by P. D. Martin
But it’s too late, I can hear footsteps behind me again. I take a few steps forward then double back, walking on tiptoe into the nearest room. My feet are bleeding and I don’t want an obvious trail.
The room looks like an old ward. A dilapidated wardrobe stands in one corner, one door fallen off. I stagger toward it and climb in. This could be dangerous. If he comes in I’m trapped, but at the moment he’s on my tail and I need to get him off it. It’s a gamble I have to take.
Underneath the ward door I see light. Marty must have a flashlight. Another advantage he has over me. I didn’t cover my bloody trail very well. I didn’t know he had a light. My heart beats faster. I think of all the photos of the victims. I bite my lip. I don’t want to end up like them. The light passes. He’s not coming in. I wait a couple minutes, but I don’t want to wait too long, because no doubt he’ll double back and check the blood trail. I slip out the side of the wardrobe and creep toward the ward door. I open the door. It creaks ever so slightly and I hope he hasn’t heard it. No light. Good.
I run quietly back toward the staircase, careful not to trip over the fire extinguisher this time. I travel quickly down the stairs—I need to get out of the building. I run down another level. Am I at the ground yet?
I come down the last flight of stairs and hurtle my way out of the stairway. I’m nearly out. But instead of a free path, I slam into somebody. I start crying. How could he have gotten down here? I turn to run in the other direction, but he grabs me from behind with his hand over my mouth. I try to break free.
“Sophie, it’s me. You’re safe,” a voice says.
I can hardly focus through the tears in my eyes.
“Josh?” I say. “Josh,” I say again as my eyes focus on him. I hug him desperately. “It’s Marty, Josh. It’s Marty.” My voice is quite loud.
“Shh. I know.” Josh takes off the parka he is wearing and puts it over my shoulders. That’s right, I’m naked. I slip my arms into the sleeves and do up the zipper.
“Carter figured it out.”
“Darren?” I follow Josh’s lead and whisper.
“He’s here too. Looking for you.”
Last time I saw Darren and Josh together, they weren’t exactly cooperating. “Darren realized the killer wasn’t you?”
“Not exactly. He saw the map was missing from your place, so he knew the map held the key. But he still thought I was guilty. He came over to confront me and picked up a map of D.C. on the way. I insisted we work on the map together. Eventually we saw the head positioning. We were on our way over here when Carter recognized Marty in the photos in the living room. But Carter knows him as Matthew Lande.”
“Marty’s real name,” I say.
“Yes. I went to school with him, but I don’t even remember the guy.”
“Well, he remembers you. He’s obsessed with you.”
“Fuck. I still can’t believe all this was him.”
“I know. It’s been you for years. He’s been setting you up.”
Josh shakes his head. “He did a good job.”
I gulp. I’d believed it. I change the topic. “Montana and Sargent. I don’t know where they are…if they’re okay.”
“We’ll worry about that later.”
“Are any of the others here?”
“Not yet. It’s just me and Carter. But we’ve called it in. Backup’s on its way.”
Our conversation is silenced by the sound of a shot.
We both look at each other. Shit. Who’s been shot— Marty or Darren?
“I need a gun,” I say.
Josh reaches into his ankle holster and gives me a small, nonregulation thirty-eight.
“Take this.”
“What about you?” I think of Josh’s Bureau issue, locked away in an office somewhere.
He smiles. “I keep a couple of spares.” He moves his arm and I look down, noticing the gun he holds in his left hand. “Wait outside.” He motions toward a set of double doors behind him. “You’ll be safe there.”
I look at the doors and the temptation is strong. Very strong. But then I think about Sam and what Marty did to her and all those other women. What he wanted to do to me.
“No.” I turn back up the stairs I’d come down. All I can think about is revenge. I run up the stairs, spurred on by adrenaline and anger.
“Sophie?” Josh calls, but it’s too late. I’m already moving. He catches up to me and we proceed up the stairs slowly. Josh passes me and moves in front, covering up the stairs, while I cover down the staircase, just in case he somehow got below us into the basement.
We move out onto the level I’d come from.
“Shit,” Josh says. I look down.
In front of us is the slumped figure of Darren.
Josh bends down and feels his neck for a pulse, all the while keeping his eyes down one end of the corridor while I watch the other.
“He’s alive,” he says. “You stay with him.”
“No, Josh. I’m coming with you,” I whisper. I’m not willing to let Josh face Marty alone. Besides, I need to see the bastard die with my own eyes.
Josh nods, perhaps even now preferring me to be with him rather than Darren. “Which way did you come from?” he asks.
“That way…I think.”
We’re in a corridor that runs at least fifty feet, with identical corridors in either direction running off it. It all looks the same and now I’m confused.
“When I heard footsteps behind me I panicked.” I pause, trying to remember. “I’m sorry, I don’t know.” I feel stupid. I’m trained to take notice and remember things like this. People’s faces, the layout of a room. But I guess my survival instinct took over when I ran.
Josh nods and we’re silent once more. He motions to the left and we move in that direction, him looking ahead, me covering behind, walking back to back. After a few steps Josh nudges me. I turn around. We’re at the first open corridor. Josh mouths, “One, two, three,” and we both charge around the corner, guns first. Nothing. No one.
Which way do we go?
“Marty, it’s all over. The FBI and D.C. police are on their way,” Josh yells.
Silence for a minute, then: “Good. They’ll find you and Sophie dead. A murder-suicide.” The voice comes from our left. We go back to the corridor we were in and keep moving down.
“I don’t think so, Marty. It’s over.” Josh keeps talking.
“Over for you. You never were that bright, were you?”
“Not like you, right?”
“Exactly. But you got all the glory. Popular at school, with the women. And then you waltzed into the police.”
We come to another corridor. Which way? “So you were trying to set the record straight.”
“You bet.”
Josh points to the sound of the voice and we move to our left.
“I finally made the FBI three years ago,” Marty says. “So then it was just a matter of destroying your world.”
“Well, you’ve failed. And Sophie’s still mine, not yours.”
He’s trying to rile Marty. That could be dangerous, very dangerous.
“Careful,” I whisper, but not quietly enough.
“I see you’ve found each other.” Marty’s anger is obvious.
It’s hard to pinpoint the voice because of the long corridors and the echo that accompanies every word, but we’re heading in the right direction.
“Marty, give yourself up and no one will get hurt,” Josh says.
It’s a promise Josh is willing to make, but I am not.
“You think you’re so good, the lot of you,” Marty says.
“Who?” I ask. If we keep him talking we can close in on his voice.
“Agents.”
Josh says quietly to me: “Marty applied as a field agent three times, then finally got in with forensics.”
“It’s forensics who are the important ones,” I say.
“You think I’m going to fall for your flattery again, bitch.”
; “This way,” I mouth at Josh, pointing to a corridor.
“It’s true, Marty. That’s why we couldn’t get you, isn’t it? Forensics.”
He doesn’t answer, but we keep moving down the corridor, checking out each door we pass. We’re moving slowly and quietly, listening intently for any noise. A footfall. A door opening or closing.
We come to the end of our corridor, to a T-intersection. Josh turns back to me, deciding which way to go.
Suddenly Marty comes charging around the corner, firing. Josh hears the steps and dives to the right, into a doorway. I dive forward and fire.
Four shots go into Marty’s chest, one after another. He falls. I land on the floor hard, but roll out of it and stand back up. I grimace with the pain from my rib. I race over to Marty and kick the gun out of his hand. I study him for any sign of life and then kneel down and check his pulse. He’s dead. The bastard’s dead.
I automatically go to reholster my weapon, and then look down at myself in Josh’s oversize parka. I haven’t got underwear on, let alone a holster.
“He’s dead,” I say to Josh, and then realize he’s not moving. “Josh!” I slide across the floor on my knees to the spot where he is lying.
I see a bullet entry point in his jacket, and pray to God he’s got a bulletproof vest on under it. I start to tear off his jacket. He opens his eyes and smiles. He coughs. He’s winded, that’s all. No blood.
“Thank God you’re okay.”
He sits up. “I’m fine.” He undoes his bulletproof vest and examines the point of contact on his skin. It’s bright red and he’ll have an almighty bruise, but the jacket stopped the bullet.
We look at each other, silent. So much has happened. Maybe he’ll never speak to me again. How could I blame him—I thought he was a killer.
Finally he breaks the awkward moment. “You hurt?”
“Just a cracked rib.” I pause. “And a couple of cuts.”
Then I hear the sirens.
CHAPTER 23
I sit in the debriefing room, still sore. I’ve got a heat pack on my ribs, which is helping to numb the pain—that and the painkillers. My thigh’s got fifteen stitches and I even had to get a couple of stitches in my left foot. The rest of the cuts on my feet are covered and my soles are lightly bandaged. Walking is difficult and slow. No help from adrenaline now.
The task force and everyone from the Behavioral Analysis Unit, including Pike, are present. Rivers leads the meeting, a piece of paper in his hand.
“Marty Connor Tyrone,” he says. “One of our own.” He shakes his head. “Born in Tucson, Arizona, in 1974, Matthew Connor Lande. Went to Catalina High School, graduating in 1991.” Rivers looks at Josh.
“The year below me.”
“Yes, that’s when his obsession with Marco started.”
Josh nods and Rivers continues. “Applied for Arizona Police Force straight out of school and was rejected. Applied for the FBI in 1995, also rejected. A month later he killed Sally-Anne Raymond. He changed his name in 1996 before studying forensic science at Michigan University. Applied for FBI field training another two times, in 1998 and 1999. Worked with the Chicago Coroner’s Office at the end of 2000. And of course, we’ve got him on flights to Florida for a vacation in 2000.”
“But we must have had his real name on record,” Krip says.
“We did, but we never cross-checked aliases against the college lists,” O’Donnell says.
We would have searched for name changes and aliases if all our leads turned up blank, but it would have been a week or two down the road.
“Now we know why the crime scenes were so clean,” Pike says.
Josh double-clicks his pen. “Even if he slipped up in Chicago or here, he could have tampered with the evidence. He was always protected.”
“He changed the handwriting report and that kept us focused on the left-hander angle,” I say.
“Part of his attempt to set up Marco,” Rivers says.
I sigh, tired. “I gave a sample of Marty’s writing to Questioned Documents. It matched the note to Sam.”
A few nods. It was a given anyway, but we still had to be sure.
“How’d he get it so clean in Arizona though? Before he even started studying?” Flynn asks.
“Oh, he’d been studying all right, self-studying,” Josh says.
I picture the tree underneath which Sally-Anne died. “The rain helped with Sally-Anne.” I pause. “He was lucky that day.”
“Did he actually know Sally-Anne?” Flynn asks.
“From afar. He’d seen her with Marco a few times,” I say.
“Was he on the Arizona suspect list?” Couples asks, looking at me.
“Yeah, but under Matthew Lande.”
There’s silence for a few moments, then Josh slams his pen down on the table. “Right under my nose.”
I want to reassure Josh. Not that it will make up for the trust we’ve lost, but I can’t help wanting to reach out to him. “That was the point for him. It was all part of the thrill. It was why he came to D.C. Why he applied for FBI forensics. And no doubt why he wanted to share with you. He wanted to be you.”
Josh pushes his chair back and shakes his head. “Single White Female eat your heart out.”
“How does he compare to the profile?” Jones asks.
“Perfectly,” I say. “He even had much older brothers.”
Josh is silent.
“Any domestic violence?” I ask.
“The father was on the police radar for years, but when Marty…I mean Matthew…was sixteen it all stopped. The father sobered up.”
I cup my hand around my cracked rib. “But the example had already been set. It’s okay to hurt the woman you love.”
“I guess so,” Rivers says. “I spoke to Mrs. Lande. I couldn’t get much out of her, but we’ll be following up his background very carefully.”
I nod. No doubt we’ll dig up the early indicators of a serial killer—bed-wetting, animal torture and the like.
“When did he meet you?” Flynn asks me.
“The Henley case.”
I’ve been over every interaction I’ve ever had with Marty at least a hundred times. I’d seen him both at work and at Josh’s, but each encounter was short. I had no idea he saw me as yet another thing that Josh had and he didn’t.
“And you worked out the body positioning, Anderson?” Pike says.
“Yeah. I realized all the victims’ heads were looking roughly toward the same spot.” I pause, thinking about Sargent and Montana. We found them both dead, shoved in a janitor’s room.
“I can’t believe we missed the head positioning,” Jones says.
O’Donnell rests his arms on the table. “We were looking for a pattern in the locations, not the victims’ head positioning.”
I should have picked it up earlier. Maybe then Sam would be sitting in this meeting. I still can’t believe she’s really gone.
“How’s Carter doing?” Pike asks.
Pike’s voice gets my attention and I slowly move my gaze from the window to Pike.
“He lost a lot of blood, but he’ll live. They’re going to release him in a few days. He’ll be off work for a couple of weeks though,” O’Donnell answers.
“Some vacation,” Krip says.
“Vacation?” There’s a hint of disapproval in Rivers’s voice, but he leaves it.
“It was a good holiday. He caught his man,” Josh says.
O’Donnell takes his glasses off. “True.”
There’s silence again.
“Right, well. We may as well wrap it up,” Rivers says. “Thanks to the task force for coming in and for all your work. And the rest of you, back to work.” Rivers looks up at Josh and me. “Except for you two. I want to see you in my office.”
The room empties without any fuss or hint of victory. There’s not really much to celebrate. We caught our guy, but we lost so much on the way.
We follow Rivers to his office. I hobble, the cuts on the soles
of my feet still very sore.
Rivers sits down and motions to two chairs at his desk. Josh and I also sit.
“I want you two to take a few days off.”
Josh takes a breath in. “But—”
“Not buts, Marco. Marty has been targeting you for years and he was framing you.”
“But you didn’t believe that, did you?”
Poor Josh. It must be hard to know that others suspected you of being a serial killer. Work colleagues, your girl…
“You were never a suspect in my mind,” Rivers says. “But we had to investigate you properly and do the right thing.”
Is he being diplomatic or truthful?
“Anyway, I’m fine,” Marco says.
Rivers shakes his head. “You took a bullet.”
“I had a vest on.”
“I know. But you’ll be sore for a few days, and time off will do you good.”
Josh doesn’t respond.
“And as for you,” Rivers says, looking at me, “if I had my way you’d still be in the hospital.”
“For a broken rib and a few cuts?”
“You need time out, Sophie. And you’ll need to spend a lot of time with Dr. Rosen.” He looks at Josh. “Both of you will.”
Josh speaks up again. “What? For a bullet?”
“You’d have to see Rosen for a bullet, it’s procedure. But it’s more than a simple bullet and you know it, Marco.”
As much as I hate to admit it, Rivers is right, for both Josh and I. I’ve been trying not to think about what happened in that room. I was lucky, lucky that he didn’t rape me. Lucky that I escaped. But I know I’ll have nightmares about it every night. And Josh? He feels guilty about all of this, especially Sam. I know he does. After all, the murders were about Josh.
I look up at Rivers and nod. Even Josh keeps quiet.
Rivers clears his throat. “There’s also the matter of procedure. Shots fired and one person killed. There’ll be an investigation.”
“What?”
“It’s routine, you know that. You had to shoot him, of course. And personally, I think you did the world a favor. But—”
“It has to be investigated,” I say.