by Mary Stone
“The initial autopsy showed he had a couple of almost complete arterial blockages. His heart was already working overtime, which could have been why the gas proved fatal for him. The other two people who died in the attack were also out of shape. According to their medical records, one had diabetes. The other was carrying an extra hundred pounds. They were susceptible.”
He let that sink in for a second before he drove the point home.
“You’re letting the people who did get away with it win by wallowing around in your own self-pity. We have clues. We have leads. We just need to follow them. The FBI, the NYPD, they’re all throwing everything they have at this right now. We have people digging into Presley and O’Connelly’s backgrounds. Their digital histories. They’re tracking the encrypted emails, the phone records of the manager who was murdered. Now, we need to do our part.”
He indicated the creepy old house.
“We might find information in there that will help us figure out where the next, and according to Sun, last hit will take place. Get your shit together now, or I’ll go in there and do it myself.”
Winter stared him down, frustrated. Finally, the tension on her face eased.
“Thanks.” With that, she got out of the car.
Noah breathed a sigh of relief and shut off the engine, following her through the snow. He hadn’t been sure he could pull that off. In her way, Winter could be just as scary as Sun.
Noah was right. She had to get her shit together. Grab on to her anger and channel it into something productive.
The floorboards creaked on the front porch as Winter climbed the steps, stomping loose snow off her boots. Winter was thankful she’d been with it enough to grab them in her dull attempt to pack the day before.
She grabbed hold of the doorknob, icy beneath her hand. It was locked.
“I’ll take care of it,” Noah offered, search warrant stuffed securely in his pocket. One solid kick sent the door swinging inward with a crash.
“Be careful,” she warned, though she didn’t sense any immediate danger. “Heidi likes booby traps. She’s probably not expecting that we’ll have found her place, but you never know.”
They stepped through the front door, Winter’s senses on full alert. The kitchen area was tidy, the table clean. There were no dirty dishes in the sink. No sign anyone had cooked in the farmhouse-style kitchen for a while. She opened one of the cupboards. Empty of food.
To the right, a short set of stairs led down to a sunken living room that looked to be an addition or a remodel of an existing structure. There was a TV, a couch, and a couple of end tables. The furniture was old but clean.
To the left, a doorway led to a formal dining area with china cabinets. The dishes were antique. Not great quality, but not junk, either. A formal parlor was on the other side of that, with bookshelves and higher-quality furniture. Everything in the house seemed to be a testament to someone’s preference for scrupulous cleanliness and order.
That fit with Aiden’s profile of Heidi.
A finished jigsaw puzzle sat on a card table. The slight coating of dust on the picture of two cats in Santa Claus hats made her think that no one had started a new puzzle in a long time. Or that the clean freak who kept the place so spotless hadn’t been home in a while to do chores.
“Interesting reading material,” Noah commented from across the room, studying the books on the shelves. “True crime, mostly. Circumstantial, but it establishes an interest, anyway.”
A bathroom and a staircase sat at the other end of the room.
“Shall we go up?” he asked.
The heat in the house hovered at a low temperature, just warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing. Upstairs, it got colder.
There were three good-sized bedrooms. One was used for storage, with neatly packed bins of what looked like clothes and more books. Another, the master bedroom, looked like it was unused.
A high bed was covered with a crocheted throw, lightly yellowed with age. The dark headboard matched the end tables and the dresser, with the mirror mounted above. Antiques. Maybe family heirlooms.
There was a wedding photo on the dresser. A small, blonde woman and a tall, dark-haired man were dressed in what passed for wedding finery in the seventies. The woman wore a hesitant smile. The man, older than his bride, scowled. Deep lines in his cheeks indicated that it was a normal expression for him.
The room smelled like mothballs. A look in the dresser drawers showed the source. Men and women’s clothes were folded and tucked inside, looking ready to wear. It was creepy, since the owners of the clothing were dead.
In the hallway, a quick look through another doorway showed a bathroom. Old-fashioned pansy wallpaper surrounded an antique, claw-footed bathtub, and the toilet was one of the impossibly old ones with a water tank perched on pipes three-quarters of the way up the wall. A chain hung down, presumably for flushing.
The doorway at the end of the hall stood open too. This was Heidi’s place, Winter knew instinctively. They had to step down into the room. It had been built at a different level as the rest of the upstairs. The roofline was a sharp slope on both sides, and the floors were creaky, dark wood. There was a simple brass bedstead, and the twin mattress was covered with a neat patchwork quilt. There was nothing else in the room, not even a rug beside the bed.
No pictures. No mementos. No stray books. Things you would find in a normal person’s house.
“Spartan accommodations.” Noah’s voice echoed in the silent upstairs. “Maybe Heidi is a Stoic. Should we check the basement? Attic?”
“I feel like she’d have some kind of office or something,” Winter said, her words sounding loud in the empty room. “A computer somewhere. She works from home.”
“Attic, it is,” Noah replied.
The narrow staircase extended another flight up. In front of her, she watched Noah try to angle his big feet on the narrow stair treads just to climb it.
This was where Heidi’s bat cave was located.
The room ran the length of the house and was even colder than the previous two floors. However, there were space heaters that probably kept the temperature tolerable when the room was in use. Cheap throw rugs were scattered here and there in an attempt to try and hold in some of the heat. Three dormer windows looked out over the snowy street below. One had a desk tucked into its alcove.
The desk was empty, except for a mouse and a keyboard. Noah moved to start checking the drawers while Winter studied the area. It was too clean. Heidi had to have a hiding place.
She found it at the far end of the room.
A red light shone weakly through the spaces between the old, scarred pine floors. “You have anything over there?” Winter asked Noah, who was still working on the desk. Knowing he wouldn’t, but she wanted to keep up appearances.
He closed the last drawer. “Nothing but office supplies. What have you got?”
“Stash spot.” She indicated a small hole in the floor. “That could be a missing knot from a pine board, but I think it’s how she opens it.”
Noah crouched down, fitted his finger into the opening. He pulled up, and after a small jerk, a small section of the floor came up too.
Winter tensed, sudden unease flooding her system as he made an approving noise.
“Good catch. There’s a burner phone and a laptop.”
A second later, Winter noticed a broken strand of wire hanging from one side of the section of floor he’d pulled up.
“Grab them fast,” she said, sudden urgency pounding at her. “I think it’s rigged.”
His eyes flew to hers for a second before he grabbed the laptop and shoved the phone in his pocket. “What—”
“Let’s go. Now.”
They’d made it down two flights and as far as the parlor, when a blast seemed to rock the foundation of the big house. Her ears rang from the shock of the explosion, throwing off her equilibrium.
Noah grabbed her arm with his free hand and pulled hard. His mouth was mo
ving, but she couldn’t hear his words over the shrilling in her head. Smoke detectors went off, shrieking on the second floor. Those, she could hear.
By the time they stumbled out the still-open front door, neighbors had come out of their houses to see what was going on. The entire top of the house was in flames, and fire raged, probably helped along by some kind of accelerant.
The ringing in her ears subsided to a loud, continuous hum that left them feeling numb.
“Good job,” she saw Noah say more than she heard. His words were muffled, and she could barely make them out. “You saved our asses again.”
25
Ryan regained consciousness in fits and starts. His brain felt fuzzy and confused. His head throbbed. When he tried to lift a hand to his aching forehead, he was only able to raise it a short distance before it was yanked back.
Opening his eyes, he blinked a few times. He was in a windowless room, the walls white-painted cinderblocks. Bright light reflected off of them, and he squinted against it, turning his head at an awkward angle to identify the source of the light. A work lamp, one of the super-bright halogens contractors used at construction sites, beamed hot beside the bed he was on. It was probably there to function as heat for the dank room, as well as light.
He moved his hands again, pulling upward. Again, he only had less than twelve inches of mobility. Bracelets bit into his wrists as he pulled harder. Metal clanked on metal. He was handcuffed to a bed frame.
He had a vague memory of a movie with Kathy Bates in it. She’d been a psychopath, obsessed with Steven King. No, the movie was based on a book by Steven King.
The mist in his brain cleared a little, and he raised his head. His feet, luckily, weren’t tethered to the other end of the bed. Both of them appeared to be intact.
Understanding rushed over him in a sickening wave. Heidi was his psychopath.
As if the thought had conjured her, a metal door on the other side of the room screeched open on rusty-sounding hinges. She slipped through the gap, studied him with dispassion.
“Good. I didn’t kill you.”
“Did you try?” His voice was little more than a rusty croak, and he realized how thirsty he was.
“No. Not yet.”
She had a glass in her hand, he saw. If he hadn’t had such a bad case of cottonmouth, he would have drooled. She set it on a small table next to his bed. He was so thirsty, he thought he could smell it. She pulled a metal folding chair from one corner closer to him and sat down, studying him like he was a bug on a dissection board.
Had she been watching him off and on since he’d been out? The thought made his skin creep.
“Care to let me know what’s going on, love?” He tried for a light tone. Failed.
“Nothing. Yet.” She continued to watch him. Her eyes, a pale, almost colorless blue today, were cold. “I’m afraid I lied to you about cutting you loose,” she told him in a matter-of-fact way. As if he hadn’t already guessed. “We do still have to finish the last act. I couldn’t do it without you. You’re going to be the star of the show.”
His chest tightened. He’d never felt the kind of fear he was experiencing right now, but something told him it was just the beginning. It would get worse.
“I figured as much.” He rattled the handcuff at his wrist. “Is that water for me, love? I’m a bit thirsty after my nap.”
“It is for you. But you can’t have it yet.”
He tried to remember what had happened after they’d arrived back at Heidi’s safe house in Vermont, but there was a blank where his memory should be. Maybe they weren’t even in Vermont. He couldn’t remember shit.
No. That wasn’t true. As his memory cleared a bit, he remembered bringing in the bags. Remembered turning around to find her wearing a damn gas mask.
Then…nothing.
He licked his lips again. Damn, he was thirsty.
He had to stop obsessing over his thirst and focus.
He licked his dry lips with his equally dry tongue. “Are we just going to chat then?”
“Yeah. I think I’d like that.” Heidi gave him a small, tight smile and leaned back in the chair. She was dressed in casual clothes. Jeans, tennis shoes, and a Michigan State sweatshirt. Her hair was straight and blonde. Her eyes were that faded-looking blue. Maybe he was seeing her actual appearance for a change? Real-life Heidi?
That, also, didn’t bode well for his life expectancy.
“We could kill some time,” he replied. Poor choice of words, he thought, smothering a wince. “What do you want to talk about? Politics? Movies? Pop culture?”
“I told you a little bit about my life story,” she mused. “I could tell you some more.”
“If you want.”
Ryan didn’t want. It would be too much like the monologue a villain always gave before he tried to kill the hero.
Not that he was any kind of hero, he thought to himself in disgust.
“My dad molested me from the time I was seven.”
He winced for real this time. This definitely had all of the earmarks of a confession and villain backstory scene.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, knowing the words were inadequate. Maybe that’s why she was so bloody crazy. He knew a bit about grabby hands messing with you when you were too little to stop them.
“My mom knew about it, but she didn’t care enough to stop him,” Heidi went on. “I killed him when I was twelve.” She delivered that pronouncement like it was of no more importance than a football score.
“Did you now? It sounds like he deserved it.”
“He did. And I got away with the murder, I might add. Put rat poison in his food and watched him die a slow, lingering death. I thought sure they’d find the cause of death in his autopsy and throw my mom in prison, but it turned out he had cancer too. He’d have croaked in a couple of months anyway.”
“That’s lovely. Very fitting.”
Tone down the sarcasm, Ryan, he told himself. He didn’t want to piss off a psychopath who had him chained to a bed. She was going to kill him, but he wasn’t dead yet, and hope sprang eternal. He didn’t need to goad her into deciding to end his existence now while he lay there like a trussed-up turkey.
“It was lovely.” She smiled a little wider, reminiscing. “I did my research at the library. In actual books, of course. Things on the internet don’t stay private.” She gave him a significant look.
“Right,” was the only thing he could think to say in response.
“Did you know that rat poison contains the kind of blood thinner used in stroke and heart attack patients? It causes all kinds of things when given in the right dose. Say, in your father’s morning oatmeal. Nosebleeds, bleeding gums, blood in your pee.”
“Fun stuff.”
“I thought about having my mom implicated in the crime anyway, but she was so weak. She wouldn’t have lasted in prison. I got around to her later.”
She confessed to matricide in the same tone anyone else would use to announce they were going to the grocery store to buy hot dog buns. The disassociation was chilling to hear.
“I could have just let her go, but she wouldn’t die fast enough. She was in assisted living,” Heidi explained. “Had a stroke and lingered for years. I finally pulled the plug on her for the insurance money, just so I could get this plan moving. She could have lasted another five years, and I wasn’t prepared to wait.”
“So, you’ve been working at this for a while, then?”
“Years. At least six. No one else has put as much time as I have into a project like this,” she added proudly. “I knew it would work from the beginning.”
“So far, so good, I guess,” Ryan replied. “Congratulations.”
Good for Heidi, anyway. For him? Not so much.
“I watched all sorts of crime shows. Dateline. Old episodes of Unsolved Mysteries. Documentaries. I researched crimes with the same methods I’d searched out information on rat poison. What the librarians must’ve thought about me. I read
hundreds of books. Did research. Picked several different potential crimes and then ran scenarios on how I’d do them. Even the crimes where the masterminds got away,” she gave a disgusted snort, “most of them still made idiotic mistakes and got nailed for them later on. I’m smarter than that.”
“You’ve certainly managed to outsmart me.”
And they’d moved on to the revealing of her master plan phase. He was doomed.
She waved a hand, dismissing his backward compliment. “That’s simple. You’re easy to manipulate. All I had to do was appeal to your pride. Once I hooked you, keeping you on the line wasn’t a problem. You’re essentially self-centered and respond well to threats to your own well-being.”
It took everything inside him to keep his face carefully blank and not try to work up a wad of saliva to spit in her face. He had never felt so impotent in his life.
Heidi yawned, a big, exaggerated opening of her mouth. “I was surprised to find out that threats against other people were an even better motivator. Ionie was pure inspiration on my part. I never actually went to Jamaica and couldn’t have cared less if you were fucking some local bimbo there. But I checked your emails, and your exotic lover has been trying to reach you, begging you to come back, and declaring her love. You’ll be happy to know she’s not a target.”
That did relieve his mind, but not much. Heidi’s word couldn’t be trusted, as he well knew.
Ionie was a sweet woman, and he didn’t want anything to happen to her. As long as Heidi knew her name and even her general location, she wouldn’t be safe. God help them if she discovered Ionie had a child. Something told him that this insane woman wouldn’t balk at murdering children.
“That’s nice of you. Ionie was just a vacation distraction,” he lied. “It’s too bad she had a stronger attachment than I did. She doesn’t deserve to die for it.”
It was a nice try. But if the story wasn’t about Heidi, Heidi wasn’t listening.
“I can’t wait for you to see the last part of my plan. Would you like some water now?”
“Sure.” That was an understatement. Whatever she’d given to him had the aftereffect of making his tongue shrivel up like an old sponge.