The Soul Hunter

by Melanie Wells

  “What does Jackson think?”

  “Jackson would think I was nuts if he knew I was listening to you.”

  “You haven’t told him any of this?”

  “Detective Jackson has been a homicide detective for fifteen years. We have evidence. We have opportunity. We have a pattern of priors. And we have a confession. He’s not looking for anything else.”

  “So you’re just doing me a favor?”

  “I’m trying to close this case, Dr. Foster. That’s my only concern here. Gordon Pryne confessed, for crying out loud. The evidence fits. He did it. But I would like to know how that ax ended up on your porch. On the off chance John Mulvaney knows something about that or is connected to this crime in some way, I am willing to get to the bottom of that. I’m tying up loose ends. That’s all.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me. I’m doing my job. And it’s a hard enough job without any more help from you.”

  “Okay, sorry. When will you get the warrant?”

  “If I have a chance, I’ll go down to the jail this afternoon and get the magistrate on duty to sign it. Otherwise, it’ll have to wait until Monday.”

  “Oh. Why?”

  “I’m off tomorrow.”

  I waited.

  “Not that it’s any of your business,” he said at last.

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “John Mulvaney is not going anywhere between now and Monday. Neither is Gordon Pryne.”

  “Neither is Drew Sturdivant.”

  “That’s right, Dr. Foster. Drew Sturdivant is staying right where she is. Nothing we do between now and Monday will change that. Why don’t you try to relax or something? Take in a movie.”

  “I can’t. Not until I know what happened.”

  “No offense, Dr. Foster, but I really don’t consider that to be my problem.”

  By this time, I’d grown accustomed to people hanging up on me. I no longer took it personally.

  I threw my phone in my purse, showered, and got myself warmed up and dried off. I felt better knowing that McKnight was at least willing to get a warrant. I was still edgy, though, and steered my truck over to the clinic, unwilling to leave well enough alone. Some people never learn.

  Saturdays are busy clinic days, but I doubted there would be much traffic before noon, given the sleeping patterns of our clientele.

  Sure enough, only one of the offices was in use, muffled conversation coming through the closed door. I checked the clock. I should have at least ten minutes, depending on whether the session was running on the hour or the half hour.

  I worked quickly, unlocking Marci’s desk with the letter opener and letting myself into the top drawer. I grabbed the key and shut the drawer. I intended to be in and out quickly, the key locked back in the drawer within a minute or two.

  John Mulvaney and I have one thing in common—other than the fact that neither of us can stand him. We both hate to return phone calls. I had a hunch there was a pile of message slips somewhere on his desk. I let myself into his office and locked the door behind me.

  I found the messages stacked neatly on his desk, underneath a colossal paperweight shaped like a big wedge of cheese. I thumbed through the slips and found it immediately. A message to John Mulvaney from Drew Sturdivant, dated two days before she died. I squinted to read the writing in the dim light. It must have been one of Marci’s depressed days. I could make out only the names and “iend of her other’s.” I pawed through the rest of the slips but found nothing significant. I tapped the stack back into place and stuck the paperweight on top, folding Drew’s message carefully into my pocket.

  I would have slipped out of the office in quiet triumph if I hadn’t heard a sound that made my blood freeze up right then and there. Someone had shoved a key in the lock.

  I crouched behind the desk as the door slid open and John’s heavy footsteps thudded into the room. I heard him shut and lock the door.

  Screaming seemed a bad idea. I clamped my hand over my mouth and tried to track his footsteps instead.

  He headed first toward the lit aquariums on the table at the other end of the room. He ran some water and walked among the rows, filling water bottles, I guessed, and dumping food pellets into stainless steel bowls. A few of the exercise wheels started to spin. Then he started for the desk. I ducked underneath and slid as far back as I could against the wood in the leg-hole.

  I’d never noticed John’s feet before. They were stubby clubs sheathed in, of all things, Wolverines—those yellowy-tan work shoes with the steel toes that construction workers wear. New ones. I could smell the leather. I’d pictured oxfords. With frayed laces and warped soles. Whatever his reasons for wearing the Wolverines, they looked to me like they could kick a hole through the side of a concrete bunker, and would certainly make quick work of me. I flattened myself against the inside of the desk, my eyes on John’s feet and my ears pricked, trying to make out what he was doing.

  John stood by the desk for a minute, shuffling things around. He opened the blinds, then grabbed the chair and sat. There was a quick shove of the chair toward me as he scooted forward. His foot stopped an inch or so short of my thigh. I sat there, trying not to breathe, thinking that possibly my Thigh Recovery Program had saved my life.

  I heard a whir as he turned the computer on, and the thunk of the paperweight over my head as he moved it to look through the messages. Then swearing. He tore through his drawers, finally unlocking the candy-stash drawer and dumping a bunch of the wrappers onto the floor in a frenzy. If he got down on the floor to go through them, I was sunk. He’d see me for sure. I closed my eyes.

  A minute of silence and then a violent groan as he shoved the chair backward.

  I heard him pacing the room. There were sounds I couldn’t identify. Shuffling. Stomping. My guess was he was tearing his office apart looking for that message—which, I surmised, he’d come to his office on a Saturday morning to get. The phone call from McKnight had surely triggered the search.

  I sat underneath his desk and listened as he continued to ransack his office. The racket somehow made it easier to breathe. I took long, even breaths and tried to slow my pulse and calm myself down. Eventually, the door jerked open and John walked out. I didn’t hear the door click behind him.

  I peeked my head out from behind the desk and listened for footsteps. I tiptoed over to the door and looked through the crack, then made a run back for the desk as I saw John walking back down the hall toward his office.

  I ducked back underneath the desk. John walked straight to the desk and sat down, scooting his chair all the way in, hitting me this time with both feet.

  He ducked his head down and stared at me.

  “Hi, John.” I smiled stiffly. “It was unlocked.”

  “What was?”

  “Your office.”

  He moved with surprising agility and strength, grabbing me by the hair with both hands, then dragging me out from underneath the desk. I shrieked and clutched his wrists, trying to pry his hands off my hair. He let go, shoving me against his desk. Pens scattered everywhere. Message slips went flying. Before I knew it, he’d stalked across the room, slammed the office door shut, and turned on me again. I found myself face to face with the rage, the angry animal strength, that Drew Sturdivant must have encountered in her last moments.

  The feeling that surged through me at that moment was primal. A raw panic, unlike anything I’ve felt before or since. I felt claustrophobic. My chest began to cramp. My arms went numb. I couldn’t breathe. It was all I could do not to double over and cry and beg for mercy.

  “What are you doing in my office?” he asked quietly.

  “John, I—”

  “Answer me.”

  “John, calm down.”

  He pointed at the floor. “Pick those up.”

  I looked down at the message slips, scattered everywhere.

  “Okay.” I knelt down and gathered them up, careful to keep an eye on the paperweight in his hand. “Calm
down, okay?”

  John snatched the stack out of my hand and thumbed through them. He looked at me. “Give it back.”

  I stood up slowly and took a step backward. “Give what back?”

  He picked up the paperweight and raised his arm to hit me. “I want it back. Now.”

  I edged away, cornering myself against the aquariums, and put my hands out defensively.

  “John. Calm down. You’re not going to hit me. We both know that.”

  He lunged for me then, swinging the paperweight at my head. I ducked, shoving the table backward and toppling the entire row of aquariums. Glass shattered. Rodents began to scatter around the room.

  John lunged for me again. I crawled on my hands and knees over the broken glass, scrambling to get away from him. Blood began to show through my jeans. I had a vague notion that I was in pain. And an almost clinical realization that I was bleeding.

  John grabbed my hair again and yanked me backward. Another table toppled. Mice and rats—surely gleeful at their unexpected bounty of luck—surged from the wreckage. Cedar shavings were everywhere.

  John threw me against his desk again and took a step backward, his chest heaving.

  He was shaking now, his face reddening.

  “Give it back.”

  “John, Marci has a copy. Those message pads are in duplicate. She keeps them, like, forever. It’s clinic policy. It’s probably locked up somewhere right now.”

  He hesitated, glancing at the door, then looked back at me.

  “John, think about it. You won’t get away with it. Be smart.”

  His face twisted with rage. He lunged forward and tackled me, knocking me flat on the desk. He put his hands around my throat, the weight of that potato-sack body trapping me underneath him.

  I tried to pry his hands off my neck. My vision started to darken at the edges and I was beginning to get dizzy for lack of air.

  I pulled at his hands, managing to loosen a couple of fingers. I could smell his breath, feel the damp heat of his body against mine.

  “I’ll kill you,” he said. “I will. Give it back.”

  I gritted my teeth and kneed him in the groin. He let go of my throat and doubled over. I backed away, gasping for air, and leaned against the wall, my head spinning. I didn’t have the stamina to run. John sank to the floor, still squeezing his legs together in pain.

  He moaned softly. I put my hand to my throat and closed my eyes. The room was strangely silent—the buzzing of the fluorescents and the scuttle of rodents suddenly deafening.

  “I didn’t do anything,” he said at last.

  I drew a deep, rattling breath and opened my eyes, batting my eyelids as my vision began to clear. “Let’s just…settle down, okay? We’ve both got to settle down here.”

  The door swung open then, and a stooped, uniformed janitor stepped into the room. He was coal-black and ancient, his features rough and rutted like an ironwood tree.

  “I saw a mouse,” was all he said. “It crawled out under the door.” He stood calmly, looking first at John and then at me, his eyes catching mine with a little twinkle.

  “John,” I said. “Look where we are.” I gestured toward the janitor. “What are you going to do? Kill us both? You’ve got to stop this. It’s over.”

  John stared dully at the janitor for a moment, then back at me, a look of resignation in his eyes. “I knew her mother. That’s all.”

  “Brigid.”

  His eyebrows came together. “Carol. Carol Anne Stevenson. We went to homecoming.”

  “Right. Carol. I met her. She really liked you a lot. She told me that, John.”

  “You talked to her?”

  “I went to her house this morning.”

  “You did?”

  “She lives in Shreveport. She really liked you a lot. She told me. She showed me the picture of homecoming.”

  “I guess she recognized me.”

  “Drew?”

  He nodded. “That must be why she called. Because she recognized me.”

  “At Finn’s house. Right?”

  John nodded. “And at that place where she…”

  “Worked? You saw her where she worked? At Caligula?”

  He wiped his nose on his sleeve and looked at the janitor again, who looked back at him, his shriveled face serene, unruffled. John looked down at the floor. His shoulders started to shake and tears dripped off his face and onto the linoleum.

  “John, hey,” I said. “Lots of men go to…those places. I mean, it’s not the Middle Ages. No one’s going to burn you at the stake or anything. Did she see you?” I asked. “At Caligula?”

  “That’s why she called me.”

  “You’re sure she saw you? Did you talk to her?”

  He nodded. “On the phone. Later.”

  “She called you and you called her back.”

  He nodded. “She was going to blackmail me.”

  “She said that? She used the word blackmail?”

  “All I did was call her back. I never should have called her back. She wanted me to meet her. To talk.”

  “Did she tell you why, though, John?”

  “She wanted to blackmail me.”

  I was still light-headed. I sank to the floor, my back to the wall, and sighed. “John, I don’t think she was blackmailing you. She wasn’t that sort of person. When did you see her at Caligula?”

  “Thursday night.”

  “You saw her on Thursday night? You’re sure?”

  “That’s why she called. She saw me. She recognized me.”

  “John, she called you before that. Thursday afternoon.”

  He sniffed loudly and looked up at me.

  “What?”

  “The message is dated Thursday. Not Friday.” I reached into my pocket and produced the message, holding it up to show him. It was smeared with the blood from my fingers. “See? The twelfth, 2:08 p.m. Maybe you got it on Friday. But the message came in on Thursday afternoon. Marci’s very good about that.”

  He nodded in mute agreement. Marci’s accuracy was indeed legendary.

  “Did you ever go to Caligula before?”

  He shook his head. “I never go to the same place twice.”

  “Really? Are there that many to choose from?”

  He nodded.

  I sighed again. The truth was getting uglier by the minute. “Did you meet with her?”

  He nodded.

  “Saturday night?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “You met her in the alley, didn’t you? Behind the car place.”

  “The pawn shop. Next door.”

  “And that was when she asked you for money?”

  He nodded. “I got so mad.” He started to cry again, huge, long drippy tears.

  “And the ax?”

  “I had it in my trunk. In case…”

  The fight went out of us both then. At that moment, I felt like I might never live again. Not like a normal person. Not like I used to.

  John groaned. I watched the arrogance deflate, the defensiveness wither. He looked up at me, meeting my eyes, for once, his face soggy, sorry. “I didn’t mean it. I just got so mad.”

  “John, we have to call the police and tell them what happened.”

  I looked up at the janitor, who nodded and left.

  John shuddered and kept crying.

  “John, did you know she was pregnant? Did you give her a chance to tell you that?”

  His blue eyes widened. They were bloodshot and sodden, his lumpy cheeks sticky, grimy.

  “She was? It wasn’t mine.”

  “I know that, John. She was probably going to ask you for help. Her whole life, her mother has told her you were the nicest person she’s ever met. She needed help. That’s all. She wouldn’t have blackmailed you. She just needed some money.”

  John’s shoulders started to heave. He balled himself up like a child, his head on his knees, and sobbed.

  “I didn’t know,” he kept saying.

  “I know y
ou didn’t.”

  “I just got so mad.”

  I heard a door open. I limped to the doorway as Helene emerged from the office at the end of the hall. I motioned for her to come. She stepped into John’s office, her eyes sweeping around the room taking it all in, and listened as I explained the situation. As I talked, she walked to the sink, grabbed some paper towels and clamped them over the cuts on my hands. I’d forgotten that I was bleeding.

  As the clinic began to buzz with weekend activity, campus security escorted two DPD cops into the clinic, along with a couple of paramedics. Helene sat with me in the hallway while the paramedics bandaged my hands and my knees and the cops secured the scene. The cuts were painful now. My neck throbbed.

  Helene turned to me and sighed. “Well, I guess you got him off your committee.”

  “Not funny, Helene.”

  “You’re right. I shouldn’t have said that. But he wasn’t the person we thought he was, was he?”

  “No. He wasn’t.”

  McKnight and Jackson showed up then. They stood and shook their heads as I told them what happened. I wasn’t sure if it was anger or disbelief I saw on their faces—both, I guess.

  “You’re lucky he didn’t kill you,” McKnight said to me.

  “I know.”

  “You’re going to need stitches,” Jackson said, pointing at my injuries. “I told you not to be a hero.”

  “I know.”

  “We’ll need to talk to the janitor,” Jackson said. He turned to the security guard. “Where is he?”

  The guard shrugged. “Never saw a janitor.”

  “Isn’t he the one that called you?” McKnight asked.

  “It was some lady from Chicago. She said her kid was upset and wanted us to check the clinic. We got here right when the cops arrived.”

  Jackson asked me for a description of the janitor. I gave it to him, knowing they’d never find him.

  Earl, Christine Zocci’s angel, had intervened on my behalf once before. He’d been dressed as a hotel porter that time, not a janitor. But his ancient face, black as the night sea and just as old, had worn the same winsome, wise expression. I’d recognized him the instant I laid eyes on him.

  Two uniformed cops led a weeping John Mulvaney out of his office. Students and staff lined up in the hallways, mouths open, as the detectives walked John down the hall in handcuffs. Helene and I followed them outside, the crowd from the clinic trailing behind us.