Disturbed

by Jennifer Jaynes

  Chelsea’s nod was nearly imperceptible.

  He set the lilies on her table tray, then turned back to her. “I’m glad you’re okay,” he said softly.

  “Thanks.”

  “Are you up to talking a little?”

  “Sure,” she said, her voice deeper than usual, hoarse.

  “We found Ethan’s body. He was in his car at the bottom of a pond back in Springfield.”

  Chelsea’s eyes flickered.

  “It was on the same property as a set of your foster parents. The ones I had asked you about last week. John and Delores Jones.”

  Her eyes seemed to flash; then she looked away, in the direction of the room’s only window.

  Lang continued. “So, both Boyd and Ethan are gone now. You should feel safer.”

  She nodded.

  Lang had expected her to be upset, confused, maybe angry—and to certainly have a lot of questions. He was surprised by her reactions, or lack of them. Maybe it was the sedative. Maybe she’d gotten more of it this morning. He should have stopped by the nurses’ station to find out before visiting.

  Her reaction could also be a product of him overloading her with information. That on top of the trauma she was surely suffering from killing someone. Whether it was self-defense or not, taking a human life was always very difficult on the psyche.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you need time to let that soak in before I go on?”

  “No. I’m fine.”

  “Okay. So, there are a few loose ends that are still troubling me,” he started. “Things that I need to look into immediately, that I’m hoping you can help me with.”

  Her eyes were on him again.

  “Your friend Elizabeth. Have you heard from her?”

  Her cheek twitched a little. “No.”

  “The apartment number you gave me: Six D. Are you sure that’s the right apartment?”

  Chelsea nodded.

  “Have you been to that apartment?”

  Chelsea seemed to struggle to think. Finally, she shook her head. “I guess I never have. She always came down to my place.”

  “Really? And you didn’t find that odd?”

  Chelsea seemed to grow paler. “Yeah, maybe. Now that I’m saying it out loud. Yes, I guess it is.”

  “The phone number you gave me. It’s not working.”

  “That’s . . . strange.”

  “Do you have any other contact information for her?”

  She shook her head.

  “And you’re sure you gave me the right phone number?”

  He showed her the number written in his notebook. She studied it and nodded slowly.

  “Yes.”

  She swung her legs to the side of the bed, grabbed the back of her hospital gown with one hand, and tried to steady herself with the other.

  “Do you need something?” Lang asked, holding out a hand to help steady her.

  “I need to use the bathroom.”

  Lang helped her walk to the small bathroom. He watched as she shut the door. A moment later he heard the faucet turn on inside, followed by the muffled sound of vomiting.

  “Do you need any help?” he called after she’d finished. “Should I get the nurse?”

  “No, I’m okay,” she said weakly from the other side of the door.

  Lang hadn’t meant to cause her any more distress. Still, he needed the information. He thought about the fact that she’d never been to Elizabeth’s apartment. The fact that there was no record of her.

  His cell phone rang. He looked at the screen. McCutcheon, the FBI agent in charge of recovering data from the phone that had been found in the Joneses’ pond. So far they had been able to trace the phone back to its owner, one of the deceased girls, Amy Harris. The memory chip was corroded from being submerged for so long, so he wasn’t sure what they would be able to recover from it, if anything. But he’d been hopeful. This call could be important.

  “I have to take a call,” he said through the door. “I’ll be right back.”

  He ducked out of Chelsea’s room. “Lang here,” he said.

  “Lang, this is Agent McCutcheon. I work out of the Springfield FBI field off—”

  The call dropped.

  “Shit,” he muttered.

  He limped through the corridor, looking for a place where he could get better reception. But the most he seemed to be able to get on Chelsea’s floor was one bar. He waited on an elevator and took it to the first floor, then crossed the lobby as quickly as he could and exited the double doors of the hospital.

  He had four bars now.

  A new text message came through from McCutcheon with a video file attached.

  The text read: Bingo! Our tech guy discovered Amy Harris had a MobileMe account back in 2010 when mobile data backup was still in its infancy. Law enforcement hadn’t yet been trained on the technology, so chances are Duplechaine and his tech guys wouldn’t have even known to look for it. Check out the attached. Harris was recording a video the night when all hell broke loose.

  The thumbnail photo was of Amy Harris.

  Lang’s pulse quickened, and he pressed “Play.”

  In the clip, redheaded Amy was alive and well, lying on her stomach on her bed. She was propped up on her elbows, her eyes heavily made up. The phone was about a foot or so in front of her and situated on something stable. Remembering the location of the furniture in her bedroom, Lang guessed it had been her dresser.

  The video came to life, and Lang could hear Amy talking excitedly. “Well, I guess that’s all for tonight. Like I said, I hadn’t planned on making this video tonight but figured you’d like to know how my Halloween birthday went!” she said, her words a little warbled, her eyes glazed, probably from all the alcohol and Ecstasy that had been found in her system. “Look for a new video on Monday. I’ll be unboxing my latest MAC order, and I’ll show you how to . . .” Amy frowned, and her head swiveled toward her bedroom door.

  He watched her sit up on her knees and say something to someone. Lang heard something that sounded like it could be a scream in the background. “Christine?” Amy called. “What’s—”

  Another sound in the distance. Definitely a scream.

  Amy’s frown deepened. “Christine?” she called again.

  Silence.

  Amy crawled off the bed and moved toward the door, out of the frame. “Christine? What’s going on?” Lang heard her say softly.

  Suddenly, Amy was struggling with someone, just out of the frame. He could see a flurry of arms. “No! Please!” she pleaded. “Why . . . are you—”

  Then he heard another voice. It was a female voice, muffled. She said something Lang couldn’t make out. Amy screamed again and then was partially back in the frame. All he could see were arms and hair and the glint of a knife’s blade. The other girl appeared in the frame. She had long, dark hair. But the angle was wrong, and he couldn’t see her face.

  Both girls were on the bed now, struggling. The unidentified girl had Amy pinned to the bed. He couldn’t see the knife. Someone was saying something. It was the brunette. Lang leaned in, trying to make it out. “Beg me to stop.”

  Amy pleaded. “Please.”

  “No. Say, ‘Please, Elizabeth. Stop.’”

  Chelsea’s friend Elizabeth.

  “Bingo,” Lang muttered in excitement.

  But how the hell did Elizabeth, a nurse Chelsea said she’d met at the hospital only after the killings, fit into this puzzle?

  The knife was suddenly back. He heard Amy scream. Something must have hit the dresser because the video image shifted. Amy and her attacker were out of view again.

  Lang strained to make out what he could. Amy let out another noise, a faint, weaker attempt at a scream.

  The angle of the video moved yet again, bumping the two women partially back into view. Then something caught Lang’s attention. As though reading his mind, the image on the screen froze.

  Lang looked closely. />
  Against the back wall was a mirror, and the reflection of the killer’s face appeared. But it was too distant. He squinted, not able to make out enough. It wasn’t going to be enough to get a positive ID.

  His phone rang. McCutcheon again. But Lang needed to see the rest of the video. There were only twenty seconds left. He’d call McCutcheon back when he was done.

  It looked like the video had been altered. Edited, perhaps by McCutcheon and his team. The pixelated image sharpened. This time, the woman’s features were much clearer. Clear enough for an identification.

  The hair on his arms stood up.

  He shook his head. Oh, no. No. Shit!

  It was Chelsea.

  “Shit, shit, shit!”

  An elderly woman in a wheelchair stared at him.

  Just as he was about to press Garcia on his speed dial, his phone rang again. It was Garcia. “Lang,” he answered, breathless, limping through the double doors of the hospital. He had to get back up to Chelsea’s room as quickly as he could, but he needed backup.

  “See the video?” Garcia asked.

  “Yeah, just did. Where are you?”

  He heard police sirens in the distance. “Half a block away.”

  “I’m about to be in an elevator,” Lang said. “Heading to her room now.”

  “We’ll be right there,” Garcia said.

  Lang heard a click.

  He rode the elevator up, his heart jogging in his chest. He exited on the sixth floor and limped through the ward, back to Chelsea’s hospital room. When he got there, Chelsea’s bed was empty. The bathroom, too.

  A nurse looked curiously on.

  “Anyone see Chelsea Dutton?” he barked.

  Looking surprised by his urgency, the nurse shook her head.

  He hurried to the nurses’ station and asked if anyone had any knowledge of her whereabouts.

  But they didn’t. No one had seen her leave her room.

  A security guard came running toward him. Garcia’s team must have already placed a call to the hospital’s watch commander. “Put someone on all the exits to this hospital, stat!” Lang commanded.

  “Will do, sir,” the guard said and lowered his head, giving orders in his walkie-talkie.

  Lang’s heart dropped and landed with a thud in his stomach. He shook his head.

  Chelsea was gone.

  CHAPTER 40

  LANG PUSHED OPEN the door to the Springfield police station. It had been almost twenty-four hours since he’d seen Chelsea in the hospital, and he was still feeling gutted that she’d been the killer all along.

  There were so many unanswered questions. The most important ones: Why had she called herself Elizabeth? And did her mystery friend, Elizabeth Jessup, even exist?

  He’d watched the camera footage of her exiting the hospital via the freight entrance eight hours after the search had commenced. She’d gotten ahold of a pair of scrubs and a lanyard and could be seen walking out nonchalantly. There was an APB out on her. Her apartment was also being monitored, as well as her vehicle, credit cards, and cell phone.

  He’d received permission to assemble a task force and had just left the second meeting. Several cops were out searching for her, and calls to the tip line were flooding in and being verified. So far they knew that she’d used an Uber to drive her from a coffee shop six blocks from the hospital to a post office on Hudson Street. The driver had said she’d stayed in there for less than five minutes, then had him drive her to South Station. Surveillance footage at South Station confirmed she was there, and a clerk working for Greyhound confirmed she’d paid cash for a ticket to Roanoke, Virginia. They also had reason to believe that from Roanoke, she might have gone on to Florida. Lang had guys working on verifying that now. If they confirmed she was indeed headed to Florida, he was catching a red-eye there tonight.

  But this afternoon he had appointments to talk with Katherine Jones and Dr. Swenson. Lang now limped down the hall, the click of his brown loafers echoing off the polished tile floor, and entered the last interview room. Katherine was sitting at the single gray table that was anchored in the middle of the room. She sat with her spine straight, her hands folded in her lap, like a student waiting to speak to the school’s principal. She hadn’t brought her lawyer this time. She was alone.

  The room was stark and dreary. Two surveillance cameras were positioned on opposite walls above a large two-way mirror. Other than the gray table and two metal chairs, the room was empty.

  Lang walked in and nodded at her.

  “Would you like anything to drink? Coffee? Water?”

  She shook her head.

  He sat down and could see she had been crying. “Thank you for meeting me.”

  Katherine nodded. “I already gave my statement.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  “I have no idea how that car . . . that boy . . . ended up on my parents’ property. I wasn’t even in the country when the murders happened.”

  “We know. You were overseas.”

  “Then why . . .”

  Lang pulled a folder out of the brown leather briefcase he’d brought with him.

  “I need to know why you lied about visiting Chelsea after the murders.”

  Lang slid a copy of the visitor log in front of Katherine.

  Katherine’s face flushed.

  “This record shows you visited her in the hospital a week after the murders.”

  Katherine stared at the photocopied log for a long time, her face void of expression.

  Lang studied her.

  Was she deciding to tell the truth, or busy formulating a new lie?

  She looked up. “I’m sorry I wasn’t exactly honest about—”

  “You weren’t not ‘exactly honest,’ Katherine. Let’s call it like it is. You lied. You lied, and you wasted my time.”

  She blinked. “Yes, you’re right. I did lie. I just didn’t want to get involved. I wanted to tell you what I knew. Then I wanted you to go away.”

  “Because you had a dead kid on your property? Decomposing at the bottom of your pond?”

  Her eyes glistened. “I swear to you—I didn’t know anything about him. My God, I feel sick every time I think about that poor boy. Him being down there, all those years. I had no idea. I work my ass off on those textbooks and never go back there. No one goes back there. Ever. There’s no reason for anyone to.”

  Lang reached for the box of tissues and slid it toward her.

  “So, why did you visit her?”

  Katherine grabbed a tissue and dabbed her eyes.

  “I visited her because I felt guilty for getting her into some trouble when she lived with my parents. I wanted to see if I could bring her anything, help her in some way while she was in the hospital.”

  “Tell me about the trouble you got her into.”

  She looked down at her hands, then back up at him. “One time I stole twenty dollars from my father’s wallet, and when he noticed, I lied and said she was the one who did it. I knew it was wrong, but I was young and stupid, and I had no idea it would turn into such a big deal. The lie ended up snowballing out of control.”

  Lang listened.

  “When my parents asked her why she took the money, she said she didn’t do it. That I was lying. My parents believed me over her, and that made her very angry. Like really angry. It shocked my parents how angry she could be, so they talked to DCF, who told them to bring her to a psychiatrist. Before I knew it, they started talking about sending her back to DCF. I still feel bad for doing that to her. I had no idea that would happen when I did it. I was just immature, and she creeped me out, so I didn’t think twice about pinning it on her at the time. I didn’t visit her again after that. And I didn’t see how telling you any of that could help your investigation.”

  “You said she creeped you out. Why?”

  Katherine shrugged. “She just scared me. She wasn’t mean or malicious or anything. She was just really quiet. But in a weird way. The only time she talked was to that ima
ginary friend of hers when she thought she was alone.”

  “Imaginary friend?”

  “Yeah. She talked to her all the time.”

  “Did her imaginary friend have a name?”

  Katherine nodded. “Yeah, Elizabeth. She called her Elizabeth.”

  CHAPTER 41

  AN HOUR LATER, Lang sat in Dr. Swenson’s cramped office, which was housed in a small medical-office building in Chicopee, just outside Springfield. Dr. Swenson was the psychiatrist who had treated Chelsea when she’d lived with the Jones family. Per Delores Jones’s notes, Chelsea’s last appointment with him had created quite an upheaval. Lang wanted to know why.

  He’d been waiting for about five minutes when Dr. Swenson walked hastily into the room. “Sorry for the wait.” Swenson went to a cabinet and fished out a file, then sat down behind his sturdy mahogany desk. “I’m also sorry it took me so long to return your messages.”

  “Not a problem,” Lang said. He stood and handed Swenson the subpoena that allowed Swenson to talk about Chelsea’s case. He watched the doctor stroke his salt-and-pepper beard while he read through it. Then Lang brought him up to date, telling him about the Springfield Coed Killings. About Chelsea being wounded. The notes and subsequent shooting of Boyd, along with her own suicide attempt. Finally, he told him about the discovery on the video and the fact that she was now at large.

  When he finished, Swenson was frowning. He shook his head. “I remember hearing about those murders when I was in Florida, but I didn’t know Miss Dutton was a part of that. And no one knows where she is now?”

  “Not yet, but there are a lot of uniforms out there looking for her. So hopefully it’s just a matter of time.”

  Swenson shook his head again. “I’m very sorry to hear about this. It’s truly awful.”

  Lang nodded his agreement.

  “So, what exactly is it I can help you with, Detective Lang?”

  “I found some notes from Delores Jones—Chelsea’s foster mother at the time you were seeing her as a patient. She said you made a diagnosis that troubled them. I was hoping you could tell me what that diagnosis was. It wasn’t in any of the files.”

  “Well, it was more of an assessment than an official diagnosis. I only had six sessions with her,” Swenson said. “But it was more than enough to see that Chelsea was a special case. One that would be better diagnosed and treated by a different doctor. One with experience with cases like hers.