The Inquisitor

by Gayle Wilson

  “Then tell him to get me out over its center,” Sean shouted, jerking his arm away to continue his drive toward the door. He dropped his jacket on the metal floor, stepping over it to grab onto the doorway, one hand on each side.

  Wind buffeted his body. Behind him, he could hear the deputy yelling instructions. Poised in the opening, knees bent in jump position, Sean waited as the craft drifted toward the middle of the narrow stretch of water below.

  Muscles tensed, he tried to judge its deepest part by color. Even as close as they were, it all appeared the same shade of dirty brown.

  The Bell Ranger seemed to hang in place, perhaps ten feet above the middle of the slough. Sean glanced back, eyes questioning, and the deputy gave him a thumbs-up.

  “I’m right behind you,” Vines shouted, “so if I’m wrong about the water and you don’t break your neck, you’d better start swimmin’ before I land on your ass.”

  Sean nodded, his throat closing with an emotion he didn’t quite understand. Maybe it was the fact that he’d always gone into combat as part of a team. With men he knew he could count on. It seemed that once again, unexpectedly, in a place as alien to him as any of the others where he’d fought, he had again found that.

  Turning back to the open door, he took one last look at the water below, ruffled by their downdraft. He drew a breath and then jumped straight out. Better broken legs than a broken neck, he had time to think before he hit.

  He’d gotten lucky. The water closed over his head, cold enough to take his breath. It was only a matter of seconds before his feet touched bottom.

  He bent his knees, trying to absorb the shock as his boots sank into the mire. He brought both arms down, propelling himself upward. Even before he cleared the mud of the bottom, he began to kick.

  When his head broke the surface, the noise of the chopper still hovering above him was deafening. Before he could orient himself and begin to stroke toward the place Evers had been seconds ago, John Vines hit the water beside him.

  He waited until the deputy surfaced. As soon as he had, Vines waved him away. Sean began swimming in earnest as the helicopter above them lifted, easing the turbulence around him.

  As he neared the low bank, he struggled to find footing in the slime secure enough to allow him to climb up. Using the exposed roots of a tree that had fallen victim to rising water, he was finally able to pull himself awkwardly onto the bank.

  He glanced back once to check on the man who’d followed him through the chopper door. Vines was heading for the same spot where he’d managed to exit the river, swimming with a powerful if unpolished stroke.

  Relieved, Sean turned back toward the woods, removing the Glock from the holster at the base of his spine. Although it had been immersed in the river, the weapon should still be operational. If it wasn’t, he’d kill the bastard with his bare hands.

  Faced with a seemingly impenetrable—and indistinguishable—wall of pine trees, he was no longer sure of the exact place where Evers had dragged Jenna into the woods. Crouching, he ran along the narrow bank, searching for something that would mark their entry. A disturbance of the black loam or broken bracken that would give him a trail to follow.

  “Here.”

  He looked up to find Vines gesturing toward an area nearer the end of the slough. Before Sean could join him, the deputy disappeared into the forest.

  Sean ran toward the spot, his breath a cloud of vapor before him. For the first time since he’d hit the water, he was conscious of the numbing cold.

  As he plunged into the thicket, he could see Vines ahead of him, his khaki-colored uniform blending into the pattern of light and shadow under the trees. Burdened as he was, Evers couldn’t have much of a lead. Not unless—

  Again Sean blocked the possibility of having this end in any way other than the one he wanted. Part of that was an outcome he’d dreamed of for almost three years. And the other…

  …was now far more important than the vow that had brought him to Birmingham.

  He pushed through a particularly dense patch of undergrowth and suddenly realized he could no longer see the deputy. He turned in a tight circle, Glock held out in front of him. His eyes searched the shadows under the trees as he listened, trying to hear any movement around him, but the noise of the choppers hovering overhead prevented that.

  It was as if Vines—and Evers—had disappeared. Which meant he must somehow have veered off in the wrong direction. The woods here weren’t thick enough to totally hide three people.

  Somewhere to his left two shots rang out in rapid succession, followed after a few seconds by a third. It was the signal they’d agreed upon before the raid began. It notified the forces coming from the road that the suspect had been located so that the need for “silent running” was over. And it meant that John Vines, with his knowledge of the area and his tracking ability, had caught up with the killer.

  Before the echoes of that gunfire faded, Sean was on the move, plowing through the tangled scrub in the direction from which the shots had originated. It had been only minutes since Evers disappeared. If the deputy had sighted him—

  He stepped over a rotted trunk, pushing between two holly bushes. A small clearing opened up before him.

  A shaft of winter sunlight poured into it through the break in the canopy, seeming to spotlight the three people standing motionless in the center. Given the direction from which Sean approached, they were almost in profile. As unbelievable as it seemed, with the noise of the choppers overhead, they didn’t seem to be aware he was here.

  Evers held the blade of his knife against Jenna’s throat. His other arm was now around her body, pinning her arms to her sides. Vines faced them, a big Smith & Wesson held out in front of him, his hands wrapped confidently around its grip.

  There was no way the deputy could make the shot that would take Evers out. The killer was still being careful to keep Jenna in front of him so that very little of his head or body was exposed.

  From this angle, however…Sean’s hands began to rise of their own volition, carrying the Glock’s muzzle upward until it was pointed at the psychologist’s temple. All he had to do was squeeze off one round—

  “You let the lady go, now, you hear? You do that, and I promise you ain’t nobody gonna hurt you,” Vines said. His voice didn’t seem loud, but despite the growing noise of sirens and the hovering choppers, each word he spoke was distinct. “Just move the knife away from her neck slow and easy….”

  Sean’s finger tightened around the trigger, the southern accent of Vines’s assurances background to its movement.

  “They’re bringing the dogs they use out at the prison, Dr. Evers. You shore don’t want to go messing with them. You just put down the knife, and we’ll have you out of here in no time. No press. No nothing. Just you and me in the back of a squad car, I promise.”

  Just you and me…

  The moment Sean had dreamed about every day for the past three years. Squeezing the trigger. Putting a bullet deep into this sadistic bastard’s brain. And then sleeping all night without his sister’s screams echoing through his dreams.

  All he had to do to accomplish it was allow his finger to complete its slow pull. Another fraction of an inch to send a lunatic to hell, where they would know how to make him pay for the pain he’d caused and the damage he’d done to those who had loved the women he’d tortured and killed.

  Those who loved…

  As Sean loved Cathy and Ryan, who were waiting for him to come home. Home for Christmas.

  Can I have a puppy, Uncle Sean? Can I?

  And who would again face the loss of the one person they had come to trust to love and care for them.

  As he cared for the dark-haired woman standing in this sunlit clearing, chin lifted, eyes closed, as the man behind her slowly moved the knife forward until its blade was perhaps ten or twelve inches from her throat.

  Someone who represented a new beginning. A chance for something in his life besides the hate that had driven him
through the endless days and nights since he’d identified Makaela’s body.

  “That’s good, Dr. Evers. Real good,” Vines said. “Now, you just let it go and then you let her go and this’ll all be over with. Ain’t nobody gonna hurt you. You got my word on that. You just drop the knife, and nobody’s gonna get hurt. Not you. Not that lady. I promise you.”

  Sean, too, had made promises. Whispered them over his sister’s body. Offered them as prayers after he’d put her motherless children to bed at night. Breathed them as he’d pumped round after round into the man-shaped targets at the range.

  Whatever it cost him, all he had to do now to fulfill all of those promises was to complete the motion he had already begun. Inexorably, as if it were no longer a part of his body, no longer under his control, his finger again began to tighten.

  He would tell them he’d stumbled onto the clearing and hadn’t known what was going on. That he had seen the knife at Jenna’s throat and believed the only way to save her life—

  Evers stepped back, releasing his hold. In the same motion he tossed the knife forward so that it landed on the ground midway between him and the deputy.

  “Dr. Kincaid, you just step away from him now,” Vines said, his tone almost hypnotic. Calm and controlled. “You come on over here and stand by me. You’re okay. Everything’s gonna be okay now, you hear?”

  Jenna opened her eyes. Her mouth worked, as if she wanted to say something, but she didn’t speak before she stepped forward, moving almost hesitantly. When nothing happened, she began to run, stumbling away from the man who had been both colleague and captor.

  Before she’d reached him, in that same softly accented tone, Vines began to parrot the familiar phrases of Miranda. “You have the right to remain silent. You have the right…”

  The rest faded from Sean’s consciousness as he watched Jenna. She seemed to gain strength and confidence in her survival with each step she took.

  He could hear the dogs now, baying through the woods as they followed the trail the killer had taken from his torture chamber. In minutes this small clearing would be full of law enforcement officials. The hunt for the Inquisitor would be over. Finished. Completed.

  And the bastard would still be alive.

  Like Jenna. Like Makaela’s children. And like him.

  I’m sorry. Sorry I wasn’t there. Sorry that I didn’t protect you. So sorry…

  He took a breath. His hands, still holding the Glock out in front of him, trembled as if the semiautomatic was suddenly too heavy. Then, in a conscious act of will, he slowly lowered the weapon until it was no longer pointed at the man he had traveled so far to kill.

  Thirty-One

  Jenna had been taken from the woods straight to the emergency room at UAB. They’d put a light cast on her arm to stabilize the fracture revealed by the X-rays. Other than that, she’d been given a clean bill of health and permission to go back to Bingham’s office to give her statement, a process that had been far more difficult than she could ever have imagined.

  Sean had been allowed to sit in on that, a concession that had apparently been made because he’d been instrumental in figuring out where to look for her. Until she’d glanced across the clearing this morning and seen him lowering his gun, she hadn’t even known he was alive, much less that he’d been with the officers who’d rescued her.

  As she’d told her story, always conscious of the watchful blue eyes focused intently on her face, it was brought home to her how close she’d come to being the last of the Inquisitor’s victims. No one had been able to give a satisfactory explanation as to why Evers hadn’t killed her during the time between her recapture and the deputy’s arrival.

  The closest to something that made sense was on a news bulletin she’d heard on the television in the emergency waiting room. One of the profilers had speculated that the ritual Evers always followed hadn’t yet begun.

  On some level, she had still been Jenna Kincaid to him. A colleague. A person in her own right rather than a substitute object of his rage against the woman who had raised and brutalized him.

  That was something else she’d learned from watching those cable news interviews—what had driven the murderer. Since the search for information on Evers had begun as soon as the police identified him, quite a lot was already known about his background.

  The grandmother into whose lap he’d been dumped as a toddler had eventually ended up in a state-run mental institution. Unfortunately, that hadn’t happened before her insanity had created the monster who’d visited the same cycle of mutilation and humiliation he’d been subjected to on more than a dozen women. In this case, as in many others, no one would ever be able to separate the roles heredity and environment had played in that creation.

  “I think that’s everything,” Bingham said finally. “Or everything that can’t wait until the two of you get some rest.”

  “If you think of anything else,” Sean said, rising and holding out his hand to the detective, “you have my number.”

  “And mine,” Jenna added, although the last thing she wanted was to relive the terror recounting today’s events had brought back with such force.

  “Hopefully we won’t have to get back to you until after the holidays. You going back to work, Dr. Kincaid?”

  “Today?”

  “I doubt anybody’s that dedicated. I meant before Christmas.”

  “I haven’t had a chance to think about it.”

  Now that she did, she realized how difficult that would be. She would contact the people she’d been told had played a role in her rescue, especially Paul and Beth. But walking back into the office where Evers’s presence would haunt them all wasn’t something she was in any hurry to do.

  “Most people think they can shake off the effects of something like this and just will themselves back to normal,” Bingham said. “I know I don’t have to tell you that isn’t the way it works. Give yourself some time. And my advice, if you want to hear it—” The detective paused to give her an opportunity to say if she didn’t.

  “I’d be grateful for anything you have to suggest.”

  “Then get some counseling. And do it right away. I don’t know who treats psychologists, but…whoever it is, I think it’s important that you talk to somebody.”

  “I will. And thank you.” She held out her left hand, which was quickly enveloped in both of his.

  “Thank you. I appreciate your willingness to do this today. With the press foaming at the mouth, I figured the sooner we could get the story out there, the sooner they’ll leave you all alone.”

  Secluded here in the police station for the past two hours, Jenna had almost forgotten what a frenzy this would cause, nationally as well as locally. Another thing she wasn’t ready to face. “You think they’ll be waiting outside?”

  “Since we put out the bulletin on Evers this morning.”

  “Is there another way—” She broke the sentence to look questioningly at Sean.

  Because, she realized, she was still expecting him to protect her. Something that was no longer his job.

  Actually, it never had been. It hadn’t even been his intention. “We can take you out through the underground garage where we brought you in,” the lieutenant said. “Have a car pick you up there and take you wherever you want to go.”

  Wherever you want to go. Despite her acknowledgment that Sean was no longer under any obligation to her, her eyes clung to his, hoping he’d provide an answer to that.

  When he didn’t, she turned back to Bingham. She could have sworn there was compassion in his black eyes.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like a few minutes to make some repairs before I go anywhere.” Right now her grip on her emotions was tenuous at best. She didn’t want to break down in front of these two. Especially Sean. “I don’t suppose there’s a comb and a mirror and maybe even a washcloth around here.”

  “I think we can provide those.” Bingham stepped back to his desk to push the button on his intercom. “Wou
ld you send Officer Dillon in? Ask her to bring her purse.”

  He turned to smile at Jenna. “Just tell Helen what you need. She’ll get it for you.”

  “I don’t want to put anyone to that much trouble.”

  “Trust me. She’ll be more than ready for a foray outside. What about you, Sergeant? Anything you need?”

  “Just to make a couple of phone calls. My cell doesn’t seem to be working after the river.”

  “Be my guest,” Bingham said, gesturing toward his phone.

  “Long distance,” Sean added, looking as if he expected to be turned down.

  “I think we can cover that in the budget. After all, we owe you. Believe me, nobody around here is going to forget that.”

  “Nobody ‘owes’ me. My motivations were entirely selfish.”

  Jenna told herself there was no reason for the spurt of disappointment Sean’s disclaimer evoked. He’d been up front about those from the first.

  Bingham’s eyes rested on her face again before he took her by the elbow. “Why don’t I take Dr. Kincaid someplace she can freshen up and give you some privacy? Take as long as you want. Just open the door when you’re through.”

  Too tired to even consider protesting, Jenna allowed the lieutenant to lead her out of his office. He reached back to close the door as soon as they were outside.

  “I expect he wants to let his family know he’s okay. And maybe to tell them the outcome of this. They aren’t the only family that’s gonna be real glad this is over.”

  Jenna nodded in agreement, although her gaze lingered briefly on the frosted-glass top half of his office door.

  “You call your folks?” Bingham asked.

  “Not yet. I doubt they even know what’s gone on here. Much less that I was involved. I know I need to tell them before they hear it from someone else, and I will. Right now, I’m not sure what to say.”

  “Want me to get in touch with them for you?”

  She shook her head. “Thank you, but I think that would scare them to death. I’ll do it. I just need to…I don’t know. Put it into perspective, I guess.”