Twisted (27 page)

“And?”

“And in one of the segments that’s focused on the woods behind the lake, I spotted some lens flare. It seemed out of place because it was coming from the lower half of the frame. So I isolated it and did some tweaking to see what it was or where it was coming from. I can’t be a hundred percent sure, but to me, it looks like a knife. And a large one, at that.”

“Yes,” Derek hissed under his breath. Aloud, he said, “Nice work, Joe. Can you e-mail me a picture or two ASAP?”

“Sure. I’m not completely done with my analysis, but I’ll send you a jpeg of what I have so far, and a final when I’m finished. You’ll have the rough within the hour, and the final by tomorrow morning.”

“Great. Oh, and include the time stamp on it.”

“Done.”

“Thanks.” Derek punched off the phone and rejoined the group. “Sorry about that. What did I miss?”

Sloane edged him a sideways glance. He’d gotten a lead. She could feel it, even though his expression remained unchanged. His adrenaline was pumping. Whoever had called him had given him something solid. But whatever that lead was, she’d have to pry the details out of him later. Clearly, it wasn’t for sharing with everyone in the room—at least not yet.

She turned her attention back to the interview.

Southern New Jersey Medical Center

Trenton, New Jersey

2:30 P.M.

The high school across the street is letting out, students trampling one another on their way to athletic practice or the nearest mall.

No one noticed as I walked in through the emergency room entrance of the hospital. Nurses from the morning shift are finishing up their paperwork and preparing to brief the afternoon shifts when they arrive in a half hour. Everyone is either busily working or champing at the bit to get out. The admitting desk is crowded and the staff looks frantic as they try to process the new patients and direct people to the right areas.

Blend. Be invisible. Act natural. Avoid the security cameras. Push beyond the physical agony and the deafening voices of the demons. Stay focused. Between the maintenance cart and uniform I “borrowed,” I can easily get lost in the crowd.

I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the window. I look like hell. It’s the pain. It’s making me crazy. Sweat is matting my hair and beading up on my forehead. I look like a junkie or a lunatic. I’m anything but. I’m one of the few sane people left—sane and decent. A man who knows right from wrong.

That’s why I’ve been chosen.

I need that morphine.

Deep breaths. Slow, deep breaths. I can do this.

I pluck out my sweatshirt and make sure nothing’s fallen out of the pockets. Reassured, I abandon the cart at the base of the stairwell, and start climbing. I’ve done my homework. So I know where I’m going.

I have to pause at the landing of each floor to gather my strength. Plus, the noise of the demons is so loud, my skull is about to cave in.

Somehow I make it to the fourth floor. The nurses’ station at this low-key wing would have only a few RNs at the desk. Less people, less chance of being discovered.

I had to pick a hospital near the
TCNJ
campus. I want them to think that what’s about to happen was committed by the same person who attacked Tyche. That I’m nearby, crippled with pain and hiding out as I self-administer my morphine.

By the time the cops get the call, I’ll be miles away, preparing to satisfy the demons, planning the capture of my alternate goddess.

I have enough ketamine. If necessary, I can always get more on the street. But the other drugs…I need more.

Seizing a new cleaning cart from the closet, I shuffle my way down the corridor until I have a view of the nurses’ station. Good. Just as I thought. Two nurses. Both on their computers. Both on the far side of the desk. I can head in the opposite direction without being noticed.

Halfway down the corridor, I spot my victim. An elderly man, either heavily sedated or in a coma, with a respirator by the head of his bed, and no visitors in his room. I leave my cart, walk noiselessly into the room, and calmly disconnect the respirator tube. My action triggers the alarm, and I’m out of the room in a heartbeat.

By the time my cart and I are headed back in the direction from which I started, nurses are yelling “Code Blue” over the sound of the wailing alarm, and every available staff member is racing into the old man’s room. All except one, who’s hurrying toward the nurses’ station.

A medication nurse. She’s wearing an ID tag, and around her neck is the necessary key to the medical cabinet. From the bold-lettered words on the ID tag, I can read that she’s a supervisory RN. I can’t make out her name, nor do I care. She looks like a wrinkled old bulldog, from her stout build and crabby scowl to her arrogant, short-legged waddle. Her patients will be better off without her. So will the staff. Once she’s gone, the chief of staff can promote a worthy, compassionate type to take her place. Someone maternal to protect and care for those in need. As it should be.

I pull on my latex gloves, and watch Nurse Bulldog disappear around back. There’s no doubt where she’s going, or what she’s going for.

I have only one goal, and nothing is going to interfere with it. I feel no remorse for what I’m about to do. It’s for survival, not for the gods, and not for the demons.

Five minutes, and I’ll be finished and gone.

So will Nurse Bulldog.

I move quickly and silently. An instant later I’m standing a few feet away from the medicine cabinet. Nurse Bulldog is concentrating on unlocking and opening it. I let her. The handle turns, and she pulls open the door. She reaches inside. I glance around. No one’s in sight.

I reach inside my multipocketed sweatshirt and retrieve my trusted knife. In one long stride I cross over to her.

She never hears me. I’m on her before she knows what’s happening. I grab her from behind, slitting her throat and slashing through the carotid artery. She drops to the floor like a thick sack of grain, blood spurting from her neck and pouring around her. The thud of her body is barely audible over the din of the Code Blue alarm.

Upon fleeting inspection, I’m pleased to see that my sweatshirt and custodial uniform look to be spared. Only my gloves and knife are bloody. And no one will be finding those.

I put away my knife and step over her body. It’s quite a challenge to avoid the growing pool of blood now spreading across the floor. But I’m careful to leave no footprints. I retrieve the black plastic bag from my pocket and load it with what I need. Morphine, Demerol, Nembutal, fentanyl, and OxyContin, plus a handful of syringes. Then I step over her body once again. I peel off my gloves as I peek around the corner.

I toss the bag onto my cart, and walk calmly toward the stairwell. The halls are now silent. Obviously, the staff did whatever they could without the medication Nurse Bulldog went to get. That disturbs me. Did the old man die? He didn’t deserve to. As I pass by, I hear snatches of conversation from the staff members exiting his room. They’re upset, but it’s because the respirator was tampered with. The old man is alive. I’m greatly relieved.

Reaching the stairwell, I abandon the cart, grab my bag, and force myself to hustle down the steps, cursing Tyche for the agony in my groin. Finally, I reach the ground floor and reclaim my original cart. I push it to the back of the hospital and out the quieter rear entrance. I unbutton my uniform, stuff it in the cart, and take off with my black plastic bag.

As I drive away, I wonder what the reaction will be when Nurse Bulldog is discovered. If her personality matches her demeanor, the cheers will outnumber the sobs.

For some reason, that strikes me as amusing.

2:45 P.M.

Nurse Kate Reilly was more than ready to go off duty. That unexpected Code Blue had really thrown her. When she last checked, Mr. Remis had been doing just fine. He was recovering from a head injury sustained in a car accident. His vitals were stable. The respirator had been functioning perfectly—every connection checked and double-checked.

It hadn’t been hard to restore the situation to normal. But the fact that someone had unplugged him from his respirator? That was beyond chilling. Who would do such a thing? Especially to Mr. Remis, who was a sweetheart, with a loving family, very little money, and a kind heart. The whole incident had been a nightmare.

To top that off, she was getting a little worried about her supervising nurse, Gertrude Flyer. Gertrude was a stickler for punctuality and responsibility. She never missed a day, never neglected a patient, and never gave less than her all. The instant the Code Blue had sounded, she’d rushed off to get potentially needed medication for Mr. Remis. But she’d never come back. That was unprecedented.

Bothered, Kate went looking for Gertrude. As she passed the front of the nurses’ station, something on the floor toward the back of the station caught her eye.

Abruptly, she stopped, all the color draining from her face.

She never heard herself scream. She just stood there, her hands covering her mouth, staring at the gruesome sight before her.

A river of blood was flowing out from the back of the nurses’ station. And crumpled in front of the open medication cabinet was Gertrude Flyer’s butchered body.

FBI
New York Field Office

26 Federal Plaza, New York City

3:45 P.M.

Sloane paced back and forth in Derek’s cubicle.

“Okay, you ordered me to accompany you to your office straight from our interview with Tina. I’ve been here for hours while you tried to hunt down your language analyst and then your partner. Are you going to tell me what they said or what I’m doing here?”

“I bought you lunch,” Derek reminded her, settling himself at his computer and calling up his e-mails. “That’s two meals in one day. One for each hour you had to wait. To my way of thinking, that makes us even.”

“Derek.” Sloane marched up to his desk, folding her arms across her breasts and staring him down. “I’m not amused. I’m pissed. And not only about this afternoon’s runaround. About this morning’s, too. What was that phone call you took during the interview about? I know it had something to do with this case. I could feel it when you came back. You were practically vibrating.”

“Such an astute woman,” Derek taunted under his breath. “Can’t pull the wool over your eyes.” He concentrated on his computer screen as he ran through the new e-mails in his in-box. “No, no, no…yes. There we go.” Double-clicking, he opened the e-mail from Joe.

Here’s the rough photo,
it read.
Let me know what you think. Final version in the A.M.

Derek glanced around impatiently, then spotted a chair. He dragged it over and set it behind his desk, then gestured for Sloane to walk around and view the screen with him.

“First, I couldn’t find either Jeff or my language analyst, Yan Dié,” he replied. “I have calls in to both of them. We’ll have our dialect answers soon. Second, that call I got during the meeting was from Quantico. It was the forensic engineer who’s enhancing the video footage for me. He found something.” Derek went on to detail what Joe had told him. “So let’s take a look and see what we’ve got.”

Sloane leaned forward, watching intently as Derek opened the jpeg. The image appeared slowly, and it was definitely rough and gravelly looking. But the glint of light was unmistakable, as was the shadow around it. And they each had a definite shape.

“That light is a knife,” Sloane stated decisively. “A long, thick knife, just like the one Tina described. And the shadow around it could definitely be a man.”

“I agree. So does Joe, at least about the knife. He’s fine-tuning the image for us just to be sure. I’ll have his final jpeg first thing tomorrow. If it turns out we’re right about the knife
and
the man—which I think we are—I’m going to ask Joe to check out the corresponding footage from the path around the lake. Maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe we’ll not only get a good fix on the Unsub, but we’ll be able to spot Penelope from one of the camera angles.”

“Look at the time stamp,” Sloane said, pointing. “Eleven twenty-nine. It coincides perfectly with the time line Deanna Frost gave us for Penny’s walk around Lake Fred.”

“Yup. So if Joe’s final product comes in as I suspect it will, we’ve got our Unsub placed at Penelope Truman’s crime scene. We’ve also got more than enough connections between the three woman—and you—to establish a pattern. It’s time to get the
BAU
involved.”

“I agree.” Sloane looked pensive as she raked a hand through her hair. “The only thing that’s still bugging me is how the Unsub knew Penny would be at Stockton that day, taking a walk around Lake Fred at that specific hour. Tina and Cynthia had routines that he could easily have kept track of. But Penny’s routine was to catch a subway to work. So how did he know—” Sloane broke off as a possibility occurred to her.

“What?” Derek asked, reading her expression.

“Give me a minute to follow up on a lead. It’s a long shot, but it might give us our answer.” She opened up her file folder and flipped through her notes. “Here we go,” she murmured. She held the spot she’d found by placing her index finger on it, then flipped open her cell phone and punched in the relevant number.

“Doug Waters’s office,” a professional female voice announced.

“This is Sloane Burbank. I need to speak with Mr. Waters immediately.”

“He’s in a meeting, Ms. Burbank. If you’ll leave me a phone number where you can be reached—”

“Is his meeting in the building?” Sloane interrupted.

“Well…yes, but—”

“Page him,” Sloane instructed. “Tell him I only need three minutes of his time. He can excuse himself to go to the bathroom and be back before everyone’s refilled their coffee cups. I apologize for the inconvenience. But this is an
FBI
matter. So there’s really no choice.”

“Of course.” The poor girl sounded like she was going to faint. “Can you hold for just a minute? I’ll track him down.”

“Certainly. And thank you.”