Twist (Book 1): The Abnorm Chronicles-Twist (17 page)

Chapter
43

Adam gasped, and his senses shot back to his seventh-floor apartment. Selene was the killer! He couldn’t believe it, couldn’t wrap his head around the clues, and it certainly wasn’t enough to prove anything.

But he had seen the disguised figure in the alley, he had
watched how the killer moved in the shadows on the street, and he knew exactly how Selene moved. Her hair, the bottles in her liquor cabinet.

When Chloe had been murdered, Adam had watched in desperation, unable to see the killer as the elevator doors closed. He had waited and waited for the murderer to emerge from the building’s front
entrance, but no one had ever emerged. But if it was Selene, she wouldn’t have left, just gone down to her own apartment on the third floor . . . .

Rodriguez put down the comic he was reading. “What’s on your mind, Adam? You went quiet all of a sudden.”

“That domestic disturbance I was telling you about. See that window on the third floor, fourth apartment over?”

The detective frowned. “A domestic disturbance? Man, you realize there
are jokes all over the department about how many disturbances you call in? Dispatch already has you flagged.”

Adam knew he didn’t have proof,
wanted to gather something else first. Blocking out Rodriguez, he bent closer to the window. He tried to see more, feeling cold sweat on his neck and forehead. By shutting the door and closing her curtains, she had effectively barricaded herself from his line of sight, and even his hyperperception had no way in.

But, when Selene had slammed the door to her apartment, then moved around, the stirring air currents had created just enough of a draft that her curtains resettled. In that momentary flutter, Adam caught a clearer sight inside.
He saw her changing out of her scrubs, donning jeans.

He saw
two empty whiskey bottles on the counter. A pair of gloves next to them.

As he tried to probe deeper
into her apartment, Selene went to the bedroom window and adjusted the curtains again, again blinding him.

He
searched for any nook or cranny, any stray reflection, but he couldn’t force his mind to move into the blind spot. And the more he pushed, the more exhausted he felt.

Would Rodriguez believe him if he sent him across the street to confront Selene?
All those emergency phone calls he had made over the last year demonstrated his overactive imagination and his paranoia. The police department would disregard what he had to say. Yes, he had witnessed Chloe’s murder, and yes they had stationed Rodriguez here to protect him, but he couldn’t just raise the alarm about a woman because she kept liquor in her kitchen and because her long hair looked familiar from an impossible nighttime view he had seen in an alley blocks away.

He struggled with the words. Fundamentally
, it made the most sense to tell Rodriguez, let the police check out Selene even if it did turn out to be a false alarm. The detective might even believe him.

But
this was
Selene
. Adam had watched her so long, lived her awful life vicariously, felt the pain of each bruise, each slap. He had felt anger and disgust on her behalf as she let those men abuse her. What if she had found some horrific way to get even? To make herself feel superior?

How could he prove
, just by looking out the window, that she was the one who had killed Chloe, killed Ingrid, killed the two policemen, killed those other random Brilliants?

The
persistent nightmare flashed in his mind’s eye: back in Cuba, when the bullet had struck his neck. It was almost the same feeling—the way he knew he had to do something, but couldn’t accomplish what he needed to do. Paralyzed, in both mind and body.

C
ould he live a life of inaction, never deciding, never doing? He had to trust somebody. The alternative seemed far worse.

Adam gathered his courage. Even speaking took more of an effort, more balls-out bravery, than jumping out of
that transport into the Cuban jungles.

“Detective Rodriguez,” he said. “I need you to believe in me. I think I have something.”

Chapter
44

John Glover, managing administrator of the VA Hospital intake department, stared at his computer monitor. In his career, he had seen too many people abuse the system, defraud the Department of Veterans Affairs. After managing so many employees, he had seen his share of ineptitude, bad workers blaming red tape for the poor service they gave the hospital patrons. Rarely, though, did he experience outright corruption.

Nurse Selene Cook had always been an adequate employee, even skilled at untangling the morass of bureaucracy
in ways that seemed incomprehensible to him. But now he sensed something fishy. Very fishy.

Though it was late Sunday and he didn’t expect to get much action until the
work week started, he continued to poke around. From watching her reaction to the suspension, he was convinced she was involved with some kind of fraud or other illicit activity.

After calling up the transcription logs that she had secretly copied, he found a
memo. Some of those particular names had been flagged with a note to call the Denver PD about any irregularities in the files. He frowned. So, what was she up to? Apparently, he wasn’t the only one who had noticed.

Sticking to the proper chain of command
, Glover had sent a note to his supervisor, asking what he should do. Exactly according to the guidelines in the handbook. But he’d been waiting hours for a response. He hoped he didn’t have to wait until Monday.

Selene Cook had
obviously been very upset when security escorted her out of the hospital. What if she decided to skip town?

Maybe he shouldn’t wait for his supervisor after all.
He could always shrug and play dumb, apologize, say he was trying to do the right thing. That usually worked against a reprimand. For the police department, like the hospital, a Sunday was just like any other day, business as usual.

While he tried to make a
clear-cut decision, at the speed of bureaucracy, his phone rang. Finally, his supervisor. “Hello, John. I received your request for clarification, and I’ve had time to look over the matter.”

Glover cleared his throat
. “Thank you for taking the time to clear this up for me, Miss Spencer.”

“
I’m looking at the transcription logs for the suspension of Selene Cook, is that correct? Hmm, I can see why you called me in this particular case. I’m going to go ahead and say that you should call this one in. Since the request has to do with a murder investigation, that overrides any confidentiality.”

Glover blinked. “A murder investigation?”

“Yes, those were all files of our vets registered as Brilliants through the DAR and the military. A lot of names, but the four recent murder victims were among them.”

“Oh.” He had heard about the killings, but spent most of his time at work. He didn’t watch the news. He liked to tell people it was too depressing but
, in truth, he just wasn’t much interested. He did know about Dr. Wolverton’s murder, of course, and now he realized that she was one of several VA therapists who looked after some of the vets classified as Brilliants. “I’ll, uh, call them right away, now that I have your approval.”

Glover
heaved a sigh of relief, even more concerned with what Selene had been up to. Since he had clearance from his supervisor, though, no blame would fall on him if any irregularities were spotted later. That was the most important thing.

He
dialed the number on the computer flag, got the Denver Police Department. “Hi, I’m calling from the VA Hospital for a Detective Jones regarding one of his investigations.”

“
I’m sorry, he’s out of the precinct offices right now, but I can forward a message.”

Glover
scanned the computer screen. “We have a memo here to call him if there are any aberrations or irregularities in the files of certain vets. I understand it’s in connection with some murders?” His voice was bland, just doing his job.

“
Turns out we did indeed have an irregularity—a substantial one, in fact. A hospital employee was caught accessing and printing the records of those particular patients. It seems very suspicious. The employee has already been suspended pending further review, so we’re taking care of the matter internally, but I thought I should let you know right away.” He wanted to reassure the police that the VA could take care of its own disciplinary actions, but if this was important he also wanted to make sure they knew he had acted on his own initiative to help solve the crime.

“
Thank you for calling it in. Can you give me the names of those patients, and the hospital employee in question?”

Glover
listed them off, and the policeman on the other end of the line seemed very interested. “And the employee’s name is Selene Cook, a nurse who works in the intake department. I have her address and contact information.”

The voice sounded excited.
“Thank you. I’ll get this information to Detective Jones immediately.”

#

As the two left Café Netherworld, Jones’s phone rang. Glancing at the caller ID, he answered. “What’s up, Rodriguez?” He listened for a moment. “All right, we’ll be right over!” After disconnecting, he turned to look at Cooper. “Wheelchair boy says he’s figured out who the killer is.”

Chapter
45

When Rodriguez opened the door for them, Cooper saw Adam sitting in his chair in the middle of the room, waiting for them. His expression was distraught, but alert and engaged. Cooper couldn’t help but feel relieved. “I knew you’d spot something, Adam. What did you see?”

The moment
this man’s name had cropped up and Cooper identified him as a Brilliant, thanks to Dr. Wolverton, he had pulled the vet’s file from Equitable Services along with all the information the VA had on him. He knew about the Special Ops mission to Cuba, knew how he had been injured. Though the files were technically sealed, that posed no problem for Equitable Services. From what he read in his record, Adam Lee was a man of courage and resolve, provided he managed to get over his personal hurdles.

Rodriguez encouraged him.
“Go on, man. Tell us what you saw.”

Adam drew a deep breath
. “I’ve been watching this neighborhood for a year. The police know how many times I’ve called in to report things I’ve seen. They think I’m a crackpot, some kind of voyeur.” He paused in embarrassment. “I guess I am, in a way. But I got to know the people all around me.

“
Across the street there’s a girl who . . . has self-destructive tendencies. She hurts herself, and she brings home men that hurt her—I think she does it intentionally, making up for something. I don’t know a lot about her past, but I’m sure she has a history of being abused.”

Jones
took notes, but was obviously impatient for Adam to get to the point.

“
I didn’t connect the details before, but once I did, they all fit perfectly into a pattern.”

Cooper smiled. “Brilliants are good at that.”

Adam took his time, as if he had to work through it himself. “It started with Chloe’s murder. I didn’t see the killer, but I saw a distorted reflection in the pool of blood on the floor. The shoulders and hips were right in the shadow I could see, but I wasn’t able to process because”—he inhaled to steady his nerves—“because of the source of the reflection. I saw the killer enter the elevator, but I never saw anyone come out through the door to the street. I never connected it with the idea that the killer might actually live in the same building as Chloe.

“Then,
last night when I was watching, just before the two policemen got murdered, I saw the killer take off a disguise in the alley, saw a flash of long hair. Then a few minutes later, when I saw the killer slide under the cars, how small and athletic she was . . .” He looked up. “Agent Cooper, I saw the way the killer
moved
. It was very clear to me, distinctive.”

Cooper nodded. “I believe it.
A kinesthetic fingerprint. Some Brilliants can see them.”

“I saw and identified the figure.
I
know
it’s the woman across the street. And what closed the deal for me—she was trying to hide.
From me.
She seems to know I’m watching and how I do it. She closed her curtains, even put towels under the door cracks. She made sure there’s no way I could see in.”

Adam was fighting back tears. “My gift presents in a weird way when someone moves into a space that I can’t see, and she seems to know it.
But I could still make out the same shadow that I saw in Chloe’s blood. It’s her, Agent Cooper, she’s the killer.”

Jones seemed skeptical. “We can go over there and talk to her. Do you know her name?”

“Selene. Selene Cook. She works as a nurse at the VA.”

Cooper looked sharply up at Jones, both of them thinking the same thing.
Selene.
Just the name they had been looking for, the woman who had gone home with Thumper from Café Netherworld, drugged him, supposedly planted his hairs in the wig that she knew would be found near the crime scene.

Jones’s phone rang again, this time the precinct office with a message from John Glover of the
VA Hospital. And that was the last nail they needed in Selene Cook’s coffin.

In a flash,
Cooper’s mind connected the pieces they had gathered so far, and everything Adam said fit neatly into the blueprint. As a nurse at the VA Hospital, Selene Cook had access to the patient files of any military vets classified as Brilliants. According to Glover, the names of the first four murder victims, among numerous other Brilliants, had been on the transcription list Selene had surreptitiously stolen from the records.

A kill list, all Brilliants?
Cooper wondered.

Dr. Ingrid
Wolverton also had access to the same files. Had she discovered something? Or just gotten in the way?

But why
would Selene Cook have such a hatred for Brilliants? Most of the pattern was already clear to Cooper. That was where he excelled. He could take all the pieces of information and bridge the gaps, using intuition to create a concrete and accurate picture.

“The abuse must have been some kind of trigger for her
,” he said. “She’s lashing out, trying to take out her resentment. Blaming Brilliants somehow. Maybe it gives her a sense of superiority to kill them. Could be she thinks we have unfair advantages, a sense of entitlement.”

Adam
scratched at his useless hand. “Yeah, right. I’ve had a carefree life handed to me on a silver platter.”

Cooper remembered the sketch Chloe had drawn.
Yes, Adam deserved it. Patting his pockets, he withdrew the folded paper. He straightened the paper, noted the incredible realism, the artistic accuracy that only a Brilliant could exhibit. “I found this at the crime scene, Chloe Eccles’s apartment. I think you might want it.”

Adam stared at the paper in Cooper
’s hand as if it were some kind of weapon. “From Chloe?”

Cooper
smiled. “You were more connected than you realize. Did you realize she knew you watched her?” He handed over the detailed sketch.

Adam
stared at the portrait of him behind the distant window, high up on the seventh floor, the words written on the bottom, “Why are you so sad?” “I . . . I don’t understand.”

“
She watched you, too. She knew you.”

Rodriguez stood behind Adam’s wheelchair, looking down at the sketch. He seemed to have a lump in his throat.

Adam stared at the words Chloe had written. “Why are you so sad?” He squeezed his eyes shut and took in a ragged breath. “Thank you for this, Agent Cooper.” When he opened his eyes again, he turned a fiery gaze at them. “Now, go get Selene and bring her the fuck down for what she did.”

Jones
called in. “I need backup for an arrest at Thirteenth and Penn. I think we’ve got our killer.” He and Cooper rushed for the door. “Keep him safe, Rodriguez.”

The other detective gave them a hard
grin. “Damn straight.”