by Torre, A. R.
So, he had called her. Early, he knew. But he had still expected her to answer or at least return his calls. When she hadn’t, he had started texting her. And then her voice mail was full, and he had broken all their rules and traced the path he had run back to their house. He hadn’t had a plan. He was just going to drive by. Maybe park a few houses down and walk by. Maybe wait until she left the house and then follow her.
The day he drove there, it had only been three weeks since his escape, and yet they were gone. Window blinds pulled shut. Car gone. The grass was freshly cut, and there was a FOR SALE sign in the yard. When he called the number on the sign, a lady said no one lived in the house.
Brooke had left him. Abandoned their plans of a happy ever after and left. That’s what he had thought, his heart breaking as he had driven back to his empty life, ignored his parents’ questions, and crawled into bed.
But maybe she hadn’t left. Maybe she had . . .
“Scott, is this who took you?” It was his father’s turn holding up a phone, and his display was now on a photo of Jay’s face, that ugly smirk exposing the crooked top row of his bleached white teeth. He’d had that same smirk when he’d stopped Scott in the school parking lot. Kept that smirk on as he had pinned Scott down to the mattress and spread his legs. Later, Brooke said it was a domination thing. That Jay had been abused as a child, and that something about taking pain and innocence from someone else gave him peace.
Jay had needed a lot of peace. The more Scott had screamed and begged through his gag, the wider that stupid smirk had become. And Brooke had sat there quietly and watched it all happen. Let it happen because if she hadn’t, he would have turned it all on her. She had been a prisoner, just like him. And she had healed him each day while Jay had been at work, and he had healed her, too.
His father shook him so hard that his neck snapped back from the force. “Scott!”
“Who’s dead?” Brooke wasn’t dead. That wasn’t right. That wasn’t why she hadn’t answered.
“John and Brooke Abbott.” His mom moved closer, and he felt trapped in the small space, both of them getting closer and closer, glaring at him as if he’d done something wrong. “Scott, the police are going to be here soon, and they are going to arrest you.”
He looked from her face to his father’s, but he still didn’t understand.
She had been alive. She had pushed him out the door with a kiss, the feel of her lingering on his mouth, and they’d had a future together. Three months. Three months, then forever.
CHAPTER 40
I weighed my options very carefully. Robert stood at the only exit to the room. My phone was on the desk beside me, in arm’s reach if I lunged for it. He stepped forward, and I stiffened, watching as he dragged the short tip of the blade along the top of my desk. It cut cleanly through the leather topper, dissected the phone cord, and suddenly that lifeline was gone.
I met his eyes, and this was a new Robert, one I hadn’t seen before. One who was holding on to sanity and reason with a very tired grip. He regarded me with a mix of pity and disgust. “You let my son die, Gwen.”
He was both right and wrong. While my intentions had been true, my awareness had been flawed. A better psychologist might have asked different questions and unveiled the true depravity of John’s thoughts. With that knowledge in hand, a better psychologist might have called the police, saved Gabe, and locked away John long before whatever hell Scott Harden went through.
But would I have known about Brooke? Would I have found that piece? Probably not. And John had been smart. He had been calculating. He had known exactly what to tell me and what line to toe without alarming me to the point of calling the authorities.
I may have made mistakes, but nothing that I had done, or not done, had been intentional. My deception, my evasion . . . all that had happened after Brooke’s and John’s deaths and wouldn’t have changed any of these horrific events.
Robert lifted the knife, but I kept my attention on his face, searching for a hint of compassion in his eyes. There was none, just tired and unfiltered hate. He wasn’t a killer. I knew that he wasn’t a killer. He was hurt. He was angry. But he would not harm me, not if he knew everything.
I believed it. I had to believe it.
“Robert,” I whispered, “I didn’t know John was the killer.”
“Bullshit,” he spat. “You told me you knew. John Abbott was seeing you while he had my son tied up in his attic. He was seeing you when he killed my child. He was seeing you when he stole Scott Harden away from his family.” He gritted out the words and repositioned the knife in his hand, getting a better grip. I thought of Detective Saxe’s somber tone when he had delivered the news of John’s death.
The man was stabbed in the stomach. The angle and situation lead us to believe it was self-inflicted.
“No!” I shook my head, searching my desk wildly for something to prove my innocence. “When you asked if I knew what John had done, I thought you were asking about Brooke. He killed Brooke. That’s what I was hiding from you. That’s what I should have told the police.” I pressed my palms together, pleading with him. “And I was treating John because he was behaving violently toward her.”
He paused, and at least he was listening. Human nature would dictate that he wanted to believe me. I just had to give him the pieces to justify it in his mind. I tried not to look at the knife. Now was not the time to give him a reminder of it.
“No,” he said tightly. “No. You said clients confessed things to you. You said you could have stopped him from killing, and you didn’t.”
“I was talking about Brooke. All we ever talked about was Brooke,” I said firmly, then placed my hand on John’s file. “This is his file. It has every session I’ve ever had with him. Read it. All my notes are there. Brooke was cheating on him, and he was furious over it. He was worried he would hurt her, and we were working on it.”
“Working on keeping him from killing his wife? What about my son?” He clenched his free hand into a fist.
“I didn’t know about Gabe,” I said softly. “I had no idea.” I gestured to the profile and my notepad, still mostly blank. “I just saw the news, about the attic, and came right home. I needed to go through everything and see . . .” I faltered, emotion coming over me, and I pinched my lips together and attempted to swallow the emotion. “I needed to see—” I tried again. “How I had missed something so horrible. Had he given me clues and I hadn’t caught them?” My voice caught. “I’m sorry, Robert.” I gasped out the apology. “I’m so sorry.”
He swallowed, and I saw the raw crumble of his features, the loss of control from a man who was so tightly wound that he was going to break. He slowly sank into the chair, his gaze tight on mine. His eyes intense and searching. “Don’t lie to me, Gwen.”
“I’m not.” I held the eye contact and took a deep breath, needing to collect myself, to control my emotions and stay levelheaded. His anger was receding, but he was still very dangerous and emotionally volatile.
I thought of the time we’d been in this room. When he had been standing over my desk, the slow turn of his head toward me when I’d entered the room. The continual questions about John Abbott that had fed my fear that he’d known about Brooke. But he hadn’t. His anger was over the Bloody Heart Killer, not Brooke’s death. So if . . .
My mind whirred through all the suspicious moments, the constant feeling that he was two steps ahead of the game, his steadfast insistence that Randall Thompson was innocent and Scott Harden was lying. “You knew,” I said quietly. “You knew that John was the BH Killer.”
His face didn’t change. He didn’t nod. He didn’t acknowledge it. He didn’t deny it. But I knew I was right. The clues were all there—I had just been missing a few cards.
“What did you think?” I asked slowly. “You thought I knew John Abbott was the killer and I still put together this ridiculous profile?”
“It was pretty spot-on for him,” he said quietly. “And I asked you if i
t fit any of your clients.”
“Well, I wasn’t thinking about my dead clients,” I said, frustrated. “And my interview with Randall Thompson was what—a test? Every conversation I had with you, where I argued about Randall’s innocence . . . you thought that was what? Me pretending to be an idiot?” My voice rose, and getting into an argument with an emotional, armed man was the number one way to get killed, but I couldn’t stop myself.
“I needed to know what John had told you.” Some fire was coming back into his eyes, and this switch in topic was either the smartest or the stupidest idea I’d ever had. “And you were cagey about it, so I finally just came out and asked you.”
I resisted the urge to check and see if the knife was still in his hand. “You didn’t come out and ask me if John was the BH Killer. You asked me something . . .” I blew out a frustrated breath. “Something like . . . did I know what he did, or something that was general as hell that I took as a reference to Brooke. Do you think if I was hiding the BH Killer’s identity that I would have let you get within a hundred feet of me? Hire me? Sleep naked in my bed?” I lifted my hands in frustration. “I think we can all agree that my powers of intuition and deduction as far as John Abbott was concerned were . . .”
“Horrendous,” he provided unhelpfully.
“Flawed,” I allowed. “But I’m not an idiot. I’m not stupid. Tell me you believe that.”
In response, he slowly placed the knife in between us, on my desk. He paused, then released his grip on it. An olive branch with a four-inch blade.
I stared at it and felt every muscle in my body give way to relief. It wasn’t safety, but he believed me.
“Robert,” I said carefully, “when did you find out that John was the one?”
His face tightened, and there was more there. I had confessed my crimes, and he needed to confess his. “October second.”
I looked down at my desk, clicking through the timeline in my mind.
“It was the day before he died.” His voice was flat and matter-of-fact. When I studied his face, it was grim but without remorse. “The day before I killed him.”
And there it was. The confession.
“I—uh—I came in the kitchen and found him kneeling over his wife. He was crying. Shaking her. Performing mouth-to-mouth, but she was dead.”
I wasn’t surprised to hear that John had regretted the action. I told him, so many times, in so many sessions, that killing her wouldn’t solve anything. That it was a brief moment that would ruin his entire life. He had loved her fiercely, unnaturally so, in the sort of rare attachment that the selfish reserve for their toys.
“He didn’t hear me. I had a gun, but I set it on the counter and pulled a knife from the block.”
His words were dusty, as if they had waited a long time to come out. He examined his palm, rubbing his fingers against the surface of it. He dropped his hands and met my eyes.
“I knew Scott was gone. I’d been watching the house. And it—it sounds so wrong, but I was mad when I saw Scott leave. I didn’t understand why he could be let go, but Gabe hadn’t. I . . .” He paused and took a deep breath. “I had gloves on. I crouched behind him and reached around and stabbed him as hard as I could, in the gut.” He frowned. “The knife was long. And sharp. He fell back and couldn’t move. He tried. He tried to sit up, to roll over, but he couldn’t.”
I stayed silent, and I could picture it. Everything he was saying. The look that would have come over John’s face. The pain that wound would have caused. But had he appreciated it? Had he looked at Brooke, dead beside him, and felt that he deserved that fate?
Robert gave a sad smile. “He recognized me. He knew why I was there. And he couldn’t move, but he could talk. I sat at the table, and for fifteen minutes, I watched him die.”
Three loud raps sounded on the window of the front door and caused us both to flinch. Robert stood and stepped into the hall. I watched as he looked down the length of it, toward the front door. I knew what he was looking at. My front door was modern, three tall rectangles of glass that eliminated the need for a peephole.
“Whoever it is can see you,” I said. “It’s dark outside, light in here.” The knife was in front of me. If I stretched forward, I could pluck it off the edge of the desk. I kept my hands in my lap.
He glanced back at me. “It’s the police.”
CHAPTER 41
I didn’t have a chance to process the announcement before Robert strode down the hall and out of sight. I stood to follow and heard the front door swing open.
“Detective Saxe,” Robert said warmly, and the man deserved an acting award.
I stepped into the hall and moved slowly toward the front door, wondering why the detective was here. Earlier, I’d been concerned about being arrested for my failure to report John’s premeditations toward Brooke. Now, with his BH Killer label in place, did any of that really matter?
Another possibility entered the fray. Detective Saxe could have the same opinion that Robert had held—that I’d known the BH Killer’s identity this entire time. My stomach turned.
“Good evening, Mr. Kavin.” The detective stood on the front porch and eyed me as I came to a stop beside Robert. “Dr. Moore.”
I cleared my throat. “Hi. Come on in.”
Robert moved to the side and the detective entered, his badge glinting from his hip. I gestured them into the study and flipped on a lamp beside the chair.
“So, you’re both here.” The detective looked at each of us. “Again. Is this a thing, or do you guys just really love talking about dead people?”
I rubbed my forehead and wished I had eaten the spaghetti back at the office. I felt light-headed from lack of food, and I needed every bit of my limited brainpower right now. “We saw the news. I’m surprised you aren’t at the scene.”
“I was, but only because it was originally my scene. The task force and feds have taken it over now. Detectives are headed to Scott Harden’s house, but I thought I’d swing by here first. I tried to call, but you didn’t answer.”
I looked in the direction of the kitchen, my purse still on the counter where I’d left it. “Sorry, my phone’s in the kitchen.”
“Well, we’re trying to figure out what happened. We’ve got two dead serial killers and a kid who escaped the morning they died. Before I start looking at Scott for that murder, I wanted to know if you had any insights, especially since John Abbott called you that morning.”
I met Robert’s eyes for a heartbeat, then looked away. How many people, other than him and me, knew that he’d killed John?
And how had he known John was the BH Killer? The latter was a question I still needed the answer to.
“Right? Isn’t that what you told me initially? That John left you a short voice mail, asking you to call him back?” Detective Saxe looked up from a small tablet. “Care to change any part of that story?”
“Two dead serial killers?” I frowned. “You have definitive proof that Brooke Abbott was involved?”
“There’s no way she couldn’t have known. Not with him keeping the boys in the house. Now . . .” He let out a frustrated sigh. “Anything else I need to know? Because I got to tell you, Doc, given what your patient was up to, there’s about to be a lot more attention on your pretty little head.”
He was right. And if this was the moment that I lost my medical license, so be it. “John killed his wife. I don’t know that for certain, but I know that his desire to kill her was what I was treating him for, and I spent a year listening to him talk about it. You probably did a tox screen on her for poisons, but I would check for vitamins that can be deadly in combination with whatever her heart medication was.” I made it the short distance to the closest seat and sat, immediately relieved by the confession.
Detective Saxe peered down at me as if I were crazy. “John Abbott wanted to kill his wife? You expect me to believe that’s what you were treating him for?”
“Yes. His client file’s in my office. Take it with
you, if you need to.”
“Wow. Suddenly singing and ready to unveil client confidences.” He looked at me with thinly veiled disgust. “You could have just told me this from the beginning. Saved the department and myself a lot of time.”
“They were both dead,” I said simply. “I didn’t know about the teenagers. I thought he was just a jealous husband, one who was trying not to hurt his wife.”
“I don’t think Dr. Moore should say anything else.” Robert stepped in, and it was sweet how a man who came here to kill me was now protecting my legal rights.
Saxe paused, and I waved him forward. “Keep going.”
“And John Abbott never said anything about the boys tied to a mattress in his attic?”
I forced myself not to go down the psychiatrist rabbit hole, but the details were fascinating. Brooke’s awareness of the acts. Her potential romantic involvement with the victims. Keeping them in their house.
In the expectant silence, I shook my head. “No. He never mentioned that. Never even hinted at it. I came right home as soon as I heard the news, to go through his file and see if there was something I missed, but . . .” I looked between the two men. “I don’t think I did. They were two separate silos. Morally, he was fine with being the BH Killer. Enjoyed it, if I had to guess. But his dark thoughts turning to Brooke . . . that scared him. That’s why he came to me. I just didn’t realize what I was dealing with.” I swallowed.
It was clear from Detective Saxe’s expression what he thought of my competency. Well, screw him. I had tried my best with the information I had been given. Yes, I’d kept things secret, in order to protect my career. But so had Robert. And probably, at some point, so had Detective Saxe. It was human nature to protect ourselves.
“So, John killed Brooke?” Saxe asked.
“I’m pretty damn sure. Like I said, I’d run the tox screen.”