The Mak Collection (59 page)

“Are you sure?” Ann prodded.

Roy didn’t like the tone of her voice.

“Yes, I’m sure.” He was starting to lose his patience now.

Daniel came back with a couple of glasses of beer.

“Is there anyone there with him? Does he have any supervision?”

“Well, no. Not really,” he said vaguely.

He took the glass of beer from his brother and nodded a thank you to him. They clinked the glasses in the air, and Daniel went back to sit on the couch again. He picked up a magazine and started reading.

“So he is at the cabin without any supervision?”

Roy took a big sip of his beer. “There is no need,” he said, purposely vague. “Look, I appreciate your concern, but everything is under control. Thanks for calling.”

“Roy—” she began.

“Bye now.” He hung up on her and shook his head.

He didn’t like her meddling like that. No one had the right to meddle in their lives. She would have put Danny in a mental home if he hadn’t put a stop to it. There was no doubt about that. And there was no way he was going to let her back into their lives again, after all this time when everything was just fine.

“Sorry about that, Danny.” He took a long swig of his beer.

“That was Dr Morgan, wasn’t it?”

“Excuse me?” Roy said, surprised. He gulped hard to avoid spitting up a mouthful of ale.

“That’s who you were talking to, wasn’t it?”

“No, just a vacuum-cleaner salesman,” he assured him. “They tricked me into calling them back. Made me think it was something important. They can be so pushy, can’t they?”

He really didn’t want Daniel to know that Ann was snooping around.

Danny seemed to relax and he took another sip of his beer. Roy finished his in long gulps.

When they had downed their drinks, Daniel spoke again. “You’re lying to me.”

What?

“That was her. I know it was her. Her name is on the paper in your hand.”

Damn, he saw it.

Roy was caught. He wasn’t sure what to say now. He hadn’t wanted to upset his brother. Their mom had always left that to him. He had to protect his brother because he was special. He was different.

“Ann thinks I did it.”

“What?”

Daniel pointed to the paper. “And so do you.”

The Nahatlatch Murders? Was he referring to the headline?

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it all, Roy. We won’t have any trouble.”

Roy wanted to ask him what he was talking about, he wanted to know if he was having another one of his episodes, but now words failed him. He didn’t feel so well. He felt dizzy…sick. The sensation came on sudden and strong.

“Whaaa…?”

The room was spinning, the animals swirling around him, those glass-eyed trophies circling him. He felt incredibly, impossibly drunk.

Within fifteen minutes, Roy Blake was out cold.

“Hi, Andy, it’s Bob.”

“Hi. How’s it going?”

Andy was still dripping from a shower, and he towelled his chest with one hand as he held the receiver.

“We have some progress on the murders,” Dr Harris told him.

“Great.”

The Evan Rose lead was at a bit of a standstill since the result of his polygraph, so they’d started on some new leads. The ViCLAS specialist hadn’t found any strong links against other reports so they could do little more than hope the offender might do something wrong—reveal himself in some way.

“We ran a rego check on one of the vehicles spotted in the area, and we got a name. It piqued my interest because he works at UBC.”

“Really?”

“Security guard.”

“Oh, yeah.” A percentage of those working in security had in fact been rejected from the police force, and on this basis they tended to treat any suspects with this occupation with special attention. While a bad cop could sometimes slip through the screening process, there were bound to be a lot more cowboys who made it into security—guys who simply wanted a taste of power.

“Bob had him on his attendance list at the psychopathy conference.”

“Whoa. Now that is interesting.”

“I was wondering if by some chance you’d met him. The name is Blake. Roy Blake. Unfortunately the name doesn’t ring a bell with me.”

Andy thought about the name. He hadn’t met a lot of people at the conference. He had been too focused on Makedde.

“Me either. I met a few professors, that’s it.”

“Antisocial, were we?”

“Very funny.”

“Yeah, I guess you were a little distracted,” Bob said.

“Yeah, very funny, ha, ha. Anything else?”

“No. That’s it. Just wondering if the name rang a bell.”

“No bells, Bob. Sorry.”

A black Ford pick-up truck sped along the Sea to Sky Highway, the tyres spitting filth onto pavements cleaned by recent rains. The man behind the wheel was hurried but sober, his driving almost reckless, his eyes glued to the road.

The Hunter had borrowed his brother’s truck. It was faster than the one Roy always left for him at the cabin.

He had to get into the city fast.

He had a mission.

“I can see how it could be an awkward position,” Makedde said sympathetically. She sipped a cup of peppermint tea. “I really appreciate you telling me what you can.” She shook her head.

Ann pursed her lips together and clasped her hands. “I’m sorry that I can’t be more forthcoming about Daniel’s condition. I have to consider the confidentiality of my patients, and if you know nothing about him, then that’s that.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t expect you to compromise yourself professionally,” Mak said.

“The brothers are an odd pair, though.” Ann said, shaking her head. “They are actually tw—”

Thump.

Makedde and Dr Morgan looked up in unison, snapped alert by the noise directly behind them.

“Did you hear that?”

Thump-thump.

There it was again.

The sound was coming from outside the door. There was no mistaking it; someone was moving on the front porch.

The doorbell rang and Ann got to her feet. “Oh,” she said with surprise and stood quiet for a moment.

Makedde slowly got up and watched the doctor move towards the front door. It seemed to take forever. It was only Ann answering her own doorbell, but Makedde’s stomach twisted into a tight knot at the sight of it.

Something is wrong.

“Are you expecting anyone?” she called out, but Ann was at the door now. Makedde wanted to yell something to her—wanted to tell her to watch out, to get away from the door but Ann was already looking through the peephole, and then she turned, puzzled, “I don’t see anyone…”

The next sound was the thunderous crash of breaking glass. The racket was not coming from the front door, however—it was coming from behind Makedde. She spun around and faced the kitchen doorway.

Someone was there. They had rung the door and snuck around the back.

Makedde’s hands were empty—no protection—no weapon.
Get the gun,
she thought.
No, it’s in the car outside…Get the purse…Use the pepper spray…

Mak grabbed the small purse off the floor beside the couch and managed to unzip the main pouch with unsteady hands…she reached inside…

Where is it!?

Within seconds she found the pepper spray and whirled around to face the kitchen again, instinctively unlocking the spray cap as she moved. She extended the pressurised container in front of her with both arms, as if she were aiming the business end of a pistol at the kitchen doorway. She had imagined using the spray many times, particularly in the past year, never quite knowing under what conditions she would need it.

Oh God.

Roy appeared in the doorway.

Roy Blake!

Makedde inhaled sharply. Her heart dropped into the acid of her belly, and her throat seemed to freeze, filling her mouth with a sharp metallic bite.

There was a horrible sense of inevitability in what was happening, and she couldn’t place why. It was almost as if she had been expecting this.

Roy was wearing a ski mask, but Makedde was sure it was him. Those large, familiar brown eyes looked straight at her—straight into her. But Roy had no smile for her this time, no chocolates that would split on the ground, no roses, no romantic sentiments. He was not trying to impress her. He was not trying to convince her of anything. He clearly had other ideas.

Roy lunged for her hand as soon as he saw the spray she was holding, but she depressed the button
first, releasing a strong pressurised stream of pepper solution directly into his face. She had been told it would accurately shoot up to fifteen feet, and Roy was well within that range. The problem of course, was the ski mask. With his face largely protected, she had to count on Roy inhaling at the right moment, or his eyes being open when the pepper spray hit.

Negative on both counts.

In an instant he was on her, twisting her arm behind her in a classic hold that she had even been taught herself. Despite Makedde’s best efforts, the manoeuvre caused her to drop the spray can in an unavoidable physical reflex. She heard it hit the ground and bounce with a tinny sound, and her heart sank.

Roy was behind her, one of her hands was free, the other pinned painfully between them and no longer holding her self-defence spray. He had locked one arm around her neck, his elbow below her chin. His grip was tight. The air smelled strongly of spray and Makedde’s eyes began to water. Her nose would soon start to run as well. She wondered how badly Roy had been hit with it, and if it would affect him at all.

She used her free arm as best she could, attempting to punch out behind her, clawing and scratching at him, but she knew her efforts could not amount to much in that position.

I need the use of my other arm to throw him,
she thought.
I need my other arm!

“Let me go…” she growled at him, and then her right shoulder cried out in pain as he yanked it further backwards. She screamed more loudly than she needed to, harbouring some thin hope of a concerned neighbour calling the police, and an even more remote hope that Roy might actually release his grip a touch if he knew it was causing her a lot of pain.

But he did not ease his hold by even a fraction.

Please don’t let him break my collarbone…or my rib
…

It would be easy to snap her bones where they had been broken before. The injuries were little more than a year old. Makedde thought of Ann near the door—everything had all happened so fast, in seconds—and she wondered where the doctor was now.

Roy spun the two of them around to face the front of the room, and Makedde’s question was answered. Ann was coming at Roy with a sharp poker from her fireplace. How she had it in her hands so quickly Makedde didn’t know, but she was glad to see it. Makedde sensed that Roy was no longer as focused on her. He released his grip ever so slightly, and she stole the opportunity to free her right arm. She pushed her hips forward and squirmed down a bit and his arm tightened around her throat as soon as he realised what she was doing.

Makedde straightened her body and raised both arms back to grab her attacker. One hand firmly grabbed Roy’s hair through the knitted mask that
covered his head. If her hand slipped and she only had his mask, her grip would be useless. Her opposite hand grabbed his shoulder at the same time, and just as she had practised so many times, she pulled down and forward in a strong arc with all of her might. With a cry that might almost have been a roar, Mak flipped Roy onto his back, and he fell to the ground by her feet, his considerable weight causing her to fall heavily to one knee.

Makedde had always been told that it was leverage and not size that mattered with that move, but still she was amazed that it could work so effectively on a man of Roy’s size.

Not missing a beat, Ann struck down with the poker in a half-moon, the end aimed straight at Roy’s face. It was a perfect strike, but he rolled away in time and it only glanced the side of his head. Mak had leapt sideways to avoid being in the way of Ann’s blow, and she supported herself against the end of the couch, the side table knocked over, her glass of water broken in wet shards across the wooden floor.

She heard a crashing sound as the poker flew from the doctor’s grasp and hit the floor. She turned to see Roy grabbing Ann. And then, horrifyingly, there was a muffled bang—a silencer, and the flash of the muzzle lit up the room.

For a second Makedde thought she had been hit, but when she saw Ann fall to the floor, she realised what had happened.

“No!” Makedde cried out. “No!”

My God! It’s my fault! I rejected him and he couldn’t take it! He followed me here and now Ann is dead!

Roy looked up.

Their eyes locked.

You’re sick. I never knew you at all
…

Mak turned and bolted, leaping across the tops of the cushions of the couch, but he was behind her, snatching at her back as she fled. She reached the other side without hindrance, and hit the ground running. The force of her departure caused the couch legs to squeal along the floor.

There was a gun in her glove box. It was her unregistered Saturday Night Special and she knew it was loaded. She needed it—
now
. She needed to get outside and open that passenger door.
Was it locked?
Yes, she had locked it.
Could she smash the windows?

Roy was shouting, “Where do you think you’re going…” and Makedde was still running, but now her foot was caught by a hand like a vice around her ankle. She fell to the floor hard, barely lifting her arms in time to catch herself on her elbows.

She screamed for help as loud as she could, and in an instant she was silenced by huge hands around her mouth. He was on her now, gagging her brutishly as he kneeled on her shoulders and upper arms. She tried to kick him in the back with the balls of her feet, but she barely made an impact. She struggled against his weight but it was impossible to
win from her position on the floor. He was too big. Once she was gagged, her arms were soon tied behind her back and she was hoisted upright, red-faced and kicking madly.