Replacing Gentry (22 page)

The red light flashed green. I stared at the limey glow, welcoming me to proceed. The sight was bittersweet. Daniel had changed the combination of his safe to the date of our engagement. At some point in our short marriage, he must have expected it to last. He must have truly loved me.

But that’s melancholic musing best left for another time,
I told myself as my thoughts took another turn. I should call Anna-Beth. I’d promised to inform her if I found anything. My hand reached to my back pocket for my phone while my eyes remained fixated on the inviting green light. After the last few months speculating as to the contents of this safe, I now stood on what felt like a precipice.

“All right, Marlie, it’s time you had some answers,” I urged myself on. “You want to know, you know you do, and now it’s a matter of life and death.” A bit dramatic, but it worked because before I had a chance to think twice about the consequences, I’d popped open the door to the safe, slid out the pile of folders and dumped them onto the center of Daniel’s desk.

Turning back, I hesitated before reaching in to retrieve the final contents. My fingers closed around etched metal and I cautiously withdrew a black pistol with polished steel accents.
XD
-40 5.25 was embossed into the slide. The absence of sufficient weight told me that it wasn’t loaded. Upon closer examination, the hollow grip confirmed my suspicion.

Where’s the magazine?
I muttered, my mind turning over random memories until the one I needed rose to the surface.
The key!

The tips of my searching fingers pinched metal, and I withdrew a tiny golden key from between the leather folds of Daniel’s desk chair. Unlocking the drawer, I spied the magazine right where I’d remembered seeing it the day the boys and I had almost crashed in the rain. Now all I needed to do was load the thing.

The little I knew about guns I’d learned from my brother-in-law, gun enthusiast extraordinaire. With the magazine in my left hand, the pistol in my right, I slammed the magazine into the handle. Palming the grip the way he’d taught me, I pulled the slide back and then released. A sliver of metal rose on the top of the slide indicating that a bullet had entered the chamber. There was no thumb safety so I knew that gripping the handle would depress a built-in safety switch. A second safety would release when my finger pulled back on the trigger. Rock-n-roll. A shudder riveted through my timorous heart. Was I prepared to shoot someone if it came to that? I prayed I wouldn’t have to find out.

I set the gun off to the side and turned my attention back to the files. Twisting my hair up in the back, I slid in a pencil to hold it and closed my eyes. I took a breath, blew it out, opened my eyes again, and with trembling fingers, turned back the cover of the first folder.

There was nothing earth shattering, just a copy of mine and Daniel’s prenup, our marriage license, and the social security documents we’d used to change my name to Cannon. Closing it, I set it off to the side. The next few folders held contracts and agreements pertaining to Cannon Records. Beneath those folders, were more holding birth certificates for the boys, social security cards, and immunization records along with various other medical records.

Satisfied there was nothing out of the ordinary, I added the boy’s information folder to the pile I’d already gone through and returned the stack back into the safe. I fingered the next folder, the one Daniel had held the night he’d visited the unmarked grave, the one that had appeared to cause him great emotional distress.

A glance around the shadowy study told me what I already knew; I was alone, and no one knew I was here. It was time I paired answers to the questions I should have known all along. Hesitating a moment longer, I adjusted the folder to the center of the blotter. Then, as if the file were an ancient document of great value, I eased the front fold open and scanned the first page. My latent suspicion curled its gnarled fingers around my heart and gave it a firm squeeze.

Laying on the very top was the death certificate for Unidentified Woman 
1
. The information on the form included her approximate age—almost an exact match to Gentry’s at the time of her death. Cause of death—drug overdose. Height, weight, hair color, all matching Gentry’s. The only box left empty was the one pertaining to eye color.

The tightness in my chest increased as I remembered what Detective Ripley had said about how the woman in the alley was missing her eyes. Evidence, though not conclusive, that the woman from the alley and the woman whose grave Daniel had visited were more than likely one and the same.

Turning the death certificate onto its face, I scanned the next page, a yellowed page torn from a newspaper. It showed the accident site where Gentry had run her car off the road. I lifted it for a closer look. Her car sat mangled next to the golf tee mailbox. The same mailbox I had looked up and seen when I’d nearly crashed that day in the rain. An eerie feeling ran down my back.

Next, there were clippings from her funeral. The boys looked so small in their dark suits, their hair combed back from their little sad faces. Daniel stood stoically at their side, his hands clinched together, knuckles glowing white in the afternoon sun as they hung down in front of him. Was I mistaken, or was his expression more agitated than forlorn?

Under more newspaper clippings sat the final content of the file—a blue folder with a case number stamped on the top and tab. The seal of the Metro Police Department was embossed across the front. This was what I’d been looking for, the piece of evidence that would finally reveal the identity of the woman found dead in an alley. It might put a face to Unidentified Woman 
1
.

My stomach curled into a fist as my worst fears were confirmed. My husband, the man I’d been sleeping next to for the last three months, was caught up in something unseemly—something illegal—something he might kill to keep quiet. Did I really want to know what that something was?

Before I had a chance to change my mind, I flipped the cover open and ran my eyes down the first page, speed reading the details of a death I’d already heard about from Detective Ripley. A lump slipped into my throat, growing to a nasty pressure in my head as I turned back the next few pages and came face to face with a dead woman. Laying in an unnatural tangle on a heap of garbage bags in a dirt-stained alley, a woman in a tattered satin blouse, fitted skirt, ripped stockings, and only one black pump with a red bottom, looked like a rag doll a child had tossed away for something better.

The next pictures showed the gruesome scene from different angles, close-ups of her fingernails, splintered and ragged along the edges, the sleeves of her left arm pushed up to show a descending history of drug use. When I came to the close up of her face, I had to grip the desk to keep from dropping to the floor.

With the exception of cuts and bruises and general lack of color, her face was an exact match to Gentry’s. Heart-shaped with a mole to the left side of her nose, her bow lips were parted and parched, her eyes closed and hollow-looking with dark circles beneath. Her dark hair was matted and strung out like a shredded oriental fan over the garbage bags.

Gently, I touched my fingers to the glossy photo. Tears for a woman I’d never known leaked from my eyes as I tried to wipe the dirt from her beautiful face.
She didn’t deserve this!
I felt a sudden outrage that someone had thrown her away like a useless article that had outlived its purpose. As I wiped at my eyes, another thought crossed my mind. If she had died in that car crash, how could this be Gentry? But then I remembered earlier when Daniel had furiously asked Paul whose body was in Gentry’s grave.

Gentry’s grave? The missing autopsy report from the hospital? Slapping the police file closed, I pushed it out of the way to expose one more file. A Vanderbilt Medical Center ME file. Inside were pictures of a dark-haired woman lying under a white sheet. Y shaped stitching peeked over the drape. Her face was bloodied beyond recognition.

The image brought back memories of the cadaver and the night my life had taken a sharp turn into the unknown. The report indicated that this woman had been a similar height and weight to Gentry, but there was no way to determine her identity without a DNA test. Further scrutiny of the file showed no evidence that such a test had been performed. But there had to be something in this file that proved she wasn’t Gentry, or else why would the report have had to disappear?

According to the evidence sitting before me, there had been six months between the deaths of these two women, and yet, somehow they were connected.

I needed help. Someone who understood all this medical jargon. Someone with the authority to exhume a body.

It was time to take what I knew to Anna-Beth. She wouldn’t be happy, and not just because I’d been ignoring her calls since her goon had kidnapped me; but by opening the safe and going through its contents, I’d already reneged on our agreement to back off my investigation. I reached into my back pocket, pulled out my cell phone, and then hesitated. Something didn’t feel right. Less than an instant later, I knew why.

His words splintered the air between us. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Paul’s voice warned. Like a silent predator stalking its pray, he materialized from the darkness. “Put the phone down, Marlie, before you do something stupid.”

Chapter Twenty-five

M
y entire body turned to stone. “How did you know I was here?”

“Your purse,” he said, lifting his chin toward the door where, just beyond, my purse lay heaped right in the same spot I’d dropped it earlier. “You must have forgotten it after you finished listening in on a private conversation.” Paul glided across the room, keeping to the shadows like an aberration.

“The conversation was about me. I think that warrants concern on my part. Don’t you?” I said, matching his derisive tone.

“Oh, Marlie, so obstinate even in the face of defeat. I knew from the first moment I saw you that you were one of those meddling do-gooders. You should have listened to the cadaver and gotten out while you still could.”

I thought back to the sick prank from the ball. “That was you?” I asked, and with the slightest of nods, he confirmed my assumption. “How? Why?”

“Because I needed to keep you away from Daniel. I saw the way he was looking at you, just like he used to at Gentry, and I knew if the two of you got together there’d be trouble. Complications I didn’t want to deal with—again.”

“Again?” I asked, but he ignored me.

“You’d been acting a little skittish all evening, like any minute you expected to see a ghost . . . or an ex-husband, maybe?” I flinched at the mention of Finn. “I saw you eyeballing the service exit and figured it was only a matter of time before something, or someone, sent you running for cover. Being that Daniel was on the medical school’s board of directors, I knew about the cadaver the students stole to make into a prop; quite an ingenious contraption they hooked up to that poor dead soul, don’t you think? I could move its mouth and even make it blink.

“All I had to do was sneak away from the table, position the cadaver, and then come back in and wait. I did my best to chase you off but Daniel got in the way. When I saw him kiss you, I thought I was too late but then you made for the door and well . . . you know the rest,” he finished as he approached the desk. Resting both hands on the side opposite from where I stood, he added, “And the
why
is not what’s important at this point, but what matters now is that you think you can still beat me.”

He leaned closer until his face was under the direct beam, shining from the desk light. “Or should I say
us.
”

Paul’s eyes, one the color of pea soup, the other ice blue, glowered back at me. “You-your one of them?” I choked out, still unable to comprehend what I was seeing.

“So you
do
know? I’m impressed. I knew you were sneaking around looking for missing records and having private meetings with police detectives, but I didn’t anticipate you’d uncovered this much, so fast.” He clapped his hands together in mocking applause. “If you weren’t such a goody-goody, you might prove useful to our cause.”

“As if,” I said. “I look forward to seeing you—and your group—brought to its knees, and I will do everything in my power to see that happen.”

Paul slid a hip onto the desk and examined his fingernails. “Bold threat, but you’re just a social worker trying to fit into a privileged life you don’t deserve. What can you do?” he said, issuing a subtle challenge.

Whether he knew a taunt would prompt me to defend myself, I didn’t know, but rise to the occasion I did. I was terrified of what his very existence suggested, and even more terrified that he, or they, assumed no one could stop them. But then I was just one woman. What was I compared to a secret group so corrupt, so evil, they thought they could control destiny? Bend God’s will?

I glanced around hoping to see a cavalry of angels coming to my rescue. But from what I could see, I couldn’t have been more alone. Where was God when I needed Him?
Be brave, Marlie,
the voice inside my head urged. Courage, after all, isn’t the absence of fear, but the will to move forward in the face of it. Paul had tried to control me that morning in the kitchen with insults and riddles. Only, then I’d seen him as just a pathetic manipulator, now he was something different all together. Something I didn’t understand—someone I now feared.

I couldn’t allow him to gain the upper hand. I had to force myself to see him as the quibbling little man I’d always thought he was. I had to believe it.

“You’re wrong, I’m not afraid of you. What can you do to me?” I thrust a finger at him. “You’re nothing but a scheming, sad little man.”

“You have no idea what you’re dealing with,” he said, the words seething from his lips.

I didn’t allow even a flinch. “I pity men like you. Small and insecure, who know they can’t rise to the top on their own because they don’t have what it takes.”

His hands curled into tight little balls. “I will crush you like the weak, repugnant, waste of existence you are.”

I should have stopped. I should have turned away. I should have thought twice about further offending a man so hell-bent on controlling destiny that he would mutilate his own body to do so. Except I just had one, well two, more things to say.

“You’re just a coward hiding behind the mask of another. And that makes you a pretender. An imposter,” I added. “
Doesn’t it?
”

I barely had a chance to register the peril I’d put myself in when, a split second later, the handle of the pistol came toward me as a voice I didn’t recognize, roared, “Enough!”

I was in a room without walls. All around me, a white expanse seemed to stretch forever. In front of me, a carousel turned, spinning so fast I couldn’t make out the faces of the people holding tight to the gold encrusted poles. A man in a tailored dark suit hastened toward me with what I felt was an urgent message. I’d been here before. Only, the last time, I wasn’t given time to hear what he had to say. Fearing I would be drawn away again without an answer, I tried to move toward him, to meet him halfway, only my feet wouldn’t go.

“What do you want?’ I called out. But he just kept coming. “Please, there isn’t time,” I tried again. “Please . . .”

And still, there was no reply. Instead, his steps halted as his gaze captured mine. Extending a hand toward the whirling carousel, I followed the tips of his fingers to see that now there were faces. Visible for only a second before engulfed once more in the centripetal force of the carousel, the despairing look in each one’s eyes showed fear. I had the sudden urge to leap to their aid—to save them.

“How can I help when I can’t move?” I asked as the scene faded away.

My face stung with every throb that radiated from what felt like a lump growing out of my cheekbone. Fire advanced like hot threads winding their way up my left arm. I tried to move it, to press my other hand to the heat to stop its progress, but I couldn’t. And that was when consciousness crashed in upon me. My eyelids flew open bringing me the rest of the way back.

My wrists were restrained.
Not again,
I groaned.

“Welcome back,” Paul said. “I was beginning to wonder if we’d have another chance to talk before you died.”

I looked up, which I found difficult considering my head held the weight of a cinderblock, to see him leaning against the side of Daniel’s desk, his legs crossed at the ankle. The fingers of his right hand rolled a syringe one-way and then the other.

“What did you do to me?” I asked, remembering only that he’d knocked me to the floor. What had come next, I couldn’t recall, but the heavy feeling in my head and chest, coupled with the blur in my vision and parched mouth, told me that a blow to the face was the least of my worries.

“You’ve obviously never experienced heroin, Miss Evans,” Paul said. “But then this isn’t just your average street variety drug. It’s my special blend.”

My gaze fell to the source of the burn coming from my arm to see a puncture mark circled in a red welt. It blurred to two, then three, and then again to one. I tried to pull against the restraints but my arms were so weak I couldn’t get them to budge.

“You shot me up?” I slurred through numb lips. “Why?”

“Because it’s what I do,” he said. “A hobby of sorts.”

“You inject people with drugs for fun? Does Daniel know what a sick bastard you are?”

He turned his palm up. “He knows I enjoy my work.”

“And what work is that?”

Paul leaned down to level his face with mine. “Ridding this world of useless people for starters.”

The picture of Gentry lying in the alley flashed in my head. “You’re the serial killer? Why would you want to do that to those people? Take their eyes?”

“Serial killer, no,” he said, wagging a finger. “But have I done this before? Yes, many times. And the eyes symbolize the quest for truth, understanding, and knowledge. Some, I took to preserve the truth their eyes exposed. Others I took because, even in death, they didn’t deserve the privilege of sight.”

His blatant confession brought on a brief instant of clarity. “And you got away with it for so long by removing the records or manipulating someone to do it for you, someone like Daniel,” I garbled. “And being that the person you killed was replaced by an imposter, no one reported them missing.”

“That is correct.”

“You’re a demented man, you know that?” I said, wanting to keep him talking long enough to allow my head to clear. Hopefully by then I could come up with a plan to release myself. Or, God-willing, give someone time to rescue me. “And what other hobbies do you enjoy?” I asked.

He looked to the ceiling in thought for a second. “It’s not really a hobby, per say, as much as my calling,” he said. “You see, I’m the one who makes this all possible.” He motioned up and down, over his body. “In my former life I was a doctor, a very prominent reconstructive plastic surgeon. You might recollect them honoring me at the ball?”

Through the haze in my mind, I thought back, recalling the mention of a deceased pioneer in the field of plastic surgery.

“I remember,” I admitted. “But why go to such extremes?”

“Like Daniel, I joined the Iphiclesians in college, frustrated over the corruption and greed of those who continue to govern this country—the stupidity of the voting public who keeps electing them. Painstakingly, over the years, I climbed the ladder to the upper echelons of the Society of Iphiclesians, the secret ranks, where I tried to convince them that we could achieve our goals much faster if we removed specific individuals of influence and replaced them with ourselves—the elite like myself and my lover, I’m sure you remember her from the cemetery—those willing to make the ultimate sacrifice.

“Our eye color is my artist’s mark. And proof of our superiority, our sacrifice. But some of the Society’s leaders disagreed. Men like Gentry’s father. They were weak. You have them to thank for saving your life the first time,” he added as a side-note.

I gave him a confused look and he explained. “When you tried to impose your misguided suggestions and opinions on Finn . . .”

Tears surged to my eyes. As I’d come to suspect, the Iphiclesians had been responsible for Finn leaving me—and for his death.

“I thought I was done with your meddling but then Anna-Beth had to bring you around again,” he said, then steered the conversation back to the Iphiclesians. “Slowly, I weeded them out until there was none left in the top ranks that opposed me. But I became frustrated with the imperfection of surgeries and started studying genetics, looking for a way to alter appearance more perfectly—permanently. Paul, the original Paul, couldn’t effectively control Daniel, or that first wife of his, any longer. Daniel was, and still is, our shining star. Our next best chance at achieving our goals.”

He straightened, laid the syringe on the desk. “The others were a disappointment, too weak to carry out their missions, too susceptible to persuasion.” He snapped his fingers. “You’re all so easily led from the light to the darkness; so willing to blur the division between black and white, to lose yourselves in the gray where good intentions can be used for evil, where evil can masquerade as good.”

His words faded out just as a flash of lightning split the darkness, bringing me back.

“Human nature?” I said, trying to follow his twisted train of thought. Trying to keep myself alert.

“Humans want to touch and to be touched, our hearts crave to be loved, our minds to be stimulated. But what we want takes effort and most are lazy by nature, tire quickly and search for an easier way. Their minds, thirsty for knowledge in this age of technology, become weak from visual stimulus. Like many once-great ancient civilizations, our society has forgotten how to think, how to reason, and instead looks to others to tell them what to believe, what to care about, and what to fear.”