Possession

by Rene Gutteridge

  She grabbed her chest, trying to breathe. Then reached for the door and yanked it open.

  Crumpled inside the closet, arms twisted grotesquely behind her, was Karen.

  Dark, furious red blood soaked through her cream blouse. Lindy dropped to her knees, covering her mouth so she wouldn’t scream.

  “Lindy . . .”

  “Don’t talk. It’s okay. . . . It’s okay.” Lindy grabbed a cotton hoodie off its hanger and yanked it down. She opened Karen’s blouse. A bullet hole. Blood pumped out like a pulsating fountain. She pressed the hoodie against it, but within seconds it turned wet.

  She could hear her cell phone ringing. She needed to call 911. Lindy pulled Karen’s arm from behind her. “Karen, hold this on the wound. I’m going to go get help.”

  “I can’t . . . I can’t feel them anymore.”

  Lindy started to get up. Her phone was still ringing.

  “No . . .” Karen’s eyes glowed with fear, with urgency, widening with each breath she took. “I am going to die.” Her words sounded like gasps. “I need to tell you something.”

  Lindy grabbed the doorknob to help lower herself. Her legs were shaking so badly she wasn’t even sure she could make it to the phone.

  “Mom?”

  Lindy turned. The door of the open closet was blocking Conner’s view of Karen. She jumped to her feet. “Conner, don’t ask questions. I want you to go to your room and close the door. Do you understand me? Now. Go. Don’t come out until I tell you!”

  Conner backed up, his eyes searching what was sure to be his mother’s terrified expression. For once, he didn’t question. He just did. She heard the door shut as she dropped to her knees again.

  Karen’s lips trembled as she tried to speak. “I’m so sorry.”

  “What happened? Who did this to you?”

  “I did something . . .” Her dulling eyes spilled tears onto her pale cheeks. She tried to turn her head a little, but she didn’t seem to have much control. “I thought he loved me.”

  “Who? Is that who shot you?”

  “But you told me about you and Vance. And I knew I didn’t have that.” She gasped again for air. “I thought if we just had some money, we might be happy.” She swallowed, her eyes fading, gazing downward. “But you had nothing, and you were making it. . . .”

  “Karen, who did this to you?”

  “He told me he loved me, but he never . . . I’m sorry, Lindy. You turned out to be . . .” Another gasp for air, this time with less strength. “. . . and I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  Lindy stared at her, watching the life slip right out of her.

  She struggled for two more breaths. “Joe told me it would all be okay . . .”

  “Joe?”

  “He . . . It went wrong. I came here to warn . . .”

  “You’re working for Joe?”

  “He said he lov . . .” She choked and blood sputtered out of her mouth, sprinkling her lips and chin. Her body hardly moved, but her eyes lit with terror as she tried for another breath that wouldn’t come.

  Karen’s eyes moved up, looked like they were trying to focus. And she said one final word.

  “Run.”

  “Karen? Karen!”

  She was gone. The reflected light in her eyes vanished instantaneously.

  A sob escaped, even as Lindy held her hand over her mouth. She couldn’t believe it. The only friend she had in Redwood City was never a friend.

  Run.

  She flew to her feet. She had to get to her phone, call the police. Or Vance? She wasn’t sure who to call first, but she didn’t feel safe. She’d thought Joe was just a thug after money, but she had underestimated what he was capable of.

  She stared at Karen’s lifeless body shoved into the tiny closet.

  A cold piece of metal jammed into her temple, hitting the bone and causing her to wince in pain.

  “Don’t move.”

  * * *

  Vance tried Lindy’s phone again. It rang and went to voice mail. “Pick up!” he yelled as he raced through the streets, weaving in and out of traffic without the benefit of his siren. “Get out of the way!”

  He tried to dial 911, missing the numbers. He didn’t even know his own address yet. Was it 6850 or 5860? And what was he supposed to tell them? They would take their time getting there if he only offered a simple “Please go check on my wife.”

  He threw the cell phone down on the seat and grabbed the wheel with both hands. He blew through an intersection, slipping between two cars. Sweat dripped down his forehead and burned his eyes.

  Erin. Erin? What did it mean? How could she be involved in this?

  A blinding headache electrified his nerves. His vision blurred. Another migraine. They came more frequently now. He clenched his jaw and left the pain to deal with itself. But as he drove frantically down the two-lane road that led to his condo, his concentration was blasted with more images from the past. Picture after picture. The dead. The clues. It was like fear had a substantiated form, touchable, breathing, living. Blood. Death. A ghostly sniper haunting the shadows.

  Concentrate. But he couldn’t. His mind wandered back to those days, like a helpless child stumbling through a dark forest looking for something familiar. He slowed the car, fearing he couldn’t control it.

  He grabbed the phone again and dialed Lindy’s number. He heard the sound of its ringing. The road in front of him looked misty, and on top of it was a scene that he had lived. He saw himself walking through the trees, looking for clues after they’d shot a middle schooler.

  Doug Cantella was by his side, talking him through what to look for.

  Then he was in a lower-level parking lot, staring at a woman sprawled on its dark pavement. Then at the gas station, a man’s head blown up.

  Vance blinked, wiping the sweat off his face with his shirt. He had to get there. He had to get to Lindy. Something was wrong. Very wrong.

  But what did it all mean?

  His mind focused on the leather jacket in the truck. Maybe Erin had found Joe first. Shot him. Was going to let Vance know where his stuff was.

  Maybe.

  He ducked at the sound of a distant shot, of cracking glass. But as he looked around, he couldn’t see anything amiss. The windows were fine.

  God, help me.

  He’d battled these demons. They came and went. But they hadn’t forced themselves into his mind like this in years. Not the sound of the bullet. The shattering of glass.

  He should talk to Doug. Doug would know what to do.

  Lindy.

  He screeched around the corner and right into the driveway. Lindy’s car was there. But the front door was open. He jumped out and ran toward the condo. Everything was quiet. He broke the silence by shouting Lindy’s name.

  “Lindy!” He flew up to the porch and into the condo. “Lindy?”

  Nothing. Silence. The first thing he noticed was her cell phone. On the counter. He grabbed it and looked at the missed calls. He ran to both rooms. Empty, except for a cluster of books spread out on Conner’s floor. He returned to the hallway and stopped midstep.

  Blood smeared across the wood floor.

  “No . . .”

  Bloody handprints. And a shoe print. Was Lindy hurt? A crushing pain sliced through his head and he shut his eyes, holding his hands against his skull.

  A few seconds passed and the pain let up a little. He opened his eyes, and the light made him feel like he’d put his face into a fire pit. But he managed to notice blood on the closet door too. He knelt, trying to put together the pieces of what was going on. His wife was gone. His son was gone.

  He grabbed the doorknob of the closet and opened it.

  God, please . . . no . . . no . . .

  Karen Kaye lay crumpled in the closet, her eyes vacant, staring at nothing. Her torso was soaked with blood.

  “Lindy!” Vance screamed.

  His cell phone buzzed to life. He snatched it out of his pocket. “Lindy?”

  “It’s Erin.
”

  Vance held his breath.

  “And I have her. And Conner.”

  “Why?” Vance slid down the wall and sat against the hardwood floor, inches from the bloody mess and Karen’s dead body. “What are you doing?”

  “I only meant to disrupt your life.”

  “What are you talking about? I want to talk to Lindy. Let me talk to her.”

  “Shut up and listen to me. I saved your life once and you did nothing to repay me—except abandon me and shove everything wrong in my life in my face.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “I wanted you to see what it was like to lose everything. Because that’s what happened to me. I had to leave what mattered to me most because of your self-righteousness.”

  “I only wanted you to get help.”

  “You blackmailed me. So I decided to blackmail you.”

  “You’re behind all this?” Vance lost his breath.

  “Yeah. I’m behind all this, Vance. I wanted to take everything away from you because that’s what you took away from me.”

  “You did it to yourself.”

  “No. See, I saved your life. But you didn’t want to save mine.”

  “I helped you. . . .” Vance felt his throat swell. “It was complicated, Erin. You know that. I needed . . . I needed to be with my wife, and we couldn’t—”

  “Yeah. I know the story.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “I thought I wanted to show you what my life was like. But now I see.”

  “See what?”

  “I want your life.”

  “What are you talking about?” Vance pulled at his shirt, which stuck to his chest. Sweat dribbled down his skin.

  “People think they can blackmail me. You. Joe.”

  “Erin, don’t do this. Whatever it is you think you’re going to do. We can talk through this. Just bring Lindy and Conner back to me.”

  “Lindy and I are going to talk.”

  “Are you going to hurt her? Did you kill Joe and Karen?”

  “I don’t have much to lose anymore, Vance. You took everything from me.”

  “Stop blaming me. I didn’t tell you to start drinking. I should have never gone along with the cover-up.”

  “I realized something,” she said. Her voice sounded so smooth, like they were back in the squad car passing the time with conversation. “I realized I tried to take everything, but I didn’t take the only thing that means something to you. You were going to walk away from everything in that truck. Even a disc that could land you in front of a DA.”

  “I couldn’t let it keep its grip on me, Erin. And you have to do the same thing. You have to let this go.”

  “No. I don’t. Now your kid’s crying, so I have to shut him up. Don’t call the police, or you have no chance of getting them back alive.”

  “What do you want from me? I’ll give you anything.”

  “See. That’s the problem. I want . . . wanted . . . you.”

  “Then take me. Bring them back and take me.”

  Silence.

  “Erin?”

  The phone went dead.

  21

  Vance dropped the phone. Sob after sob escaped him. He couldn’t stop it, so he let it pour out of him. Frustration. Anger. Fear. Regret.

  He hated the power that Erin had lorded over him for so long. Guilt had caused him distance from his wife. He’d held on to too many secrets. For too long. And now Lindy’s life, and Conner’s, was in the hands of a woman who was capable of murder.

  “Lindy . . .” His eyes swelled with tears again and he could hardly see anything in front of him. He managed to crawl away from Karen and her blank stare, into the living room, which consisted of only carpet and two lawn chairs. He lay on the floor, captive to long chains of memories.

  He was at the mercy of all his mistakes rolled into one, in the form of a very dangerous woman. He had wondered about Erin after she decided to leave the department. She always seemed on edge before. Once she left, she grew dark and reclusive. Even before she left, when Vance made the choice to cut ties with her, she was different. Her eyes had turned cold. Intense. Loaded-gun intense. Vance noticed, on the occasions when he ran into her at a crime scene or the officers’ club, she blinked slowly. Unfastened to what was around her.

  Another piercing pain boomeranged through his head. When would these stop? He had to think. Think. But the pain was nearly unbearable. It felt like his skull was cracking.

  Call Sammy. He was the tech guru and data analyst with the department. Vance pulled out his phone, looked through his numbers. He had Sammy’s cell, he thought, but the numbers and letters were blurry. He held the phone as close to his face as possible, blinking, trying to get the numbers in focus. He decided just to hit Send.

  Suddenly he stood over another body. Inside a bus. Sprawled on the steps. No. Keep focused.

  “Sammy Gunther.”

  “Sammy, it’s Graegan.”

  “Vance, my man. How are you?”

  “I need some help.”

  “Sandwiches not popular on the West Coast? You should go into the sushi business, man.”

  “I need you to look up phone records for me.”

  “You in some trouble, Vance?”

  “Sammy, can you just trust me on this one? I need Erin’s phone records.”

  “Erin ‘Crazy Eyes’ Lester?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Give me a second.” The clicking of the keyboard filled the phone, and Vance felt a sense of relief. He was starting the process of tracking her down. And he would track her down.

  “Got it.”

  “I need the last ten numbers she dialed.” Vance scrambled to his feet and made his way to the kitchen. He searched for a pen and grabbed a paper plate to write on.

  “That’s easy. They’re all 411.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yeah. The whole page is filled with 411 calls.”

  Vance knew the trick. Clever criminals used it because there was no way to trace the call. The 411 service automatically dialed the number, leaving no record of who was being called. Erin had planned this.

  “Thanks, Sammy.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  Vance closed his eyes. Tried to lighten his voice. “Yeah, man. It’s cool. I’ll call you back. I may need some more info.”

  “Only for you, because your wife makes outstanding chicken salad sandwiches, which I miss, by the way.”

  “Thanks.” Vance choked out a good-bye and hung up.

  Think. Like a detective. He could figure this out. He could find a way back to them.

  He dialed information and got the phone number to the Chicago precinct where she worked.

  A woman with a deep voice answered the phone.

  “I’m calling about one of your officers, Erin Lester.” He didn’t know where else to start. Perhaps talk to her lieutenant, find out what he could. Obviously they knew something. She wasn’t at work.

  The woman’s voice sounded irritated. “You’ll have to talk to our media relations spokeswoman.”

  “But—”

  Elevator music. Lengthy, with a single violin stabbing his mind with every high note. Then, “Ellie Fitzgerald.”

  “I am calling about Erin Lester.”

  “Sir, I can’t tell you anything more than what was in the statement.”

  “Remind me again what was in the statement.”

  “Sergeant Erin Lester is on unpaid administrative leave pending an investigation into the accident.”

  “Accident?”

  “Sir, who are you with?”

  “An Internet news outlet.”

  “Well, I’m not going to be your source. Sounds like you need to do more investigative journalism and rely less on people just telling you information. Good-bye.”

  The call ended, and Vance quickly got on the Internet with his phone. He googled Erin’s name and an article came up from an online Chicago newspaper. He read quic
kly. There had been an accident involving an officer. Four months ago. She’d struck a car with a family inside, injuring the father and killing a three-year-old girl.

  Vance dropped to his knees as he continued to read. There was speculation that she’d been drunk at the time. She was on patrol and had been chasing a speeding motorcycle when she crashed. She was uninjured. An investigation was pending.

  Erin had returned to drinking. She was probably going to lose her job. Especially if they found out what he knew. What he’d kept secret for years.

  He stayed on his knees for a long time, staring out the back window, which showed only a partial tree from his view. Desperation bled over him, through him, like it had been dumped from a bucket.

  What was he going to do? How was he going to find her?

  Think. Think.

  But he couldn’t. A shotgun blast shattered a window nearby. He ducked. He always knew the snipers were watching him. When they stood over the bodies, he knew they were nearby, with the detectives in their sights.

  Think.

  He saw Doug walking beside him, pointing to this and that. He’d taught how to look, what to look for, how to search for things unseen.

  That’s how they’d found the tarot card and the note from the snipers.

  Vance got up and turned to the front door. He walked to the porch, his legs shaky and unstable beneath him.

  Karen. She was here. But where was her red car?

  Erin had been driving a rental. She knew he could trace that, find some information. So she’d switched and took Karen’s car, probably abandoning the rental.

  Now she was in a red car. That was his first clue.

  He turned and paced. Pacing kept away the memories. Sometimes. Where could he look for them? Where would Erin go?

  He circled the living room and finally sank into one of the lawn chairs, training his mind to the facts he knew.

  But just like the sniper case, it was like Erin was a ghostly mist vanishing into thin air. She could be anywhere. They could be anywhere.

  It almost couldn’t get worse.

  Except it did.

  Because suddenly standing in the doorway was one of his worst nightmares. And he couldn’t even pull a gun on her.