by Osborne, Jon
After forcing my way into her opulent Buckhead home while the powerful hurricane had raged on outside, I’d struck down the undeserving whore in a manner exactly befitting the worthless pig she’d been. And with Dinah Leach’s name safely crossed off my list, I could now turn my full attention to the spoiled heiress out in New York City, a petulant little brat who’d never worked a single day in her life yet somehow still possessed a net worth larger than several third-world countries combined.
Hell, the world would cheer me for that one.
After the heiress, Number Three would come in the form of the requisite pop singer – Amber Knightly, who’d gotten her big break on The Disney Channel when she’d been just eight years old.
I pause and narrow my eyes as I come to the fourth name on my list, a name that – for obvious reasons – I’ve secretly added without my mother’s knowledge or consent:
Annabeth Preston.
I shift uncomfortably in my wooden chair at the kitchen table and fiddle with the delicate silver Tiffany necklace hanging around my throat.
Can I really do it? I wonder. Really take the life of the woman who’d given me my own – twice?
I straighten in my seat and pull back my slender shoulders. Of course I can do it. I need to do it, as a matter of fact. There’s no other option. No room for mercy here. After all, it’s only fair after what she’d done to poor Timmy.
What’s more, I’ll actually enjoy it.
At least that’s what I tell myself now.
Shaking my head, I return my attention to the list and force myself to slow down. No point in getting ahead of myself here. No need to rush things. And at least there’s no ambiguity concerning the fifth and final name on my list.
Still, Dana Whitestone will mark a worthy foil, so I’ll need to be extremely careful with her. The woman’s unofficial label as “America’s top cop” would no doubt prove the stiffest test of my own greatness. Because killing vapid reality stars and other undeserving fame whores of their ilk was one thing, but besting a woman like the FBI agent at her own dangerous game was quite another. If I can pull it off, though, I know that my name will go down in history as one of the greatest serial killers of all time.
John Wayne Gacy.
Andrei Chikatilo.
Ted Bundy.
Gary Ridgway.
Richard Ramirez.
Nicholas Preston.
Pushing my chair away from the kitchen table with the loud scrape of wood against tile, I smooth my red Armani dress around my long legs before making my way into the guest bathroom of our house at 969 Turning Oaks Drive while my mother sleeps peacefully in the master bedroom a hundred feet away, completely oblivious to the fact that her own name has been added to my special list.
Closing the bathroom door behind me, I peer into the vanity mirror above the sink and nod approvingly at the pleasant image that stares back at me, shiver again at the tantalizing prospect of one day butchering my mother like a kosher hog. Flipping over my long brown hair to one side, I smile at myself.
Right on cue, my reflection smiles back.
I widen my smile even farther while I study my high cheekbones, glittering green eyes and perfectly straight white teeth. No two ways about it – I’m absolutely gorgeous. Stunning beyond my wildest dreams. Just like my mother had assured me I’d be all those years ago. And where was the great surprise in that?
After all, apples – even the rotten ones – never fell too far from the tree, now did they?
Leaning in even closer to the mirror, I blot my lipstick with the tip of my right pinkie and sigh contentedly as I slowly drift back in time to my first kill. No matter how much time passed, you never forgot your first go-around, did you?
Of course you didn’t.
Because the first time was always the sweetest.
PART III
BACK IN THE SADDLE
“Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.” – Mark Twain
CHAPTER 20
Two hours after her hasty negotiations with Dr. Spinks concerning her discharge from the hospital, Dana almost laughed out loud at the ridiculousness of it all. She just couldn’t help herself. Still, she had to admit that it was kind of fun, too. Because playing cat-and-mouse really could be a thrilling game when you were the one trying to avoid detection, rather than the sick feeling you got deep inside the pit of your stomach while you were in the process of hunting down a deranged serial killer and knowing that any one of your many mistakes could cost innocent people their lives.
Would probably cost innocent people their lives.
That being said, Dana felt an awful lot like Chevy Chase in Fletch right about now, dressed up as a doctor in a white lab coat and holding a medical chart in front of her nose while a group of orderlies crowded around her and escorted her past the press that was camped out in the hospital’s parking lot.
The reporters barely glanced up at them as they strolled by. Not a single Dan Rather in the entire group, and thank God for that. Not a single Nathan Stiedowe in the entire group, either – and thank God twice for that.
Dana shuddered at the terrifying memory of her half-brother. Because Nathan Stiedowe had been a reporter once upon a time, too; had even had the audacity to write about the murders of her parents under the same name he’d been given by their mother at birth: Jeremiah Quigley. Murders he himself had committed. And he hadn’t been the kind of reporter who would’ve been fooled this easily. Not even close. He would have sensed Dana’s fear from a mile away, would’ve smelled it.
What’s more, it would have excited him.
Short as Dana was – five-three even on her best day – each of the orderlies who’d applied for the job of acting as her human shields had been selected on the basis of their own, more impressive heights. No doubt it marked the easiest employment interview process any of them had ever been through in their entire lives:
Are you taller than any one of The Lollipop Kids from the Wizard of Oz?
Yep.
Great, you’re hired.
Dana heaved a grateful sigh of relief when they finally reached a white hospital van fifty yards away from the media and seven of the orderlies immediately peeled off, heading back toward Fairview General’s main entrance and giggling to themselves like naughty schoolchildren as they passed by the reporters again. Take that, Tom Brokaw. Stick that in your newsreel and smoke it, buddy.
The job of actually driving Dana home fell to a young man of about twenty-eight or so. Justin McNamara was the oldest son of a surgeon on staff at Fairview General, so Dr. Spinks had decided he’d probably be Dana’s best bet to not kiss and tell – aka go running off to the press with his story. With anything about Dana and her personal life seeming to be a hot commodity these days, if any new information leaked out to the press after the ridiculous Fletch routine the source wouldn’t be hard to trace.
They’d made it halfway home to Dana’s apartment complex in Lakewood on the western outskirts of Cleveland when her stomach suddenly lurched.
Gritting her teeth, she berated herself for her unforgivable stupidity. Because it hadn’t been very long ago that her brother had posed as an orderly in order to gain access to her hospital room, less than a week after she’d passed out from the sheer stress of investigating the Cleveland Slasher case.
Well, the sheer stress of it washed down by more than just a small measure Kettle One vodka.
Dana’s heartbeat pounded wildly against her ribcage as she studied the orderly from out of the corner of her left eye, not wanting to alert him to her suspicions. He didn’t look like a killer to her, but then again neither had her brother. Hell, Nathan Stiedowe had been so devilishly handsome that he’d made Ted Bundy look downright homely by comparison; completely obscuring the horrendously ugly person he’d been inside.
Dana balled up her fists in her lap and breathed slowly through her nostrils; unable to believe that she hadn’t even considered the possible threat until it was too late. Once again – as ha
d been the case so many other times in her career – it seemed that she was a day late and a dollar short, the same mistake she’d consistently made during the Cleveland Slasher and Chessboard Killer investigations.
Dana shook her head in exasperation. What the hell was wrong with her? Why the hell couldn’t she seem to think straight anymore? And if something was up, had Dr. Spinks been in on it, too?
Before she knew what was happening, her worst fears were confirmed when McNamara suddenly jammed down his foot hard on the brake pedal and brought the van to a screeching halt, slamming Dana’s body violently forward against her seat belt.
Pain like a knife wound ripped through her right shoulder while two feet away a casual smile played across McNamara’s full lips as he turned in his seat to face her.
Dana jerked back in horror – seeing Nathan Stiedowe’s face dancing in front of her eyes – raising her arms to protect her face.
A confused look flooded across the young orderly’s handsome features. “Whoa,” he said, holding up his hands in front of him in a placating manner. “Take it easy, ma’am. We’re here, that’s all. You’re home. Look.”
He gestured past Dana’s aching right shoulder and out her window. She turned in her seat and blinked hard in confusion. Fifty feet away, her apartment complex loomed up nine stories high into the late-afternoon winter sunshine.
An exquisite wave of relief washed through her veins and cleared her mind like the morning sun breaking through a dark bank of clouds. Without realizing it, she’d gotten completely lost in her thoughts again; had completely lost track of time. Worse, she’d also briefly lost track of her physical body, had absolutely no idea where she’d been there for a moment.
Dana closed her eyes and let out a soft sigh. If nothing else, she knew that the FBI shrinks would have a field day with her once they’d finally coaxed her onto the comfortable leather couches scattered around their plush offices down in Quantico.
She felt ridiculous as she lowered her arms and tried to smile at McNamara. Wasn’t easy. “So we are,’ she said, trying her best to sound casual about the whole thing but falling miserably short. “Sorry about that. Didn’t mean to go all schizo on you there.”
The concerned look in McNamara’s eyes let her know that even he could see that she’d lost her marbles – and he was just a lowly orderly. Told her that he thought they might as well start fitting her for her white coat right now – and not the kind she was currently wearing as part of the elaborate Fletch ruse, either. The kind of white coat that restricted the free movement of your arms, both for your own safety and for the safety of those around you.
The kind of white coats that they passed out right along with the psychotropic meds over in the mental-health wing at the Cleveland Clinic.
McNamara forced the semblance of a smile onto his full lips. “No problem, ma’am,” he said. “Welcome home.”
Chapter 21
Dana exited the van and stood on the curb until McNamara had driven away, watching the young orderly adjust his rearview mirror to keep her in his line of sight before swinging the van out of the parking lot and disappearing into the heavy traffic streaming down Clifton Avenue. No doubt he wanted to make sure that Dana didn’t slit her wrists right then and there on the snow-covered sidewalk. Truth be told, though, she didn’t blame him the least little bit for his vigilance. Why would she? She probably would have reacted the exact same way had she been in his shoes.
She shook her head mournfully and started toward her apartment building, knowing that the poor kid had no idea just how close he’d come with his silent diagnosis of insanity. Because the truth of the matter was that she did feel like she was starting to go a little bit crazy lately, just a smidge Looney Toons; a textbook case of PTSD if she’d ever seen one.
Then again, when the hell had crazy people ever been trusted to make their own diagnoses?
A biting cold delivered by howling wind sliced hard through her paper-thin lab coat and swirled her recently re-grown short blonde hair wildly around her scalp as she made her way up to the main doors of the apartment complex and fished her magnetic key card out of her purse before sliding the plastic rectangle through the electronic reader and stepping inside, shivering violently as she did so.
Dana shivered some more. Cleveland in the wintertime had never been an especially pleasant place to live under even the best of weather conditions, but today’s lake-effect winds were making things that much worse, that much more unbearable. It was the kind of cold that hurt you all the way down to the bone. The kind of cold that made you want nothing more than to curl up into a tight little ball right there in the middle of it all and simply cry yourself to death.
Stepping deeper inside the building, Dana paused a moment to shake off the bitter cold, luxuriating in the warmth of the lobby that immediately went to work defrosting her frozen cheeks. Taking a deep breath, she then headed directly for her landlady’s apartment on the first floor, deliberately ignoring her mailbox located in a honeycomb arrangement in the middle of the lobby, not even wanting to think about what might be in there after all this time away. No doubt the damn thing was crammed full of credit card bills and Publisher’s Clearinghouse letters breathlessly informing her that she could be the next lucky winner of the million-dollar prize.
Dana pulled open another door at the northeast end of the lobby and made her way down the hall before knocking lightly on her landlady’s door.
A moment later, Maggie Carter fiddled with the chain inside and opened up. “Dana!” the old woman said happily in her thick Polish accent. “Welcome home, honey! We’ve been so worried about you! How are you feeling, my love?”
Dana smiled – a real smile this time. It was hard not to when you looked at Maggie Carter. Eighty years old if she was a day, she’d escaped her home country and its Nazi persecution during World War II and had subsequently changed her name from Magdalena Abrahamowicz to the more American-sounding Maggie Carter in an effort to fit in better with her new surroundings. The name change had been made to honor her adopted country of the United States, but the simple truth of the matter was that Maggie Carter would have fit in anywhere she went. The woman possessed a smile that lit up the room like a sunburst every time she showed off her false teeth and, even at her advanced age, still moved around town like an eighteen-year-old girl brimming over with enthusiasm and good cheer.
Dana widened her own smile, knowing that she could probably learn a thing or two from the old gal. Life wasn’t all just gloom and doom and serial killers. There were good things about it, too – however hard that good stuff might be to find sometimes.
“I’m fine, Mrs. Carter,” she said, catching a whiff of freshly baked bread that was emanating from the kitchen and making her stomach growl. “I’m feeling much better, as a matter of fact. And how are you and Mr. Carter doing? How’s his colitis these days?”
Maggie Carter rolled her watery blue eyes halfway around her wrinkled face and waved a frail arm in front of her painfully thin body, jiggling the loose skin hanging off her right biceps like a rooster’s comb. “I’m wonderful, sweetie,” she said. “Thanks so much for asking. As for Mr. Carter, well, Bob’s sleeping again, but what’s new, right? His health is fine, though. He might not look like much, but that man’s as healthy as a horse. Eats like one too.”
The old lady cackled at her own joke, and Dana joined in. She just couldn’t help herself. Maggie Carter’s laugh was infectious.
The old woman stepped to the side and motioned for her to come inside. “Anyway, get the heck out of that cold hallway and get your pretty little butt in here already, missy. You’ll catch your death of pneumonia if you’re not careful. Kind of reminds me of Warsaw in the wintertime.”
The old woman paused and shook her head, no doubt to chase away what must’ve been extremely unpleasant memories of Warsaw in the wintertime. “C’mon, sweetheart,” she said. “I’ve got some hot tea waiting for us on the stove and I know there’s somebody here who’s jus
t dying to see you.”
Dana gave Maggie Carter a faux confused look. “And who might that somebody be?”
The old woman eyed her sardonically. “Why, Oreo, of course, you silly bird! He’s been doing nothing but crying for his mama all day and night ever since you left – not that I’m complaining, mind you. To tell you the truth, the company’s been kind of nice, what with Bob usually sleeping all the time.”
Maggie Carter shook her head again. “I swear to sweet Jesus above, that man could sleep through a hurricane.”
Dana laughed and stepped inside the old woman’s apartment as she’d been instructed, even though what she really felt like doing right now was retrieving her cat and getting back up to her own apartment before taking a long, hot shower. A chance to scrub the antiseptic smell of the hospital out of her hair and skin and fingernails.
A chance for her to be alone for a little while.
She stopped herself mid-thought and gave herself a swift mental kick in the butt for her unforgivable selfishness. Here she was already looking forward to ending her visit with Maggie Carter, and she’d also had the unbelievably poor taste to show up on the woman’s doorstep empty-handed.
Dana suppressed a sigh, wishing she’d thought to bring along a gift for Maggie Carter as thanks for watching Oreo for so long, but also knowing that it was too late to worry about that now. She’d need to do it later. She knew the old lady was fond of chocolate and cheese, so she made a mental note to stop by Godiva and the deli tomorrow morning. Even with Godiva’s exorbitant prices, it was a small price to pay for the old woman’s kindness. Because as far as Dana knew, most kennels didn’t offer unlimited pet-sitting services for comatose pet owners who were stuck in the hospital following horrific plane crashes.
Maggie Carter smoothed her flower-patterned housedress around her bony knees as Dana stepped deeper into the apartment and looked around.