Stone Cold (33 page)

McKenzie’s shoulders seemed to sag as he stared vacantly at the images of the four dead women on the table before him. Griffin leaned forward and tapped the images one by one.

‘They may not have had families but they all had lives, Dale,’ he said. ‘Friends, people who cared about them and have spent the last decade suffering, wondering what on earth happened to them. They had lives that you took. Why? You lost your twin brother, Stephen. You
know
what it’s like to lose somebody close. Why the hell would you put these people through that same pain?’

McKenzie did not look up as he replied, his gaze affixed to the photographs.

‘Stephen never died,’ he whispered. ‘I gave him life again. Haven’t you ever wondered detective, what it would be like to live a life without rules, without laws, without restraint? A life that you can just walk away from at any point, when you’re bored of it or when it just gets too difficult?’ McKenzie looked up at Griffin finally. ‘A life where you don’t have to care?’

Griffin shook his head. ‘You could have lived that life without wrecking half a dozen others.’

McKenzie shook his head.

‘No, detective, I couldn’t. Tell me that you wouldn’t kill if you could do so without fear of the law, or rape or steal or plunder. Tell me you wouldn’t invade lives just for the thrill of it, control and dominate and then cast aside the old life for a new one.’

Griffin stared at McKenzie for a long moment before he replied.

‘The only mind that would really think like that is the kind that isn’t strong enough to face real life. You’re a coward, McKenzie, nothing more and nothing less, and what’s left of your life will be spent behind bars because even if the prosecution hire a fucking chimpanzee to handle this case the jury will still send you down.’ Griffin looked up at the sergeant standing by the door. ‘Get this asshole back to holding.’

***

48

Griffin walked through the hospital ward just as the morning nurses were starting their shifts, brilliant sunshine beaming in golden shafts between the rows of beds as he searched for Ally Robinson. Maietta walked alongside him, having met him at the hospital entrance, and he could tell that she was watching him with interest.

‘You’ve got a bounce in your step all of a sudden,’ she observed. ‘Got lucky in the end last night, did we?’

‘None of your business,’ Griffin replied, but he couldn’t help the smile twisting the corners of his lips. He felt like a clown.

Maietta made a soft whistling sound and nudged him with her elbow as they walked. ‘Load off your mind?’

‘Cut it out.’

‘Seriously.’

Griffin glanced at Maietta, saw the genuine smile on her face. ‘Sure, things are looking up.’

They walked into the ward and saw Robinson laying on a bed, propped up on pillows and staring out at the sunshine. The surgeon who had operated on her the previous night had informed them that the only thing that had saved Robinson from bleeding out was her obesity: the knife had not penetrated her deeply enough in any of the wounds to cause a fatal bleed.

Ally Robinson had dragged herself almost a quarter of a mile once the drugs had worn off, along the side of the road on which she had been abandoned, before a passing motorist had spotted her and called 911.

‘Miss Robinson?’

Griffin introduced himself and Maietta. ‘We’d like to ask you a few questions.’

Ally nodded. Her eyes were tired and her body was bandaged where she had been struck repeatedly by Dale McKenzie.

‘Can you tell us what happened?’ Maietta asked, all of the hard–edged street–kid attitude stripped from her voice and making her sound surprisingly gentle.

‘I got a call from a friend of mine,’ Ally said, ‘last night. She’s been having a hard time lately. I wanted to meet with her after work, to help her sort things out. Anyway, she didn’t pick up, but her boyfriend did.’

‘Kathryn Stone,’ Griffin said, identifying the friend. ‘How did you know my name, when you arrived at the hospital?’

‘Kathryn mentioned you once,’ Ally said. ‘She was helping you.’

‘And Kathryn’s boyfriend did this to you?’ Griffin asked, gesturing to Robinson’s wounds.

She nodded, closing her eyes and looking away from them for a moment. ‘Yes.’

Griffin looked at his notes for a while.

‘Do you recognise this woman?’ Maietta asked, holding out a picture of Sheila McKenzie to Robinson.

Robinson squinted at the image and then shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think so. Why?’

‘You’re sure?’ Griffin pressed. ‘You don’t know who she is?’

‘No, I don’t know her.’

‘So, why would Kathryn’s boyfriend do this to you?’ Griffin asked.

‘Revenge,’ Ally whispered. ‘Kathryn was kind of abusing him after she found out that he was seeing another woman behind his back.’

‘And you were involved,’ Maietta said.

‘Yes,’ Robinson replied. ‘Not directly, but I kind of helped a little. Kathryn was about to leave her boyfriend, Stephen. She’d been able to access his laptop after he started lying to her, and she figured he was having an affair. She looked at his financials, and was able to figure out where this other woman lived.’

‘And you were helping her with all of this?’ Maietta asked.

‘I was her confidant,’ Robinson replied. ‘She told me all about the affair her boyfriend was having, and about how she was kind of playing tricks on him using her knowledge of his lies.’

‘Okay,’ Griffin said. ‘Here’s where I’ve got a problem. You see, last night we found the woman in the photograph lying in a pool of blood in a storage unit. She’d been shot.’

Robinson stared at Griffin as her lips parted in horror. ‘What?’

‘She nearly died,’ Maietta added. ‘Attempted homicide, twenty to life.’

‘I didn’t shoot her!’ Robinson almost yelled. ‘And Kathryn hates guns!’

‘Then you’d better tell us everything,’ Griffin said. ‘Because somebody here is lying to us, and we need to find out whom.’

Robinson sank back into her pillow. Her reply, when it came, was barely a whisper. ‘I don’t know anything, only that Kathryn was taunting Stephen.’

‘How did you get involved with her, with all of this?’ Griffin asked.

‘She asked me to buy some stuff,’ Robinson replied. ‘Said that she couldn’t get it herself without her boyfriend getting all suspicious of what she was up to.’

‘What kind of stuff?’ Griffin demanded.

‘Tickets to a holiday resort,’ Robinson replied, ‘uh, some particular kind of aftershave and an engagement ring, of all things. She got him to propose to her in front of about a hundred people.’

‘Aftershave?’ Maietta asked. ‘What would she want with that?’

‘A gift I suppose, I didn’t ask too many questions.’

‘Anything else?’ Griffin asked.

‘I don’t remember. Tickets to a vacation spot.’

Griffin stared at Robinson. ‘Hunter’s Lodge?’

‘Yeah, that was it. She was planning a weekend away.’

‘And you paid cash for all of this?’ Robinson nodded. ‘And she told you what she was doing?’

Robinson stared up at the ceiling as she replied. ‘Not all of it. I suspected she was up to something and that things might turn nasty if she continued. I kept telling her just to leave, to not get involved.’

‘And you didn’t find that odd at all?’ Griffin asked Robinson. ‘That she stayed put?’

‘Sure,’ Robinson replied. ‘But Kathryn’s been acting all kinds of strange lately. Like I said, she’s been under a lot of pressure with work and her relationship, or what was left of it.’

‘Yeah, her boyfriend,’ Griffin said, and pulled out a photograph of his own. ‘You recognise this man?’

Robinson took one look at the photograph and then shuddered. ‘Yes, that’s Stephen.’

‘Stephen,’ Maietta echoed.

‘Stephen Hollister,’ Robinson said. ‘They’ve been together about three years.’

‘Dale McKenzie,’ Griffin corrected her.

‘Who?’

Griffin slipped the photograph back into his pocket.

‘Stephen Hollister does not exist,’ he replied. ‘His real name is Dale McKenzie, and he’s currently in custody for the murders of four women.’

‘Oh God,’ Robinson gasped. ‘Is Kathryn okay?’

Griffin smiled. ‘She’s safe. Is there anything else that you can tell us, anything at all?’

Ally Robinson sighed and pinched her eyes with one hand. ‘I’m sorry, I just can’t think straight right now. Kathryn was up to something, definitely, but I’m pretty sure she only told me what she needed to.’

‘Okay,’ Griffin said as he stood to follow Maietta from the room. ‘Take it easy, okay? We’ll need a statement from you at the precinct when you’re discharged.’

‘Sure,’ she replied.

Griffin walked out of the room. Maietta shut the door behind them and looked up at him. ‘Well, what do you think?’

‘She’s got no reason to lie,’ Griffin shrugged, ‘and if I’d just been stabbed half a dozen times I’d be screaming for justice. McKenzie did it.’

‘Fine,’ Maietta agreed. ‘That’s it, enough for one weekend. Get your ass home to Angela, I’ll see you Monday morning, ‘kay?’

‘You got it,’ Griffin nodded. ‘I’m just going to swing by Kathryn, see how she’s holding up.’

Maietta didn’t reply other than to wave over her shoulder as she headed for the hospital exit.

***

49

It was going to take time to get used to limping about using a walking stick.

Kathryn struggled around her bed as she packed her things back into her suitcase, which had been retrieved by the police from the back of her car when it had been pulled from the river. Her plight had reached the ears of the nurses tending to her, and to her amazement they had done their best to dry her clothes out on radiators all around the ward.

A small act of kindness in a world that so often didn’t seem to care.

She could not stay in the apartment any longer, that much she knew, even though Stephen was gone now. Too many bad memories. The place would always haunt her. At least she had somewhere else to go now. The thought of that warmed her soul a little as she worked. She was almost finished when she heard a knock at the door. She limped across and opened the door. Detective Griffin stood outside waiting for her.

His stood with one hand in his pocket, and for the first time since she’d met him he was wearing casual clothes, jeans and T–shirt and a dark leather jacket. She waved him in and he closed the door behind him. He kept the one hand in his pocket, trying to be casual. Pride anchor.

‘You look different,’ she said as he followed her into the room.

Griffin shrugged. ‘New day, new dawn and all that.’

Kathryn smiled. ‘Angela.’

A tiny smile curled from one corner of Griffin’s lips. ‘She’s come round to my way of thinking.’

‘You mean you grovelled and apologised until you were blue in the face.’

‘Yeah, pretty much.’

‘And she was happy about that?’

‘Several times.’

Kathryn blushed and stuffed the rest of her things into her handbag. ‘That was more than I needed to know.’

‘You been discharged?’

Kathryn closed her handbag and lifted it onto her shoulder. ‘An hour ago, doctor says I’ll be fine. I heard you got your man?’

‘Well, we know it was Dale McKenzie who abducted his wife if that’s what you mean,’ Griffin said.

‘Make you feel better, to have closed another case?’

‘Sure it does,’ Griffin chuckled over his shoulder as he grabbed Kathryn’s bulging bag off the mattress and carried it to the door for her. ‘But it makes me feel on top of the world to know I’ve closed four.’

‘Four?’ Kathryn asked as she passed through the doorway. ‘The earlier victims?’

‘Yeah,’ Griffin followed her out to a corridor, nurses bustling to and fro as they walked. ‘Turns out he was some kind of serial killer with four unsolved murders to his name. Maietta fill you in on all of that?’

‘Yeah,’ Kathryn said as she limped down the steps outside the hospital and walked toward the taxi ranks. ‘I had no idea.’

‘He did it before his career took off,’ Griffin quipped. ‘The money he took them for paid for his flight training.’

Kathryn reached the taxi rank, a driver spotting her walking stick and climbing out to help her. Griffin opened the taxi’s trunk and carefully lowered her suitcase into it.

‘You think you’ll be okay now, detective?’ she asked him.

Griffin shrugged. ‘Maybe. It’s you I’m worried about.’

‘Me?’

‘Yeah, you,’ Griffin said as he slammed the trunk shut. ‘You were recently abducted, witnessed an attempted homicide, beaten and nearly drowned. That’s gotta take some kind of toll, right?’

Kathryn sighed and jangled her keys thoughtfully in one hand. ‘A lot has taken its toll recently, detective. Right now I’m just glad to be moving on with my life and not stuck in that apartment, rotting with Stephen.’

‘Dale.’

‘Whatever his name is,’ Kathryn replied. ‘He won’t get off, will he?’

‘Of this?!’ Griffin laughed out loud. ‘Mankind will be living on the moon by the time Dale McKenzie gets out. There’s no way the finest prosecution team in all the land could unhook him. Best chance he’s got is avoiding the electric chair, and that’ll be an achievement.’

Kathryn nodded. ‘So I can sleep with the light off?’

‘Yeah,’ Griffin smiled. ‘You’ll be fine. I owe you one, though.’

Kathryn smiled. ‘You don’t owe me anything, detective, it’s my job.’

‘I wanted to thank you for putting me onto McKenzie’s tail,’ Griffin said. ‘All your talk about how important family was, it kind of got me thinking about the creep, you know? Where was his family? Where was his history? He targeted orphans, you know?’

‘I didn’t know that,’ Kathryn said. ‘All I know for sure is that’s he’s a world–class bastard.’

‘Yeah, he is,’ Griffin said. ‘There ain’t nothing people like him won’t do because they don’t have any family. They don’t have anybody to embarrass, nobody to keep them on the straight and narrow, nobody to betray or apologise to. The McKenzie’s of this world owe nobody anything but themselves.’

Kathryn looked at Griffin for a long moment.

‘I’ve e–mailed Captain Olsen that, provided he agrees, you should be returned to full duties and your firearm returned to you,’ she said finally.