So Close the Hand of Death (24 page)

C
olleen was starting to get royally pissed off. Flynn was fretful, hungry for smiley-face pancakes, though Detective Ross said that leaving the CJC was an absolute no. They were making do with McDonald’s that one of the patrols had brought in, pancakes and sausage patties, but Flynn wanted smiley faces, and just about everyone in the Homicide offices knew about it.

She was lost without her computer. Ross had taken it from her when she tried to leave the first time, before he’d locked her and Flynn in an interrogation room. She wasn’t under arrest, but she wasn’t free to leave, either. She couldn’t believe that they thought she had something to do with this crazy killer’s game.

Ewan Copeland.

The name made all the hairs on her arms stand on end. So long as she kept denying she knew him, kept playing dumb, she’d be fine. They’d catch him. She and Flynn would be able to go back to their lives.

She tried to quiet her cranky son, and waited. There was nothing for her to do. She worked on her breathing, her yoga breaths. Square. In for four counts, hold for four counts, release for four counts, still for four counts.
She made a game of it for Flynn.
Watch Mommy, baby.
After five rounds, he began to relax. After eight, he fell asleep against her shoulder, his soft hair spiked with sweat. She held him tight against her chest, felt his small body go limp and warm as he slid into sleep. Wished she could go back to his age and do the same thing.

There was a soft knock at the door. It opened slowly and Lincoln Ross stood in the frame, a wistful smile on his face. She felt her heart leap when she saw him. She was crazy, going mad, but when his smile turned from wistful to engaging, she couldn’t help herself, she smiled back.

“The pancakes worked, I see,” he said.

“I think I hypnotized him,” she replied, and he stifled a laugh.

“It worked on me, too. I’ve rarely felt so calm while at work.”

She realized he’d been watching, waiting for Flynn to settle, before he came back to the room. She appreciated that. Ross came all the way into the room, shut the door quietly behind him.

“I need to talk to you, Colleen. Is he totally asleep?”

“He’s out. What is it? Can we leave now?”

Lincoln sat carefully in the chair across the table from her.

“Not just yet. Colleen…” He took a deep breath. She got a terrible feeling in her chest. Like something was going to pop.

She steeled herself. She’d already received the worst news a wife could get, that her husband was dead well before his time. The only thing worse would be hearing something terrible about Flynn, but she had her son in
her arms, and no one else to worry about. She would be fine.

“What is it, Detective?”

He fidgeted with his hair for a moment.

“Colleen, where did you grow up?”

“Blacksburg, Virginia. Why?”

His liquid brown eyes rested on hers, and she saw his eyebrows twitch, just a fraction.

“Why?” she asked again.

“Have you ever been to Forest City, North Carolina?”

No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
.

“I don’t believe so,” she said.

“Colleen,” he started. She shifted Flynn, buried her face in his neck. She felt the panic begin to rise in her chest.

“Colleen,” Lincoln said again. “Forest City. Do you remember anyone named Emma Brighton?”

They don’t know. They don’t know
.
Please, God, don’t let them know.

“I’ve never been to Forest City, North Carolina, Detective.” She raised her chin in sheer defiance and looked him straight in the eye.

“I had your prints run, Colleen. I know you’re Emma Brighton. I know what he did to you.”

The name. It brought back immediate, slavish memories, ones she’d buried so deep she’d actually convinced herself it had happened to someone else. Someone she didn’t know. A story she’d heard about, a dreadful rumor, but someone else’s rumor. The kind of things she dealt with every day on Felon E, women raped, children dying. The very people she fought for, who deserved her justice.

She felt the pancakes rise up the back of her throat.
The detective was staring at her still, watching. How could she have ever found him attractive? For the rest of her life, she would see those lips form around the name, his pink tongue touching the edges of his teeth as they parted and joined. Open, close, open, close. Emma. Emma. Emma.

She was crying. How did that happen?

“Colleen? Are you okay? I’m sorry to drop this on you. But we had to know. The way you reacted when you heard Copeland’s name—”

“Don’t you dare say his name to me.”

She jerked to her feet.

“I’m leaving. Now.”

Flynn started to cry. She didn’t care, she just crushed him to her harder and bolted for the door. The detective followed, but she was quicker. She was already out and down the hallway, running blind, her hair in her face, tears shattering her vision.

She hadn’t thought of that moment in years. She’d done extensive therapy, working with a system called EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It was a cognitive therapy that realigned the neural pathways in her brain so she could move forward with her life, leaving the crippled portion of her soul on the therapist’s floor, shoved with her foot under the therapist’s couch, forever left behind. EMDR allowed her to hear the word
rape
without cringing, without faltering. It allowed her to get married, to find enjoyment, even abandon, in her marriage bed with Tommy. It gave her a new life, one free from the crushing, horrifying memories of what happened that night. It gave her a new name, one not sullied with the stains of violence. She started over, and no one knew. No one. Not even Tommy.

With two words, that fucking detective had undone years of work.

Her arms relaxed. The door was just ahead.

Emma. Emma
Goddamn raped until she bled on the carpet torn open between her privates her stomach slashed forty times with the sharpest blade he could find her virginity her sex her blood spilling on the carpet the ambulance driver screaming her stoned mother’s pitying gaze the whole world knew what he had done to her and she’d never escape the pain the screams the blood
Brighton.

“Stop her,” she heard the detective yell, but the faces that turned to her were shocked, and that moment’s delay was all she needed. She scooted out the door and rushed across the street. She pounded down the ramp to the garage. She didn’t even realize that she’d dropped Flynn back in the station, by the door.

She had no idea who Flynn was.

All she knew was she had to leave, to go, to get out. Now.

The car. Right ahead. Keys…she slapped her pockets and found them. Unlocked the door. Pulled it open and sat in the seat. Emma Brighton.

The face from her past floated to the surface, the sweet smile, the curly hair. A happy girl.

Emma Brighton, before she was debased and defiled.

Colleen didn’t feel the blade slide through her throat. She didn’t feel anything at all.

E
wan Copeland scraped at the dried blood on the table with a fingernail.

So much of his life was spent waiting. For his mother to hurt him. For his father to come home. For the bars to his cell to open. For the painkillers to take effect. For the swelling to go down. For the damn woman tied to the chair to wake up.

He had all the time in the world, but really, this was getting ridiculous. He wanted to play. He got bored with waiting after a while. Patience was a virtue, yes, but in his case, he should be given a bloody Oscar for his performances.

He finished removing the red flecks from the table and debated. He’d started an excellent thriller last night, gotten halfway through. He liked thrillers. They moved quickly. Just like him.

Read? Or wake her ass up?

Choices, choices.

He stood, crossed the room and retrieved the ammonia capsule from his bag. He’d pilfered them from work, the perfect antidote for fainting relatives and distraught spouses. He cracked the capsule open and waved
it beneath her nose until she began to moan. He placed it upright on the table, he might need it again. “Hello, Samantha.”

The woman stirred, her dark hair shifting against her perfect ivory skin as her head lolled forward. Not quite there yet. “Samantha…Samaaaaaantha…wakey wakey.”

He tapped her cheek with his open palm, softly, not a slap, just a nudge. A little push toward the left. Her eyelids started to flutter, the brown eyes out of focus. She blinked heavily, the lashes soft against her lids.

He tapped her harder this time, on the other cheek, with the back of his hand, enjoying the bloom of red on her perfectly peach-skinned cheeks. Her eyes flew open. He watched them process the situation—he, the glorious one, standing before her, head cocked to the side like a curious puppy, a ten-inch blade in his hand. The fear registered in an instant. An appropriate, intelligent reaction. Of course, he expected nothing less, but still. Fear was good. He liked fear. He wanted to see that same glance bleeding out from gray on gray eyes, but for now, this would have to do.

He did so love the look of a wide, mobile mouth incapacitated with a gag.

“Glad you could join us,” he said.

She shrieked behind the gag, and he shook his head.

“No yelling. That’s not fair. I’m not yelling at you, am I? Calm down and be a good girl, and you won’t get hurt.”

He traced her collarbones with the blade, watched as her eyes filled with tears. Sam Loughley wasn’t a dumb woman, she knew what was happening. She sniffed hard, her mouth stretched against the gag, then
shut her eyes. They always shut their eyes. He’d gone through a stage when he’d tried gluing their eyes open, but the staring started to get to him. It was so much more feminine, more demure, for the lashes to brush against the cheeks, guiding the rivulets of tears leaking down their skin. Crying with eyes open looked… strange. Like dolls. He wasn’t a fan of dolls.

“Sam, you know your role in this play, don’t you?”

She opened her eyes again, and there was a bit of defiance lurking there.

Good. She would fight for her friend.

“It shouldn’t take too long. You’ve been missed by now. I haven’t. I’ve been planning this for weeks, right under your noses. But Taylor will be looking for you. She’s a clever girl, she should be able to puzzle out where we are. I have faith in her, just like you do. So. We’re just going to have ourselves a little party while we’re waiting. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

The eyes closed again.

He wanted to talk. Now that she was awake, now that he had an audience…he wondered how Ruth was managing. He doubted he’d ever see her again, her or her creepy friend Harvey. The minute he smelled danger he’d probably taken off, out of town, a rat scurrying for the cover of darkness. The boy he killed wasn’t meant to be found, not during all of this, yet he’d managed to both screw that up and leave behind a clumsy, ill-timed red herring that no one had fallen for. Idiot. Why had he let Ruth bring the fool along? It was a mistake, one of the few he’d made along the way. He wasn’t perfect, after all.

No, he was going to be alone again, for quite some time. He wanted to enjoy the company while he had it.

“Samantha, tell me. What was it like growing up
with her? Was she as strong as she is now? Or were you the strong one? Working with dead bodies all day, I have to wonder. You enjoy it, don’t you? Feeling inside them. The smell of the viscera, the weight of their testicles, all those holes. You become one with their bodies. You bring work home with you, too, into your family, your children. You share small bits of every human being you touch with all the people you care for. There is no amount of gloving and scrubbing that can erase what’s in your mind. When you fuck Simon, do you think about the blades cutting through the flesh? Do you like that feeling, Sam? The tugging, the cutting, the succulent tissue parting before you?”

The knife was poised above her abdomen now. He edged the tip through her sweater, a bit farther now, into her skin, just ever so slightly. Relished the gasp of air through her nose as the nascent pain ran through her synapses. A trickle of blood wept from the wound, just a scratch, really, and slid slowly over the edge of her slacks between her legs. He ran his finger along it, gathering the red droplets. He stared at the brilliant glow, felt himself become mesmerized. He had to force his eyes away. He wiped the blood on the table, replacing the smudge he’d removed earlier. It looked so much nicer fresh. Like wet paint.

He really loved this woman. She wasn’t struggling, or begging. She was stoic.

Hmm. He decided to see just how brave she really was.

T
aylor ran back to the front desk of Forensic Medical, where Kris was waiting for her.

“Nothing. She’s not down there. Do you have her schedule up yet?”

“Yes, and I called the doctor—she hasn’t shown there. Here, look.” Kris got up and let Taylor sit in her chair, pointed over her shoulder at the computer screen.

“It was a normal day. We had intake of three new cases, late afternoon. She was going to post them overnight, began the night shift staff meeting at ten, that’s when she realized her car was crapped out. She was going to grab dinner beforehand, and it wouldn’t start, so she decided to have someone from staff run out and get something for her. It was a typical twelve-hour shift.”

“Was Stuart in last night?”

Stuart Charisse was Sam’s favorite assistant in the morgue, a quiet, smart man who was devoted to Sam.

“Yeah, he was in. I think he got off at two o’clock.”

“Call him.”

Kris wasted no time. She moved to the right and grabbed her phone. She obviously had all the staff numbers programmed in, she simply hit a single button and put the phone on speaker. A sleepy voice mumbled, “Yeah?”

“Stuart, it’s Kris. I’m here with Lieutenant Jackson. We’re looking for Sam. Have you seen her?”

He yawned loudly. “No. Not since I left. She and Iles were going to get something to eat. She missed dinner.”

“Barclay?” Kris asked. “He was in last night?”

“Yeah. Something about his performance review. They decided to do it over Subway, I think.”

“Thank you, Stuart,” Taylor said, then cut off the phone. Kris’s face had gone white.

“Kris, what’s wrong?”

“Barclay isn’t in Nashville this week. I was talking to him when you got here. He’s in Florida. His mom is sick, he went down to help. He goes down there a lot.”

Barclay fucking Iles.

“Kris, how long have you and Barclay been dating?”

Kris was wringing her hands, the knuckles white from the force, her eyebrows touching across her forehead as she frowned. “Almost a year now. He’s a great guy. You know him, Lieutenant. I recommended him to Sam—he seemed like he’d make a really good ’gator. He went to med school for a while, he’s really smart. The rest of the staff all like him, too. He loves Sam. He loves you, too—he talks about you all the time. You’re his hero. He wants to be just like you. I actually got a little jealous once, but that was silly. I was just being insecure. But why would he lie to me? What’s going on?”

What’s going on indeed? Taylor ran back through her memories of Iles. She’d worked with him the first time not too long ago, but he’d been around the department, at the crime scenes, for months. Access. He’d have access to everything—personnel files, schedules, home addresses.

Son of a bitch.

“Kris, listen to me very carefully. I think Barclay may be someone else, someone very, very dangerous. I need you to give me every bit of information you have about him. His phone number, his address. Every picture you have. Everything you can think of that belongs to him. Right now.”