“Did you get the scoop on Harrison?” Reed asked, tugging her to sit beside him on the bed.
“Not yet, but I will,” she promised. “John said Harrison served doctored drinks, went into the bedroom and came out dressed and acting like a crazy woman.”
Reed curved an arm around her, pulling her in for an intimate kiss filled with lips and tongue and a passionate desire that was unnerving in a man who had been in surgery for hours the night before. She actually felt a little dizzy.
“I see you’re feeling better,” she murmured, unable to hold back her smile.
His husky voice filled her ears. “You always make me feel better.”
Marina laughed. With a finger she traced a straight path from his forehead to the center of his chest. “Don’t start something you can’t finish.”
“I always finish what I start,” he said, giving her the phony version of an injured expression.
She cupped his cheek, reveling in the feel of his razor stubble on her fingers. “I wasn’t questioning that. I just hate to get all excited when you’re going to be physically limited while you recover,” she teased.
This time Reed laughed. “Take me home, Marina. I’ll find a way to satisfy you. Guaranteed.”
“Stop it, Reed.” She pushed at his hands that had slipped from her waist to her hips. “They’re not going to let you out of here for at least another day or two.”
“So you’ll wait for me?”
“I’ve waited a lot longer than a couple of days for you to come around,” she said, suddenly unable to maintain the light, teasing note of their conversation any longer.
“We both messed up,” he said, urging her closer, “But we’re going to get it right this time, okay?”
“Yes.” She leaned down for another kiss. “I’ve got to get back to Chicago.”
“So you’ll call me when you get there?”
“Sure.” She opened her purse, found a pen and a piece of paper and wrote down the phone number.
“And be careful. Harrison doesn’t have to be the killer, you know.”
Marina gazed down at him, hating that she had to leave and wishing he’d tell her that he loved her again. She knew that people said a lot when they thought they were dying. Maybe he’d exaggerated his feelings. It wasn’t like her to need his reassurance. “Talk to you later,” she said, leaving the room to meet Trudy.
Marina took Trudy to the hotel then started the drive to Chicago. She spent most of the trip puzzling over the serial avenger. Was it Harrison? Was he crazy? Never in a million years would she have suspected him, yet they’d caught him. She needed his alibis for the nights of the murders and she needed a motive for the killing.
In the back of her mind she worried that this entire episode would turn out like the one they’d had with Gerry Chandler and Sandra Nichols. Gerry was still recovering at home. Sandra was in jail awaiting trial for her attack on Gerry, but there was nothing else to link her to the murders.
Surely there couldn’t be that many past victims waiting to take advantage of the spotlight on the serial avenger to eliminate some of the Alpha Kappa Epsilon members. Shaking her head, Marina drove on.
When she stopped for gas, she called Captain Spaulding and asked that the protection for the men who had been on the serial killer list continue at least until they were certain that Harrison was the serial avenger. He agreed.
Getting back on the road, she couldn’t get Harrison Hicks and his glorious disguise off her mind. “Harrison, Harrison,” she muttered under her breath, “are you really crazy or are you the best actor we’ve ever seen?”
CHAPTER 19
Javier had used his emergency key and was camped out at Marina’s house when she arrived home. Getting up from the sofa, he folded her in an emotional hug. “He’s okay?” he asked, anxiously studying her face and gleaning something from her demeanor and expression.
“Yes. He’ll be back in Chicago in a day or two.”
“Good.” Javier released her. “I made you some asopao de pollo.”
“Oh, Dad, thank you!” Marina’s stomach whined as she hurried into the kitchen. Food had not been a priority during the past twenty-four hours. Better still, asopao de pollo was her favorite comfort food.
She warmed a bowl of the soup in the microwave. Javier sat with her while she ate. Between spoonfuls she smiled at him, sensing that he was waiting for the right moment to tell her something important. “What is it, Dad?” she asked when she could stand it no longer.
“I want to apologize for meddling when you were seeing Reed and Emilio. I should have let you decide between the two.”
Marina shook her head vehemently. “It wasn’t your fault. I asked for your opinion.”
“And I should have kept it to myself,” he countered. “You love Reed Crawford.”
“Yes, but I didn’t know it then,” she admitted, surprised at how easily this truth flowed from her lips.
“If I hadn’t interfered, you might be married now,” Javier added soulfully.
Marina laughed. “We’ll never know, will we? Don’t worry about it, Dad, because Reed and I love each other now.”
He nodded. His expression letting her know that he’d accepted her word and her choice, once and for all.
She gave him a speculative glance. “You know, it’s kind of hard to see you without a love life.”
Javier threw her a mischievous look. “Why don’t you introduce me to Reed’s mother? She’s single, isn’t she?”
At a loss for words, Marina’s eyes widened. What in the world would she and Reed do if Trudy and Javier actually hit it off?
Javier’s resultant laughter said it all. He was just teasing her.
“Just for that, I’m going to set it up,” she threatened.
Javier just kept laughing.
Tired from the drive and the long night before it, Marina still went in to the office. She was worried that C.P.D. and the FBI might prematurely decide that Harrison was the serial avenger and remove the protection in place for the remaining men on the list.
Determined not to waste any more time, Marina worked with Shepherd and Spaulding to secure a search warrant for Harrison Hicks’ home in Chicago. Hours later she led a team of Reed’s police buddies and station volunteers in a search of Harrison’s home.
Harrison’s house was incredibly neat and orderly. The team members wore gloves but there wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere. Hidden at the back of his bedroom closet the team found stylish women’s clothing and shoes. Several pairs of the heels were taken for comparison to the high-heeled prints found at the site of Alderman Huber’s murder.
So Harrison’s dressing up like a woman isn’t a fluke, Marina mused. Still it failed to explain why he’d tried to kill John.
The team hit the jackpot when they opened a locked file filled with important papers. Under receipts, they found several for visits to a psychiatrist named Dr. Everett Bell.
Marina studied them, realizing that they were the key to resolving Harrison’s possible role in the murders. They showed that Harrison had been going to Dr. Bell once and sometimes twice a week for years.
Marina left Harrison’s with one thing on her mind. She needed a court order to get Harrison’s medical information from Dr. Bell. She went back to the office and put the paperwork together.
It was getting late. Both Shepherd and Spaulding had gone home for the evening. Spaulding answered his private line and listened to her update. Afterward, he ordered her to go home and get some rest and leave the court order for the first thing in the morning.
Reluctantly, she stopped work for the day. At home, Marina received a call from Reed. He was still in a lot of pain. For some reason he’d decided to try to wean himself off the pain medication as soon as possible and it was taking a toll on him. This made talking to him and trying to maintain a degree of normalcy extremely difficult. She was actually glad to get off the phone. Lying in the dark, she fought waves of guilt and sadness. She should have been t
he one on the porch getting shot and the one in the hospital. Marina fell into an uneasy sleep.
With Reed out of the task force picture Marina doubled her efforts to finish the job. She got up early the next day and had her court order by ten in the morning. She was at Dr. Bell’s downtown office requesting Harrison’s medical records half an hour later.
Dr. Everett Bell was a thin, scholarly-looking man who hid his big gray eyes behind black wire-rimmed glasses. He sat at his contemporary desk in his office doing paperwork while Marina went through Harrison’s records. He’d agreed to answer general psychiatric questions, but could not give her specifics about his sessions with Harrison without Harrison’s permission.
That said, he was concerned about his patient and planned to see Harrison to help him. Marina wanted to be one of the first to talk to Harrison if he came out of whatever state he was in.
She combed through the thick stack of medical files slowly, studying each page filled with Bell’s angular scrawl. Harrison had something called Dissociative Identity Disorder. Having gone through a series of computer searches, she knew the term was used for people with multiple personalities.
In the notes from the early sessions, she read that Harrison had been a severely abused child. His mother had starved, beat and burned him. Dr. Bell wrote that he thought this was how the additional ego or personality, Harry, had been born. Harrison’s aunt had gone to court to have him taken from his mother. His mother had served time in prison for child abuse.
Checking time periods, Marina skipped ahead to Harrison’s college years. Dr. Bell had met Ava, another one of Harrison’s personalities then. She had come out when Harrison had been pressured to participate in the fraternity parties that included rapes and assaults on female students.
Marina rubbed her forehead. This information forced more questions to surface. She wondered if Harrison had actually participated in any of the rapes and assaults. If he hadn’t, why had he been accused by some of the victims? Then there was the question of Ava, one of his egos. With Harrison being dressed as a woman, it sounded as though Ava was the one who’d shot Reed and threatened to kill John. John said she’d acted as if he’d done something to her, like rape. Marina wondered if Harrison could have been assaulted and blanked it out of his memory.
Standing, she took several of the records to be copied. The serial avenger puzzle was making her head hurt.
As she prepared to leave, Marina got a call from one of the guys at the station. Harrison had been transferred to a state facility where they would try to determine if he was fit to stand trial for attempting to murder Reed and John. This was a lot less than murder charges for the Alpha Kappa Epsilon members who had been murdered, but until and unless she could tie Harrison to the other crimes there wasn’t much she could do.
She told the doctor about Harrison’s transfer. Then, hoping that Dr. Bell would be able to bring Harrison out of the state he was in, she followed him to the facility.
The state facility was in a small Illinois town west of Chicago. Tall, elegant-looking gates enclosed a modern-looking building surrounded by lushly sculptured grass, flowers and shrubs. If she hadn’t known the place for what it was, she would have guessed an upscale private hospital. Glad that she and Dr. Bell had called ahead, Marina checked in at the gate, parked her car and went in the main entrance.
The facility director double-checked their paperwork and welcomed them. He told them that Harrison had been seen by one of their doctors. The doctor had failed to bring him out of the mental state, but hadn’t given up yet. An assistant showed them to where Harrison was being kept.
Harrison was in a small room with a bed. The walls were sterile white. The door was heavy steel with a thick mesh-covered glass at eye level. Harrison sat on the bed, unmoving. His eyes were open but he stared ahead blankly.
Dr. Bell asked them to move Harrison to one of the consult or treatment rooms. The staff complied. Soon Marina was watching Dr. Bell with Harrison from the other side of a one-way mirror.
Bell spent a lot of time talking to Harrison and trying to make him feel comfortable. Listening from her vantage point, Marina found the ebb and flow of his voice hypnotic. Harrison wasn’t reacting.
Bell continued to talk. He began to ask Harrison questions about how he felt. He focused on Harrison being safe from harm and with someone who cared about him.
Marina relaxed into her desk chair, abruptly aware of how tired she was. She hadn’t slept much in the past few days. She saw Harrison sort of fall forward on the couch.
Suddenly much more alert, she heard Bell asking him if he was all right. Harrison was shaking. “I couldn’t stop her,” he mumbled.
Bell went to comfort him. “Harrison, you’re all right now, but a crime has been committed—actually several. The authorities need to talk to you about it. Can you do that? It’s very important.”
Harrison nodded. “I couldn’t stop her,” he repeated.
Dr. Bell gave him water from a pitcher on the side table.
Marina got on her cell phone and asked Reed’s C.P.D. buddy Marco to come down to assist in the interrogation. By the time he arrived, Harrison was somewhat calm. They read him his rights and turned on the tape.
“Did you drug John Stuart at your cabin?” Marina asked, starting the questions.
Harrison lifted his head, shaking it. “No, she did it. She wanted to make him pay.”
Marina pressed him. “Who’s she? What is her name?”
“Ava.”
“The Ava who lives inside you?” Dr. Bell asked.
Harrison hung his head. “Yes.”
“Why did she want to make John Stuart pay?” Marco inquired calmly.
“She…she says he raped her, that all of them did.”
“Who is she accusing of rape, Harrison? What are their names?” Marina interjected, ignoring the tension bunching the muscles at the back of her neck.
“Aubrey Russell, Colton Edwards, Elliot Washington, Flint Huber and John Stuart.”
Dr. Bell made eye contact with him. “Harrison, did you see them rape Ava?”
Harrison shook his head. “No. No, I blacked out.”
Forcing more air into her lungs, Marina leaned forward. “Did you see Ava shoot Lieutenant Crawford?”
Harrison swallowed hard. “Yes, but I couldn’t stop her. She was too strong for me.”
“Did you see her hurt or kill anyone else?” Marco asked in a deceptively calm voice.
Harrison was trembling again. He hung his head. His words came out slow and halting. “Yes. She…killed the men who raped her.”
“Which men?”
“Aubrey, Colton, Elliot and Flint.”
Marina fisted one hand along the bottom of her chair. She had to be certain. “How did she kill them?”
Harrison looked at her like she was a dimwit. “Ava is beautiful and she loves disguises. She lured each man to a private place, drugged him and killed him.”
“But how did she kill them?” Marina repeated.
“With a knife she stole from the Alpha Kappa Epsilon house. Then she castrated them. I—I tried, but I couldn’t stop her.”
Marina relaxed against the back of her chair in a sort of daze. They’d finally caught the serial avenger. She didn’t know if the murdered men had actually raped Ava. She thought it was more likely that Ava had somehow identified with the group’s victims so much that she imagined herself as one of them. The pertinent fact was that Ava thought she was a victim and had acted on that assertion.
“Ava, will you come out and talk to us, explain your actions?” Dr. Bell prompted. “If Harrison gets prison time for this you are going to be there right along with him.”
Everyone focused on Harrison, waiting for some sort of reaction. Marina was remembering the blonde she’d chased through the trail at the preserve and their fight at the end. She hadn’t known it was Harrison, even when she’d ripped off the blond wig to find the brown hair beneath it.
Several moments pa
ssed. Dr. Bell sighed and stood. “I’ve talked to Ava a few times. She can hear and see everything Harrison can, but she’ll only come out when she wants to,” he explained.
Marina and Marco left the facility, anxious to have the tape transcribed and entered into evidence. Marco shook Marina’s hand as she prepared to get into her car. “Congratulations. You and Reed did some good work on the task force,” he said.
Marina thanked him. “I don’t know if they’re going to find Harrison competent to stand trial,” she noted, “but the important thing is that we’ve stopped the murders and gotten him off the street.”
A Serial Affair Page 18