Scared Stiff

by Annelise Ryan

  Knowing I’m dangerously distracted, I take him up on his offer, stripping off my gloves and tossing them in the trash. I drive home in a somber mood, where I find Hoover curled up in the middle of my bed sound asleep. Nestled between his front paws sleeping just as soundly is Rubbish. I strip down to my undies and crawl in beside them. They waken, but when they see I’m joining them, they both settle down and go back to sleep.

  Surrounded by my warm, snuggly little furballs, I curl up into a ball and start to cry.

  After a fitful night of pacing, crying, and occasionally sleeping, I awaken the next morning to the ring of my cell phone. Daylight is peeking in through my windows and a quick glance at the clock tells me it’s a little after seven. Memories of the previous day’s events come flooding back as I grab my phone and I mutter a silent prayer that it’s Hurley on the other end, calling to give me another chance and forgive me for my stupidity.

  “Hello?”

  “Did I wake you?” My spirits sag as I realize it’s Izzy, not Hurley.

  “No,” I lie. I sit up and rub the sleep and dried tears from my eyes, then look over at Rubbish and Hoover, who are curled up together on the other side of the bed. “What’s up?” I ask, throwing the covers off and climbing out of bed.

  “Have you seen this morning’s paper?”

  I shake my head, then remember that I’m on the phone. “No. How bad is it?”

  “Well, your picture fills the front page above the fold, right beneath a headline that reads, LOCAL WOMAN DEAD, INVESTIGATION ONGOING. You look appropriately stricken. Beneath that is another, smaller headline that says, PSYCHIATRIST ON THE LAM, with a picture of Luke Nelson. The article doesn’t say anything about the sexual abuse or that Carla killed herself, just that Nelson is wanted as a person of interest and can’t be found. Hurley said he wants to keep the details quiet for now.”

  “You talked to Hurley this morning?”

  “Yep, I called him right before I called you. My mother fell yesterday and she’s in the hospital so I need to run up there and see her this morning.”

  “Sylvie fell? Is she all right?” I’m concerned not only because of my friendship with Izzy, but because the cottage I’m living in was originally built by Izzy for Sylvie when her health was failing. She gradually improved and moved out after a year because she’s fiercely independent and has little tolerance for Izzy’s lifestyle. She’s been going strong ever since at the ripe old age of eighty-something, but if she’s had a setback and needs to move back in, I might lose my digs.

  “Not to worry,” Izzy says, reading my mind. “The hospital said she didn’t break anything. They diagnosed a mild case of pneumonia that temporarily weakened her but her doctor said she should be good as new in no time.”

  I breathe a small sigh of relief.

  “Anyway, because I’m heading up to the hospital, I won’t be doing the post on Carla until later today. That’s why I called Hurley. He said he wanted to be there for the autopsy so I wanted to let him know I’m not planning to start it until around eleven.”

  “Okay. Anything you need me to do in the meantime?” I’ve made my way to the kitchen to start the coffeepot up and both Rubbish and Hoover have followed. They are sitting patiently at my feet, looking up at me with beseeching eyes.

  “Actually, there is,” Izzy says. “We need more photos of the scene. I shot some yesterday in the room where Carla’s body was but I didn’t have time to finish because I got the call about my mother and had to head for the hospital.”

  “No problem. I’ll run by first thing this morning and get the pictures for you.”

  “Thanks. The digital camera is in the office on my desk. I’ll see you at eleven.”

  “Tell Sylvie hi for me.”

  “Will do.”

  I hang up, glad for the revised schedule since I overslept. After letting Hoover out to do his morning ablutions, I fill up the critters’ respective food bowls and admire Hoover’s restraint in not eating Rubbish’s food after he snorts up his own. A shower, a cup of coffee, and a bowl of cereal later I head for the office.

  I find the camera right where Izzy said it would be and sitting next to it is his digital recorder. Remembering that Hurley has mine, I grab Izzy’s, figuring I can use it if I find anything at the scene I want to note. I tuck the recorder in my pocket, put the camera and a handful of gloves inside my purse, and then make my way to Nelson’s office.

  The place is locked and sealed up with crime scene tape, but Junior Feller is pulling guard duty in a squad car parked out front. I park a couple spaces away, grab a pair of gloves and the camera, toss my purse on the car floor, and get out, locking the car behind me.

  Junior rolls his window down as I approach. He’s sipping coffee and reading the morning paper. I see my face plastered across the front of it and realize that Alison did, indeed, use the last picture she shot of me.

  “Morning, Junior.”

  “Hey, Mattie. Nice picture.”

  “I guess.” He makes no big deal about my status as a headliner. In a town the size of Sorenson, just about everyone makes it into the paper at some point.

  “You need in?” he says, gesturing toward the office door.

  “I do. I need to snap some shots we didn’t get yesterday.”

  “No problem.” He balances his coffee cup on the dashboard and climbs out of the car. We walk up to the door together, managing to attract a crowd of curious onlookers in the process. After he slices through the evidence tape and opens the door for me, he says, “Holler if you need anything.”

  I thank him, don my gloves, and head inside. I take off my jacket and remove the recorder from its pocket, turning it to voice activation mode. I then slip it in its usual place, nestled between my breasts. I make a mental note to not tell Izzy where it was lest he worry it has girl cooties on it.

  I snap some photos of the front room from as many angles as I can manage, making a verbal note when I shoot the corner where Luke Nelson was treated by the EMTs. Once I feel I’ve gotten what I need, I head into the office area.

  The room is cold and dark; the blinds on the one window have been closed to keep people from peeking in. I flip the light switch and the first thing I notice is the files I was wading through yesterday still stacked atop Nelson’s desk. I shoot a couple of pictures of the area, set the camera down, and then go about returning the files I looked through yesterday to the drawer. It takes two loads to get them all in and unbeknownst to me a hanger hook on a file in the second half catches on my sleeve. When I pull back, the hooked half of the folder comes with me and its contents spill out, some inside the drawer, some on the floor.

  Cursing, I unhook the file and toss it on the desk. I round up the papers that spilled in the drawer and stuff them back inside. Then I kneel down to gather up the ones on the floor. A small slip of paper has slid far beneath the desk and I have to crawl underneath to get it. When I try to get back up, I miscalculate and bash my head on the underside of the desk’s middle drawer, aggravating the area where my stitches are.

  “Damn it,” I mutter, wincing and rubbing my head gingerly. As I’m waiting for the pain to recede, I look at the paper that caused all my misery and see that it’s a receipt from an Internet store. I start to toss it aside but the name of the store—Spies R Us—catches my eye. As I read further I see that the receipt is for a video camera, but not just any camera. This receipt is for a nanny cam.

  Chapter 45

  I stare at the receipt a moment, pondering its significance. Why would Nelson need a nanny cam?

  I manage to crawl out from under the desk without incurring further injury, and I place the receipt on the blotter and snap a picture of it. Then I start examining the office with a new, more critical eye. The first place I look is the bookcase, but as I’m shuffling volumes around it dawns on me that this isn’t the room Nelson would want to record in.

  I grab my camera and head into the counseling room. Dried blood still covers the wall and couch, and the s
mell makes my breakfast churn threateningly. To distract myself, I focus on shooting as many pictures as I can. Even though Carla’s body is no longer here, I keep seeing it in my mind’s eye, lying on the sofa like a ragdoll, her hand on the floor filled with blood, the gun lying nearby.

  And then it hits me: it was her right hand on the floor, the one affected by the stroke. Based on what I observed at her house, there is no way she could have used that hand to shoot herself. I make a verbal note of the fact for the recorder and a mental note to call Izzy when I’m done and fill him in.

  I set the camera down on the table next to the stuffed chair and examine the rest of the room. I don’t see anything obvious that looks like a camera, or anything that might be hiding a camera. But then I realize I’m not sure what a nanny cam looks like so I head back into the office and boot up the computer on Nelson’s desk. I launch the Internet browser and type in the Web site that appears on the nanny cam receipt. Seconds later I’m looking at a page filled with cleverly designed mini-cameras.

  I print the page off and carry it back into the counseling room with me. One by one I compare the items on the page with the items in the room. And it doesn’t take me long to find what I’m looking for. I set the page aside and grab my camera again, this time shooting pictures of a part of the room I’d missed earlier: the ceiling.

  I drag Nelson’s chair across the room until it’s positioned beneath the smoke detector. The cushion is too thickly stuffed to make for a solid foot base so I remove it and, in doing so, I find something crammed between it and the chair’s side: an elastic leg stocking. Something about the stocking niggles at my brain and I hold it up and stare at it a moment. But I’m too distracted by the smoke detector, so I toss the stocking over the back of the chair for later consideration.

  When I climb up and peer more closely at the smoke detector, I can now see the lens hiding inside it. I’m about to try to pry the outside portion loose to get a better view when I remember how I’ve mucked things up in this investigation already. I decide it would be better to go outside to get Junior as a witness, and my cell phone so I can call Hurley.

  As I climb down from the chair, I nearly fall when a female voice startles me.

  “You just had to meddle, didn’t you?”

  I jump onto the floor and spin around to find Jackie Nash standing in the doorway of the room. She is leaning against the doorjamb, one hand held behind her back, the other playing with her hair. Though her posturing is casual, the rest of her appearance is not. Her hair is mussed and wild looking, her eyes have an angry glint to them, and her mouth is pinched tight with fury. The scars on her face appear more vivid than usual and I can see that she’s not wearing her usual make-up.

  “Jackie? What are you doing here? This is a crime scene. You shouldn’t be in here.”

  “And yet here I am,” she says, flashing me a humorless smile.

  That smile makes me cringe and the hairs on the back of my neck begin to crawl. “How did you get in? Where’s Junior?”

  She shrugs. “Last time I saw him he was hanging on the back bumper of his car flirting with a bunch of women. So typical,” she chastises, shaking her head. “His type is always paying attention to the cute ones. They never notice me, unless it’s to pretend they don’t see my scars and aren’t laughing behind my back.”

  “No one is laughing behind your back, Jackie.” Even as I say the words, I can hear how false they ring to my own ears. I’ve been witness to what she’s describing too many times.

  “Sure they do,” she says. “I’ve gotten used to it over the years. I’d pretty much resigned myself to a lifetime of lonely spinster-hood, working at Dairy Airs until I die. But then Luke came along and everything changed.”

  “I’m glad the counseling has helped you,” I tell her, fearing it hasn’t helped nearly enough.

  She scoffs. “Counseling? Luke doesn’t give me counseling. He loves me. Unlike the other cretins out there, he’s able to see past all of this”—she thrusts the scarred side of her face toward me—“to the real me underneath it all.”

  “You’re dating Luke Nelson?”

  “Call it that if you want, but it’s something much more. We’re in love.”

  I wince, not relishing the revelations I’m about to make. “Oh, Jackie, you don’t understand. Nelson was just leading you on.” I move toward her, thinking that a sympathetic hand on her shoulder might soften the blow. “The man is . . . sick. He’s got girlfriends in several different towns and—”

  The hand behind Jackie’s back shoots forward and I realize why she had it hidden. She’s holding a knife, a really big knife. And it’s now pointed straight at me. I stop where I am, afraid to move, afraid to breathe.

  “He doesn’t care about any of those other women,” Jackie says irritably. “They came after him. He told me all about them, how they hang all over him, begging him to sleep with them.” Her lip curls in disgust and she shakes her head sadly. “They are nothing more to him than an outlet for his needs. I’m the only one he truly loves. I’m the only one that really knows how to take care of his needs.”

  Suddenly the relevance of the elastic stocking dawns on me. It’s the same type that Jackie would wear to help heal her wound grafts and scar revisions. She must have taken it off during a dalliance here in the office with Nelson.

  I stare at her, unsure of what to do or say next. Judging from the crazed look in her eyes, a look I’ve seen plenty of times before on mental patients at the hospital, she is beyond reason. It also means she is highly unpredictable and very dangerous. And she’s blocking my only exit from the room.

  Deciding that a dose of shocking reality is my only hope, I couch my next words carefully and try to keep my voice calm despite the fact that my insides are quaking. “You don’t understand, Jackie. There’s more to it than that. Luke Nelson is a rapist and a very ill man. He needs help.”

  She shakes her head again, harder and faster. “You don’t understand. Luke just has special needs, that’s all. He explained it to me, how his sexual drive is higher than most and he has to find other outlets to get release. It’s not an emotional thing with those other women, only with me. I’m willing to let him get what he needs physically, as long as he comes back to me in the end.”

  I stare at her, disbelieving. “He’s raping women, Jackie.”

  “No, no, no. Those other women, they all slept with him of their own free will.”

  “I’m not talking about the other women he was dating, Jackie. I’m talking about his patients. He’s been drugging them and then raping them. I have proof. He needs to be stopped.”

  Jackie laughs, but it’s a brittle, humorless, ugly sound. “Yeah, that’s what that bitch Shannon said, too, when she found out. She said she had to report him because what he was doing was wrong.” She takes a few steps into the room, moving closer to me. The knife now hangs at her side, but I harbor no illusions about her ability to use it in a flash. “But I knew the real reason Shannon wanted to report him,” she goes on. “She was just jealous because she didn’t have the kind of relationship with Luke that I have. She wanted to ruin it for me, to take away my one chance at happiness.”

  The significance of her words washes over me like an icy shower. Other facts crash together in my mind, suddenly making a horrifying sense. The blood type found in Shannon’s kitchen was the very rare B negative and I now recall that Jackie’s blood type is the same. We always had to make sure we had it on hand at the hospital whenever she came in for surgery. And I knew Jackie had mental and emotional problems because of all those times I cared for her in the ER during her breakdowns. I also recall Jackie’s incessant questions about how the investigation was going every time I saw her, and how nervously she behaved. I remember the spilt glasses of milk and the slices of cheesecake we found on Shannon’s kitchen table, which I now realize ruled Erik out. Per Jackie’s own words—obviously not realizing she was clearing him in the process—Erik is lactose intolerant.

&nbs
p; I’m afraid to ask my next question but have to. “Did you kill Shannon?”

  I half expect her to deny it but instead she says, “Of course I did. I had to get rid of her to keep Luke safe. And it would have worked, too, if you hadn’t gone and stuck your nose into things. It’s all your fault that that other woman figured everything out and came here yesterday. She caught me and Luke making love and then she tried to kill him. Darned near did, too. If I hadn’t wrestled the gun from her, she might have shot him a second time.”

  “You killed Carla, too?”

  “I had to, don’t you see? She came charging in here full of accusations that would have ruined everything. I had to shut her up for good. Luke and I decided we could pass it off as a suicide but you had to come back and keep on snooping. I knew you’d muck it all up. And now Luke is gone.” The tenor of her voice has risen to just shy of hysteria. “Where is he?” she asks shrilly. “Where did you make him go?”

  “I have no idea,” I say, backpedaling. “He disappeared yesterday right after we questioned him.”

  She moves closer and raises the knife, waving it in front of her like a blind man’s cane. “It’s all your fault,” she says, clearly angry. “Why couldn’t you just leave him alone? Why couldn’t you just leave us alone?”

  I take another step back and feel the chair hit the back of my legs. My mind scrambles, trying to decide what to do next, trying to figure a way out of this mess. I remember the recorder nestled in my bra and decide I need to keep her talking. Junior Feller is parked right out front and if luck is on my side, he might come in to check on things. If not, at least I can record what Jackie says as evidence. Then my mind registers what the evidence will be used for—to help solve my murder—and I shudder.

  “I don’t believe you killed Shannon,” I tell Jackie. “I don’t see how you could have.”

  She smirks. “It was easy. She told me about the gun; in fact she asked me if I wanted to buy it. She said Erik had given it to her but it made her nervous having it around. At first I told her I wasn’t interested, but when she told me what she’d discovered about Luke, I changed my mind. I went over there under the pretense of looking at the gun to see if I wanted to buy it. And then I shot her.”