“He
won’t be in any position to answer questions about the incident—perhaps not for
several days, maybe more.”
“But
he will be okay?”
The
doctor nodded, his hands clasped together. “His vital signs are strong. He’s
got considerable damage to one leg and he’s suffered a concussion, so we’ve got
him connected to an I.V. for nutrients. There may need to be some surgery to
the leg, but there’s no way to say how much until he’s up and about. Also,
we’ve set the arm. It was a compound fracture, so that might slow him down a
bit.”
The
doors opened and two nurses brought Aaron through on a gurney and wheeled him
down the hall.
Sam
stared at him. His body was so still. Only the faint color in his cheeks and
the slow, steady drip of the I.V. suggested he was still alive.
The
doctor paused at the door, and Sam watched the nurses attach Aaron to the
machines inside the room. “You can go in and see him, but I’d like to limit the
visit. I’ll send a nurse down in about ten minutes.”
She
thanked Dr. Okamoto and took a deep breath as she entered Aaron’s room.
He
lay flat on his back, a breathing tube in his nose and cords connected to both
arms. She heard the beep of the machine watching his pulse and saw the drip of
the I.V., keeping him fed. Her chest tightened.
She
stopped at the edge of the bed and looked down at him. She realized she’d never
seen him stretched out. He was significantly taller than she would’ve imagined.
His blond hair was curled over his forehead, his eyes closed. She brushed the
hair off his face and spoke to him.
“Aaron,
I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.” She looked around the room again, both
unused to and uncomfortable with the idea of talking to herself. She prayed
Aaron could hear her.
“Williams.
I never imagined it was him. I should’ve figured it out sooner. I’m so sorry.”
She sat beside his bed and covered his hand with hers. His hands, too, were big
and manly, and she wondered if someone loved Aaron like she was starting to
love Nick. She wondered if he had brothers and sisters. Were his parents alive?
There were so many things she’d never bothered to find out. She needed to reach
his parents and let them know what had happened. She would call first thing in
the morning. Since Aaron was stable, there was no sense in waking them up.
She
took his hand. “The good news is that they’ve got him. They’re interrogating
the bastard right now,” she said. Strangely, she felt no relief. Her fear for
Aaron surpassed her anger and outrage at Williams’ crimes.
She
squeezed Aaron’s hand again and looked around the sterile room, reminding
herself to send something over for him when he woke up.
When
the door opened, she expected the nurse and was surprised to see Corona’s face.
“Andy.”
“I
heard I might find you here.” He motioned to the hallway. “Come out when you’re
ready.”
He
left and Sam looked back at Aaron, pushing a stray curl off his face. “Get
better, you hear?”
With
that, she left the room and found Corona leaning against the wall several doors
down.
“I
thought we might grab a cup of coffee.” He started down the hall and she went
along. “Doctor says he’s going to be okay.”
She
nodded.
“That’s
good news.”
“What’s
going on with Williams?” she asked.
“He’s
squealing like a pig on the breaking and entering and leaking the stuff to the
media. Your brakes, too.”
“What
about the murders?”
He
gave her a hesitant look out of the corner of his eye. “Nothing yet.”
She
exhaled, disappointed. “But he had access to my flashlight and the gum wrapper.
He’s a good suspect.”
Corona
nodded. “Now that we’ve got him, we’ll work to match hair, fibers, that sort of
thing. Anyway, don’t sweat it. You should be celebrating.”
“I’d
feel a hell of a lot better if my assistant weren’t down the hall being fed by
a tube.”
“Of
course. We’re all worried about Ferguson. He’s going to be okay. I contacted
his parents.”
“Thank
you.”
“They’re
coming down from Washington tomorrow.” They reached the cafeteria and Corona
pulled the door open. He bought the coffee while Sam waited at a two top in the
back of the room, away from the crowd of tired-looking visitors. What a
depressing place.
Corona
set the coffees in front of them and sat down. He paused and then wrapped his
hands around his coffee and looked up at her. “I owe you an apology.”
She
nodded. She thought he did, too, but Corona apologizing was something she’d
never seen before. He was usually right. She knew this would not be easy for
him.
“I
should have taken the threats more seriously to start with.” He shook his head.
“And I should’ve seen that Williams was losing it. Jesus, I knew he was
competitive with you, but I had no idea.” He looked out the window, his eyes
narrowed and sunken. He looked tired. “I should’ve seen it.”
She
didn’t respond. She should have seen it, too. They all should have.
“But
that’s not what I’m really sorry about.”
She
frowned.
“I’m
really sorry that I didn’t put up a bigger fight about letting Cintrello’s guys
serve that search warrant.”
Sam
closed her eyes and tried to block out the image of the police in her home. “It
was pretty shitty.”
“I
know.”
“And
I’m still not off the hook,” she added. “Not if Williams isn’t singing on the
murder charges.”
“That’s
why I’m here. I know you’re not a killer.”
She
nodded without saying anything. Those words were no longer enough. She needed
proof now.
“But
to get you off the hook entirely, we’ve got to get the right guy on the hook.”
“You
don’t think Williams is that guy?”
“I
don’t know. Maybe. But if he is, we need some evidence.”
“How
do you propose to get that?”
He
shook his head. “Shit, Chase. I don’t have the slightest clue, but I’m hoping
we can put our heads together and come up with someplace to start.”
“I’m
still off the case, right?”
“Officially,
yes.” He took his eyes off her and stared down at her coffee. “But I think you
should take some time off—paid, of course.” He glanced up at her and rolled his
hand like she’d seen in Mafia movies when they were telling someone to lie
about something. “Take some time to get things back together. Do what you need
to do.” He returned his hand to his coffee cup. “You know what I’m saying.”
She
met his gaze and nodded. “I do.”
Then,
before she could say thank you, Corona got up and told her they’d talk sometime
later in the week. “I’ve got some ball-busting of my own to do,” he said as he
walked away.
Sam
woke up at seven the next morning, thinking about Aaron. She called the
hospital and confirmed that he was in stable condition. The doctor wasn’t
available, so she left a message to have him call her at home. A minute later
the phone rang.
“Chase.”
“It’s
Nick.”
She
half smiled when he didn’t say Thomas. “I heard you got your man.”
“That’s
what they’re telling me. Did Corona tell you that we verified Gerry Hecht’s
story?”
“No.”
“Records
show he was attacked in San Francisco, just like he said.”
“Why
was he close to my office?”
“Been
following you, I guess.”
“Where
is he now?”
“Been
living in Martinez. Then early last week he was attacked in the alley right
outside your office. Broken ribs, fingers, bruised kidney, lacerations—you know
the drill.”
“Williams.”
“Yep.
I guess a car interrupted the attack and Williams made a run for it. Hecht
called the police department after he called you. He said he thought the guy
who killed the others and framed you had tried to kill him.”
“How
would Gerry know it was the same guy?”
“Something
the attacker said. And when he talked to the police, he told them he’d caught
Williams in your car. We think Williams went back and replaced whatever he took
or got out whatever he’d put there. We haven’t found anything incriminating
yet.”
“That’s
how he could have gotten the gum and the flashlight. Although the timing is
wrong. He’d have had to do that sooner.”
“I
know,” Nick agreed. “We’re working him for the murders, but we need to get our
hands on Hecht again.”
Sam
felt her blood start to rush. This was good news. “Where’s Gerry now?”
“That’s
the unfortunate part. We sent a couple of cars up to his place this morning.
Gerry’s gone. His stuff’s still in the apartment, but no one’s seen him since
he was released from the hospital. We’re trying to see if there’s any contact
information with the doctor, but it’s not looking good.”
Sam
rubbed her eyes. “Damn. There’s no way to track his call to the house?”
“No.
I wonder why he called you there. And how the hell did he get that number?”
She
shook her head. “It’s listed under the boys’ names. Maybe he somehow got that.”
“Right.
‘Austin’ is on the mailbox.”
“Jesus,
you think he was out here?”
Nick
didn’t answer. “We’ve got guys checking through his things, looking into his
background—see if he left us any clues.”
“Williams
still won’t confess to the murders?”
Nick
sighed. “Not a peep. We found snapshots of you in his desk, and he’s starting
to squirm on the brakes, but nothing on the killings.”
“You
think it’s possible he didn’t do them?” she asked.
“Shit,
I don’t know. Be a lot to swallow, you know?”
She
didn’t know what to say.
“You
doing okay?” he asked.
“Not
great.”
There
was an odd silence.
“I
want us to talk, Sam, about everything. Can I come by tonight?”
“I
don’t know, Nick. I’m not really ready to think about that now.”
“But
we need to talk. I want you to understand why I did what I did.”
Her
mind went back to the other night, to his body, the scars. His touch. She shook
her head, trying to shake the thoughts free.
“Sam.
Please.”
“I’ve
got another call coming,” she lied. “I’ll call you later.”
She
hung up quickly. How could she trust him again? He was good with Derek and Rob,
and she believed he cared about them. And probably about her, too, but was she
willing to risk that? She pushed it aside and shifted her thoughts back to
Williams.
She
shuffled the pieces around, trying to get them to fit. He’d almost killed
Aaron. He was certainly capable of murder. Was he simply holding off the
inevitable by denying his involvement?
She
pulled herself out of bed and dressed for her run, then started the
coffeemaker. The boys were still asleep, and she tiptoed through their rooms,
gathering laundry. Rob’s room, as always, was a mess. Most of his clothes were
already on the floor, and it was impossible to tell what was clean and what was
dirty. She did her best guesswork, even finding some dirty-looking sweatpants
and a couple of T-shirts tucked in the back corner of his closet. She took the
load to the laundry room and dropped it on the floor to be sorted.
One
of her first lessons as a parent had been to check pockets. When the boys had
first arrived, she’d loaded their clothes in the washer on hot without
realizing that one pair of pants had a pocket full of chewing gum. Everything
in the wash, including some of her own clothes, had been ruined.
She
started her own load first and then went to the living room and pulled down the
first of two binders of case notes she kept on the top shelf. She was surprised
the police hadn’t confiscated them when they searched her house, but maybe they
had missed them. Settled into a chair, she opened the binder and turned it
right side up, wondering how she’d managed to put it back upside down when
she’d last used it. She flipped to the beginning of the binder and paged slowly
through her early days in homicide. Before she’d kept her daily journal, her
most detailed notes had been taken on lined notepads and three-hole-punched
into the binder. She had fit five years of notes into one three-inch binder. It
had been, and still was in many ways, her bible.
She’d
meant to go through the notes earlier, but things had gotten away from her.
Paging ahead, she looked for the section on Charlie Sloan’s murder of Karen
Jacobs, but didn’t find it. She frowned. Had Williams somehow gotten hold of
her notes on the Karen Jacobs case? Would this prove he was involved? She stood
up and had started for the phone to call Nick when something on the bookshelf
caught her eye. Standing on a chair, she pulled out a book on victimology from
her coursework and flipped it open. Tucked inside the book were folded pages.
She opened them up and found her notes on Karen Jacobs.
How
had her notes ended up in another book? Had Williams been inside her house? It
wasn’t possible, was it? Putting the book back, she unfolded the notes on
Jacobs. She sat down on the couch and stared at the bookshelf, thinking. But
she couldn’t come up with an explanation for why her notes were out of the
binder and in another book.
Turning
her attention to the notes, she reviewed what she had on the Jacobs case. Her
first notes included the site and layout of the victim’s body. Karen had been
Sloan’s first. The detailed study of her victimology—her background, how she’d
been lured to the site of the attack, what clues were found at the scene, the
six-leaved branches. Flipping onward, she read about Karen.
The
next five victims followed within seven months. Each one had an extensive
description like Karen’s. None of them had stood out as Karen had. Somehow that
first victim of any serial murder case, like Sandi Walters now, always remained
the freshest in her mind. None of the other pages appeared to have been
disturbed.