Mysterious Montana

by B. J Daniels

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him clutch his side. “Are you all right?”

  “Just a little indigestion. Slade gives it to me all the time.”

  She spotted both stairs and elevator down the hall. She was anxious to get off this level. The echo of their steps along the concrete hallway was giving her a headache. The halls seemed to wind like a maze down here. She felt turned around, but then she hadn’t been paying attention.

  Unconsciously, now that she could see the elevator ahead, she slowed her steps, trying to give Slade as much time alone as possible in the lab.

  “I wouldn’t worry if I were you,” the chief was saying. “We have a warrant out on Carolyn Gray, the crime lab is sending someone down from Missoula to help us with the investigation of Dr. Delaney’s murder, and we’ll continue to look for your baby.” He ran his beefy hand over his face. “One way or the other, it will be over soon,” he said, his hand muffling his voice. “So don’t you worry.”

  They had almost reached the end of the hallway and the elevator. Her heart slammed against her chest. She stumbled, losing her balance.

  Curtis grabbed her to steady her. “Are you all right?”

  This time she saw him flinch. Something was definitely wrong with him, but her mind was on the flash of memory. It moved through her mind like a wisp of cloud. She could feel him staring at her oddly. Just get to the elevator, she told herself. “I think I’d like to sit down once we get to the main office.”

  “No problem,” the chief said as he took her arm. “Let’s get you taken care of as quickly as possible so I can get back to your…boyfriend.”

  * * *

  SLADE COULD SMELL the blood pooling in front of the cabinet as he drew near. He reached out cautiously for the knob, half expecting the cabinet door to be locked. He pulled. The door swung open.

  Carolyn Gray tumbled out.

  One good look at her, and Slade knew there was no reason to check for a pulse. She’d been shot and shoved into the cabinet as if her killer had been in a hurry. He could see now where the blood that had splattered on the white tile floor had been hastily wiped up.

  He stumbled back, confused. Three monsters. All dead. If Carolyn had killed Dr. Delaney, then who had killed her? Not Lorraine. Carolyn’s body was still warm and Lorraine—

  He jumped at the sudden sound of his cell phone ringing. Hurriedly, he dug the phone out of his shirt pocket before it could ring again. “Rawlins.” He’d expected it to be Holly warning him that the cop was on his way back down.

  “Slade?” It was Shelley. “Is everything all right?”

  Not a chance. “Yeah.”

  “I got your message. Sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner. I was farther up island.”

  He started to cut her off, to tell her this really wasn’t a good time, but then she said, “You asked about the Christmas ornament. The twin golden angels?”

  He’d almost forgotten, so much had been going on. He moved away from Carolyn’s body, toward the door.

  “I do remember it,” Shelley was saying. “You know who made it? Francie Dunn. You know, Jerry Dunn’s mom. That was back when we were kids and played together.”

  He’d forgotten that Jerry had lived down the street from them back then. When he’d called Shelley, he’d hoped maybe the ornament had meant something to their mother—their adoptive mother, he mentally corrected himself.

  “So Francie Dunn gave it to Mom,” he said.

  “No, Francie made it. L.T. gave it to Mom that Christmas, right before…”

  He stopped in mid-step, freezing. That Christmas, right before she was murdered? “You’re sure L.T. gave it to her?”

  “Positive. I remember because she looked at him and burst into tears. That was so unlike Mom. Slade, what’s going on? Why ask about the ornament now?”

  He was trying to understand his mother’s reaction and why the chief would have given her the twin angels. Norma said he’d been against the pregnancy. He’d never been close to either Slade or Shelley—and he definitely wasn’t an angel kind of guy. Unless there was some special meaning other than the fact that the angels were twins that had made his mother cry.

  “Slade, what’s going on?” Shelley asked, sounding worried. “Has something happened?”

  “You know me, I just get sentimental this time of year.”

  “Oh yeah, right. You’re sure everything is all right?”

  “It’s fine. Shel, I’ve got to go. I love you.” He snapped off the phone before she could question him further and turned to find Chief L. T. Curtis framed in the lab doorway.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Holly woke in total blackness, dazed, head aching. The last thing she remembered was reaching for the elevator button.

  She tried to get up and bumped into a wall in the dark. She could hear the sound of water and heat pipes but couldn’t tell if they were over her head—or just one misstep below her. Carefully, she got to her feet, afraid of falling into an abyss.

  Once on her feet, she discovered the knot on the side of her head. She half expected to find no memory of anything. But not only could she remember being hit, she remembered the voice and the muffled familiar words. “It will be over soon.” The same words she’d heard the night she delivered her baby. And she realized now why she’d known the person speaking the words even through his mask. Why she’d been so shocked. Because she’d met Chief L. T. Curtis last February with Slade, right before someone had wiped Slade from her mind—but not from her heart, she thought.

  No wonder the monsters had found her soon after she met Chief Curtis.

  But at least now she knew she’d gone to Slade this Christmas Eve of her own free will, because she was in trouble and instinctively she’d known to go to him.

  And now she had her memory back, for all the good it did her. Slade was waiting at the lab. And Curtis had told him he’d be back as soon as he took care of Holly. Well, he’d taken care of her all right!

  Gingerly, she reached out her arms, fearing what she might feel in the dark, but desperately needing to escape this prison—and get to Slade. He would trust Chief Curtis. He would believe that she was safe with the two police officers she’d bet weren’t waiting upstairs in the main office. Slade would be a sitting duck.

  Her fingertips touched a wall directly in front of her. And another off to her left and right. A closet? Or a coffin stood on end? The thought sent a chill through her. She felt for a doorknob, desperate to find one.

  Her hand found the handle of a broom or mop and shoved it aside, only to have it hit something over her head. A large container tumbled down, striking her shoulder, almost knocking her to her knees.

  She grabbed her shoulder in the blackness of the closet and felt something wet and sticky. Blood? She leaned against the wall, holding her shoulder, waiting for the pain to subside a little. The closet smelled strongly of floor cleaner. She crouched down and found a large plastic bottle and something wet and sticky spilled on the floor. Not blood. Floor cleaner.

  She wasn’t bleeding. That was a relief anyway.

  She wiped her hands on her jeans and went back to looking for a doorknob. Nor was she in a coffin, she thought counting her meager blessings.

  Her hand banged against metal. Smooth, round metal. She’d never been so happy to find a doorknob in her life. She tried to turn it, not terribly surprised to find the door locked—and obviously with a key—from the outside.

  She considered throwing herself against the door, but knew that breaking it down was out of the question even if she’d had enough room to get a run at it. Banging on the door for help seemed just as ridiculous. She hadn’t seen a soul on her walk with the chief down the labyrinth of hallways. Wherever she was, it wasn’t on a main floor and she would never be heard over the sound of the water and heating system now roaring in her ears.

  She was trapped. In the dark. And Slade was out there with at least two crazy armed people—Carolyn Gray and Chief L. T. Curtis.

&nbs
p; She fought the desire to scream. Or cry. Think. She felt around for the broom or mop handle she’d discovered earlier. Mop, she decided, when she found it and ran her fingers the length of it.

  Maybe she could use it as leverage to break off the doorknob. She wasn’t sure the door would open even if she managed such a feat, but she had to try. She couldn’t just stand here in the broom closet, unable to warn Slade, just waiting for the chief of police or Carolyn Gray to come back and kill her.

  She got the mop handle between the wall and the knob and pulled down with all her strength. She thought she felt it give a little. If only she had a little more room. Or more weight. The mop handle broke. She fell, slamming into the closet wall.

  She felt tears rush her eyes and a sob catch in her throat, just waiting to be let loose. She threw down the piece of broken mop handle, hurt and scared and frustrated. And angry. But she wasn’t going to cry.

  Bracing herself against the wall, she put her foot against the doorknob. She would break the thing even if it killed her!

  She kicked, then kicked harder, ignoring the pain in her arch. The doorknob gave way on the ninth kick. It clattered to the floor. She leaned against the wall, realizing she was crying, but not sure how long she had been.

  She wiped the tears from her face with her sleeve and turned her back to the wall opposite the door, figuring she’d have to kick her way out, but determined she would, come hell or high water.

  The moment her boot touched the door, the door swung open and she slipped on the floor cleaner and fell to the floor. Crying and laughing and closet-blind, she scrambled to her feet and burst out into the dim light of the hallway.

  Once out, she realized she had no idea how to get back to the lab.

  * * *

  SLADE HADN’T HEARD the chief open the door because he’d been on the phone. Curtis stood filling the doorway, his service revolver in his beefy hand. He was looking at Carolyn Gray’s body, his expression one of regret rather than surprise.

  “Who was on the phone?” the cop asked.

  “Wrong number.”

  “You always were a bad liar, Slade. I figured Shelley would remember the ornament incident. She always paid more attention to the little things than you did.”

  Slade stared at him, trying to get control of his fury, his fear, his repulsion, trying to understand with his mind something his heart just refused to believe. “What did you do with Holly?” he demanded, fear making his blood run cold as he advanced on the cop.

  Curtis lifted the revolver in his hand, the threat too clear.

  Slade stopped, his own weapon in his coat pocket, where he’d put it when he’d found Carolyn dead. He knew he couldn’t get it out, aim and pull the trigger before Curtis fired and killed him, so he didn’t even consider it. He wouldn’t do Holly any good dead.

  “I locked her in a closet until we could get some things sorted out,” the cop said.

  He didn’t know why, but he believed Curtis. “Why?” he asked, his heart breaking. “Why would you get involved with someone like Allan Wellington?”

  “Allan was a genius,” Curtis said.

  “All madmen think they’re geniuses.”

  “Do they? You think I’m mad and yet I’m no genius. If I were I wouldn’t be here right now.” The cop glanced toward Carolyn Gray’s body. “I wish you’d left this alone, Slade. I told you Marcella would never have had an affair.”

  Slade eyed the contents of the lab, looking for something he could use for a weapon. A small microscope lay on its side on the lab table in a pile of broken glass. If he could get to it—

  “Marcella must have found out what Wellington was doing when she was getting the fertility treatments,” Slade said, edging slowly toward the lab table. “She would have come to you, because for some reason she didn’t want my father to know she was getting treatments? Or trying to expose Dr. Wellington.” He frowned as he glanced at Curtis. “And she would have trusted you.” A thought struck him. “She found out about your involvement.”

  The cop was nodding thoughtfully. “I didn’t want to hurt Marcella, but she wouldn’t listen to reason.”

  Slade swore. “She was trying to tell us who her murderer was. You gave her that ornament as a warning. If she talked you’d do something to her kids. No, not her kids, Norma’s and Joe’s kids.”

  “So Norma told you,” Curtis said disgustedly. “I figured eventually she would.” His gaze hardened. “They betrayed me. Especially Marcella. She’s the one who talked Norma into having Joe’s children, and Norma—” he shook his head angrily “—jumped at the chance to be with your father.”

  “That’s why you stole Holly’s and my baby,” Slade said with a start. “You couldn’t stand the thought of Norma having a grandchild.”

  “You always were a bright kid,” the cop said. “Must have gotten that from your father.”

  His father. Slade looked into Curtis’s eyes and knew. “You made it look like a heart attack.” He never had a bad heart. Inez’s words seem to echo. Sweet heaven. “You killed my father—and Dr. Wellington.” It was everything he could do not to launch himself at the man and take his chances. If he could just get his hands around the cop’s throat—“Dad must have found out that you were the one who killed Marcella.”

  “Your father was one hell of a cop,” Curtis said almost sadly. “He wanted to blow me away himself, but he had too much honor. It was just one of the things Norma loved about him. He gave me until the next morning to turn myself in. Wellington told me what I needed to make the death look like a heart attack. Ironically, I used the same drug on the good doctor when the time came.”

  “But why kill Wellington if he was such a genuis?” Slade asked, trying to put it all together, knowing somewhere in it all was the key to what had happened to his baby girl.

  “He was getting out of control and I was getting tired of cleaning up after him. And I didn’t need him anymore.”

  “Holly,” Slade guessed, inching toward the lab table. He moved so slowly. Too slowly. But he didn’t dare make a misstep. He had to think of Holly. Finding Holly. “You were afraid of him marrying a woman so much younger and controlling her mind through the use of drugs.”

  “Wellington had taken her off the drug so he could get her pregnant, but he was having trouble controlling her.”

  “It was you she was running from when she left the Institute last Christmas Eve,” Slade said. It all made sense now. The way Holly had disappeared right after she’d met the chief and Norma. “You could have killed her after you used the mind control to make her forget me,” he said, wondering if there wasn’t some human compassion in the man.

  “You were already obsessed over your mother’s murder,” Curtis snapped. “If I’d killed Holly, you would never have let up until you found out the truth.”

  Slade was almost within reach of the table—and the microscope. Suddenly he saw something that stopped him dead. He watched a drop of blood fall from the cop’s left side and splat on the floor, bright red, at the man’s feet. Slade’s glaze leapt to Curtis’ zipped jacket. The knit band around the bottom on the left was soaked with blood. He’d been wounded! Had Carolyn Gray fought back? But how badly was the cop hurt? “You had to know she was carrying my baby, Norma’s grandbaby.”

  “Inez convinced me that the baby was Wellington’s.”

  Slade saw it now, all of the pieces finally falling into place. Except one large empty hole that he had to have filled no matter what happened in this room tonight.

  * * *

  HOLLY STOOD in the middle of the hallway, lost. She had no idea where she was or where the lab was. She felt tears blur her vision. She swiped at them angrily. Which way? Back down the hall away from the elevator? But then the halls made a junction and—

  She saw something on the floor and knew before she reached down to touch the bright red spot what had been wrong with Chief Curtis. Blood. He’d been wounded. It made no sense, but she didn’t question it as she looked down the h
allway for another drop of blood, then another. Better than a breadcrumb trail, she thought.

  She took off her boots, not wanting to make a sound, then began to follow the bloody trail back to the lab. As she drew closer, she began to run, fear and anger coursing through her veins like blood, a hot cauldron of fury. “Dammit, Rawlins, don’t you dare let that psychopath kill you!”

  * * *

  “WHAT IS IT you want, Slade?” The way Curtis said it he could have been asking him what he wanted for lunch. The cop sounded tired and old and Slade found himself wondering how well he’d ever known him.

  “My baby and Holly.”

  Curtis cocked his head to the side. “Why don’t I believe that’s all you want?”

  “That’s it. I don’t give a damn about the rest of this.” It surprised him, but it was true.

  The cop grabbed a shelf on the wall next to him and flung its contents to the floor. “Not you, Slade. You have to have truth and justice. You couldn’t live with yourself otherwise.”

  “You might be surprised,” Slade said.

  Curtis wagged his bald head as he pulled a second gun from his coat.

  Slade recognized it as his own—the one he couldn’t find at Dr. Delaney’s. “Dr. Delaney was telling the truth. He wasn’t at the birth of Holly’s and my baby. It was you. You put the mask in Delaney’s closet to frame him.” He could reach the microscope now. All he needed was the right moment and a hell of a lot of luck. “There is one thing I don’t understand. Why not let Holly keep the baby? All Inez wanted was an heir for her brother—even a dead one. Why not let Inez have a live family heir? No one would be the wiser.”

  “Holly was too unstable,” Curtis said with a sigh. “I figured after her baby was born dead, she’d probably end up committing suicide.”

  He’d planned to kill Holly. No doubt still did. Sweet heaven. “What part did Dr. Delaney and Dr. O’Brien play in all this?”

  The question seemed to take Curtis by surprise. He frowned. “Dr. O’Brien has nothing to do with this. Why would you ask about him?”

  Slade spotted Holly out of the corner of his eye and couldn’t believe it for a moment. She peeked around the edge of the doorframe and winked at him. He’d never been so glad to see anyone in his life.