Charade (43 page)

Striking a pensive posture, he added, "Actually, Pierce and I are similarly motivated." "You mean to find Amanda's heart? You knew her, too?" "Cat," he said in a chastising tone. "Where's your imagination? Haven't you figured it out yet? Shame on you." His calm articulation terrified her. If he'd been ranting and raving and frothing at the mouth, she would have feared him less. Instead, his cool logic and soft voice clearly indicated to her his level of madness. He was totally detached from reality. "As usual, no one will suspect me of wrongdoing," he said. "You blamed Melia for everything that went wrong, never suspecting me. I leaked the O'Connor story to Ron Truitt. I also called him, identified myself as Cyclops, and fed him that malarkey about child molestation. I was afraid he'd recognize my voice during that meeting in Webster's office. But he was too intent on attacking you to pay any attention to me. "It was tricky to rig the light, but I did that, too. The damned thing nearly killed you ahead of schedule. It was only supposed to scare you." His lips formed a moue of remorse. "After suffering so many setbacks, both personal and professional, it will be understandable that you became overwrought, even suicidal, on the anniversary of your transplant. "I'll move to another part of the country, get a job, and blend into the woodwork again. I can play almost any role, pass myself off as anything. I'm very adaptable. Very average. Very forgettable. People rarely notice me." His eyes turned wistful. "Only Judy thought I was special." "Judy? Judy Reyes? You're her lover!" "Ah! You finally figured it out. That's me, the nameless man who escaped that cretin." In a dramatic mood shift, his eyes suddenly filled with tears. "He brained her with a baseball bat." "How'd you manage to get away?" "He stood over her, looking down at what he'd done. He seemed to be fascinated by the amount of blood that pooled beneath her head. He was sort of in a trance and paid no attention to me. I grabbed my clothes and ran. I knew I couldn't do Judy any good.

I knew she was dead. I felt her death as keenly as if I'd died myself." His chest rose and fell with pent-up rage as he recalled that sultry afternoon in Fort Worth. "Judy was very religious, and steeped in the Hispanic culture. Her husband knew how she would feel about her body being butchered." "She wouldn't have approved of organ donation," Cat said. She had to keep him talking, in order to give Bill time to return. Her eyes darted around the room, looking for a means of escape or a weapon with which to defend herself. But as long as he held the humming hair dryer over the tub just beyond her grasp, she was afraid even to move. The second she did, he'd drop the dryer and she would be history. "She would have been mortified by the mere suggestion of it," he was saying. "She would have wanted her body to be buried intact. Reyes knew that. Donating her organs was his way of punishing us for loving each other. He had her dismembered to torture us throughout eternity. The only way I can release us from this curse is to stop her heart." "By killing the recipient." "Yes," he said flatly. "As long as her heart goes on beating, her soul will be in torment. I vowed over her grave that I would give her the rest and peace she deserves. So I had to kill that boy." "The young man in Memphis. How'd you locate him?" He shrugged as though that had been the easiest part. "I got a job with an organ procurement agency. Soon, I had the ONUS number assigned to Judy's heart and tracked it to him." "Then, if you'd done what you promised Judy, why the others? Why were they killed? Why kill me?" "Computers are fallible because people operate them. What if the numbers had been accidentally scrambled?" He shook his head as though that were unthinkable. "I couldn't take a chance on there being a mistake." "So you decided to eliminate any patient who received a heart that day." "That's the only way I could guarantee the completion of my mission."

Cat shivered, but tried not to show her mounting terror. "Why'd you wait until the anniversary each year?" "Otherwise, it would have been an ordinary killing spree. I'm not psychotic. Keeping to the anniversary lends the killings a ceremonious aspect that Judy would've liked. She attended only formal masses. She liked ritual, order, traditional rites. This is the way she would want it." "You actually believe that she'd be proud of you for murdering three people?" "She would want me to reunite her with her heart. That's what I'm going to do. Then her soul can cease its search." He wiped the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand. "I love her too much to let her spirit remain in torment. I'm sorry that you have to die, Cat. I like you very much. But there's simply no other way." He kissed his fingertips, then pressed them against Cat's chest. "Rest well, Judy, my love. I'll love you forever." Cat grabbed his hand just as the other one released the hair dryer. She screamed. The lights went out. The hair dryer fell into the water but did no more damage than cause a splash. Jeff cried out in dismay and frustration. Cat surged up out of the water, but he knocked her back down. She heard his kneecaps crack against the tile floor as he dropped beside the tub. His hands landed hard on the top of her head and pushed it beneath the surface of the water. He held her down. She struggled, flailing her arms and legs, twisting her head from side to side, clawing his arms. But he didn't let go. Reflexively, she opened her mouth to scream. It filled with bath water. As if from a distance, she heard footsteps pounding down the hall. The bathroom door crashed open, and suddenly she was free. She raised her head out of the water and gasped for air, choking on the water in her throat and nasal passages. Her hair clung to her face, obscuring her vision, although it was so dark in the bathroom that she couldn't have seen much anyway.

"Cat?" It was Alex. "I'm here." "Stay out of the way," he shouted. He had wrestled Jeff to the floor. It would be no contest. Alex was by far the stronger. "You son of a bitch, if you've hurt her--" His threat ended in a grunt of surprise and pain. "Is she all right?" It was Bill, standing in the open door. A tongue of flame shot from the barrel of Alex's pistol. The roar ricocheted off the bathroom walls. Bill went down without a sound. Alex bellowed in fury. By now Cat's eyes had adjusted to the darkness. She was able to see that Jeff had somehow managed to get his hands around Alex's pistol. They were struggling for possession. The side of the porcelain tub was slippery and wet, but Cat scrambled over it. She attacked Jeff's face with her bare hands, pummeling it with her fists, scratching it with her nails, pulling his hair. He screamed in pain and let go of the pistol, which Alex shoved against the back of his ear as he flipped him over and straddled the small of his back. "Move," he said, heaving to regain his breath. "Please. I'd enjoy nothing better than to blow your fucking head off." "Go ahead and shoot me," Jeff sobbed. "I've failed Judy. I want to die." "Don't tempt me." Cat picked her way around them, stumbled through the doorway, and tripped over Webster's feet. "Bill?" In the meager light, she saw him sprawled on his back. The stain spreading across the front of his shirt looked as black as ink. "Oh, God, no. No," she whimpered. Too weak to stand, she crawled to the nightstand and dragged the phone to the floor. She punched out 911. Then she crawled back to Bill, grasped his hand tightly, and whispered for him to hold on. "Help's on the way," she called to Alex, and was startled by the faintness of her voice. "How's Webster?" he asked. "He hasn't moved." "Christ," she heard him say. "You might have another murder chalked up to you, Mr. Doyle."

Jeff was babbling incoherently. Cat's teeth were chattering. She grabbed a corner of the bedspread and pulled it toward her. But instead of wrapping herself in it, she spread it over Bill, tucking it around him. The wail of approaching sirens was the sweetest sound she'd ever heard. She bent over Bill and said urgently, "Hang on, Bill. Help's here. Can you hear me? You'll be all right. You will!" He didn't respond, but she hoped he sensed her presence. Lieutenant Hunsaker was the first one into the house. "What's wrong with the lights?" "Fuse box in the kitchen pantry," Alex shouted from the bathroom. "Hit the main breaker switch." "I need help in the bedroom," Cat called out. "A man's been shot in the chest." Within seconds the lights came back on. Cat squinted against the sudden brightness. When she reopened her eyes, two paramedics and Hunsaker were squeezing through the bedroom door. Hunsaker had drawn his pistol. "Okay, Pierce. You're surrounded. Come out with your hands up." "What the hell are you talking about?" Alex shouted. "Not Alex. He's apprehended ..." Unable to say more, Cat gestured toward the open bathroom door. One of the paramedics nudged her shoulder. "Your friend's in bad shape, ma'am. Move aside and let us help him." "Will he be all right?" "We'll do what we can." In a cautious, crouching position, Hunsaker approached the bathroom door. He held his pistol out in front of him with both hands. "Throw down your gun, Pierce." "Gladly, you dumb bastard. If you'll cover him." "Who's that on the floor?" "Jeff Doyle." "Is that the sumbitch who called time and temperature and pretended he was talking to me?" "The surveillance on her phone wasn't canceled yet, right?" Alex asked. "That's right. Damn good thing, too. Who is this little shit, anyway?"

"It's a long story. Cuff him and read him his rights." "Just a goddamn minute, Pierce. Don't be telling me who to arrest. I was coming after you." "Do it," Alex said tightly, pushing Hunsaker out of his way. He stepped around the paramedics who were bent over Webster, working feverishly to save his life. Cat stood rigid, watching. Alex snatched her robe off the chair and wrapped her in it. He held her tightly, one strong hand palming her head and holding it against his chest. "Are you all right?" She nodded. "Sure?" "Yes. Scared. Is Bill--" "Still alive, I think." Placing his hand beneath her chin, he turned her face up to his. "That was a damned brave thing you did. He could have shot me, too. Thanks." Now that it was over, her knees were weak and she was trembling all over. "I'm not brave." "The hell you're not." He pulled her close again, almost squeezing the breath out of her. "If anything had happened to you ..." He placed a fervent kiss at her hair line. "I love you, Cat." "Do you, Alex?" she murmured against his chest. "Is it really me you love?"

Chapter fifty six

"What did he say?" Dean asked. He nodded thanks to the flight attendant who'd brought him a second scotch and water. "Nothing," Cat replied. "That's when you arrived. It was chaos. Alex and I didn't have another opportunity to speak alone." "I was planning to surprise you with a bottle of champagne to toast the fourth year of your second life," he said. "Instead, when I reached your house, it was surrounded by police cars, and a body was being loaded into an ambulance. Scared the hell out of me." She patted his hand, then rested her head against the first-class seat. "I'm so tired. I don't want to talk about it anymore. But I have to. I need to talk it out and then let it go." After a moment of introspection, she added, "I've learned that it's not good to keep bad memories bottled up. It's better to let them out, air them, analyze them, deal with them, and then bury them for good." "Who dispensed those pearls of wisdom?" he asked in a snide tone. "Or need I ask?"

"You promised, Dean," she said, wearily closing her eyes. "No Pierce-bashing." "Right. But I conceded grudgingly." He sipped his drink. "We've pieced together most of it. But there are several points I'm still unclear on. You said that Bill returned to your house on foot after moving his car. He got there the same time Alex did." "Yes. Bill saw him racing up the walk and threw a body tackle. He warned Alex that we were on to him and that he and Jeff were there to protect me. Alex told Bill that he was protecting me from the wrong guy and explained that Jeff had been Judy Reyes's lover." "He must have been convincing." "He's talented that way," she said softly. "Anyhow, Alex called Bill's attention to the absence of Jeff's car. Obviously he'd hidden it so no one would know that he was at my house. Even I wouldn't know until he was inside and it was too late. "That convinced Bill. He asked what he could do to help. They sneaked around the house, peeping in the windows, trying to see what was going on inside. They wanted it to be a surprise attack." The cardiologist joined in the telling. "And when Alex saw Jeff holding the hair dryer over your bathtub, he ran to the back of the house, entered through the kitchen window, located the fuse box, and hit the breaker switch. Quick thinking on his part." "Luckily, he'd noticed the breaker box before that night, so he knew where to find it." She didn't tell him under what circumstances Alex had sneaked into her house twice before. "Thank God. Another second or two and--" "Don't remind me," she said, shuddering. "Poor Bill. They finally allowed me to see him this morning before we left. He's still in ICU and very weak, but he'll be fine. Nancy hasn't left his side." "What brought him to your house at that time of morning?" "A brainstorm for Cat's Kids." She told the white lie to protect the privacy of the Websters. Miraculously, the stray bullet had gone straight through Bill without hitting any vital organs. He'd suffered shock, loss of blood, entry and exit wounds, but he would recover completely. That morning, he had asked the ICU nurse for a moment alone with Cat. He thanked her for shaming him into ending his affair with Melia.

"I love Nancy. Without her love and support . . ."He paused, as if speaking drained his energy. "Until Carla's death, we'd led charmed lives. It was as though we were exempt from the suffering other people experienced. When she was killed, we learned differently. "I was distraught. I couldn't get over it. I went looking for something that would alleviate the pain. Stupidly, I ended up in a sordid affair with a woman who is the antithesis of my beautiful, gracious wife. I figured I deserved no better. I was punishing myself for not being able to protect Carla from death. "Melia pestered me until I hired her. Then she insisted on working on Cat's Kids. You know the rest. That night you caught us together, you said some things that brought me to my senses. Last night, I realized it had to end. Once I'd made up my mind, I couldn't get out of there fast enough." He reached for her hand. "I immediately drove to your house to tell you that you'd saved the most important thing in the world to me--my family. Thank you." "Thank me by getting well. You and I still have a lot of work to do." She kissed his forehead. Out in the corridor, she met Nancy, who hugged her. "Thank you, Cat." "For what? If it weren't for me, Bill wouldn't have been shot." Nancy looked at her, communicating a deeper understanding. "He told me everything. I've forgiven him, but can you forgive me? I ... I did you a grave disservice for suspecting--" "It doesn't matter," Cat interrupted. "I value your friendship. And I admire your talent for fund-raising. Can I depend on you to continue working on Cat's Kids?" "As soon as I get Bill up and around." Dean pulled Cat away from her recollections and back to the present. "Webster and Pierce seem to have formed a mutual admiration society." She laughed. "Which is odd since they didn't like each other when they first met. Alex felt terrible about letting Jeff get hold of his gun during their struggle. Bill dismissed his apologies. If he'd remained in the kitchen, as Alex had instructed him to do, he wouldn't have been in the line of fire."