The Broken (The Apostles) (16 page)

Mike smacked her hand and limped by her. “I’ll get myself the damned drink.”

*  *  *

Saturday, June 13, 9:30 a.m.
Dorado Bay, Nevada

Jason’s home squatted in a row of small, cheap tract houses in downtown Dorado Bay. Kate hadn’t been to that house in fifteen years, not since the night of her junior prom, the night she turned her back on her home and the people DNA deemed her family. She fingered her left ear and the scar there. It wasn’t as big as the ones Jason had given her, but now, as she walked up the driveway of her childhood home with Hayden, it burned, reminding her that this place had been her own brand of fiery hell.

Hayden had called ahead, and Dorado Bay police chief Mitt Greenfield waited for them on the porch. He wore gray-skinned cowboy boots and a frown that reached his eyes.

“We’re glad you’re here, Agent Reed. You, too, Ms. Johnson. We’ve been through this place top to bottom and found some odd things.”

Hayden opened his mouth, but a loud screech sounded behind him.

“Holy crap!” Kate spun toward the noise. “What was that?”

“Jason’s cat,” Chief Greenfield said.

“Jason owns a cat?” Hayden asked before she could.

“That’s what the neighbor across the street said,” the chief added. “Said the cat’s been caterwauling for two weeks. And she won’t leave the place, either. It’s like she’s waiting for Erickson to come home.”

Kate watched as Hayden jammed a hand in his pocket. “What’s wrong?” she asked him.

“The cat, it’s not in the profile. The Butcher does not have close attachments. He’s isolated and cares exclusively for his own pleasures. If the Butcher had a pet, it would be dominated, most likely caged. Such an animal would instinctively fight to escape.”

Escape.
The single word blasted away thoughts of Jason’s cat. Kate’s earliest memories of this house were of escape. She felt the tug now.

Hayden’s hand rested at the base of her spine. Her shoulders jiggled with a silent laugh. Of course he knew she was panicky, and of course he had her back. She headed up the steps.

Nothing about her childhood home had changed. The entire house smelled of bleach and stale air caused by permanently sealed windows. Plastic sheeting covered the furniture. Alphabetically arranged books sat in razor-sharp rows on the bookcase. In the kitchen all food had been taken from original containers and placed in plastic storage canisters and labeled. As a child, she’d been consumed with running from this place. Jason had sought to bring order to it.

“What was he like when you were growing up?” Hayden asked.

She’d been expecting this question and was surprised it took Hayden so long to ask. But Hayden was a patient man, and it was time to walk through this house and look back on her childhood. A distasteful and daunting task, but head-guy Hayden would point out that only then could she move on. Yes, this man had gotten into her head, and right now she welcomed his presence.

“When Jason was born, Kendra rarely let me touch him,” she started. “He was her special child. He was shy and never brought friends home. He was a neat freak and insisted on everything being organized.”

“Did he ever show interest in animals?”

“He was always bringing home strays, which Kendra would toss out of the house.”

“Do you ever remember him mistreating any animals, pulling feathers off birds, torturing dogs or cats?”

“No, why?”

“As children many future serial killers exhibit sadistic tendencies toward animals. Many are also fascinated with fire and wet their beds, even into their early teens.”

Kate shook her head. “That doesn’t sound like the kid I grew up with.” Although after what Jason did to her, she couldn’t bear to think of what he might have done to the cat still screeching outside.

He thrust a hand through the right side of his head, ruffling the neat wave of hair.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Sometimes I think I’m chasing two people. There’s so much about Jason that fits the profile of the Butcher. He’s a male between the ages of twenty and forty. Small build. Lives with his mom when not at work. No college education. Loves order. Then there are times where it doesn’t fit. The cat. He’s well liked by everyone. He had a girlfriend and picked her flowers.” His hand dropped to his side, and she had an insane desire to smooth his wayward hair.

Instead she clasped her hands behind her back. “You said a witness saw a woman in a pink dress on Shayna Thomas’s front porch. Maybe he has a partner.”

Hayden fisted his hand and slipped it in his pocket. “Maybe.”

Jason’s bedroom was as neat as the rest of the house, with a closet full of clothes arranged by colors and a collection of video games organized alphabetically.

“Check out the nightstand,” the chief said. “That’s when things get really weird.”

Hayden opened the drawer, and inside was a stack of underwear. Young-girl underwear. A half dozen pairs, white with little blue flowers and worn.

Kate opened her mouth, but only a choky gasp spilled out.

“Yours?” Hayden asked.

She nodded, her skin crawling. “Why would he keep piles of my old underwear next to his bed?”

Hayden’s eyes squinted, like he was reading fine print in a dense book. But isn’t that what profilers did? They read the fine print on evidence and people. “He had deep feelings for you,” Hayden said. “The location is significant, too. Your things aren’t in a box in the attic or under his bed. They’re next to him as he sleeps, within arm’s reach and literally at the level of his heart.”

Kate waved a shaking arm at the nightstand. “But it’s not right. He didn’t even like me. He stabbed me twenty-four times that first time, threatened me while I was in the hospital, and stabbed me again the night I got out of rehab. He tried to
kill
me.”

Hayden moved to stand in front of her, a granite wall between her and the sickening contents of her brother’s nightstand. She matched her breathing with his, and her heart slowed.

“What do you know about Jason’s sex life?” Hayden continued. “Do you remember any pornographic magazines, or do you remember him masturbating or sometimes staring at you?”

She shook her head. “Like I said, he was very quiet, and I left when he was eleven. But I don’t remember him being overtly sexual. Although”—her stomach churned—“he never slept in his own bed. He always slept in the master bedroom. With her.”

Before they reached the master bedroom, Kate smelled the flowers: stale roses. Worse than the smell was the sight. Pink was everywhere: a frilly pink comforter, pink striped wallpaper, pink paint on the ceiling, and pink throw rugs in the shape of roses. Her stomach heaved, and she grabbed onto the highboy dresser with the pink crocheted doilies.

“You okay?” Hayden asked.

She was fine. She could deal with this search of her childhood home if it meant getting closer to a killer, but as it turned out, Hayden found nothing significant in Kendra’s sea of nauseating pink.

In the kitchen, Hayden poked around cupboards and the walk-in pantry.

“Check out the freezer,” Chief Greenfield said, his voice wobbling for the first time.

It was empty, except for a frozen blood stain.

“Oh, God,” Kate said with a hitch of breath. The stain, the width of the freezer and half the length, was hardly blood seepage from a package of hamburger.

“We’re getting it typed,” Chief Greenfield said. “Seeing if we can get a match on any of the broadcaster victims. If that’s the case, we have our link.”

Hayden studied the freezer for a good five minutes. She didn’t know how he could stand the cold. The icy air pouring out of the freezer made her knees quake.

When he at last raised his head, he brought out a brick-red chunk of ice. “He didn’t have a broadcaster in here.” Two threads poked out from the ice. Pink.

She reached for Hayden’s arm to steady herself. “You think he stored Kendra’s body in this freezer?”

For a moment, Hayden didn’t say anything. Then he nodded.

The cold intensified. “Why?” Kate asked.

“He wanted to keep her close.” He turned to her. “Just like he wanted to keep you close.”

*  *  *

The picture was getting clearer.

Hayden saw that Jason had been a boy torn in two. He was little boy trying to please his overbearing, mentally ill mother, who was deathly jealous of Kate, a jealousy brought on by Kate’s father’s attention. Jason was also the little boy who adored his daring, pretty older sister, and he was sensitive enough to know the injustice being done to Kate. Had that rift as a child sent Erickson into a bout with dissociative identity disorder? Hayden had wondered from the beginning if he was chasing one person with a split personality because there were such disparities at each crime scene. However, people who genuinely suffered from the disorder were barely able to function, to dress themselves and get through the day and its normal challenges, let alone plan and execute six successful murders.

He jammed a fist in his pocket. The tesserae in the mosaic that was Jason Erickson were numerous, and they were starting to come together, but there were still a number of missing pieces. He had one more room to check before he could get Kate away from the hell house of her childhood.

When he started up the steps to the attic, Kate grabbed his hand, her fingers cold and hard. “We don’t need to go there,” she said with a sudden sharpness.

”What’s up there?”

“Nothing.” Two fast blinks.

He raised an eyebrow.

“I can’t stop you, can I?”

“Should you?” He kept his words soft.

“No.” Her shoulders curved in as if she were trying to disappear into herself. “You probably need to see it.”

A band of something clamped around his chest, containing his growing anger at Kate’s mother and a society that allowed horrible wrongs against children. The staircase was narrow, the ceiling low. “Do you want to go in first, or do you want me to?”

A growl rolled over her lips and collided with her strangled laugh. “This is another one of your psychobabble things, isn’t it? Giving me some control in a place where as a child I had no control?”

He admired her astuteness and that laugh. “And if it is?”

“It’s still bugging the hell out of me.” With another little growl, she rushed passed him and shoved open the door. “Welcome to my world.”

The minuscule room with high-pitched ceilings held a twin bed with a plain blue blanket and a three-drawer dresser. On the floor in front of the bed stretched a blue and brown circular rag rug. Nothing else. No pictures on the walls, no knickknacks or books, but there were bars on the window.

She circled the room, touching nothing. “You know, she never physically abused me.” Kate stopped at the window, and the silhouette of her against those bars made him flinch. The surest way to kill a spirit like Kate’s was to cage it. “But she never let me truly live. I couldn’t have friends, join school clubs, read popular books or magazines, or wear pretty clothes. She was miserable in life, and she wanted the same for me.”

Her voice trailed off, and she squatted, pulling back the rag rug. On the faded maple floor spilled a brown stain. “Remember that scar on Jason’s arm, the one I gave him?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “It happened right here. It was the night of my junior prom, and I was determined to go. Kendra refused to buy me a dress or shoes and wouldn’t let a boy on the property, but for once I wanted to be a normal high school girl in a pretty dress going to a fancy party. So I put together an elaborate scheme. I sewed an outfit from old cocktail dresses I’d found at Goodwill and told my date I’d meet him at school.

“Long story short, Kendra found me getting ready and went ballistic. She was particularly upset I wore a pair of small gold earrings my father had bought me before he left.” Kate massaged the jagged welt on her lobe. “The earrings set her off. She yanked one out, and while I stood in shock holding my bleeding ear, she picked up a pair of scissors and headed toward my dress laid out on the bed.

“That’s when I lost it. I ran toward her and tried to get the scissors out of her hand. We struggled, and Jason, who never could stand us arguing, jumped in. I know, Hayden, I’m sure as the sky is blue, that he was trying to get the scissors out of her hands so neither Kendra nor I would get hurt. When I eventually yanked the scissors from Kendra, my momentum sent me flying, and I jammed them into Jason’s arm. He jumped back, and the scissors sliced down his arm and across his wrist, a horrible, jagged gash.”

Her gaze dropped to the bloodstain. “It was an accident. I didn’t mean to hurt him, but I didn’t bother to stick around and see if he was okay. I took off and never looked back.” With a shrug meant to be indifferent but heartbreakingly sad, she slid the rug back in place. “Let’s go.”

He didn’t need to be a profiler to see how hard this was for her, but he had to be thorough. He reached for the door to what looked like a closet. Behind him, Kate sucked in a gasp. His fingers hovered over the knob.

He’d seen torture chambers outfitted with chains, ice picks, battery acid, and branding irons. He’d touched the final words and prayers scratched into walls by victims who knew the place where they were being held against their will would be the place they would die. And he’d heard the echo of terror that would live forever in rooms where vile bits of humanity perpetuated evil. Damn the Kendra Ericksons of this world.

His gut twisting, he pushed open the door and pulled on the cord hanging from the ceiling. Light chased away shadows, and it was his turn to suck in a breath. “It’s beautiful.”

She left the window and joined him in the closet doorway. “I called it Happily Ever After.” Her voice was light and melodic, like sweet music. “I had forgotten all about it.”

“You drew it. All of it?” He motioned to the space and asked, “Do you mind?”

“Do I mind if you look into my past? My dreams? My soul?” she asked with a sarcastic laugh. “Sure, Hayden, go right ahead.”

Hayden studied her face, making sure her intent matched her words. Catching the genuine smile, he stepped into a fairy tale. Magic Markers and crayons. Hardly the tools of an artist, but the murals on the walls moved him. His gaze traveled from the magical pool to the fairy village to the pasture that housed the unicorns. A smile curved his mouth as his finger traced the green-eyed princess flying through the sky on a winged horse with a little boy with equally green eyes. He raised both eyebrows at her.