For the Right Reasons

by Kara Lennox

  “Now, it’s okay if the bad man isn’t in these photos. You don’t have to pick any of them.”

  “Is this really necessary?” Eric asked. He was afraid the sight of DeVille’s face would upset MacKenzie.

  “Unfortunately, it is, and I’ll tell you why in a minute.” Meeks opened the folder and pulled out a color photocopy of six mug shots. All were of Caucasian men with brown hair who appeared in their early forties. The picture in the upper right corner, Number 3, was Bobby DeVille.

  MacKenzie studied the six pictures seriously. She didn’t pick out the sheriff right away, which made Eric nervous. Finally she pointed to Number 3, and Eric relaxed. But her next words brought him up short.

  “I remember this man. He was at that place, remember, Daddy, when we drove a long way and I ate tomato soup? He talked to Dr. Bree.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Eric said. He’d had no idea his six-year-old had such a phenomenal memory.

  “And is he the man who put you in his car this morning?”

  MacKenzie looked confused. “No,” she said flatly. “He’s not the bad man.”

  “MacKenzie, are you sure?” Meeks asked gently. Meanwhile Eric was about to come out of his skin.

  MacKenzie nodded.

  “Okay.” The deputy took away the photo lineup and returned it to the folder. “Mr. Riggs, can I talk to you outside?”

  Eric already knew most of what she was going to say, but it still felt like a bucket of ice water to the face. “We have a problem. Sheriff DeVille has a pretty damn good alibi. He bought gas just outside Tuckerville about fifteen minutes before the time you estimate MacKenzie was taken. He has a credit card receipt to back up his story, and the gas station attendant remembers him specifically.”

  “So unless he can be two places at once...”

  “He couldn’t have done it.”

  “Then he has an accomplice,” Eric said immediately. “There’s that car parked at the house next door to DeVille’s—who does it belong to?”

  “Stolen, I’m afraid. But as of now, we don’t have enough to hold Sheriff DeVille. Plus, he doesn’t have any injuries indicating he fell out of a tree. Nothing beyond what you gave him, anyway.”

  “This is a nightmare. He’s still out there. And Bree—she’s out there without any protection.”

  “Why don’t you call her? Let her know she needs to be careful.”

  Eric was about to do just that when his phone rang—the silver one. He answered impatiently. “Riggs.”

  “Eric.” It was Kinkaid. “I just wanted to check in—”

  “We got the wrong man,” Eric blurted out. “He has an alibi. Airtight. And MacKenzie says he’s not the one. She knew exactly who he was, and she was positive he wasn’t the man who kidnapped her.”

  “Ah, hell. You mean he was telling the truth about hiking through the woods and finding her?”

  “I don’t know. He might still be responsible. He might have an accomplice. But we’re looking for a man with a cut on his head. He fell out of a tree.”

  “What?”

  “Long story. I don’t have time—I have to warn Bree.”

  “Okay. There’s one more piece of information you should have. I wasn’t even going to mention it, because I thought it was irrelevant. But Beth has been doing some more sophisticated analysis of the DNA from the Hollings County case. Turns out the perp in that case has the genetic marker for Huntington’s disease.”

  “What does that mean, exactly?”

  “If the perp is over thirty, there’s a good chance he’s starting to show symptoms.”

  “What are the symptoms?” Eric asked.

  “Huntington’s is a pretty nasty disease,” Kinkaid said. “According to Beth, it attacks the central nervous system. Early symptoms might include a problem with balance, slurred speech and an overall lack of coordination.”

  Eric’s mind whirred. “Holy shit. It’s Dr. Gentry—the coroner. Bree thought he might have a drinking problem. I’ve seen him stumble a couple of times, and he definitely seemed a little bit off to me. Joe, she’s with him right now. He offered to take her and pick up my car, but God knows where he’s actually taken her. We have to get to her—now!”

  “I’m on it. How long have they been on the road?”

  Eric checked his phone for the time. “Fifteen minutes or so.”

  “Get Bree on the phone. Give her some kind of warning in case he hasn’t shown his hand yet.”

  They ended the call, and Eric immediately speed-dialed Bree’s cell. Please, please, dear God, let her answer.

  “What’s going on?” Deputy Meeks asked.

  Eric quickly explained the situation to the deputy. She didn’t question how he got his information, taking it at face value. “I’ll get some people working on my end.”

  He got Bree’s voice mail. Crap. “Bree, I don’t have time to explain, but you’re in danger. The sheriff wasn’t the kidnapper—Gentry is. I suspect he’s behind everything else that’s happened, and he’s going to go after you. Please call me as soon as you get this. I’m coming.”

  He returned to MacKenzie’s room long enough to let her know he had to leave for a short while. He hated to leave her alone at a time like this, but he had to go after Bree. The more people hunting down the killer, the better.

  But when he entered MacKenzie’s room, she was asleep. After explaining to the nurse at the desk what was going on and securing her solemn promise that no unauthorized personnel would enter MacKenzie’s room while he was gone, he went with Deputy Meeks. He would do whatever he could to bring Bree home alive and well.

  * * *

  BREE DIDN’T QUITE get to her phone in time, and the call went to voice mail. She checked the caller ID. “Oh, that was Eric. I need to call and find out what he wanted. Excuse me. I hope nothing’s wrong with MacKenzie.”

  She looked up and realized they’d left the interstate. “Wait, where are we going?”

  “Shortcut,” Ted said easily. “I hate taking the freeways through downtown, don’t you?”

  At this time of the evening, she didn’t think traffic would be much of an issue, but she didn’t argue. The man was nice enough to give her a ride, so she wouldn’t complain about what route he took. She couldn’t imagine that this two-lane blacktop would be any faster than the freeway, but, oh, well.

  She started to call Eric back when Ted abruptly knocked the phone out of her hand. It fell into the darkness near her feet.

  “What the hell?”

  “Sorry, Bree, I can’t let you call Eric back.”

  “Why not?” Her heart hammered inside her chest so hard she thought it would beat its way out. Something was very, very wrong.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t figure it out.” He pulled off the blacktop onto an even smaller road, full of bumps and potholes. The car lurched along the suspension-challenging path.

  “Stop the car. Let me out.”

  Ted chuckled. “Soon enough.”

  “Why are you doing this? What’s going on? What is it I didn’t figure out?”

  “You’ve got the wrong man behind bars.”

  “Kelly?” she said, confused. “This isn’t news to me.”

  “Yeah, Kelly’s innocent, but that’s not who I was talking about. I meant the sheriff. He really did have the bad luck to go hiking in the woods and stumble across MacKenzie. He got to her just minutes before I would have.” He yanked off his baseball cap. “I got a nasty bump on my head falling out of that tree. Not sure how long I was unconscious.” He laughed softly, shaking his head. Bree thought she had never heard a more evil sound. “Still can’t believe a six-year-old got the best of me. Although she’s not my usual type, I think I would have enjoyed doing away with her. She would have fought me. But no matter how clever she is, she’s
not stronger than me.”

  Ted was insane! Bree wasn’t going to stay in this car one minute longer. She had no interest in finding out what his plans were for her. A car accident was more preferable. She reached over and grabbed the steering wheel, yanking it hard to the right.

  “Hey!” Ted screamed as the car careened off the road and landed with a thud in a ditch. It landed at a forty-five-degree angle, nose-down.

  Bree unfastened her seat belt and scrambled to get out of the car, but her door was blocked by something and would open only a few inches.

  “You bitch! What the hell have you done?” Ted unfastened his own seat belt and made a grab for her.

  She hit him with her purse, which was not such a small weapon. It packed a pretty good wallop.

  He was stunned for about half a second and she hit him again, but he grabbed the purse and wrestled it out of her grip, shoving it behind him.

  “It might be over for me. It’s only a matter of time before they figure it all out. But you... I’m going to end it like it should have been ended a long time ago, the very first time I got wind of the fact that you didn’t believe Kelly Ralston was guilty of rape.”

  He grabbed her by the arm, opened his door and started yanking, nearly dislocating her shoulder.

  She fought like a wildcat, screaming and scratching. But the angle of the car was in his favor; he had gravity on his side. Eventually he separated her from the car, then nearly broke her arm as he bent it behind her while placing his other arm across her chest in a travesty of an embrace.

  “I’m not going anywhere with you!”

  His reply was to slam her up against the car hard enough that her head bounced against the metal roof, making her see stars. Twice more he repeated the action, and she didn’t see or feel anything.

  When next she became aware, she was upside-down, and it was dark.

  It took her a few moments to realize she was being carried in a fireman’s hold through the woods. She didn’t cry out or let Ted know she was awake, hoping she could take him by surprise when he got to wherever he was taking her.

  She could tell he was getting tired. With each step he grunted and groaned, and he breathed hard, his gait uneven, and twice he stumbled on the rough path he’d chosen to take through the woods. The longer he carried her, the weaker he would be, so she kept her body as limp as possible and let him keep going.

  She’d better figure a way out of this, fast, or her hours, her minutes, were numbered.

  Finally it seemed Ted couldn’t go any farther; his breathing was so labored he sounded as if he might pass out any second. Abruptly he pushed her off his shoulder and she dropped onto the ground like a sack of wet sand.

  She could outrun him! She lay in an inert pile, peering at him through barely open eyes, waiting for just the right moment. He held a flashlight, but it wasn’t aimed at her. This might be her only chance. She leaped to her feet and started running, crashing through the woods in the general direction from which they’d come.

  But, Jesus, it was pitch-black out here. She thwacked into tree trunks and branches, and her feet became hopelessly entangled in underbrush with each step. She’d made hardly any progress at all before he snagged her arm.

  “Nice try, princess. But you can’t get away from me. You’re gonna die, and it will be painful.”

  “You’ll never get away with it,” she said as he dragged her along until he had her back where he wanted her. It appeared to be a small clearing; she could make out the remains of a campfire and some rudimentary seating made of logs and boards. “Eric knows I left with you. When I go missing—”

  “Yeah, I know.” He sounded only mildly regretful. “It was all winding down anyway. I’ve got Huntington’s. I bet you didn’t know that.”

  “Oh, God, Ted. I’m so sorry.” In that moment she meant it. He might be a monster, but not even monsters deserved to die of that horrible, debilitating disease. She was so thrown off balance by his revelation that she didn’t even fight as he wrapped something around her wrists.

  “I’ll plead guilty. They’ll give me the death penalty. Providing I can make it through all those mandatory appeals in a couple of years, the execution will be more of a mercy killing.”

  “You killed all those women?” she asked, just to be sure. “And Philomene. You were the one who raped her.”

  “That’s right.”

  She hoped this fact came to light, so Kelly could at last be freed. Then Bree’s and Philomene’s deaths would mean something. Although she wasn’t committed to the whole dying idea. Eric and his Project Justice buddies would come looking for her. They could find Ted’s car in the ditch—her cell phone ping would get them that far. Then they would have to follow the trail they’d taken on foot.

  But how long would all that take?

  “Why do you have to kill me?” she asked. “We were friends once.”

  “Friends? Is that what you call it? You know I wanted more.” He wrenched her arms over her head and secured them to a branch.

  She tried to kick him, but he was prepared for the move and easily sidestepped her puny efforts.

  “We’ll have none of that now.”

  “So, what, you asked me out and I said no. We were in med school. Nobody had time for a social life.”

  “Ah, that’s not quite true. What was that guy’s name? Barry somebody...”

  How did Ted know about Barry? She thought they’d been discreet. “What about him?”

  “Everybody knew you slept with him.”

  The bastard must have bragged about his conquest. “An ill-considered one-night stand. So what?”

  “I’m not stupid, Bree. You rejected me because you found me repulsive. All the girls did. ‘Undead Ted,’ that’s what they called me.”

  He was still hung up on grammar-school taunts?

  “Even if that were true, which it isn’t, lots of people get rejected. They don’t become serial killers.”

  “Yeah, well, it takes a certain set of circumstances to produce a serial killer. I’ve researched the subject exhaustively. Do you want to hear what my mommy did to me?”

  No, she did not. But the longer he kept talking, the longer she lived. “If you want to tell me, I’ll listen,” she said as sympathetically as possible.

  “Oh, it’s all very cliché. Locked in dark closets, forced to eat...well, things you won’t see on the menu at any restaurant. She did worse than that, too. I have the scars to prove it. Do you know what it’s like to be impotent by age fifteen? No, of course you don’t.”

  “Impotent?”

  “If you’re wondering how a rapist can be impotent—let’s just say there are lots of ways to violate a woman that don’t involve having a stiffie.”

  Her stomach roiled as she recalled what Philomene had told her about the rape.

  “She got worse around the holidays,” Ted said. “I think she got depressed. But instead of taking antidepressants or swallowing a handful of uppers just to feel something, she found a different way to stimulate herself.”

  “That’s why all the murders occurred around the holidays.”

  “Yup. Something about the smell of roast turkey flipped a switch in my brain. Exams and all the holiday stress—killing became my own personal Xanax. I paced myself—only one per year. I would spend weeks picking out just the right girl and planning how I would do it so I wouldn’t leave any incriminating evidence behind.”

  “And if you did, being the person who examined the bodies was an extra insurance policy. No wonder there was so little evidence....” Except for that first murder. “Wait. In Hollings County. There was DNA, and it wasn’t yours.”

  “Yeah, actually, it was. The DNA in the database with my name on it isn’t mine. That was easy to finagle. I was asked to provide a sample, so I swabbed the nearest cad
aver’s cheek. A little sleight of hand, and bingo.

  “But that was the one detail that might come back to haunt me.”

  “Because of the Huntington’s.”

  “Exactly. You just kept pushing and pushing, zeroing in on that case the way no one else did. Once you got Project Justice involved...” He sighed. “They have practically unlimited resources.”

  “So you thought if you got rid of me, the pressure would be off and Eric would lose interest in the case? That’s not really how it works. Once my life was threatened, every resource Project Justice has went toward finding the threat and eliminating it. And taking MacKenzie—how did you think that was going to work?”

  “The plan was to pick you both off once you showed up, bury you all in the woods, dispose of your car. It could have worked.”

  “I still can’t believe you would harm an innocent child.” The slightest thread of sympathy she might have felt for him evaporated on the spot.

  “Innocent, my ass. That child is in league with the devil. She nearly killed me. Got herself untied, stole my phone, climbed a tree, then kicked me in the head and made me fall.” He wiped his face. “The cut on my head is bleeding again, thanks to you. And I’ve got the mother of all headaches.”

  Despite her bleak situation, Bree found herself smiling. Good for MacKenzie. Bree had told her that if she was ever afraid, she should take action to make herself feel better, and damned if she hadn’t taken that advice to heart.

  “What about those tire tracks near Philomene’s car?” Bree asked.

  “Easy. We were all at Bobby’s lake house that night—him and me and Sam Needles. When the other two were asleep, I took the Range Rover and drove back to Tuckerville. Philomene was so easy to manipulate. A call from a pay phone pretending to be one of her boyfriends, a rendezvous, a knife across her throat. Really wished I could have taken more time with her, but carrying her across that field to the cattle tank, tying her into that tarp—it all took time. I barely got back to the lake house before the others woke up and wanted to start back.”