls had chowed down on pizza earlier. And yes, in the far corner, beside the refrigerator, was the back door. All she had to do was make it to that door, then race across the backyard to the next house just yards away. Forget trying to call for help: she was better off getting out of the house and running to the next-door neighbor as fast as she could go.

I can’t let him catch me
. Even forming the words in her mind made shivers race over her skin.

Pausing on the top step, listening intently at the closed door, she heard nothing beyond the normal sounds of the house. But she knew people were up there, in the main part of the house: for one thing, Holly’s family had to be there. And the man—where was he?
Who
was he?

Oh, God, if he decides to come into the basement now …

The thought was so horrifying Charlie felt faint.

Holding her breath, she turned the knob with infinite care, then pushed the door open the merest sliver.

And found herself meeting Holly’s mom’s eyes as the man cut her throat. The silver blade of the black-handled butcher knife gleamed in the warm light of the kitchen’s recessed lighting as it sliced through the tender flesh. Diane Palmer’s hands were behind her back, presumably bound. Like Holly’s, Diane’s mouth was sealed with duct tape. Her hair was blond like Holly’s. The man’s fist was wrapped in the short strands, holding her head back so that her throat was exposed. Her eyes were blue like Holly’s. As they locked with Charlie’s, they radiated the ultimate in terror. But it was too late, it was done, there was nothing anyone, not Charlie, not anyone, could do. The knife left the flesh with a whoosh, flinging blood in its wake. Blood poured like a red Niagara from the gaping wound in Diane’s tanned throat. Her apple green nightgown was instantly swallowed up by the flood of red. Her arms, her legs, the kitchen floor—everything was splattered with blood, puddled with blood, smeared with blood.

Every tiny hair on Charlie’s body shot to instant attention. A scream tore out of her lungs, but she managed to swallow it just in time. Her heart jackhammered. Her breathing stopped.

The man’s thin lips slowly curved into a spine-chilling smile. Rooted to the spot with horror, Charlie watched as Diane blinked once, twice, before her legs folded beneath her and she sagged toward the floor. For a moment her killer held her up by his fist in her hair. In that split second, Charlie looked at him: military-cut dark brown hair; a ruddy-complexioned face with a meaty nose and full cheeks; over six feet tall, with a thick-chested, stocky build. He wore a forest green button-up shirt and dark jeans.

Then he let go of Diane’s hair, watching as she collapsed like a rag doll. The thud as she hit the floor galvanized Charlie.

The killer had no idea she was there. He hadn’t seen her. He couldn’t be allowed to see her.

Or she would die.

Heart in throat, Charlie turned and fled back down into the basement.

CHAPTER TWO

Fifteen years later, Dr. Charlotte “Charlie” Stone sat across the table from a devilishly handsome man with prison-cropped dirty blond hair, taking notes as he studied the cardboard rectangle she had just placed in front of him.
Devilishly
was the appropriate adjective, too: from all accounts, this guy was as evil as he was hot, and he used his outrageous good looks as bait to lure his unsuspecting victims to him.

“A magician holding up two knives. That’s this here figure in the middle.” Michael Allen Garland tapped a blunt forefinger on the hourglass-shaped image that was a central component of the first card in the Rorschach inkblot test. The chain shackling his wrists clinked as he moved. His ankles were also shackled, and a chain around his waist was secured to a sturdy metal ring set into the wall. His short-sleeved orange prison jumpsuit was the only spot of color amidst the unrelenting gray of the walls and the poured concrete furniture, which consisted of the table and the stools on which they both sat. “These two things on the sides are closer looks at his fists clutching the knives. Right there is blood dripping off his hands.”

“Um-hmm.” Charlie’s murmur was designed to be both noncommittal and validating, a reward to Garland for participating in the evaluation without signifying any type of judgment of his description on her part. Historically some ninety-five percent of test subjects identified inkblot Number One as a bat, a butterfly, or a moth. Garland’s atypical response was not unexpected, however. In the way her life tended to work, the best-looking guy she’d come into contact with in a long time was a convicted serial killer, and serial killers almost universally saw the world in terms of violence and aggression.

“This here magician done killed somebody,” Garland concluded, looking up as he said it, his southern drawl pronounced, his sky blue eyes slyly gauging her reaction to his words. With his square jaw, broad cheekbones and forehead, straight nose and well cut mouth, the muscular, six-foot-three-inch, thirty-six-year-old Garland would have had no trouble picking up women in any bar in the country. Which he had done, at least seven times that the Commonwealth of Virginia knew of. He had slashed each of those women to death before being caught four years previously. Having been sentenced to death, he was now in the process of winding his way through the legal system. For the foreseeable future, however, he was an inmate at Wallens Ridge State Prison, the federal maximum security facility in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, with a Special Housing Unit (SHU) dedicated to some of the country’s most notorious criminals, of which he was one. A psychiatrist who was rapidly gaining national renown for her work studying serial killers, Charlie was conducting a forensic assessment of him and seven other serial killers housed in the facility. At the moment she was closeted with Garland in one of the cheerless cinder-block rooms in which such inmates typically met with their lawyers. Equipped with a panic button built into her side of the table as well as a security camera that was continually monitored set high up in a corner, the room was freezing cold even on this sultry August day and small enough to awaken her tendency toward claustrophobia. On a positive note, her office, grudgingly granted to her by the warden at the behest of the Department of Justice, which was funding her research, was right next door.

“What about this one?” Keeping her face carefully expressionless, Charlie replaced card Number One with card Number Two. It was just after four p.m., and she would leave the prison at five-thirty. Dealing with Garland in particular always left her drained, and today was no exception. She was really, really looking forward to the run along the wooded mountain trail that led up to the top of the Ridge and back with which she typically unwound. After that, she would go home, make dinner, do a little yard work, a little housework, maybe watch some TV. After the grim surroundings in which she spent her workday, her house in Big Stone Gap was a cozy refuge.

“Hell, it’s a heart,” Garland said after a cursory glance down. “A bloody one. Fresh harvested. Plucked right out of somebody’s chest. Probably still beating.”

Once again he tried to gauge her reaction, which for the sake of her research Charlie was doing her best to conceal. The typical response was two humans, or an animal such as an elephant or bear. His deviation from the norm was interesting, to say the least. She would have been downright excited, and gotten busy hypothesizing that the administration of inkblot tests to at-risk youth might identify the potential deviants among them, if she hadn’t halfway suspected that Garland was coming up with his bloody interpretations at least partly to mess with her. Without commenting, she wrote down Garland’s interpretation.

Resting his powerful forearms on the table, Garland leaned closer. “You married, Doc? Got any kids?”

She met his eyes at that. From the glint in them, she knew she wasn’t mistaken about the enjoyment he was deriving from their interview. As one of maybe half-a-dozen women in the facility, she was accustomed to being the object of the all male inmates’ intense interest, with wolf whistles, catcalls, and lewd suggestions routinely following her progress whenever she was within view of the cells. Ordinarily she was able to tune it out, but this was a little different because Garland was not behind bars, was close enough despite his restraints to reach out and touch her if he’d wanted to, and exuded a raw kind of masculine magnetism that, if she hadn’t known precisely who and what he was, she might even have succumbed to, thus proving that despite everything she knew she was potentially as vulnerable as anyone else to a predator of this type. The answer to both his questions was no, but she wasn’t about to tell him so. This was her third meeting with Garland, and each time he had tried to charm her, to flirt with her, to make her aware of him as a man. Like many serial killers, he was outwardly charismatic, with a friendly, engaging personality that he could turn on and off when he chose. Add his looks to the mix, and it was a deadly combination.
Stone cold killer
was the last thing any unsuspecting woman would think if he started coming on to her.
Dream lover
was more like it. One of the things that made most serial killers so dangerous was their ability to appear normal, to blend in to the fabric of society, to seem just as well intentioned and harmless as the vast, clueless majority. It was almost like protective coloring, akin to the aptitude of a chameleon for taking on the hue of its surroundings to keep from being spotted. She had realized already that Garland was a master of it.

“You know the rules, Mr. Garland.” Her tone was deliberately untroubled. Inside, where he couldn’t see, her heartbeat quickened and her pulse started to pick up the pace. It was the same kind of reaction, she imagined, that a snake handler might experience when confronting a spitting cobra. Instinctive respect for the creature’s deadly potential was felt on a bodily level. “We stick strictly to the test. Otherwise I end the session and have you escorted back to your cell.”

Which was a six-by-eight windowless cube in which he was kept in solitary lockup for twenty-three hours a day. The days when he had an appointment with her were exceptions, allowing him out for the time they spent together, which was about two hours, plus the half hour or so it took him to be processed in and out of his cell, as well as his allotted exercise hour. Add to that the fact that she was a woman, and their meetings were a rare treat in what was for him a bleak existence, she knew.

His broad shoulders shrugged. “Didn’t you ever just once want to break the rules, Doc? Say to hell with it and go for what you want?”

He was studying her, testing her, trying to provoke her into a more rewarding response than the cool professionalism she had maintained so far.

Not gonna happen. I know what you are
. She had seen the autopsy photos of his victims, knew what he was capable of. She gave him a level look.

“Last chance, Mr. Garland. We’re on inkblot Number Three.” Charlie replaced the card in front of him with another. “What do you see?”

He glanced down, then up again to meet her gaze. “Whatever you want me to see, darlin’.”

Charlie couldn’t help it. Her lips thinned and her eyes flashed with annoyance. Although Garland was sitting perfectly still, she could feel the pickup in his interest as her expression changed. Not a surprise. From the beginning she had sensed the intensity of his need for her to become flustered, or angry, or responsive in any way that went beyond the parameters of the doctor/subject relationship. Having spent much of her residency and the three years since immersed in the thought processes and emotions and worldview of serial killers, she knew what he wanted: a connection. She also knew how to react to deny it to him and did so calmly.

“I can see we’re finished here.” Plucking the card from in front of him, she restored it to the stack on her side of the table and stood up, something that his restraints prevented him from doing, although he sat up a little straighter, watching her. His sheer physical size made him seem to take up way more than his fair share of the space in the room. As she closed her notebook, he slid a swift, comprehensive glance down the length of her body in a classic male once-over. When his eyes came back up, they gleamed at her. Charlie could feel the sexual energy he gave off, and was reminded once again that he was a dangerous man. “I’ll have Johnson”—the guard waiting outside the door, who as a security precaution every now and then glanced in at them through the tiny, mesh-lined glass window in the steel panel—“take you back to your cell.”

“Ah, Doc, come on. I was just—”