“Why?”
Dutch laughed. “Why? Why not? Because I can, brother. So, what will it be? The woman or the girl?”
“Where is she? Where’s Julia?”
“Is that your choice, then? Julia over Miss Brown?”
Mitch looked at Neesy. There were tears in her eyes. “Let me see her,” Mitch stalled. “Let me make sure Julia is all right and then I’ll decide.”
Dutch shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“She’s your own flesh and blood for God’s sake!”
“Is she?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Après moi le déluge, you stupid little man. You think there could ever be one like me?” Mitch saw the warning in Neesy’s eyes a split second before Dutch swung the baseball bat with such force, it laid Mitch out flat. “You think I, the unique and glorious I, would deign to reproduce even if it was biologically possible?” He kicked Mitch, shouting, “Look at you, crumbs under my boot heels.” He pushed his foot on Mitch’s windpipe and pressed.
Mitch struggled beneath the force of that foot. It was crushing the air out of his lungs. He was pinned, choking and gagging. The room was turning red; bursts of light popped in and out of Mitch’s peripheral vision. He was going to black out. He was going to die. Unless…
Dutch’s stance, strong as it was with his weight behind it, was also an unbalanced one. At the last second, Mitch seized Dutch’s ankle and yanked. His brother fell.
Still half strangled, coughing, Mitch rolled onto his side in an effort to stand. Before he could, Dutch bared his teeth and leaped on him like a rabid dog.
They scrambled on the ground, inches away from the center where the floor opened into a wide square for the staircase. Dutch pounded Mitch, forcing his head into the opening. He was healthy and strong, and Mitch was wounded and weak. But he was also possessed by adrenaline fever. The madness fueled his body. He pushed Dutch back, hand on his brother’s chin, and Dutch gave, inch by maddening inch. Soon, Mitch was able to flip positions and force Dutch onto his back. Mitch sat on him, smashing his brother’s beautiful face. Again. And again.
And again.
Dutch was mashed and bloody and finally, finally still. Sick but satisfied, Mitch crawled off him, stumbling to his feet. He dragged himself to the glass wall. Neesy’s eyes were closed. Her skin was pale and stretched tight. She looked smaller, shrunken. How much time did he have?
He was looking around for something, anything, to get him inside, when a hot searing pain shot into his back. He staggered, turning.
Dutch was conscious, standing, and holding a bloody scalpel. His face was raw and smeared with blood, but his teeth gleamed white. “I’m going to turn you into art.”
He lunged, and Mitch barely managed to sidestep him. But as he did, Dutch’s knife arm came within reach. Mitch snatched it, raised his leg, then cracked the limb backward over his knee with all his might.
The sound of bone breaking splintered the room. Dutch dropped the knife and screamed in agony. Holding his shattered arm, he reeled backward, lurching and tottering, and Mitch watched in horror as his brother lost his footing, stepped unawares into the room’s open center, and fell.
In an eyeblink he was gone.
48
Mitch was shaking, his whole body quivering uncontrollably. He wanted to stop, think about what had just happened, but he couldn’t. Neesy was still losing blood. And when he thought about Julia, a river of molten terror ran through him.
The ceiling wasn’t terribly high, maybe eight feet. He grabbed the metal shelving and pulled it down. Everything on it fell and scattered on the floor, but he ignored that. Instead, he dragged the shelving close to the back wall of the glass room, unpended it, and with a grunt of pain, started battering the ceiling. It took him an eternity to pound a hole wide enough to crawl through. Every inch of him hurt, but he couldn’t think about that now. His mind was a frantic web of fear. Hurry, hurry, hurry—his only objective. When he finally made it through, he didn’t even know if Neesy was alive or dead.
The minute the hole was wide enough, he let the shelving crash to the ground. He turned it right side up and shoved it against the wall. Praying it would hold his weight, he used it like a ladder, pulling himself up the few feet necessary to reach the ceiling.
The crawl space was warm and damp and smelled of mice. He lay on his stomach, reached back through the hole, and pulled up the shelving. Then he repeated the entire routine, this time on the floor several yards away.
By the time he managed to crack though the beams, the shelving was dented and deformed. Then the bottom shelf fell out of its housing. He set the unit aside before more of it broke, then scrabbled with his bare hands, ripping out wood and nails. His fingers were bleeding, but finally he yanked open a big enough hole. He threw down the now-distorted shelving, then dropped down after it.
He was beyond despair when he saw Neesy up close. She hadn’t flinched at the noise he’d made. He felt for a pulse at the side of her neck and could barely find it. With a frenzied jerk, he pulled out the needle. Blood spurted everywhere. He ripped off his shirt, wrapped it around the needle entry, and bent her arm over it.
He was undoing the last of the straps when her eyes fluttered open.
She stared at him. “Hey, you,” she whispered.
“Hey, yourself.” He stroked her face.
“Am I dead?”
He kissed her forehead. “Not dead.”
“Am I dreaming?”
He kissed her lips. “Not dreaming, either.”
Tears leaked down her cheeks. “Are you sure?”
He took her good arm, the one that hadn’t been used for bloodletting, and guided it to his face. “Feel real enough?”
“You need a shave.”
He smiled. “Will you be all right for a while? I undid all the straps but you should lie here and rest until I can get you out.”
“What about… what about Dutch?”
Gently he said, “You don’t have to worry about him anymore.”
“And… and Julia?”
He shook his head, hoping she couldn’t see his fear.
“Oh, God.”
“I’ll find her.”
She nodded. “I know you will.” But the tears welling up in her eyes betrayed her own fear and misgivings.
“Don’t Neesy,” he said. “Please don’t.”
She closed her eyes as though trying to hold them back, but it didn’t work. “I won’t,” she said as they slid down her cheeks. “I’m not.”
“Stay here?”
“Too tired to move anyway.”
He left her, unsure if he was doing the right thing. Did he get there in time? Would she die anyway? But the other drumbeat inside his chest gave him no other option: he had to find Julia.
He climbed out the way he’d come, the choice haunting him. The makeshift ladder held most of the way up, but it buckled just as he reached the crawl space. He was left hanging, his arms clutching the crawl space, his feet dangling over the glass room. If he fell, there’d be no way out for either him or Neesy.
The thought gave him the extra strength he needed. At the last second, he managed to heave himself up and over the lip of the hole he’d carved. He lay on his back, breathing hard and fast.
A few seconds’ rest, and he jumped down into the room below and jolted down the stairs. His brother still lay at the bottom, his body twisted, his neck at a skewed angle. For the first time in his life, Dutch looked graceless.
Something pierced Mitch—sadness, relief, the overwhelming knowledge of talent wasted. If lives weren’t at stake, he might even have stayed with his brother’s body longer, but he didn’t. He flew down into the heart of the mansion. In his mother’s room he found a landline, the phone itself an old-fashioned rotary, cream colored with gilt trim.
For a half second he paused. What he was about to do would be the end of everything. But better that than the end of e
veryone he loved.
He picked up the receiver and dialed 911.
While he waited for the police and EMTs to come, he tore the house apart searching for Julia. There were several places that had been special to Mitch when he was a kid—an old garden shed that had survived the sale of the gardens, a butler’s pantry with a pulley compartment that went between floors, an ancient laundry chute that snaked down to the basement. At one time or another, he had escaped to all of them. Now he hustled from one to the other, each time sure Dutch had stashed her there, and each time shattered to find it empty.
By the time he got to the basement, he was in a frenzy of hopelessness. The police would be there any minute, and he wasn’t under any illusions about being arrested. He’d never be able to find her, help her, heal her when they took him away.
He punched the end of the metal laundry chute. The old steel was fragile, and the thing collapsed in a cloud of dirt and dust. Mitch inhaled a lungful and backed away. The broken chute seemed to represent himself—stuck in the mess of the past and looking at the collapse of the life he’d made to escape it.
He trudged out of the basement. For the first time, he felt a stinging throb at his back where Dutch had sliced into him. He was shirtless and cold, and the adrenaline was wearing off. How deep was the cut? If he never found Julia, it couldn’t be deep enough.
His pace slowed to a limp, and fear rose to a clanging crescendo. What if he never found her? He pictured her curled into herself, her small, helpless body lifeless and hidden where no one would ever find her. A keening moan escaped his throat. What had Dutch done to her?
A knock boomed through the house. Mitch ignored it.
The knock turned into pounding. It battered at the huge front door, thudding with the beat of his heart.
The police had arrived.
Mitch plodded from room to room. Every cell in his damaged body seemed to cry out in pain. Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered.
The police were still trying to get in. Their efforts had become a steady report that echoed like a soldier’s drum on the way to the gallows. Mitch entered the portrait gallery with the rumble of that drum in his head. It seemed to be sounding out the beats of a lifelong battle. A fight that had ended in loss and was now nearly over.
A small door on one wall led directly to the foyer. He looked toward the door, acutely aware of his failure, wanting, almost needing, the cuffs and the chains and the bars.
Halfway there, he halted. Inhaled a huge, panicked breath.
Above the door was a picture frame, but there was no painting inside. A small body hung in the center. Lifeless, head drooping, arms limp.
Julia.
Now the sound of heavy, galloping feet echoed through the house. But all Mitch heard was the bellow of grief that roared up from his throat, flew out his mouth, and swelled like a noxious demon to fill every corner of the room.
49
Once Mitch was in custody, Roger Carrick flew to New York and undertook a complete search of Hanover House. Among other things, the search turned up a specially designed chamber hidden in the walls of Dutch’s secret attic room. It contained a stockpile of blood, all carefully packaged, stored, dated, and labeled. It was those labels that brought Roger to Rikers Island, where Mitch was being detained.
Despite what they’d found at Hanover House, the New York prosecutor’s office wasn’t ready to drop the original murder and kidnapping charge—there was still no evidence to support any suspect other than Mitch. And with his evasion of prosecution for over a decade, plus his recent escape from detention, no one was willing to release him on his own recognizance. Even house arrest had been denied.
So he stewed in jail, and if Roger couldn’t connect Dutch to the murder of Alicia Ruiz, Mitch was going to be there a long, long time.
But the scarlet letter theory made sense only if Mitch had carved it. And though Alicia’s eyes had been taken like the other victims, she hadn’t been exsanguinated, so there was no blood evidence to connect Dutch to her death. And the best connection—her eyes—unlike those of the other victims, had never been found, even after several top-to-bottom searches of the mansion.
But Roger had come to Rikers for another reason, which was why Mitch sat across a bare table from him, along with Hannah Blunt and Mark Cascio, a member of the New York firm she’d hired to represent Mitch. Roger still wasn’t sure why Hannah Blunt was there, since she wasn’t licensed in New York. But perhaps, since she was someone Mitch knew and seemingly trusted, he was more comfortable with her help.
He certainly looked uncomfortable in his orange jail clothes and floppy slippers. Underneath the jumpsuit, he had a ten-inch cut across his back where Dutch had sliced into him. The scars from the beating he’d received while on the run made him look rough and coarse, a river rock instead of the polished gem the ten-year-old pictures from the original investigation showed. Certainly nothing like what you’d expect from the heir of a great fortune.
Not that Mitch seemed overly interested in the wealth. The only thing he ever seemed to care about was the kid and the woman from Crossroads.
Roger had debated bringing charges against Denise Brown—aiding and abetting, accessory after the fact…. He didn’t have any proof, though he was sure he could get some if he looked. He didn’t. Mitch swore he’d forced her to do everything, and though he had been armed, Roger suspected that was a dodge to protect her. In the end, though, he let the story stand. Any help she gave Mitch was to protect the girl, who, it turned out, really did need protecting.
Roger hadn’t been there when the police bludgeoned their way into Hanover House. But he’d read the reports and talked with the first responders. Mitch had been demented with grief, howling like a mad wolf and trying to crawl his way up the wall to the girl. His fingers and knuckles were bloodied from punching and scratching handholds into the plaster, and even after the police were able to cut her down and tell him she was alive, he had to be Tasered in order to restrain him. He’d been on suicide watch for the first two days in jail, and even now, weeks later—when Dutch was no longer a threat, and Mitch was receiving daily progress reports from Hannah Blunt and knew the girl was recovering—her health and safety as well as that of Miss Brown was the first thing he asked about.
“I understand they’re both doing well,” Roger said. “That’s not why I’m here.”
Mitch visibly relaxed.
“Why are you here?” Hannah Blunt asked.
“It’s about the blood.” Roger told them about the stored blood they’d found. “Each sample was carefully named—”
“They have names on them?” Mitch looked down at his hands as though the thought was incomprehensible.
“Yes. But they don’t correspond to the victim names. We were hoping you could help us figure out why.”
A dark, angry scowl crossed Mitch’s face. It was a look Roger had seen many times in the past weeks as the full story of Dutch’s crimes took shape and still Mitch was held accountable. “Me? Why the hell should I—”
Hannah Blunt put a hand on his arm. “You’ve told us Mr. Turner is not a suspect in these murders,” she said to Roger. “Why would he know anything?”
“Mr. Turner and his brother moved in certain circles. Perhaps the names would be familiar.”
“The crimes happened all over the country,” Cascio said. “I don’t think those circles stretch that far.”
“Besides, Mr. Turner has been out of that world for years,” Hannah said.
Roger knew this was a long shot, but it was the only shot he had. He’d been able to place Dutch in each respective city at the time of each murder—he’d been in each town for an art show. But why change the names? It couldn’t be a way of covering his tracks—Dutch would have known a simple lab test could tie the samples to the victims. FBI profilers and psychiatrists had floated a lot of theories, but none of them had satisfied Roger.
He turned to face Mitch directly. “If you could tell us something, anything…”<
br />
Mitch took a deep breath. He looked at the two lawyers. Both gave him a small nod.
“Okay. What are the names?”
Roger removed a list from his briefcase and ran down it. “Viola, Cecilia, Nancy, Priscilla, Rose—”
“Wait,” Mitch said. He looked stricken, almost sick. “Viola…”
“Cecilia, Nancy, Priscilla… Do those names mean anything to you?”
“Oh, my God.”
“What?” Roger said. “What is it?”
“The paintings,” Mitch said. “Dutch’s portraits. Those are the names of his paintings.”
Roger was dumbfounded. “Are you saying he… he painted his victims?”
“I don’t know. But… we’re talking blood here, right? You said these were the names found on the blood he collected?” Mitch looked even worse now.
“What is it?” Roger said. “What do you know?”
“I know that as a kid, my brother liked to paint with blood.” He told them about the room off the kitchen.
Now Roger understood why Mitch looked so terrible. “Are you telling me that those portraits were painted in the victims’ blood?”
The room was stunned into silence.
“Well…” Roger sat for a few seconds. He didn’t know quite what to say. “I guess I’d better get a warrant for the paintings so the lab can get on it. Thank you. I… appreciate your help.” He rose.
“Does that mean you’ll expedite the other tests?” Hannah Blunt said. “It’s been weeks and we’ve heard nothing.”
“I’ll make some calls,” Roger assured them.
“Don’t strain yourself,” Mitch said.
“Mitch,” Hannah scolded. Then to Roger she said, “These last few weeks have been very difficult, as I’m sure you can imagine. My client has cooperated fully with every aspect of this investigation, and he’s still incarcerated.”
“I know,” Roger said, gathering up his papers and his briefcase. “And I’m working on it. I’m doing everything I can.” He signaled that he was ready to go, and a corrections officer let him out.
Two Lethal Lies Page 27